Leach: Midnight Maneuvers should be 'pretty intense'

Midnight Maneuvers, a long time staple of Mike Leach’s off-season workout program for his players, gets underway tonight at Martin Stadium just over three weeks from the start of spring practice, which begins March 21 and concludes April 23.

“Teams have their mat drills or their circuit drills that they do during a portion of the offseason,” Leach told the Birmingham, Ala.-based Kurre and Klapow Show Saturday night. “Ours will start Monday. It will be pretty intense. It’s the most intense part of our offseason that we do.

“It’s pretty good. It really brings the team together. It’s one of those things that is legendary. Occasionally, the young guys get more psyched out than they need to because the older guys know what’s coming.”

Leach described the purpose behind Midnight Maneuvers in his best-selling book ‘Swing Your Sword”:

“During the two-week conditioning circuit, I wanted them to sacrifice their evenings. We called it Midnight Maneuvers. We would actually start around 10 at night. The timing was perfect because that's roughly the time of day when we'd be playing a lot of fourth quarters. I've heard a lot of teams do their conditioning at dawn, but how many games are their players going to play before breakfast?

We'd have our guys do a bunch of stations, where they'd have to do everything from bear crawls, to dot drills for their footwork, to obstacle courses. Better still, we knew they weren't out with their buddies partying. Instead, they were with their team. They gave up their nights because it was a team endeavor. We were working together as a team -- it was a good message to send.”

Even though Washington State lost its starting quarterback (Gardner Minshew), top running back (James Williams), top tackler (Peyton Pelluer) and multiple defensive/nickel backs (Hunter Dale, Darrien Molton, etc.), Leach is optimistic the 2019 Cougars possess enough talent to challenge last year’s 11-win total.

“We have a chance be better,” Leach said. “We have to replace some guys, but we have a number of players back. We should have a pretty good nucleus of a team.”