Home Virginia Football great Ray Roberts: On blocking for Barry, Chris Slade, Tony Elliott
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Virginia Football great Ray Roberts: On blocking for Barry, Chris Slade, Tony Elliott

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Ray Roberts
Ray Roberts. Photo by Chris Graham.

Virginia alum Ray Roberts blocked for Barry Sanders for three seasons. Blocking for Barry Sanders: a thankless job.

“With Barry, you can do, well, if you’d like to, Barry, we’re going to block in a way that you should go to the inside hip of the tackle, but hey, we’re going to get you the ball, you do what you do,” said Roberts, a 1991 All-American offensive lineman at Virginia, who was taken with the 10th pick in the first round of that spring’s NFL Draft by the Seattle Seahawks.

Roberts went to Detroit as a free agent in 1996, reuniting with UVA alum Herman Moore, who was in the midst of a three-year run of 100+-catch seasons with the Lions at the time.

Sanders, meanwhile, was putting up bonkers numbers as a tailback. In 1997, Roberts’ second season in Detroit, Sanders ran for 2,053 yards, averaging 128.3 yards per game.

You’d think, from the highlight reels, that he did it all on his own.

“Yeah, that’s kind of how it was blocking for Barry?” Roberts said. “I just had this conversation with our broadcast team. One of our guys was talking to me, it’s like, hey, no offense, Ray, but you know, look at how Barry had to gain all these yards. And I’m like, well, man, you guys only see the highlights, you don’t see, like, you don’t see all the, you know, if he carried the ball about 25 times, you get two highlights.

“You haven’t seen the other 23 times that we were delivering him to the second level, and then he was doing his thing. But you watch all the videos of his running style, you think, like, man, he didn’t have an offensive line.”

Iron sharpens iron

Roberts is a year older than two-time Virginia All-America defensive end Chris Slade. He credits having to go one-on-one with Slade in practice for the better part of their three years together on Grounds with helping him get the most out of his own talents on the football field.

“Practicing against him, you just had to be ready for everything,” Roberts said. “He had long arms, he’s a strong dude, he could rush for power, he could rush for speed, yet he could use his hands really well. I would say other than Chris, in practice, the best college player I played against was Marco Coleman at Georgia Tech, who was also drafted in the first round. But Marco was more, like, quickness than power, even though he’s a big dude.

“I knew from playing against Chris, like, well, you’re not going to do anything, like, that was going to kind of threaten me, because Chris does that, and you don’t play as with as much power as Chris, even though they were both great players in their own right. Being able to practice against that every day, it couldn’t do anything but help,” Roberts said.

It got to a point where coach George Welsh had to separate the two on certain drills so that they wouldn’t kill each other trying to get the upper hand.

Which gets us to this story, about when they met for the first and it turns out only time in the NFL, in 1992.

“His first year in the league, my second year, we had to go play the Patriots, and Chris is over there, and so like everybody on the team is like, dude, like, that’s your boy, like, what are y’all going to do? And I’m just like, you know what I said, I’ll be honest, I have no idea, bro,” Roberts said. “Because, you know, I’ve always practiced against him, but that was practice, this is going to be a game, with two different teams, we get paid to beat the hell out of each other, and so I just remember going into the game, and I didn’t say one word to him, because I felt like if I was like, what’s up dog, it would just take my energy down, you know what I’m saying, and then all the sudden, I feel like I’m playing against my best friend versus playing against, like, the other team.

“I don’t know how that was for Chris, but for me, I had to kind of, like, be conscious of that, so that then, he can be my best friend and former teammate after the game, versus during the game, because it was really weird to see him in a different uniform,” Roberts said. “I’m just like, man, that’s my guy, Chris Slade, we’re lining up, and we’re playing with real bullets. It’s not a practice where Coach Welsh can blow the horn and stop play.”

If you want to know what Roberts thinks of Chris Slade, it’s reflected in the name given to his oldest son: Slade.

Roberts, who spent two years as director of life skills on the football staff of former Virginia head coach Mike London, is joyed at the fact that Chris Slade has returned to their alma mater to serve as an assistant on the staff of new head coach Tony Elliott.

“There’s a there’s a greatness that has come from this program. Not goodness, not OK-ness, but greatness. And Chris Slade is a walking example of the greatness that can come from UVA,” Roberts said. “That’s why I think it’s important. And it’s also important that they see that it was important for him to take the job and come and do it. Because I’m sure maybe in the past, they may have reached out to players or whatever that maybe didn’t have interest or had other things to do. But Chris Slade said, yeah, this is important enough for me to come back and coach and help bring this team back to prominence.

“I think that sends a message to the players. So now you have a dude that, I can remember my senior year that we’re trying to get new facilities, it was my senior year that they opened the McCue Center. Chris was a year behind me. He walked those halls, went into those same rooms, went to the weight room that’s back out on the field, even though they’ve got the indoor facility, there’s still the three fields that were there. I think it’s awesome that they had the foresight to do it.”

High on Tony Elliott

Count Roberts among the Virginia football alums who think that Carla Williams made the right move hiring Elliott to head up the football program.

“I see discipline, and in a lot of ways, especially on defense, Virginia gave up a lot of yards and big plays because of assignment alignment, it’s just that simple. The game isn’t complicated, and so when you can kind of boil it down to some basic things, and be champions at those basic things, you’re going to have a great chance of success, and so on like that,” Roberts said.

“I can also see it in his approach to putting the staff together, when everybody else was panicking. People in the portal, not in the portal, signing day is coming, and we don’t have a coach. He never seemed to push the panic button. He had his process. Maybe that’s his engineering background. He’s very methodical and things like that, and all of that, to me, speaks to discipline, and if you can have a very disciplined team, with some great athletes and ballplayers, you can win a lot of games,” Roberts said.

Roberts, around his two years on London’s staff at Virginia, was an assistant and head coach at the high school level in Seattle area, where he settled after his nine-year NFL career, and where he now works for Special Olympics.

His experiences in all of those jobs – high school coaching, college coaching, Special Olympics – emphasized to him the importance of establishing a culture.

“I think it’s important because it kind of sets the boundaries for your freedom within it,” Roberts said. “So, this is kind of like one of those what was Ray smoking moments, but I remember one time, I was just sitting in his cabin, like, I like to just kind of get out into nature, just kind of be by myself and just kind of be with my thoughts sometimes, and I got into, like, how you stack the wood in the fireplace.

“And so, I’m like, doing all the stacking in different ways, and I’m sitting, I’m watching, I’m looking at the flames, and I’m like, man, that’s interesting, like, fire can be the most destructive element on the frickin’ planet. When it’s out of control, and it doesn’t have any boundaries, it can destroy everything,” Roberts said. “Look at just what happened in Colorado, it just destroyed a whole entire community. But when you set boundaries around it, and then you let the flame be free within those boundaries, fire is one of the most productive elements on the planet. It provides light, it provides heat, it provides you a way to cook food, you know, like, all these different types of things.

“That’s what culture is,” Roberts said. “Culture is the boundaries around the flame that that allows the flame to be free within those boundaries. And when you’re when you’re able to do that, then I think you can recruit to that, like, if they’re fitting the culture. They might be a better athlete, but if they don’t fit the culture, a lesser athlete who fits a culture can be more productive. It takes a lot of commitment to commit to that philosophy and not just have like this loosey goosey, you know, kind of a culture.

“But to me as a coach, that’s the toughest thing to establish, is culture,” Roberts said. “Like, you can establish an offense, you can establish, like, whether you’re going to be fast or physical or both, or whatever. But the culture for that to thrive is the hardest thing to accomplish. And to Bronco (Mendenhall)’s credit, man, he came in when it was just a culture of failure, and he set the foundation of this culture of winning and winning the right way, and bringing in the right type of people.

“I think that is a very good launching pad for Tony to build his program, because there’s a lot of the culture that he doesn’t have to rebuild, because Bronco did such a good job,” Roberts said.

Program support: Facilities and fans

Roberts was a high school recruit back when Welsh and his staff operated out of what the coaching staff called “the trailer park,” a collection of trailers in the shadows of University Hall that served as the nerve center for Virginia Football.

The program would open the McCue Center by Roberts’ senior year, and for a few years Virginia Football was back on equal footing in terms of training and performance facilities with its peers.

It’s been a while since Virginia has been anywhere near where its peers are, but help is on the way, with a new training and performance center slated to open in 2023.

“We still met in those trailers the year we were number one in the country,” Robert said. “I know that times have changed, but you can still build a quality program, that’s winning and producing, like, some NFL-caliber players, I still think you have a chance to build a very competitive football program at Virginia.

“Now, all the bells and whistles will help,” Roberts said. “I’ve had enough conversations with enough coaches, college coaches, to really understand it, like, whether you like it or not, these high school players see these facilities and things as an investment in football. And so, you have to be able to kind of show them that the school, the fans and donors are interested in investing in them as football players.

“People will say like, oh man, well, UVA is about the education and all that kind of stuff,” Roberts said. “Well, for some of these kids that are, you know, trying to get to the NFL, they’re going to come and major in sociology, you know, and you can major in sociology everywhere, and it’s not going be it’s not like Virginia’s sociology program is different than somebody else’s.

“Now, some of the more, like, business, engineering, law, like those kinds of things, yeah, there’s a separation, but for some of these majors that you have access to, and you have aspirations to get to NFL, well, you can get those anywhere. So, then you start going, well, which schools putting dudes in NFL? And it’s like, oh, OK, well, there’s a lot of dudes that are defensive ends going to Ohio State that end up being first- and second-round draft picks, you know, so I can go get my sociology degree from there.

“So, you have to be willing to invest,” Roberts said, “and that’s not just asking the big donors, that’s asking the fans to show up at games. It was really disappointing this year, like, yeah, maybe you weren’t to get nine or 10 wins, but man, we were still winning, and it was still good football, and the stadium would be half-empty. It’s just like, well, that’s not a good look for recruiting. It was like, man, you tell these big recruits that are coming to town that come into a stadium that’s half-empty, and then they go to somewhere like, you know, Clemson, Tennessee, North Carolina, like, some of these other places, Penn State, and then the stadium is full of people, it’s sad. So, the fan role plays a part of that, too, like, you have to get out and cheer and support through the thick and thin, that’s your part of building the program, too.”

‘The smartest dude on the field’

Roberts racked his brain trying to figure out what Barry Sanders was looking for him to do in front of him.

“Sometimes, like, I can remember when I first got there, I would get frustrated, because I’m just like, man, like, why did he go back over there, and we got this hole over here?” Roberts said. “Back then, we didn’t have all the video. We just had pictures, you know, on the sidelines. So, I’m like, man, I’m going to take this picture and ask Barry, what do you see?

“And they’re like, oh, man, don’t, nobody does that. I’m like, bro, I’m working hard, bro. So, I mean, I don’t even know, like, I’d like him to help me understand. And so, I went to show Barry, and I’m like, hey, like, I’m going to, if you give me like a like another half a second, I’m coming up to the linebacker. He goes, oh, well, when I get the ball, and I see that no one’s coming up the linebacker, I’m going to cut it backside, or I might just feel the flow, I might think that the hole is backside, or play it the first part of the game to set them up by hitting the front side of the play, and then when the linebacker starts flying over, that’s when I cut it back.

“That gave me information, right?” Roberts said. “So, I’m like, oh, OK, now we’re on the same page. And so, it made it easier to block from that.”

Fans might think the big guys on the offensive line – Keith Jackson used to call them “big uglies” – are just big, dumb guys who hit people.

Roberts liked to ask questions.

“I prided myself on being the smartest dude on the field all the time. Like, you Virginia guys, yep, we went to school, yep, that’s us,” Roberts said. “So, I’m looking at the play sheet, and you can see where everybody’s accounted for in blocking, and then it’d be one player that had an exclamation point over the top of his position on defense. And I’m like, what is that? I have no idea what that means.

“And so finally, I went to the coach, and I’m like, hey, man, like, what does this mean?” Roberts said. “He goes, oh, that’s Barry’s guy. What do you mean? He was like, oh, there’s always one dude in the box that we don’t block, because one dude ain’t going to tackle Barry. And I was just like, oh, okay.”

Story by Chris Graham

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