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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 dying, 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 tutorial 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 knowledge 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 Occasions in 2000. “However I used to be set on this objective, 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 supreme place to plant a foot earlier than kicking a subject objective and the right way to sq. one’s physique to the tip zone.
His best-known college students included Vinatieri, who grew to become the N.F.L.’s profession scoring chief with the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts and who kicked two Tremendous Bowl-winning subject objectives; Tucker, of the Baltimore Ravens, who holds the league document for the very best share of subject objectives made; and Olindo Mare, the Miami Dolphins’ all-time scoring and subject objective chief.
By the mid-Nineteen Nineties, Blevins’s status as a kicking guru was starting to unfold. Via an administrator at a group school the place he had been teaching, he got here to the eye of Dick Steinberg, the overall supervisor of the New York Jets.
Blevins offered Steinberg with scouting reviews on the Jets’ kickers in 1993, and the subsequent season he labored because the group’s kicking marketing consultant, a significant 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 tough 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 grew to become 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 referred to 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 grew to become 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 yr. His profession included two Tremendous Bowl-winning subject objectives for the Patriots.
“Doug has the proper kick in his thoughts,” Vinatieri instructed Sports activities Illustrated, including, “He watches you and figures out what it’s essential to 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 pinnacle coach, Mike Ayers. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in prison science in 1988.
He quickly started holding tutorial 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 pinnacle 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.
“A whole lot 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 cellphone interview. “Doug knew that was his function and charted each one in all his kicks, and Mare grew to become the most effective Dolphins kickers ever.”
After six years with the Dolphins, Blevins grew to become a marketing consultant to the Minnesota Vikings in 2004. He helped enhance Aaron Elling’s distance and cling time on kickoffs.
Through the group’s coaching camp that yr, Elling instructed The Minneapolis Star Tribune that Blevins “can see each mechanical factor you’re doing on a kick, unexpectedly.”
The Vikings job was Blevins’s remaining one for an N.F.L. group. However he continued to work with kickers individually and coached at Emory & Henry Faculty, 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 cellphone, 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 resulted in divorce, Blevins is survived by his mother and father; his daughter, Sarah Blevins, from his marriage to Nancy Duque, which additionally resulted in 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 folks noticed that I might create the specified outcomes and obtain the suitable degree of success, I used to be welcomed into the world.”
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