Theo Ash is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover high schools for AZPreps365.com

It’s hard to defend NFL defenses.

Just ask Scott Ruby, the Desert Mountain High offensive line coach. This season, his unit had to go up against blitz packages designed by former NFL cornerback and current Desert Mountain head coach Conrad Hamilton, every day in practice. 

“He's the best defensive coach in the state, not just high school, but at a college level also,” Ruby said. “From a strategic standpoint, Xs and Os and putting the opponent at a disadvantage … He’s the master at that.” 

“I'm not a defensive guy, but I can tell you. You'll have three man front, four man front. You got every blitz package you could possibly think of, inside blitz, strong side blitz, up the middle, two guys off the edge. I mean, we were on blitz period at the beginning of the year, against our own defense and they just killed us as an offensive line.”

Ruby went on to compare Hamilton’s defensive looks to what you see from the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Alabama Crimson Tide saying, “He's kind of a Nick Saban disciple.”

“You go from watching the very defenses we're running, to clips with the Steelers and who knows who else in the pros. Then he brings it down a little bit to Alabama and USC and stuff like that. So, and I mean, his defense is just unbelievably sophisticated.”

Hamilton’s signature defense was the stepping stone to Desert Mountain’s push to the 5A playoffs this year. The Wolves, seeded No. 3, fell to sixth-seeded Ironwood in the quarterfinals on Nov. 27, but despite the crushing loss, the Desert Mountain program appears to be on the upswing. 

The Desert Mountain Wolves practicing at their facility in Scottsdale (photo courtesy Desert Mountain)

 

Hamilton played for the New York Giants under the tutelage of defensive coordinator John Fox, who then moved on to be an NFL head coach for 16 years, appearing in two Super Bowls.

“Fox really changed my outlook on the sport, and the mental aspect of it, understanding the X's and O's and all that. And I fell in love with it underneath his tutelage. I knew, during that time, that when I was done, I was probably going to get into coaching,” Hamilton said. 

Wolves defensive end Porter Sweet transferred to Desert Mountain before the season, and initially found the complexity of the playbook a little overwhelming. 

“At first it was hard for me to learn,” Sweet said. “There are so many different responsibilities and all the different plays, you gotta go inside, outside loop. Sometimes you have to read your tackle. So that's probably the biggest thing, knowing your responsibility, but it's a really fun defense to play in. Because you get a free rusher on almost every play.”

Sweet finished the season with 22 tackles, 2.5 sacks, and 6.5 tackles for loss in four games. The team overall finished the season with 22.0 sacks. They also forced 13 turnovers, and had 66 tackles for loss in just seven games. 

 

Porter Sweet ready to rush the passer (photo courtesy Desert Mountain)

Hamilton also worked as a defensive assistant and analyst for ASU, spending countless hours studying film to figure out the tendencies of opponents, working closely with then-defensive coordinator Todd Graham, who is now the head coach at the University of Hawaii. This also helped Hamilton grow as a leader.

“From a football standpoint there was growth, but also just how [Graham] ran his program, how to build a program, how to run it based off of character and discipline, putting that at the forefront, you know, as opposed to worrying about just wins or losses,” Hamilton said. 

With character and discipline, though, come wins and losses, and that perspective is probably why the Wolves finished with their best winning percentage since 2012, when future NFL quarterback Kyle Allen was on the team. Just two years removed from a disappointing 3-7 campaign, Desert Mountain made the playoffs in Hamilton’s second year as head coach. 

“The second year has gone great!” Hamilton said, adding that it takes a while to instill a winning culture in a program.

“[The seniors] have been under somebody else's regime for three years. All of a sudden I take over the job in April. And then having to transform the philosophy, and how we want to do things, just from a cultural standpoint and the expectations, not to mention a staff shift … That was a big shock for those guys.” 

Hamilton said he felt an offseason hampered by COVID-19 restrictions actually helped the team with preparation.

“It got us to build more relationships, more one-on-one talking and developing guys off the field as opposed to on, and then looking at the film and the cut-ups that we have, get into the playbook in a little bit more depth than maybe we would have had a chance to do if we're always so worried about what we were doing on the field,” he said. 

Ruby, the offensive line coach, believes nothing can replace field work. But he still found ways to take advantage of a socially- distanced offseason.

“I have a laundry list of offensive line drill clips from the pros, to Wisconsin and Georgia and Alabama and all those kinds of schools,” Ruby said. “So I would make clips and send them to the guys saying, ‘OK, you're out there working on your own, do footwork like this, or here’s a good series of drills for pulling,’ and that sort of thing.”

The line at Desert Mountain uses a unique technique, referred to as shoulder blocking, to get the most out of their players. Instead of using hands to engage defenders at their shoulders, the linemen get low and attack the hips of the opposition. 

“If you smack a guy with your hands, above the waist, his arms will absorb some of the impact… but If somebody were to hit you in the hips, you know… it’s going to move you,” said Ruby.

“I can't speak highly enough of the guys we had. Basically six or seven guys who played offensive line. That's all we had. Whereas the big schools, like Chandler, you'll find 30 linemen. But we only had seven. And they were just good guys. They worked hard, they were very coachable. They didn't, you know, roll their eyes. They just were a real delight to coach.” 

According to MaxPreps, Desert Mountain only allowed about a single sack per game.

“Going against probably the most complex defense in Arizona high school definitely helped,” said senior lineman Heath Henderson. “Everything in the games, we had either seen it before in practice, or it was easy to pick up on because of how much blitz protection we did.” 

Henderson said there really wasn’t anything they saw in other games quite like what they saw in practice.

Ruby’s son, who was the offensive line coach at Chaparral when Hamilton coached there, told him, “‘Dad, you win 10% of the time against Conrad [in practice]. That's really good, because you get in a regular game, and you'll never see that kind of stuff.’ And he was right. We did not give up an assignment bust sack all year long.” 

Hamilton gave high praise to the line, saying, “Our offensive line, by far at 5A, I believe is one of the best offensive lines in the state. And they're one of the best prepared and well-coached O-lines in the state.”

Henderson said even though the line was undersized, Ruby’s techniques allowed them to make up for that.

“He taught us a shoulder blocking technique that allowed us to use leverage against our opponents, which is why we had the most rushing yards and passing in the division,” Henderson said. 

 

Lineman Heath Henderson runs out with his teammates (photo courtesy Desert Mountain)

Although a playoff berth was a step in the right direction, the eventual goal is always a championship. 

Desert Mountain’s season ended with a 35-30 loss to Ironwood in the 5A conference playoffs.The Wolves finished 4-3 overall, while Ironwood has advanced to Friday night’s 5A state championship against Sunrise Mountain.

“I’m exhausted, it’s been a long weekend. We lost a really tough game on Friday night, I haven't really gotten any sleep. I’ve probably watched the film about 20 different times trying to figure it out,” Hamilton said, shortly after the Wolves’ season came to an end with the quarterfinal loss.  

Hamilton said he knows other schools may have better pure athletes than Desert Mountain, but traveling around the state to recruit them doesn’t really interest him. 

“You’ve got to win your neighborhoods. You've got to present a great opportunity for your kids to come and play, whether it's facilities or what you're doing on the field  schematically, offensively and defensively, the love that you're showing to your players, and the opportunities for the next level,” he said. “But if I want to go out and recruit and have all the best kids come to my school, I'm going to go get paid money to do that. I'm gonna go coach in college, right? I'm not going to sit here and waste all my time doing that in high school, my job in high school is to develop the athlete. We're going to coach who we have.”

Hamilton said he wants recruits to see what Desert Mountain is doing, not just with the schemes and the blitz packages, but most importantly what they’re doing with the culture. A culture that mirrors what teams do at the highest level in terms of preparation, mindset and goals. 

“It's great to have good athletes play for us, we'll coach them up. And that's when you kind of start to win those championships. And hopefully people see what we're doing, that they'll want to stay in the neighborhood. They want to play for Desert Mountain,” he said. 

“But we're in the development business, I believe, in high school. So our job is to develop the player on the field and off and enforce the academics and the discipline and character for them to grow as people.”