Is Gruden too "soft" of a Head Coach ?

Elephant said:

Well, I certainly hope Peerine can step up, because I have no confidence in any of the other RB's to carry the lion's share. Chris Thompson remains the best RB we have, but he cannot consistently carry the ball 20-25 times a game.

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Conventional wisdom is that he can't - but I'll confess I'd love to see them try Thompson as the starter. Guy gives us all kinds of options.


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Is Gruden too "soft" of a Head Coach ?

Docsandy said:

All well and good..that is assuming we have a REASON to have gas in the tank mid to late season.

Gibbs 2.0 came into a team he did not put together. The personality of the team never meshed under Gibbs 2.0, which is unfortunate. Yes, every opponent was the best team in the world and Gibbs was able to get his Gibbs 1.0 players to buy into that. Didn't hurt that we had a certain #44 as well as the Smurfs...

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Gibbs had enough time to put his own stamp on the team in round 2. He didn't ultimately have the stomach for it the 2nd go round. He did some good, in fact, a lot of good, but I think when it became clear we were years away he decided he wasn't up for the challenge.

Had he had a younger promising QB things might've been different. As it was he rode Brunell as far as he could.


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Docsandy said:

All well and good..that is assuming we have a REASON to have gas in the tank mid to late season.

Gibbs 2.0 came into a team he did not put together. The personality of the team never meshed under Gibbs 2.0, which is unfortunate. Yes, every opponent was the best team in the world and Gibbs was able to get his Gibbs 1.0 players to buy into that. Didn't hurt that we had a certain #44 as well as the Smurfs...

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PS - ALL new head coaches inherit squads they didn't put together. Just sayin'


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Boone said:

PS - ALL new head coaches inherit squads they didn't put together. Just sayin'


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This is true..but I guess what I'm remembering is the "blank check" Cooke gave Gibbs before the era of caps, free agency, etc. I admit that at times I respond to these with rose-colored glasses which I'm sure makes me appear the usual "female football fan who doesn't know much" so I should probably stop <grin>

At the time, fans were pretty used to not going anywhere... for those of us who remember the glory years and still remember that feeling it gave us.. makes us yearn for more and thus will make fans impatient (not speaking for you nor myself specifically); those who are not old enough (I can't believe I'm old enough to write a phrase like that ... keep hearing about that feeling and therefore they become impatient. This puts pressure on coaches. It doesn't help that we have an owner who, at the beginning, was (and acted) acting like a fan who wanted to buy a championship..he himself was impatient and put all kinds of pressure on coaches. Still does but is getting better as shown by hiring a GM, handing over certain responsibilities, etc.

Anyway... it's only my 2 cents which really isn't worth much nowadays...<grin>

Boone said:

Conventional wisdom is that he can't - but I'll confess I'd love to see them try Thompson as the starter. Guy gives us all kinds of options.


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Can he take the punishment?

Elephant said:

Can he take the punishment?

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I don't think he could and to attempt it would ultimately be subtraction by addition.

As far as Gibbs goes, I think he was as as tough as anyone on performance between the white lines but he would let players be themselves off the field. I would use Riggins and Portis as examples.

Boone said:

Bullshit. Which teams? Have you observed their practices? No - you haven't. You're taking DC mediots word for it @Ax? That's just a beleagured Redskins fan post Ax.

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Damn Dude! Who shit in your lunch box?

Google is your friend, my friend.

Lots of stuff out there about it. Actual Gruden quotes talking about the fear of getting someone hurt in practice.
So, we don't have to agree on what's soft, and what's not. Put it appears pretty obvious that we could do more, within the rules of the CBA.

And, I'm anything but a beleaguered Redskin fan. Just pointing out that Jay talks tough, about being tough, and physical. While taking a "we might get a boo-boo" approach to the physicality of practice.
The players love him for it. As long as they can produce on gameday, it really doesn't matter.

Is Jay too soft? Short answer, no.

Softness of a coach shouldn't matter as long as they're executing based on it. People reference Gibbs and how he was 'soft' but the players respected him. He also had an absolute PITBULL as an O-line coach in Joe Bugel. Over the last 2 preseason games, it's very clear our STARTING Defense is ahead of our STARTING Offense when it comes to level of play.. I wonder how much of this has to do with Tomsula being in the defensive practices every day, and how 'hard' he is on his guys. Personally I feel like it's the position coaches responsibility to dictate how 'hard' the practices are, and the coach needs to manage, not motivate.

The other major part of this 'softness' is leadership. On defense we have 'dogs' as (I believe) Doc Walker refers to them. Guys with nastiness, Swearinger, Norman, guys that lead the guys to being 'hard.' On offense, we have a couple guys but one of our captains cant quit smokin weed, and the other is someone who has found the book on the definition of PC (Kirk). If you look at the previous Gibbs teams, there were player leaders that held the team accountable for how hard they pushed and how bad they 'wanted it.' I still remember the story about the O-line looking at Randy White and telling him that we were gonna run his ass over, and then did it, and that didn't come from Gibbs. That's 'want-to' as I like to put it. I dont see that with this team, I'm hoping Scherff can have some of that in him and as he develops, he pushes the guys a little more.

Yeah, well Doc Walker is one of the guys very critical of the limited contact in practice. Beyond the limitations of the CBA. And goes off on the "no tackling to the ground" way of thinking.

Year after year of sloppy tackling would make you try something different, IMHO.

Elephant said:

Can he take the punishment?

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5' 8" @ 190 pounds so not a guy whose really built to go game to game through the middle 15 or so times every Sunday. He's a big asset as a receiver, I wouldn't risk losing that.

JohnssBass said:

5' 8" @ 190 pounds so not a guy whose really built to go game to game through the middle 15 or so times every Sunday.

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But more durable than our starting TE !