CBS Philly's Coach Of The Year: Archbishop Wood's Steve Devlin

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) —Steve Devlin was not too pleased. The Archbishop Wood coach found a few mistakes that needed to be corrected and he wanted to address the matter with his team as quickly as he could at halftime against Simon Gratz in the District 12 5A championship.

"Coach Devlin came in and yelled at us, he definitely wasn't too happy the first half of that game," recalled Wood senior captain Anthony Diodato, the Vikings' starting right offensive tackle who was a converted tight end. "Coach Devlin expects nothing but the best of us and we weren't playing our best. He demands us to play to our potential on every down and we weren't in the first half of that game."

Wood was up 55-12 at the time.

Devlin is that demanding. It's probably why no team in the Philadelphia area has been as successful over the last decade as Wood. It's a program that has thrived because of Devlin and his staff, and it enters every season a state champion contender.

But no Wood team may have done more with less than the 2016 Vikings. They started 0-2-1 against three of the best teams on the East Coast, Wayne (OH), Bergen Catholic (NJ) and local powerhouse St. Joseph's Prep. The players will admit themselves this wasn't the largest, fastest or most athletic team Devlin has had in the last seven or eight years.

Yet last weekend, it was the Vikings holding aloft the golden ball as the first PIAA 5A state champions (in the new 6A classification system) thanks to a thoroughly dominating 37-10 victory over Harrisburg and one of the best players in the country, Micah Parsons. Wood did it with an offensive line that featured Diodato, Tom Walsh, Matt Arcidiacono, Connor Bishop, and Al Glasgow, who made gaping holes for the Viking rushing attack to pound away for 392 yards rushing, which translated into 6.6 yards per carry. Walsh and Glasgow are juniors, and Bishop is a sophomore. Wood did it with a sophomore quarterback, Jack Colyar. They did it with the smallest offensive line Devlin ever had playing in a state title game.

But mostly, Wood did it because of Devlin, who actually deserves more credit for his coaching ability than he gets. He's won more state championships than anyone in the area, four in the last six years, ending this season riding an 11-game winning streak.

At the eye of that swirling success is Devlin, an old-school, high school Chuck Noll.

He's had success, though he may not have done a better coaching job than he did this season. It's why Steve Devlin is CBS Philly's high school Coach of the Year.

Devlin managed to keep a young team focused and believing in themselves when there wasn't a lot to believe in starting the season 0-2-1.

"It was a challenge, but the kids kept going and responded and we had a great senior class made up of great leaders," Devlin said. "We had one returning starting offensive lineman back, and we moved Anthony Diodato to the offensive line and you saw how he and that group responded. This season isn't a credit to me, it's a credit to the seniors and juniors, really everyone on this team. They knew what we had to do and they did it. This season was really a tribute to a great group of kids. It really had nothing to do with me."

Diodato and his Wood teammates disagree.

"We wouldn't have won the state title without Coach Devlin," Diodato said. "He is the captain of the ship. A lot of people thought we were panicking when we were 0-2-1. But we kind of knew we weren't losing to just anyone. Coach Devlin pushed us all to work much harder. It's why I go back to the Gratz game. Coach Devlin wasn't as happy as he should have been and we put up 55 points in a half. We had to play better if we were going to win a state championship. He definitely saw things in us that we didn't see in ourselves."