Doug Blevins, who efficiently coached school and N.F.L. kickers like Adam Vinatieri and Justin Tucker, regardless of by no means having performed soccer as a result of he had cerebral palsy, died on Sunday in Johnson Metropolis, in east Tennessee. He was 60.
His son, Roman, stated the reason for loss of life, in a hospital, was problems of esophageal most cancers.
Blevins was fascinated with soccer from a younger age, and more and more with the nuances of kicking. He watched video games and educational movies, learn books and, when he was in highschool, began to correspond with the previous Dallas Cowboys kicking coach Ben Agajanian. He would analyze video that Agajanian despatched him, then use the data to enhance the kicking on his highschool group, the place he was the coach.
“Since I used to be handicapped, I knew I’d by no means play a down,” Blevins instructed The Los Angeles Instances in 2000. “However I used to be set on this aim, making it to the Nationwide Soccer League.”
Blevins, who instructed kickers from a motorized wheelchair, taught himself the mechanics of place-kicking, punting and kickoffs. He analyzed hip rotations, leg swings and toe angles; he talked to kickers in regards to the perfect place to plant a foot earlier than kicking a area aim and methods to sq. one’s physique to the tip zone.
His best-known college students included Vinatieri, who turned the N.F.L.’s profession scoring chief with the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts and who kicked two Tremendous Bowl-winning area targets; Tucker, of the Baltimore Ravens, who holds the league file for the very best share of area targets made; and Olindo Mare, the Miami Dolphins’ all-time scoring and area aim chief.
By the mid-Nineties, Blevins’s fame as a kicking guru was starting to unfold. By means of an administrator at a group school the place he had been teaching, he got here to the eye of Dick Steinberg, the final supervisor of the New York Jets.
Blevins supplied Steinberg with scouting reviews on the Jets’ kickers in 1993, and the subsequent season he labored because the group’s kicking advisor, a serious shift in his profession.
“That is an uphill battle,” Blevins instructed Sports activities Illustrated for a profile of him in 2004, noting that it was particularly troublesome as a result of he was not an ex-player and much more difficult due to his incapacity. “I wanted to have strolling, speaking résumés on the market. If I had guys I discovered who turned profitable kickers within the N.F.L., then I’d at all times have a spot on this league.”
In 1995, he started a five-year consulting stint with the World League of American Soccer (later generally known as N.F.L. Europe), the place he taught soccer gamers to be N.F.L.-style kickers and chosen the kickers for the groups.
Between 1995 and 1996, he spent a number of months in his hometown, Abingdon, Va., fine-tuning the place-kicking abilities of Vinatieri, an undrafted kicker from South Dakota State College.
On account of their collaboration, Vinatieri turned a extra constant kicker, blasting footballs off his highly effective proper foot. Blevins positioned him with the Amsterdam Admirals of the World League in 1996, and the Patriots signed him later that 12 months. His profession included two Tremendous Bowl-winning area targets for the Patriots.
“Doug has the proper kick in his thoughts,” Vinatieri instructed Sports activities Illustrated, including, “He watches you and figures out what that you must do.”
“I wouldn’t be right here with out him,” he added.
William Douglas Blevins was born in Abingdon on Aug. 3, 1963. His father, Willis, was an engineer. His mom, Linda (LaFon) Blevins, was a nurse who inspired Doug to pursue no matter he needed.
Within the early Nineteen Eighties, whereas attending the College of Tennessee, Blevins was a scholar assistant coach underneath Johnny Majors. After transferring to East Tennessee State College, in Johnson Metropolis, he held the identical place, working for the top coach, Mike Ayers. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in legal science in 1988.
He quickly started holding educational camps in Southeastern states — which he did for a few years — and tutoring kickers. From 1992 to 1995, Blevins was the particular groups coordinator and kicking coach at Abingdon Excessive Faculty.
In 1997, whereas nonetheless working for the World League, he was employed by Jimmy Johnson, the top coach of the Miami Dolphins, because the group’s kicking coach. He helped Mare win the No. 1 place-kicking job by slowing down his kick.
Johnson stated it was Blevins’s single-minded focus that helped the kickers.
“Lots of kickers get off on their very own and get out of rhythm; loads can occur to them if somebody isn’t teaching them on each single kick,” Johnson stated in a telephone interview. “Doug knew that was his position and charted each certainly one of his kicks, and Mare turned among the best Dolphins kickers ever.”
After six years with the Dolphins, Blevins turned a advisor to the Minnesota Vikings in 2004. He helped enhance Aaron Elling’s distance and grasp time on kickoffs.
Throughout the group’s coaching camp that 12 months, Elling instructed The Minneapolis Star Tribune that Blevins “can see each mechanical factor you’re doing on a kick, abruptly.”
The Vikings job was Blevins’s ultimate one for an N.F.L. group. However he continued to work with kickers individually and coached at Emory & Henry School, in Emory, Va., and at East Tennessee State. He had agreed to affix the employees of Tusculum College, in Greeneville, Tenn., earlier than he was recognized with most cancers.
Billy Taylor, Tusculum’s new head coach, was a participant at East Tennessee State when Blevins was a scholar assistant coach.
“Doug wheeled himself into Coach Ayers’s workplace and stated, ‘Coach, I’ve lived with cerebral palsy all my life, however I’m a linebacker at coronary heart,’” Taylor stated by telephone, recalling the dialog. “‘I really like soccer, and I need to be a part of this.’”
Along with his son, Roman, from his first marriage, to Nenita Colon, which led to divorce, Blevins is survived by his mother and father; his daughter, Sarah Blevins, from his marriage to Nancy Duque, which additionally led to divorce; his brother, Greg LaFon; his grandmother Kathleen Hensley; and his stepmother, Carmen Blevins.
Blevins stated that his incapacity didn’t reduce his ardour for teaching gamers in a specialty that he knew so nicely.
“Skilled soccer is a results-oriented enterprise,” he instructed Talents.com, a disabilities web site. “As quickly as individuals noticed that I may create the specified outcomes and obtain the suitable degree of success, I used to be welcomed into the world.”
