Small details matter - what would YOU suggest?

Doomsday

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Premise: You are hired as a consultant answering to Jason Garrett, to improve performance. Post your suggestions here.

Mine:

1.) Sweat the details: Start with the most basic and seemingly unimportant stuff. Example - Every team you see at every level be it High School, College, the Pros and even Pop Warner, pay attention to the team getting beat. Look how sloppy they are and where does this start? Their jerseys are untucked, even early on in the game. They're not paying attention to detail starting at this most basic level, and they have no pride in their appearance. This translates to lack of pride in themselves. The other team, the one kicking their asses? Looks sharp. This happens just about every time, and you'll notice this once you start paying attention to it and looking for it. It's not a coincidence. If you look sloppy you will play sloppy because, you are sloppy. Clean this shit up. Make the smallest details important. You'll find less mental mistakes, fewer bonehead penalties and bonehead plays and better decision making, execution and performance.

2.) K.I.S.S. Keep it Simple, Stupid: Your schemes are too complicated. Your players get confused, hesitate and make mistakes because they have to think before they act, way too much. Simplify everything - do you really need a 500-1200 page defensive playbook? Why does your veteran quarterback have to wear a wristband to get the plays called, to remember shit? Because your shit is way too complicated, that's why. The most successful teams keep it simple, put players in the best position to succeed, and eliminate mistakes due to complexity. Much of lack of confidence by your team comes from the complexities of your systems and schemes. Simplify it.

3.) Special teams ARE special: You're putting far too little emphasis on this part of the game, and what emphasis you are putting, is negative. You are coaching it from a philosophical standpoint of limiting risk and avoiding costly mistakes, not from the standpoint of turning it into a weapon. It's not good enough to have a so-so or just okay special teams - you must tune it to be the best special teams in football. Weaponize the special teams and to do that - once again, you've got to simplify it. That chipboard Hardy slapped out of your ST coach's hands? Why was it so think with paper? It looked to have at least 100 pages on it. Maybe Hardy in his frustration, was illustrating the actual problem you have there. The more you overthink the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain. Your ST needs to be a elite squad with a good mix of your stars and your role-players and backups in positions where they can have success. Emphasize this part of the game and stop treating it like it's a leaky faucet you are annoyed with and would like to ignore.

4.) Everyone wants to be stroked: There's a school of thought in existence that the stars and the guys making lots of money can't be motivated. That's bullshit, everyone can be motivated. It starts at the bottom, with the new people coming in to the mini camps - do you even take the time to know their names? Is your atmosphere one of wishing we could get though this part of it let's just go through these motions so we can get to the real camp? Or is it instead about making the players you've assembled feel wanted. These guys are disoriented, uncertain, anxious faces filing in. It's your job to motivate them starting right there. It's as simple as "Hey (first name) I saw you doing some good things out there today. We think you can play here. We like you." It's not about starting this IF they make the team, it might be exactly WHY they go on the make the team.

5.) Yeah, duh: All of this stuff sounds stupid right? Or you think, "that's just obvious stuff" but I'll leave you with the fact that everything I said here are hallmarks of the perennially successful teams. Their players aren't motivated to avoid failure, they are motivated to succeed. And if you think those two are the same thing, we definitely see now one of the big problems your team has. Implement and institute what I'm telling you here, and watch success follow. Or, just keep going on the way you are and stay at 8-8.
 

Doomsday

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I forgot:

6.) Eschew dumb players: You get mistakes and more importantly, repeated mistakes, from dumb players. This is because they are dumb. They lack the cognitive ability to learn, adapt and adjust. They don't learn from their mistakes as a result. Pay more attention to their Wonderlic scores. The Wonderlic isn't biased, it does not know the skin color, social class or education level of the applicant, it does not test knowledge, it does not look for rocket scientists, nuclear physicists or geniuses. It looks for and identifies, dumb people. And when it identifies one, it is because that one IS dumb.

The average score for NFL players currently is 19. In the 90s this average was 28. Did players get dumber? No, NFL teams got less interested in this aspect of evaluation mostly due to political correctness concerns. The idea being that any intelligence test would naturally be biased against blacks and inner city, poorer applicants. That's the "soft bigotry of lowered expectations" and it's wrong. The Wonderlic is not biased. Again, it doesn't test knowledge or what you have learned. It tests your ability to learn. It's a dumb detector. USE it. Take it into account with your current roster and do a audit, and bring any player who has a contract coming up in the next two years and who had a low score previously, in to test again. Stress the importance of this test. Use the results as part of the decision making on whether to sign him again.

Use it during the Combine, the offseason and when looking at ANY player you're thinking about bringing in. If they are well below average on this test, let someone else have them. Stock your team with smarter players. Take fewer chances on the dumb ones.

Some notable players who scored well below the average include:

  • Morris Claiborne – 4 (first-round pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, lowest score ever known by an NFL player)
  • Mario Manningham – 6 (3rd-round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft
  • Frank Gore – 6 (3rd-round pick in the 2005 NFL Draft)
  • Tavon Austin – 7 (first-round pick in the 2013 NFL Draft)
  • Terrelle Pryor – 7 (third-round pick in the 2011 NFL Supplemental Draft)
  • Carlos Hyde – 9 (second round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft)
  • Travis Henry – 9 (second-round pick in the 2001 NFL Draft)
  • Charles Rogers – 10 (second overall pick in the 2003 NFL Draft)
  • Cordarrelle Patterson – 11 (first-round pick in the 2013 NFL Draft)

Some notable players who scored well above the average include:

  • Aaron Rodgers – 35 (first-round pick in the 2005 NFL Draft)
  • Colin Kaepernick – 37 (second-round pick in the 2011 NFL Draft)
  • Tony Romo – 37 (undrafted in 2003)
  • Matthew Stafford – 38 (first overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft)
  • Eli Manning – 39 (first overall pick in the 2004 NFL Draft)
  • Alex Smith – 40 (first overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft)
  • Calvin Johnson – 41 (first-round pick in the 2007 NFL Draft)
  • Blaine Gabbert – 42 (first-round pick in the 2011 NFL Draft)
  • Eric Decker – 43 (third-round pick in the 2010 NFL Draft)
  • Greg McElroy – 43 (seventh-round pick in the 2011 NFL Draft)
  • Matt Birk – 46 (sixth-round pick in the 1998 NFL Draft)
  • Ryan Fitzpatrick – 48 (seventh-round pick in the 2005 NFL Draft; finished test in a record nine minutes)
  • Ben Watson – 48 (first-round pick in the 2004 NFL Draft)
  • Mike Mamula – 49 (first-round pick in the 1995 NFL Draft; second highest score ever reported)
  • Pat McInally – 50 (fifth-round pick in the 1975 NFL Draft; only player known to have gotten a perfect score)
 

cmd34

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1. Fire yourself.

Fire?
mcfucking-kill-yourself.jpg
 
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