On November 8th, the University of North Texas seems to be like most other colleges around the country. It’s a Thursday afternoon and students pacing the campus with purpose. Many are finding their way to get lunch. Others are rushing to class.
Just across the highway, the UNT Athletic Center sits deserted with an empty Apogee Stadium standing beside it. At exactly 12:30 p.m., I walk into the inside wide receivers meeting room to eight tables, split into two columns, facing a large television. At the back of the room, there’s a desk with a computer and a backpack. An unopened bag of beef jerky sits on a sheet of paper with a seemingly random combination of words and letters.
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About two minutes later, I have company.
“Sorry about being late, I got caught up in talking to a coach,” Mason Fine said. “Let’s do it. This is going to be fun.”
The North Texas quarterback is expected to become the program’s all-time passing leader this week (which he eventually did on Saturday against Old Dominion). Now completing his third full season at the helm of the Mean Green offense, he has established a routine and on Thursday afternoons, he takes part in voluntary, solo film time.
After getting me a chair, he walks behind the desk to flip on the monitor, grabs the sheet with the play calls, as well as his notes from throughout the week — and turns on the TV.
It’s go time.
Fine looks at the call sheet on the desk and picks a formation. This one is called “Rip.” He gets up and goes to a whiteboard on the right wall of the room and writes, “Rip,” then draws out the formation. It’s doubles, with two receivers on each side of the ball and a running back flanking Fine in the backfield. Early in his career, he would draw out the formation on the board but three years in, that’s engraved in his head. Still, he draws this one out so I have an idea of what it should look like.
Next, he writes out five pass plays that the team plans to run out of the formation this week. Underneath that, he writes the names of two run plays that are an option out of “Rip.”
Now that he has that to look at, he walks back to the computer and searches for the film of Old Dominion’s defense.
“I click Old Dominion, I go to cut-ups and then it gives you all of the cuts,” Fine said. “All blitzes, all plays, Cover 0, Cover 1…It makes it easier for quarterbacks. Back in the day, you got to go through all plays and figure out what formation. Now, they got tons of coaches writing all of this stuff in there, and GAs and stuff.”
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After selecting “Rip,” 48 plays pop up, starting with North Texas’ offense against Old Dominion from last year.
“This isn’t going to be like watching highlights,” Fine warns.
The first play pops up on the screen and before the ball is snapped, Fine pauses to make his pre-snap reads.
“Looks like we have Cover 3, this guy [a cornerback] is playing off and they’re going to blitz this guy [middle linebacker],” Fine said.
Fine quickly, but carefully, details what he sees from the secondary as far as what kind of leverage the cornerbacks are playing and where the soft spots should be in the zone defense. He runs through each pass play on the board and identifies where the favorable matchup is on each play against the defense he sees.
“Really, all of these plays have an answer in almost everything,” Fine said. “You just got to get there. Different guys get the ball but they all have answers. You just make the correct read and you’ll be fine.”
A split-second after the ball is snapped, Fine pauses the tape again. He’s now gauging if his pre-snap reads were right; whether guys he thought were going to blitz actually follow through on what they were showing. He’s also looking to see where his head turns as he gets the football in his hand to make sure he’s going through the proper reads. The film obviously only shows one play at a time on the screen, but Fine is imagining his responsibilities for multiple plays on the board to run out of the formation.
On this play, he’s on the money and the defense does exactly what he expects. The result is him hitting a receiver on an out-route for a first down.
“You know it’s Cover 3 so they’re going to get off so just get us right there, it’s a good play, and that’s it,” Fine said. “Now, if we get to more in-depth stuff, I’m late on this throw. It should be fake, left, right, ball. Instead, I go left, right, hitch, ball. That’ll get intercepted.”
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Fine moves on to the next play. This time it’s a run call. Instead of starting on the back end, he looks at the defensive line to see how they’re lined up. The first play on the board is a type of outside zone, which is designed to go to the left. However, the front doesn’t give North Texas a favorable matchup in that direction.
“If we want outside zone, we want to run it to the 2i,” Fine explains. “So instead of running to the left, I’ll go up and say, ‘check, check, check, check’ and run it to the right because we want to run it to that gap.
“That’s actually a play we will run. Last year, I didn’t really have that freedom to check to shades but now I’ve gotten smarter.”
For the next 26 minutes, Fine runs through most of the plays out of “Rip.” Halfway through, he rips open the bag of beef jerky and switches over from North Texas vs. Old Dominion in 2017 to opponents earlier this season who ran the same formation against Old Dominion. While the actual plays being run don’t match North Texas exactly, Fine uses that to get a better feel of the personnel he’s going to see on Saturday as opposed to last year’s film, which features some players that are no longer there. It’s largely beneficial because Fine still identifies which players are going to be the read and points out different flaws he feels he can take advantage of, or strengths that tell him he shouldn’t take a chance in a certain direction.
Near the end, Fine turns back to the 2017 film and runs through the same routine. On this particular play, his pre-snap read is correct and he knows exactly where he wants to go with the ball. The problem is, it’s a blitz and the defender gets in his face immediately, forcing an incomplete pass into the dirt.
“That’s still on me,” Fine said.
Fine then switches to a play later in the game that’s the exact same look but this time, it ends in a short completion right into the teeth of the blitz. After making the mistake earlier in the game, he came back and hit his hot read, instead of going through the normal progressions.
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After sitting with Fine for over 30 minutes, seeing how he breaks down film and prepares off of the field, I left to go about my day.
Fine stayed back to watch a few more hours of film on Old Dominion while listening to Pandora.
Fine’s film study habits started out of a desire to get an edge on opponents in high school. Currently standing at 5’11”, Fine was never a physically dominating presence on the field. After struggling as a wide receiver in his freshman year of high school, Fine made it a priority to do everything in his power to be the best quarterback possible.
“I felt in my mind, if I can watch film more than any of the other — I wouldn’t say quarterbacks, because I wasn’t comparing myself to quarterbacks — it was really going up against the defense,” Fine said. “I wanted to be a great quarterback and I wanted my team to be successful and I kind of figured, at the time I knew a lot of high school guys didn’t watch film — especially at 3A Oklahoma level.
“I know if I can watch film and be the most prepared, I can go out here because I know from my freshman and sophomore year, they’re going to give it away. If I can just see what they’re doing, their tendencies, I can be able to exploit that.”
Fine had an example in front of him from his coaches at Locust Grove, namely David Blevins, who is now the school’s head coach. The staff would watch a lot of film and taught Fine the ropes of how to do the same. Eventually, Fine was routinely watching film with the coaches to ensure that he was on the same page they were on Friday nights.
“I think my good study habits just came from, starting in high school, first of all wanting to be great and wanting to be successful,” Fine said. “I knew to be successful, I had to be prepared.”
Fine’s extra work paid off with results on Fridays and as time went by, he noticed the impact it had on his football IQ. He started recognizing defenses early, making quick reads and thinking less about the defense because it felt so second-nature. This allowed him to focus more on his own offense.
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Watching film on opponents as well as himself, eventually became such a hobby that it captivated Fine’s attention over a lot of normal things high school kids enjoy.
“My junior year, I went to prom and I didn’t have a date or anything,” Fine said. “My friends caught me at the table, because I don’t dance, watching film from the year before. A lot of my friends when I go back, they give me crap because I was that guy watching film at prom.”
Even when he wasn’t literally watching film, Fine had developed such an infatuation with learning the intricacies of different offenses and how to beat defensive looks that his free time started to hold a different meaning.
It was just hard to convince his parents.
“I would play NCAA Football and my dad would say, ‘Get off of that video game,’” Fine said. “I’d be like, ‘Dad, this video game is making me better playing football,’ and it was. It’s a video game but I would really, honestly learn the coverages on that game and I really studied as I was playing like, okay, they’re playing two-high [safeties], it’s Cover 2, might be Cover 4, so I was playing that video game kind of how I watch film.
“Obviously, anything works in a video game but I would try to run the play that would work against that coverage every single time. Like, I would read the defense and switch my play to that.”
To this day, when Fine hears Cover 2 or Cover 3, he sometimes sees the safety assignments as the big blue bubbles covering the back end of the field as they would appear in NCAA Football or Madden.
When he arrived at North Texas, Fine was bracing for film study to get more complex. While the volume of plays and the emphasis have increased, a lot of the advancements in software — such as XOS Digital, which is what North Texas uses to watch film — have actually made it easier for Fine to maneuver around certain types of plays and focus in on what he wants to work on any given day.
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As far as his routine, such as drawing things out on the whiteboard and the order of identifying things, Fine has watched offensive coordinator Graham Harrell do it and simulated that.
“It’s a hobby,” Fine said. “I wouldn’t say it’s two-plus-two because you’re always wanting to learn, always wanting to get better.
“To me, sophomore and freshman year, that was a foreign language. Now, I can see safety rotation and I kind of know where I’m going and it’s making my job easier. Football is a hobby for me. I love the game and I want to be the best I can. If I keep watching film, if I keep being around great coaches, I just learn something new every day.”
Fine said there are days where he feels drained, whether it’s from a heavy load from football throughout the week or the 12 hours of classes he’s taking (cut back from his usual 15 hours per semester). Instead of taking those days off, though, Fine enjoys coming in and “just watching football,” even if it doesn’t mean breaking down defenses and reading coverages. Even that is rare, though.
“It’s fun to me,” Fine said. “Sometimes I might not be in the mood but then again, it’s a hobby, but it’s a job, too. You were brought here to win football games. This is your job, so you’d better be prepared and ready to go.”
Fine usually goes through video a minimum of four days each week. On Mondays, Fine watches about three games’ worth of film on the upcoming opponent, mostly as a spectator, to get a feel for the defense because the coaching staff hasn’t installed a game plan yet. On Tuesday morning, the game plan is in and the quarterback room watches film together for a couple of hours. Fine then comes back on his own afterward to what was discussed to make sure he and Harrell are on the same page. Sundays the quarterback room gets together to evaluate the game from the previous day.
Tuesday’s practice is the most rigorous one of the week and after a day off from the film room on Friday to focus on practice, Fine comes back to the film room on his own on Thursdays to make sure he has everything down perfectly. If not, he has Friday to figure things out with the staff before game time on Saturday.
After the last week of preparation, Fine went out and set the career mark for passing yards in North Texas history. This season is not over, and he will still have a full season of football remaining in 2019. This comes just a few years after setting the Oklahoma record for most passing yards (13,081) and touchdown passes (166) in state history, en route to being first and only two-time Oklahoma Gatorade Player of the Year. For a player who doesn’t overwhelm physically, it’s the hours upon hours of preparation, on the field and off, that continue to be the source of remarkable results.
