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When it comes to dealing with players, coaches cannot take a one-size-fits-all
approach.
An NFL roster is not composed of 53 robots, all reacting in identical fashion because
of a common program.
An NFL roster is composed of 53 individuals. Just as no two snowflakes are the same, no
two NFL players have the same personality, ability and the vast array of other traits that
cumulatively define a person.
"Everybody is different," said NFL Coaches Association executive director
Larry Kennan, who coached in the NFL for 15 years. "You need to find out what their
hot button is and keep pushing it. Everybody is different. You can’t deal the same
with all of them. You just can’t, because they’re all different."
TE Shannon Sharpe said of Ravens head coach Brian Billick, "He lets each guy be
himself. So many times you see coaches say, ‘This is the way I want you to dress.
This is the way I want you to look. This is what I want you to do.’ And Brian
doesn’t do that. He’s like, ‘Look, I’ve got 53 guys on my roster who
are from 53 different places from 53 different religions and 53 different backgrounds, and
so I don’t expect you all to be alike. I expect no two guys on this team to be
alike.’ And we’re not."
In addition to understanding that there are 53 different personalities on a team, a
coach must also realize that there are a variety of roles and types of player and coach
accordingly. Coaches must work in different ways with, among other distinctions, a
superstar as opposed to a scrub, a rookie vs. a veteran and a performer who has thick skin
instead of thin skin.
Superstar vs. everyone else
When coaching a superstar, a coach has the opportunity to get more creative.
"He can do his thing very well, and you’ve got to design plays for him,"
said Rams administrator of pro personnel Jack Faulkner, who was a longtime coach before
moving over to the front office. "You don’t just run some damn play just because
it’s a play that comes out of your head. What can he do? What does he do best? You
put in the best plays for him so that he can take advantage of his athletic ability."
When working with a superstar, a coach will find himself doing less coaching in some
regards yet also getting into more nuances of the game in other capacities.
"A guy who is a great runner like Marcus Allen was, you don’t want to coach
him on how to run, because he knows how to do that," Kennan said. "But you need
to coach him on all the other points. How to block and how to run routes and things like
that. But as far as running and to tell a guy you should have cut back here or
shouldn’t have cut back, he maybe knows more about that than you do. You can suggest
things. … You need to know a lot about the game to deal with those guys, because
it’s not necessarily a simple thing."
Falcons RB coach Ollie Wilson is from the coach-everybody-the-same school of thought,
but when he said this, it still became clear that it is different coaching a superstar.
Wilson believes every player should be coached with the same enthusiasm, but he seems to
recognize that there are some differences with a superstar.
"I really believe that you coach everybody the same," Wilson said. "And
I think you coach everybody hard, and I think you coach everybody as much as you can.
… I think the star does more things, can do more things and again in turn they may
need more. But the guy who is still trying to make it and trying to get to that level also
needs to be productive, and he knows he needs more. So I don’t really believe that
you coach one guy different than another. I think that you coach them all hard, and your
level is always high, your standards are always high as far as coaching is concerned, and
you go with it that way."
Perhaps the subtle point Wilson makes is hammered home by all-time great QB Joe
Montana. Although a coach may work with the same energy whether it is a superstar or
bench-warmer who has his attention, their significantly different places on the football
food chain requires different handling.
In the book "Super Bowl: The Game of Their Lives," Montana said of head coach
Bill Walsh, "He didn’t come out and say that a quarterback should be a leader,
but I know he expected it. He expected you to work the hardest and do the most. That was
the standard for the quarterback. I always realized that Bill expected a lot from his
starting quarterback, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant in our first few
years together.
"There was one time when I’d been playing pretty well, but got hurt, and my
backup came in and did a good job. After the game I heard Bill tell him, ‘Great
game,’ or something like that, and I was a bit upset because Bill never would
compliment me in that way, although he would say nice things about me to the press. In
time, I came to understand Bill’s thinking. When a guy who didn’t play a lot
played well, Bill thought he deserved to be praised. Bill expected that high level of me
all the time, so for him to say something like that to me, I had to do something that was
out-of-the-ordinary great. I came to recognize that Bill would compliment me on those
occasions when I played over and above what he expected of me."
While this type of praise may be harder to come by for the superstar, the standout
performer may also be able to get away with a little more at times than a less significant
contributor.
This past season, the 49ers lost a game to the Bears in which San Francisco wasted a
19-point, third-quarter lead. WR Terrell Owens publicly criticized head coach Steve
Mariucci’s play calling, suggesting that Mariucci had let up on the Bears because he
didn’t want to embarrass Chicago head coach Dick Jauron.
Mariucci called Owens’ statement "utterly ridiculous." This was not the
first time the star wide receiver and the highly regard head coach had butted heads in
what is a chilly relationship.
That said, consider some comments Mariucci also made shortly thereafter.
"He’s playing hard, he’s playing well," Mariucci said. "Cut
the guy some slack."
Mariucci also said, "We have some similarities, believe it or not. In some ways
we’re alike. When he comes to work, he gives us a full day’s work, which I hope
I do, too. He wants to win, just like I want to win. We both compete like crazy. We both
have the same goal in mind for this football team."
Given the blasphemy of Owens’ statement about his boss, this was truly a case of
Mariucci taking the high road. The reason seems clear. Owens is a superstar. Thus, once he
had defended himself, Mariucci really had no choice but to bite his tongue. Everything
Mariucci said about Owens in defending him is true, but ask yourself this: Would the
comments have been as gracious if Owens were a 20-catch-a-year bench-warmer instead of a
gamebreaker who catches 90-plus balls a season?
Rookie vs. veteran
Looks can be deceiving. A rookie and a veteran may play the same position, may
look the same in pads and may run the same 40-time, but you would get an altogether
different picture if you could X-ray their brains.
"It’s totally different, because the rookie doesn’t know anything, and
sometimes the veteran knows too much," Kennan said.
Said Wilson: "Just knowledge. Just knowing what’s going on from a lot of
different standpoints. … I’ve had rookies who come and have no idea.
They’ve coming from programs where they’ve been the guy, and everything has been
brought to them and handed to them, and said, ‘OK, you do this, and when you get on
the field you go play.’
"And then I’ve had guys who have come in and just said, ‘Coach, this is
what I need to do. Can you help me do this? This is the direction I need to go in, can you
help me do this?’
"The veteran guy basically knows what the league is all about. He knows how to
condition his body physically. He knows how to work at those things. There’s certain
phases that the veteran players know. They know what their offseason situation has got to
be. They know what their physical training and their eating habits have to be. They know
what it takes to practice and be successful at this level as far as the NFL is concerned.
I think that’s what the veterans know.
"The rookies don’t know that because they haven’t been involved in that.
If they have that little bit of knowledge and little bit of extra, then that helps you,
but you’re basically teaching them those type of things so that they become veterans,
and they get in a situation where they know that they can do things on their own without
you having to carry things through."
If you want to see a coach really have to earn his paycheck, just watch him when he
must work with a rookie who has been thrust into the starting lineup.
"To me, that’s one of the most trying times, is when a kid comes in as a
player in that first year, and he starts right at the beginning," Chiefs TE coach
Keith Rowen said.
"Because there’s so much to learn. They are at their worst preparation of
their whole career. … You’re teaching them assignments. You’re teaching
them technique. You’re not only teaching them what to do, you’re teaching them
how to do it. And then the third element is who they’re going against. So now you
have one of these great pass rushers, and you’re trying to teach them the moves and
the type of preparation that most of your players would have, except they’ve never
seen it before."
"Taking a younger player when he’s got to play with limited experience is one
of the more trying situations, because that’s the advantage a veteran has. He’s
played, he knows how to play, been around the league. And so the teaching level, because
his background is different, is totally different."
Thick skin vs. thin skin
There are all kinds of measurables in the scouting profession.
The scale will tell weight. The stopwatch will tell 40-time.
Measuring tape determines height.
There’s is no scouting tool, however, that can measure the thickness of a
player’s skin. Does he have the thick skin to handle criticism, or is it so razor
thin that he crumbles from even an angry glare?
Said Wilson: "I’ve got some guys that I can flat-out rip for a half hour, and
it wouldn’t bother them. They’d hear it, they’d listen to it, they’d
take the criticism, and they’d go out and they’d perform. I’ve got other
guys that if I started ripping into them, they’d go into a shell, and I’d never
get them back."
Part 6: The hiring game
Part 5: The glass is half full
Part 4: Difficulties of the profession
Part 3: Coping with defeat
Part 2: The player-coach relationship
Part
1: Setting the tone
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