The late Mike Leach was one of the most unique characters in the history of college football.

Leach did things his way. His coaching style bucked traditional norms in the sport. And that style is a big reason why he was so successful during stops at Texas Tech, Washington State, and Mississippi State.

One of the things that was unique about Leach was the way he ran his practices.

David Cutcliffe, a former Tennessee Vols offensive coordinator and head coach at Ole Miss and Duke, recently joined The Stingray Network and told one of his favorite Mike Leach stories.

At the time, Cutcliffe was serving as the SEC’s special assistant to the commissioner for football relations and Leach was the head coach at Mississippi State (Cutcliffe retired from that role earlier this spring).

“I’ll tell you one (story about Leach) that blew my mind,” said Cutcliffe. “And he wasn’t wrong. So I’m over there for practice. I get there real early in the morning. It’s spring ball, and I know what time practice is starting. I’ve talked to David Wilczewski, their operations guy, and got all the information. I’m sitting there, and [Leach is] slowly putting on his stuff in his office and putting on his shoes. And I hear whistles out there (on the practice field), and I’m like, ‘Okay, they’ve started practice,’ and he’s just talking — he’s got a story or two.

“So finally, we walk out there, and they’re all out there practicing, and I’m like, ‘This is crazy.’ So we walk down to the field and he goes out there, and all of a sudden a horn blows when he arrives. They all get around him, and he has some great words with them. And then, practice actually starts then. But what I realized with his practice schedule, there were no periods like I was used to. And there’s no clock that showed the time. He had a little card in his hand, and things happened when Coach Leach wanted them to happen. The assistant coaches were given time where they could get their individual drills working and get the things covered that they needed to cover. He knew they needed that because nobody else would practice like they would practice.”

“Then when things would get good enough, he’d go to the next period,” continued Cutcliffe. “I remember telling Peyton (Manning) about this. This is spring ball in seven-on-seven. It was interesting. I noticed that the receivers would stay in six plays in a row. Now, he would not run it off of a script either. The defense called whatever they wanted to call. He called whatever was on his mind. So I watched this over and over again. And then I asked him later why (he kept the receivers in). He said, ‘The way we play the game, most receivers get tired. They’re going to play six, seven, eight, sometimes nine plays in a row, and everything’s a little different for the quarterback when they get tired to when they’re fresh.’ And I called Peyton and said, ‘That’s brilliant, man.’ I said, ‘One of the hardest things to do is quarterbacks and receivers getting on the same page.’”

Essentially, Leach wanted to get his wide receivers tired during practice to mimic how they would feel on game day, so the quarterbacks would be familiar with how to execute the plays with tired receivers.

Cutcliffe is an offensive genius, and Peyton Manning is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. Cutcliffe and Peyton have seen it all. The fact that Leach was doing something so unique that Cutcliffe immediately called Peyton to talk about it speaks to Leach’s genius.