Tag Archives: Hard Knocks

What a Coach wants, What a Team Needs?

12 Sunday Aug 2018

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18-08-12 Hue Jackson

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We have our first week of pre-season football. I’ve watched the first episode of Hard Knocks and more importantly I have seen Andrew Luck throw passes in game for the first time since January 1st 2017.

My offseason was dominated by getting a book published so it was only a couple of weeks ago that I finally watched the Dallas Cowboys’ All or Nothing series and when you combine that with Hard Knocks then I have naturally started to think about coaching.

“You get what you demand,
you encourage what you tolerate.”

Tom Landry

This is a quote that I was already familiar with but caught my eye as a reminder in one of the meeting rooms at the Cowboys facility and is one of those things that I think is just as apt for management in a business as it is in sports.

One of the surest things in management is that a player or employee will spot an inauthentic approach from a manager or coach, but there is more than one way to demand what you want or excellence.

There was a really interesting discussion about this week’s Hard Knock on The Ringer’s GM Street podcast as Michael Lombardi explained his problems with Hue Jackson’s approach to getting his team ready. This largely focussed around a coach’s table discussion that had started with the training staff informing Jackson who would and wouldn’t be practising that day. There are several members of that coaching staff with Super Bowl experience who questioning whether players who had not achieved anything in the NFL should be getting days off when there was so much to do, and one coach who was asking for them to be dressed and make it look like the reps decision came from the coach. Jackson listened and was firm about not wanting to get players injured and tried to establish that he understood their position but the view was different from his chair and they moved on.

I can’t give the insight on how it affects the coaching staff having never been in an NFL building yet alone on a football coaching staff so go listen to the pod but it did set me thinking. What Lombardi’s concern was about not only keeping the coaching staff together, but how to breed toughness in a team.

I think there are multiple ways to do this. It doesn’t have to be about shouting and rah-rah speeches. Toughness can be quietly getting on with your job under difficult circumstances. Certainly Hue Jackson was trying to demonstrate that when he told some of his coaches in a film session that his mother had just died and then went straight back to discussing the tape. It was hard to watch him trying to pull himself together after the front office staff had gathered round to support him having lost both his brother and his mother in the space of two weeks. An hour later he is back on the training field and working with his team.

This is where we circle back to how he is coaching. It is undeniable that Bill Belichick is a great football coach and he has a particular way of doing things that is built around a culture of fear and negative reinforcement but that’s not the only way to do it. What Pete Carrol has done in Seattle is still built around competition but there is a completely different approach and presentation with his positivity and encouragement for players to be vocal and themselves. In Hard Knocks you got to see the very different way that Gregg Williams runs his room to Jackson and I’m sure there are players that will thrive with that approach and those on who that approach will grate.

In a lot of ways American football is still a very conservative game but how long coaches can maintain some of the old school approaches in the face of modern training methods and as players change I don’t know.

“He needs to be challenged intellectually so he doesn’t get bored,” Jim Mora told Peter King. “He’s a millennial. He wants to know why. Millennials, once they know why, they’re good. Josh has a lot of interests in life. If you can hold his concentration level and focus only on football for a few years, he will set the world on fire. He has so much ability, and he’s a really good kid.”

This was Jim Mora talking about the Arizona Cardinals’ rookie quarterback Josh Rosen ahead of the draft and whilst I don’t think the culture of football will change overnight, it has to and will continue to adapt as the game changes and players evolve.

The interesting interaction between Hue Jackson and rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield is a case in point. Jackson was asking about what time he got in and was comparing it to Tyrod Taylor. It was something that Michael Lombardi commented on that Jackson didn’t demand Mayfield came in at 05:30 and whilst no, he didn’t demand he did set a seed. I don’t know which way would be more effective, it depends on the player and how they feel about their coach. Only time will tell.

Hue Jackson has a 1-31 record in the last two seasons so it is not like he is starting from a position of strength but he has been in the league a long time. He has to be true to his beliefs but in the world of sport, those beliefs get tested against one thing, the results of the football team. It won’t matter that he’s dealing with multiple bereavements, or that he turned a comment about jumping into a lake if his team failed to win a game last season into a cleansing ritual in aid of his foundation that is trying to support efforts to combat human trafficking in Cleveland. What matters as far as the team is concerned is results. He has a new GM that didn’t pick him so if Jackson doesn’t win more games this season it is hard to see him staying on as head coach.

There’s a lot of nuance to coaching and you can only do so much without the right level of talent, but in sports your record is your record despite all the things that go into it. The pre-season is about preparing your team for the regular season, although a lot of coaches are as concerned about getting their team to the start of the season healthy. The ultimate decider on how well you balanced those needs is your record, but that ignores if you quarterback missteps and tears his knees up. There is plenty of luck involved for a team and whilst we build some coaches up and tear others down, they are only human and even in a game as built around coaching as the American football, you can only control so much. However, you have to have a lot of trust or faith in the bank to get you through a rough patch and for Hue Jackson, time is running out for him to get results.

The Dress Rehearsal

31 Thursday Aug 2017

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The third pre-season game is usually seen as the dress rehearsal for a team, but even then there is no set formula on who plays as the coaches are most interested in preparing for the season whilst minimising the risk to their starters. You can also see rookies and other players stepping up so they can get reps with the starters against other quality players to get a better evaluation. This complicates what we can interpret from the outside, which is why it is important not to put too much stock in what you see in pre-season, but for those involved the football is important despite what some might tell you.

With all of the fourth pre-season games taking place on Thursday night, a logistical challenge is facing the teams as for the first time they are cutting from ninety without a cut down to seventy-five before tonight’s games, although many teams have already started to make some cuts. There is also a challenge for the Hard Knocks crew as they prepare everything for next Tuesday’s episode with a more compressed time frame. Sadly being in the UK I won’t get to see episode four of Hard Knocks before the week four games start tonight, so I’ll have to run through the week three games without the extra insight of the behind the scenes footage of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who played the Cleveland Browns in their third pre-season game.

A number of players were held out or played limited snaps, so Jameis Winston was working without his full complement of options in the offence, and this did show. He floated a pass at a tight end that was intercepted, although he also escaped pressure and made a good pass to Freddie Martino later in the game, but it was rookie receiver Chris Goodwin who finished with most yards of any receiver. I think with a full complement of starters the Buccaneers will have an offence going in the right direction so we shouldn’t take too much from this game, but Winston will need to limit his interceptions. No one wants to lose their starting quarterback, and there are not enough quality starters floating around for teams to have a really good backup, but the Bucs might be concerned with the way Ryan Fitzpatrick has turned the ball over so far and they will be hoping that if he does get called upon in meaningful games that he reproduces some of his form from his 2015 season with the New York Jets and not what he has displayed so far.

As for the defence, they gave up some worrying plays to a Browns team that I think are going to cause some trouble for teams this season. You are always going to miss a player of Gerald McCoy’s ability, but he should be back for the regular season after being held out of this game with an injury, still there were not a lot of players that stood out to me. Part of that is due to not having coaching tape yet. This always makes it hard to truly see what is going on, you just can’t evaluate a secondary without the all twenty-two view, and the end zone view is brilliant for seeing how the front seven line up and play. Still, I did notice that Riley Bullough, a player I have mentioned multiple times this pre-season having been a player highlighted on Hard Knocks, did not get into the game on defence until the last drive on defence, and so whilst I did see him on special teams, he will be desperate to put up good tape tonight to try to catch on to a team, be it the Buccaneers or somebody else who has liked what they have seen.

For the Cincinnati Bengals, who took on Washington in their third warm up game, it has been a pre-season of questions rather than answers. Still, it was good to see John Ross get on the field, even if he didn’t make a catch, he demonstrated his speed on an end around run, and it will take a couple of weeks to shake of the rust as he makes his way back from a shoulder injury. I was also not expecting to see Andy Dalton over throwing the fastest man in combine history on a deep ball! It was much better to see the first team score a touchdown, and whilst the Bengals’ young tackles still had their problems, the offence functioned and has the potential to come alive if things break right for them during the season and the young players bed in.

The defence will be looking to make do round Shawn Williams injury, and he will be missed at safety, but the pass rush still looks good with defensive end Chris Smith catching the eye in every game and looks to be a potential bargain given the conditional pick the Bengals gave up to the Jacksonville Jaguars to get him. The young linebacker group got even younger with the trade of special teams stalwart Marquis Flowers to the New England Patriots and they will be without Vontaze Burfict for three games after his appeal against suspension was not successful. I can see why Marvin Lewis and the Bengals will be upset given their reasoning about the Kansas City Chiefs player being hit with a shoulder within five yards of the line of scrimmage, the player being in line with the target of a pump fake, and the ball being in Alex Smith’s hands, but Burfict has a history that precedes him and clearly is not being given the benefit of the doubt.

There’s a lot of questions about the Bengals, but at least they look to have made it to the start of the season relatively healthy and I still think they will do better than many have predicted, even if I’m not going to guarantee a playoff berth. I will say, I’m still deeply uncomfortable every time Mixon takes the field and I find it hard to see how I will ever resolve that pick.

Finally, having spoken about the hope I saw for the LA Rams offence on our last podcast, Jared Goff did not play well against the LA Chargers. More worrying for him will be the fact that the offence is designed well and seemed to run better with Sean Mannion as their quarterback. Whether Goff’s struggles can be partly put down to rookie receiver Cooper Kupp being withheld from the game due to a minor groin pull I don’t know, but the Rams third game did not go as well as their second, and it would surprise no one if the Rams had another rocky season. Still, I do see some signs of hope, I’m just unsure whether Goff can, or will be given the time to, become a franchise quarterback. It is also too early to tell how Sean McVay will do as a head coach, but I have a feeling he will turn out well given time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean things will work out for him in LA.

One last thing before the final pre-season games start last night. I stated on our last podcast that if you were going to watch pre-season games, that week three were the ones to watch as that was when the starters would play most. And I stand by that. But for those of us who have the disease as Ross Tucker puts it, these final games will be fascinating as the players we have never heard off, are playing for a chance to catch onto a roster, or practise squad. They just want to make the team and no one should question their efforts, and I intend to honour it by watching all three teams I have been following.

Still, next week the season starts.

2017 Pre-Season So Far

20 Sunday Aug 2017

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I like to follow a couple of teams through pre-season alongside my own Bengals and the major storylines. This will include the team being featured on HBO’s Hard Knocks as that gives you a chance to see all of the games that you get the highlights of and gives me an in to a team I don’t know.

So this year I am following the Tampa Bay Buccaneers thanks to them being on Hard Knocks, and the LA Rams who happen to have been last year’s Hard Knocks and Amazon’s All or Nothing team, but mainly I’m watching the Rams this pre-season to see how their new head coach Sean McVay does in turning around their offence. Even if at thirty-one he is making me feel like I’ve done nothing with my life…

I will pick up the week two games next week, but what have I learnt in the first two Hard Knocks episodes and the week one pre-season games?

Well, this years Hard Knocks has mostly been good fun with a strong cast of characters. I’ve been impressed with Jameis Winston who is clearly invested in trying to be a good leader for his team. Not only is he working hard and making his way round the whole team, but the moment that was eye opening to me was when he approached a group of smiling linemen during the Buccaneers game against the Bengals and almost quietly dropped a line about being glad they were enjoying themselves but that Ryan (Ryan Griffin, backup quarterback fighting for a roster spot with newly signed Ryan Fitzpatrick) was injured. It was an effective way of making his point.

Winston is still searching for the right blend of risk taking and protecting the ball, a discussion we saw him having with head coach Dirk Koetter, but only time will tell if he can find it.

Winston is not the only player showing leadership, and it was a surprise to number 49, Riley Bullogh, to be singled out by Koetter in a meeting about displaying leadership, since he was their third string mike linebacker. Most teams don’t carry three mike linebackers if they play a 4-3 defence, but I was impressed not only with the way Bullogh has been portrayed on Hard Knocks, but also with the way he played and he also managed to catch the eye whilst I was watching the game against the Bengals. I think he may well make the team.

Sadly, we’ve already had our first painful cut, and it is always hard to watch someone go through this, but second year kicker Robert Aguayo seems to have struggled ever since being picked in the second round by the Buccaneers last year. He was an incredibly accurate kicker in college, but whether it is the pressure of being such a high round pick for a kicker, or simply the reality of kicking in the NFL, he has not managed to be consistent in the NFL and although he was picked up on waivers by the Chicago Bears, it hard to know if he’ll be able to turn things round. The problem is likely to be that this narrative will follow him around, as will the questions about his career, and you would have to be incredibly tough minded to set this aside when you know it will keep following you. I hope he turns things around, but only time will tell.

I’ll pick up other players as we go forward, the duo of new signing DeSean Jackson and establish receiver Mike Evans have featured heavily and should provide Winston with a nice balance on offence, but the other player who seems to be a genuinely good guy as well as a wrecker of offences, both in practice on game day is Gerald McCoy. Seeing this seven-year veteran carrying others pads around, dressed in a kimono, and testing the waters of what is an acceptable celebration has been a lot of fun. It’s always nice to see a different side of players who you so often only get to see in a helmet and pads.

So as the Buccaneers played and lost to the Bengals, what is there to say about the team from Cincinnati?

Well apart from getting a win, the Bengals offence line seemed to hold up and there were promising signs on offence, although you can only tell so much in pre-season. However, with a running and passing touchdown, third string quarterback Jeff Driskel made a claim that the Bengals should keep three quarterbacks on the roster this season. Given the number of receivers that they might want to keep, this could be difficult as the Bengals have only been keeping two recently, but I suspect Driskel would get snapped up by another team if they tried to stash him on the practice squad.

It is hard to say too much about pass coverage when you only have the TV copy to watch, but on defence the pass rush did catch the eye, particularly Jordan Willis although Carl Lawson looked good as well and I think both players could help add and an extra pass rush element to the defence this season. However, the pass coverage in the middle of the field was soft, and this is definitely something to keep an eye on.

So if the Bengals looked solid, how did the LA Rams go in their first game against the Dallas Cowboys?

Well the major thing that struck me on the offensive side of the ball was ball security. I suspect this will be a point of emphasis in the coming weeks as the ball was put on the ground a lot. Fumbles and drops hampered the team, and although McVay won his first game, there is still a lot of work to do. That said rookie running back Justin Davis caught the eye when he wasn’t fumbling with his burst and ability to make defenders miss, and so if he can secure the ball he could become a useful backup to Todd Gurley. Only time will tell if the o-line will play better through the season, but it was certainly strange to see Andrew Whitworth playing in the blue and white of the Rams. I’ll need to see more of second year quarterback Jared Goff to form any serious opinion, but he hasn’t shone yet and that has to be worrying given what the Rams gave up to select him number one in the 2016 draft.

Still, the Rams traded for Sammy Watkins last week and it will be fun to see if Watkins can stay fit this season, and if he can help the Rams turn round their passing attack.

The defence for the Rams looked good though, they seemed to be picking up the defence of new co-ordinator Wade Philips quickly and this was without Aaron Donald, although I will be interested to see how the disruptive tackle lines up in Philips’ 3-4 defence.

This leaves with one final point to make about the pre-season so far before I start catching up with the week two game, the Rams switch to the blue and white helmets with the white face-masks is definitely a good one as they look great.

Who says you do not learn anything in pre-season!

Does the NFL Have a Problem?

27 Thursday Oct 2016

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It seems that everyone is writing some variation on what is wrong with the NFL, or questioning whether there are any good teams. The ratings for TV in the States are down, and the quality of the prime time games has been called into question, yet as ever, I think that the situation is more complicated than that.

Certainly there do seem to have been a lot of less than stellar games in the prime time slots, but part of that is due to the lack of flexing games until later in the season, and the very nature of the Thursday games. As it allows me to watch every team, and I get a chance to watch without knowing the score, I watch and write up the Thursday night games and you can frequently see them descend into an easy win for the home team. Playing a game three days early when it takes a week to recover has always caused problems for NFL teams, and it certainly calls into question the NFL’s claim that safety is their prime concern.

However, whilst these games are deliberately chosen to show case every team to the nation, the big prime time Sunday night and Monday night games are meant to be the best of the week’s matchups. The problem with that though, is these fixtures are selected whilst the army of computers that are used to churn out the schedule are working overtime to find the best fit that they can out of the incredibly complex mix of team requirements, TV requirements, the cycle of divisional opponents and various other factors that goes into making the NFL schedule. The difficulty being that when these decisions are being made, nobody knows who the good teams are going to be in the upcoming season. Even a safe looking selection like the New England Patriots visiting the Pittsburgh Steelers can take a turn for the worse when an important player like Ben Roethlisberger picks up and injury that keeps him out of the game.

There has been mention of the NFL having gone up against the presidential debates, but whilst there is a lot of focus on the race, the league have only had games go up directly against two of the three televised debates. So what is going on?

Part of it could well be that the NFL seems to be lacking teams that are definitively good this season. Week seven saw the last undefeated record go, and there are only three teams with a solitary loss. The New England Patriots look as good as anyone now that Tom Brady has come back from his suspension, but their defence seems to lack pass rushing and may be vulnerable to a high powered offence. The Dallas Cowboys have looked good as they have gone 5-1, largely thanks to the performance of two key rookies on offence and a defence that seems to have made a definite step up in play when compared to last season. The only other team to with a solitary loss are the Minnesota Vikings who were the last undefeated team this year, but the injuries to their already suspect offensive line allowed the Philadelphia Eagles to pressure them into a loss. This is a team that has already lost their starting quarterback to a practice injury in the preseason and their leading rusher.

Not team is ever perfect, but it feels like the presence of a major flaw is looming over a lot of teams this season. The Seattle Seahawks are as competitive a team in the league, but their offensive line is not good, and now an injured Russell Wilson is struggling to perform behind it. The Atlanta Falcons have the second ranked offence by DVOA, but their defence is ranked a lowly twenty-sixth and such a disparity makes it hard to look like a super team.

Once again though, there could be more to it. Certainly the games haven’t always been the best spectacle, people want excitement, and when games are being called with so many penalties as they currently are, it is hard to keep people engaged. My only personal frustration is the five yard illegal contact that seems to get called the moment a corner back breathes on a receiver, along with an unnecessarily generous automatic first down. If you are going to call a penalty that often, it shouldn’t just come with a first down, and a bit of hand fighting is hardly the biggest problem in the NFL. In fact I’ll try to approach that right now.

There are so many topics to cover and once again I am running out of time so let’s circle round to the biggy, at the centre of so many questions. The league office, and in particular Roger Goodell. There have been many words dedicated to his performance over the last couple of years. For a very on point summary of his handling of the Josh Brown case look no further than Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post (article here) and the really troubling this is that we have been here before and Goodell has not learnt his lessons. So the NFL are stuck with a commissioner who is happy to fine players for daring to twerk in the end zone, but can’t stick to his own policy on domestic abuse and yet again is blaming local law enforcement. The owners are happy to have him as he acts as firewall for criticism aimed at the league, but with dropping ratings, questions about safety and concussions, plus for possibly the first time there is potentially a serious rival league in the NBA who might be able to mount a genuine attempt at replacing football as America’s number one sport, it might be time for them to realise that the NFL is not too big to fail.

It is a long way from that, but they have to address youth football, get out of their own way when it comes to officiating, and find the right balance between player safety and allowing coaches to coach. To look at whether the rosters are too young, what new training tools like the robotic tackling dummies that we saw in this seasons Hard Knocks can give to the game. Football can be a conservative game, but with the challenges it faces, and to ensure its policy, it has to look to the future and embrace it, and that might just mean a forward looking commissioner that inspires confidence.

Of course, in four weeks’ time these stories could all just disappear, but the problems won’t and that should concern owners, players, and fans alike.

Jaguars @ Titans (-3.5)

My rule for the Thursday night games going forward is to always pick the home team unless there is a compelling number of points, or an amazingly good team on the road against a poor team. By this formula there is nothing about the Jaguars who seem to have gone backwards this season on offence for me to do anything other than pick the Titans.

Gee’s Pick:          Titans
Dan’s Pick:          Titans

Dreams with a Deadline – Process Over Outcome

04 Sunday Sep 2016

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I want to try something a little different this week before we get into the grind of the NFL regular season, which is why I am cross posting this across both my blogs, so if you’re not a sports fan please bear with me for a little bit as things will come around.

For the last few weeks I have been following the pre-season of three NFL teams and generally getting excited about the start of a new season. However, this is the weekend that as the final cuts are made, for some careers are ending and for others dreams.

As you watch Hard Knocks (for the general reader a series following an NFL team through training camp) the shift in focus goes from a team coming together to the tension that surrounds them as players start to get cut and the business of football really kicks in. Something like two percent of those who play college football make it to the NFL and the average career is a little over three years. The offseason roster goes from ninety to fifty-three this weekend, and whilst the practice squad has expanded over the last couple of years, when you look at those numbers multiplied over thirty-two teams with very few alternative outlets to play American football professionally there are a lot of people left hanging now.

Once the season starts we will start talking about players who are bad or good, but in reality you have to be pretty exceptional to even make it into a training camp, yet alone make a successful career of the sport of American football.

So what happens next? Some will hold on for a call once the injuries start, some will keep themselves fit and hope to try again next year, and some will have to walk away from their dream. Something they have worked very hard to achieve, with fine margins and no way to keep going.

Those who do not like sport will find such sacrifices hard to comprehend, even if they understand that for some this represents their best chance of making something out of their life. Even those of us who love to lift or run as amateurs struggle to truly understand the pressure that a large number of these players will have been going through. This isn’t just winning or losing; this is about putting food on the table for their families, a shot at something bigger than themselves, and chasing a goal with a deadline.

That deadline is the bit that can be truly terrifying. I remember in my twenties feeling a dread every time my birthday rolled around, looking at the things I had and hadn’t achieved and holding myself up against some idealised timetable. I’m a bit more relaxed about things these days, partly through having done things like publishing a book this year, and partly as I have come to understand that I have a restless nature. A couple of days ago a friend halted halfway through a sentence as they realised they were basically calling me crazy.

An NFL blog, writing books, an NFL podcast, a band, a pretty busy job – all the things as I like to say. I found it funny because I didn’t disagree, and they left out the lifting, the runs, the morning stretches and core work, the out of hours support, walks with my partner, the list goes on.

I have come to appreciate the trying of things, but whilst there are things that get sacrificed, I’m not in a position that I have had to sacrifice everything to pursue one goal. There’s some that will talk about how you can achieve anything if you pursue their dream. For some this is true, and I can see that it is offered as a genuine encouragement, but usually by people who have beaten the odds. If I can, then so can you. The problem is that, if you’re focussed on the result, then anything other than achieving that result, and it is all too easy to not get the most out of what you’re doing at the time. And if you sacrifice everything for one goal, then there’s a lot to pick up if that gamble doesn’t pay off.

That’s not to say goal setting isn’t important, or that you shouldn’t try to do what you love, but how you get there is kind of important. If this is sounding dangerously close to one of those life is a journey not a destination inspirational posters, then that’s because it is. So why am I bringing it up now? The answer is podcasts and how I got very lucky this week.

Podcasts feature heavy in this next section because of a discussion between Jonah Keri and Katie Nolan on Keri’s podcast. At the end of every episode Jonah Keri asks his guest for an inspiration thing that has helped his guest. It can be as serious or as silly as they like, and one of the themes that keeps cropping up is that if you love doing something, find a way to do it. Make the thing that you want to do, and you will get better at it and the success may or may not come, but do it for the love anyway.

The reason that these blogs exist are because as I got older, the idea of being a writer wouldn’t go away. I was not one of those children who had a clearly defined idea of what they wanted to do and pursued it through a specific path in education. I kept fiddling with stories and ideas, and then really started working on my writing as I got more serious about it.

The NFL blog started because I loved the NFL and I wanted to work on something that would help me with the mechanics of writing. The NFL would always be something to write about, I was following anyway and it was an extension of my love of the sport.

Along the way, I discovered what I love writing about in relation to football, read more, listened to more podcasts, watched more games. A self-perpetuating interest developed. Not only that, but I learned how to manage my writing time, when I could squeeze out extra words if I needed to, and in the process learnt how to write fiction in more focused bursts without waiting for inspiration.

I read about coaching, and developed my thoughts on this, stealing from Pete Carroll’s book about developing a philosophy, and borrowing the idea from great Bill Walsh that the score takes care of itself. I still haven’t distilled my philosophy down to a handy twenty-five word summary as Carroll asks, but I know the name.

Process Over Outcome.

The idea that you cannot control the outcomes of situation, but if you focus on making the process as good as possible, then you maximise the potential for things to go well.

I’m still working on selling my children’s book, I have a lot to learn. Mostly because I was focussed on making the book as good as I can through the editing and production process.

It is also important to not be afraid of making mistakes, you have to learn from them, but if you’re paralysed by the possibility of failing then you’re not focussing on the process and you might not even try.

The Wrong Football podcast started last season when my friend Dan came to me, and said he’d like to do a podcast with me, and my response was sure, but you have to produce it as I can find time to sit down and record but I’m too tied up with the site to do much more. I approached it like I do being in a band, I have to trust the other people to do their job, go with the best idea, it’s working in a collaborative creative process. Something I’m used to with music and something I have written before about on my writer’s blog.

Thanks to this process, on Friday night I got to shake the hands of a Super Bowl winner. In fact, a pretty significant one for me, because this wasn’t any old Super Bowl winner, but a member of the legendary 1985 Chicago Bears. The team that caused the surge of interest in American football in the UK in the mid 1980s, and pretty much the reason that I am fan of the game. Things come full circle. It was a great experience, certainly for Dan and I, who were very nervous to begin with as this was our first live interview for the pod, but we settled quickly enough because after all, we were talking football.

The interview should be coming in next week’s pod, and will be accompanied by a second interview another ex NFL player Nick Ferguson who was also a great guy, very happy to talk to us and evangelise over the game. It was a pretty incredible evening before we even got to the NFL event itself.

I’m very happy for the pod, and I hope the interviews come across well. I also look back on it, and I think to my own brief stints being interviewed about my book. I don’t see my purpose there as being a hard sell, I just try to be enthusiastic about what I have created. If I wasn’t enthusiastic then I wouldn’t have created it. You hope that your enthusiasm sparks something in others, at the end of the day isn’t that what we’re all hoping for.

The truth is though, that all of these things are interconnected. In a way, the play of Shaun Gayle led to me writing a book, and writing meant that I got to shake his hand. This interconnectedness is part of life, the complexity of the world that surrounds can be baffling, and sometimes it is nice to stare at a sports field and pretend it is as simple as winning and losing. However, once you start to study it the complexity soon picks up again.

I’ll soon be predicting games and writing about the league. I’ll also be working on a sequel to the published book, running, lifting, doing all the things. Following various dreams, trying to ignore the deadlines. Process over outcome. It’s worked for me so far.

What I Have Been Watching

31 Monday Aug 2015

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I’m still catching up with games after my holiday, so it feels somewhat redundant to bringing your detailed round ups of the first week’s action with the third going on at the moment. Let’s face it, if you are coming here for your breaking news then I question your use of the internet. That said, there are still lots of relevant things to discuss as I take you through what I’ve been watching, and what I’ve been missing as well.

I’ll start with the Bengals, and whilst I’m hopeful that the defensive line rotation already looks more effective, and the first team offense look good as it marched down the field to get a touchdown on the opening drive.

What I really want to talk about here are quarterbacks. There is no question that everybody is waiting for Andy Dalton to backup his four playoff appearances in his first four seasons with a playoff win. In fact there’s no shortage of people calling for his head and saying that the Bengals should move on. However, whilst I’m not a Dalton apologist, I do think there is a more nuanced position to be taken in between the two camps.

There is no doubt that when is off, his play looks terrible. He can look lost, miss throws, and people question his leadership. The thing is that leadership is about how you do your job and get the best of those around you, and it doesn’t have to be done by shouting and leading from the front. But leadership also has to be earned, and in the recent seasons we seen the trend in the NFL has been to play quarterbacks much earlier and be less patient with them.

Now apart from the physical tools required to play the game, there is a huge quantity of data for a quarterback to process so he can execute the play for each play that he is on the field. To get good at this requires the right kind of brain, but also a huge number of reps, be them mental, practice, or in the game. There simply aren’t enough good quarterbacks to go round for a league of thirty-two, and so whilst everyone would love to have an elite franchise quarterback, you can win with above average quarterback play and I wonder how many players could win if they were in a situation where they were developed properly over time.

Last year’s playoff loss was horrible to watch, but the team were so injured in the skill positions when it came to receivers, that the offence couldn’t move the ball. Now at that point Dalton couldn’t throw the team better like Brady has done in the past. However, Brady is in the discussion as one of the best quarterbacks ever, and so let’s not throw Dalton out just yet.

Particularly as which of the Bengals’ quarterback would you replace him with? AJ McCarron had shoulder problems last year and has been troubled by a rib injury this season so I’ve yet to see him take a snap yet, even if his performance in game two was enough to have Josh Johnson released.

It was Josh Johnson’s performance that to me highlighted the problem of quarterbacking in this league. There were plays that he made with his arm and legs that demonstrated why he has hung around the league for six seasons already, but the lack of consistency was troubling. For me he is too quick to take off and use his legs, although he at least doesn’t take the kind of hits that are truly terrifying, but in the first game he threw two balls that should have been intercepted, and at least one if not both could have been returned for touchdowns.

It is coming towards the time where you may well have to decide that Dalton is not going to develop enough, and that it is time to move on, but I don’t think the Bengals are there yet. I am hopeful that with Hue Jackson going into his second year as offensive coordinator, that this team can get the playoff monkey off Dalton, and Marvin Lewis’ back.

So moving on from the Bengal’s first game, let us talk about preseason games and what I can see, as well as one of my favourite series around this time of year, namely Hard Knocks.

I haven’t been back to watch the years I wasn’t able to see, but as a football obsessive it doesn’t really matter who the team is as I love getting this glimpse of what is going on. This year is even better for me as we’re getting to watch JJ Watt in training, which should just be a series in of itself. However, I have enjoyed watching Bill O’Brien as a head coach, and it always nice to see the personalities behind the facemasks, which is all you see of so many players.

However, it has highlighted the problems of trying to analyse games deeply when you only have the TV copy, which is what you have for preseason on Gamepass. Through commentary, and replay you can see what’s going on if it is highlighted, but if you’re trying to look out for specific players, or watch certain coverage to figure out how s player got so wide open, it can be really difficult without the all twenty-two and end zone views. It also means that you tend to focus on skill players, and flashy defensive plays, but you miss a lot of what is going on around the lines or in the receiving game before the player catches the ball.

It is interesting to me that so often people seem to want their coaches to be all out disciplinarians, and that the term player’s coach is as often used more as a criticism than a complement. I have found it fascinating to watch the way Mike Vrabel has been coaching the Texans’ linebackers, and in particular Kourtnei Brown. I don’t want to single out Vrabel for criticism as he is working in a culture that he’s deeply steeped in, he was a really good player, and he is trying to bring out the best in his charges. But different people respond to different types of coaching, and I wonder if there was not a more nuanced way to approach the message he was trying to get across. That said, Brown had an amazing sequence of snaps in the third quarter of their game against the 49ers, getting two sacks along side multiple pressures as things really began to click for the NFL journeymen who may yet make the squad. I’ll be interested to see the rest of their games, and I shall make sure to have watched their third game before I watch the fourth episode of Hard Knocks as that is the only thing I am up to date with so far.

So, if I was frustrated by the camera angles in the Texans game as I was looking to spot the players I had been watching in Hard Knocks, the Colts at the Eagles was the game I made most notes about of the preseason week one games. I picked two teams because I wanted to look at their coaching thank to the offseason reading I had been done and this proved to be a good choice in this game.

The real proof of what Chip Kelly has been doing in the offseason will be how they perform in the games, and in this first preseason game, things looked pretty damn good. But what I really want to focus on this week is an aspect I particularly liked about the Eagles offence, and don’t worry folks, it wasn’t Tim Tebow.

There has been a lot of talk about how good Kelly’s system is, and that it is quarterback proof. I might not go that far as I don’t think any system can really cope with bad quarterback play, but it is really well structured, and what I really admired about it whilst watching this game was the commitment to deception, and specifically the run/pass questions it asked of the oppositions defence.

Apart from the use of quarterback options plays, if you watch the backfield of the Eagles, on almost every play the quarterback/running back gives you a look of the opposite of what they are doing. You have quarterbacks faking that they’ve kept the ball on run plays, play action passes, and draw plays. This commitment forces the defensive players to make a read on every play, which means they have to respect both possibilities and this can get you easy receptions just as much as route combinations designed to attack a particular coverage.

From what I can see, one of the reasons that rookie tight end Eric Tomlinson was wide open in the second quarter, was because Cam Johnson had to make a read on the play fake run as he dropped into coverage with Tomlinson, and so he was just a fraction late, taking too flat of an angle to make a tackle on the Eagles tight end and so what could have been a short gain goes for nineteen yards.

The pace of the Eagles’ offence is really hard to judge on the condensed view, other than that the coverage is frequently scrambling to catch up and a number of plays were missed or picked up half way through as they were too quick for the TV team who were still looking at the previous play, so you can see how it can stress a defence.

The final game I watched from the first week was the Chiefs at the Cardinals, and in this is the hardest for me to comment on. The Cardinals have had a change in defensive coordinator this year, and the number of defensive backs that they were typically using last year in combination with the way they rushed the passer is something that’s really hard to look out without really going over game film rather than the TV game footage.

However, it was really nice to Carson Palmer back and playing, and you can see the potential in Logan Thomas, certainly with his arm, but he still needs time to develop. The team moved the ball well with the first team, but I shall be really interested to see how they develop going forward, and hopefully will get a better understanding of what Bruce Arians is planning for the upcoming season.

I have a lot more games to watch, as I try to catch up with the NFL, but going over games isn’t exactly a chore. So roll on more games, the season is coming!