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In life, you can throw teams together to perform minute tasks, such as cleaning up friend's yard, jump starting a vehicle, going door to door to sell cookies. You can even throw together a group of kids to play a game of pickup football in the backyard with relative ease. However, running a competitve football organization at any level of football is slightly more complicated. In a post a few days ago, I noted that maintaining a football team is akin to keeping an elaborate salt water aquarium set up running appropriately. Your pH must be on track, your live rock must be cured appropriately, you must make sure your cycles are appropriate and you can't mix certain species of fish with others for fear of eating each other or disease.
A football team is an extremely delicate system. When people use the term "football team" they often imagine players and coaches in uniform standing on a green field marching a football up and down the field. However, that is just the final product and production piece of a football team. The real identity of a team is forged during the offseason and during each and every day at the office.
If there is a perceived lack of respect between players and coaches, a team can and will nose dive extremely quickly. This isn't the old days of sport where your coach was essentially your God to never be questioned. Society has evolved, for better or worse, and the ways of yesteryear don't work as they used to. Players are more sensitive than ever (in general sense). Players no longer want to fight for their coaches respect, many feel they've already earned the right to be respected. There are still throwback players, to be sure. London Fletcher being a prime example. But I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of players don't feel public scrutiny is the method that needs to be utilized to reach them. I agree with them in a way. Coaches must use some tact with today's athletes. But athletes also need to understand that they must be held accountable for their own mistakes and actions. The moment someone rocks the ship, equilibrium is deeply effected and winning becomes a much more difficult task.
When that happens, though, people react different. Some fans call for the coaches heads. Some say the players need to be responsible. Some sit in between. But for the sake of conversation, let's talk about team building. It's not as easy as saying, "Alright, well, the 3-4 tanked so let's just shift on over to the 4-3!" or saying, "The zone blocking scheme stinks, I want old school Redskin football (which was actually zone, by the way ) let's go to angle blocking!"
The ecosystem is too fragile to just move on. First off, is the way a team approaches its own players. The Eagles see a kid with talent and they lock him up. Even if they are in year two of a rookie deal, they pay their own to stay with the team. When a player is drafted by the Eagles they know that if they prove their worth they will get extended and welcomed.
The Patriots cut ties with older veterans who demand too much money. Why did your Mike Vrabels and Tedy Bruschi's stick while your Ty Law's didn't? Simple: A cost/effectiveness ratio. Vrabel and Bruschi didn't want much money and were a better choice than the alternatives, so they stayed. Ty Law would have cost the team entirely too much money for his effectiveness, in the Patriot's eyes, so they cut ties.
The Ravens want first right of refusal. Newsome sits down with the players and says, "Look, we think you should be allowed to go get what you're worth. Test the free agency waters. The only thing we ask is that you allow us to match any deal that you're offered, and we're going to assume that being a Raven is important to you and you'll sign if we match". The players love the Raven model. They either get paid big bucks to go elsewhere, or they resign with a team that has grown together over the years.
I'm not going to say which I prefer, it's not important to the context of the conversation. But all three of the models I listed look to achieve balance. So acquiring the players necessary is a big part of things, and they all have a plan. But once players are acquired, they still have to fit together.
There has been a ground swell of people who would like to see Chip Kelly take his high octane Oregon offense to D.C. and RG3. Here's the premise of that offense:
Speed kills. Extreme conditioning matters. Sacrifice size in the name of speed and out athlete the opposition
To be fair, Chip Kelly has a brilliant football mind and could probably run any number of systems, but a team who brought Kelly in would undoubtedly be hanging their hat on the hope that the "Duck" offense would make their team dangerous. And it's likely it would leave a lasting mark on the NFL for a period of time until other teams figure out the finer nuances. Speed can kill in the NFL, RG3 is a prime example. However, look at the Raiders. They always value "fast" players. They haven't fielded a competitve squad in quite some time.
In order to run the high octane "Duck" offense, teams would need to mold their roster to a high octane roster. Smaller, shiftier guys. Which means they'd have to build their defense, at least in part, to match that tempo. At a clinic a few years ago, Oregon's defensive line coach spoke and he said that the first few practices in Oregon he thought Kelly was crazy. The offense wants to run a play once every 15 seconds. He said the defense had to get smaller and more athletic to accomplish being able to defend them. Therein lies a problem... Do you mold your defense to give your offense a quality look in practice, which is invaluable to an offense... Or do you mold your defense to stop other NFL teams (which is the purpose of a defense, is it not?) at the expense of giving your offensive football team a good look. It's quite a trade off. But now your scout offense is also effected. Facing a bruising back this week? You likely don't have many guys who can play that "role" in practice because you have a team of LeMichael James and Varners.
That's part of the ecosystem. You must find balance. Both in what your opponents do and what you do. You must have a plan. You must execute trades and drafts and free agent signings. Draft day trades may look like they are born out of no where, but I'm willing to put money on the fact that those trades are spoken about weeks in advance. There always needs to be a plan, and everyone, including your own team must be constantly evaluated.
The director of pro personnel has a job to rank EVERY player in the league by position. Including his own. When free agency rolls around, if an upgrade is available, they know it. It's run in a similar fashion to a draft board. At the same time, the director of college scouting is compiling a list of pretty much every prospect, and who fits and who doesn't. They also have to try to find comparisons to current pros in order to figure out a ceiling or a floor. Then all of the information goes back to your GM, who has to compile it and make complex decisions all the while trying to plug holes, fill the team for the future, dealing with contract disputes, etc.
In season, teams aren't quick to sign free agents with no familiarity to the system. It's too hard to bring a guy in from another system in mid season and get them acclimated quickly enough. That's why you often see guys who were cut brought back. They have some familiarity. And occasionally you'll see guys brought in with a background in a similar system to what you run.
Now factor in having a coaching turnover in any way, on either side of the ball. You now have guys meant for one system trying to play in a new system that doesn't necessarily fit their strengths. Which means a learning curve and a building curve. That's why teams tend to stick with "tradition" when hiring new coaches. Pittsburgh has remained a 3-4 team for years, and Mike Tomlin was smart enough to resist the urge to change from a 3-4 team to the 4-3, which is what his background was in.
It's all part of the ecosystem. It's fragile. And the slightest change can throw a team into a catastrophic death cycle. I've read some, at least in my opinion, very good thoughts and analysis on matters from coaching changes, to scheme changes, to why a coach should be kept around or not. I've also read some fairly ill informed rhetoric compiled out of haste, which was the mistake of the early years in the Dan Snyder era.
Keep in mind how fragile a football ecosystem is
A football team is an extremely delicate system. When people use the term "football team" they often imagine players and coaches in uniform standing on a green field marching a football up and down the field. However, that is just the final product and production piece of a football team. The real identity of a team is forged during the offseason and during each and every day at the office.
If there is a perceived lack of respect between players and coaches, a team can and will nose dive extremely quickly. This isn't the old days of sport where your coach was essentially your God to never be questioned. Society has evolved, for better or worse, and the ways of yesteryear don't work as they used to. Players are more sensitive than ever (in general sense). Players no longer want to fight for their coaches respect, many feel they've already earned the right to be respected. There are still throwback players, to be sure. London Fletcher being a prime example. But I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of players don't feel public scrutiny is the method that needs to be utilized to reach them. I agree with them in a way. Coaches must use some tact with today's athletes. But athletes also need to understand that they must be held accountable for their own mistakes and actions. The moment someone rocks the ship, equilibrium is deeply effected and winning becomes a much more difficult task.
When that happens, though, people react different. Some fans call for the coaches heads. Some say the players need to be responsible. Some sit in between. But for the sake of conversation, let's talk about team building. It's not as easy as saying, "Alright, well, the 3-4 tanked so let's just shift on over to the 4-3!" or saying, "The zone blocking scheme stinks, I want old school Redskin football (which was actually zone, by the way ) let's go to angle blocking!"
The ecosystem is too fragile to just move on. First off, is the way a team approaches its own players. The Eagles see a kid with talent and they lock him up. Even if they are in year two of a rookie deal, they pay their own to stay with the team. When a player is drafted by the Eagles they know that if they prove their worth they will get extended and welcomed.
The Patriots cut ties with older veterans who demand too much money. Why did your Mike Vrabels and Tedy Bruschi's stick while your Ty Law's didn't? Simple: A cost/effectiveness ratio. Vrabel and Bruschi didn't want much money and were a better choice than the alternatives, so they stayed. Ty Law would have cost the team entirely too much money for his effectiveness, in the Patriot's eyes, so they cut ties.
The Ravens want first right of refusal. Newsome sits down with the players and says, "Look, we think you should be allowed to go get what you're worth. Test the free agency waters. The only thing we ask is that you allow us to match any deal that you're offered, and we're going to assume that being a Raven is important to you and you'll sign if we match". The players love the Raven model. They either get paid big bucks to go elsewhere, or they resign with a team that has grown together over the years.
I'm not going to say which I prefer, it's not important to the context of the conversation. But all three of the models I listed look to achieve balance. So acquiring the players necessary is a big part of things, and they all have a plan. But once players are acquired, they still have to fit together.
There has been a ground swell of people who would like to see Chip Kelly take his high octane Oregon offense to D.C. and RG3. Here's the premise of that offense:
Speed kills. Extreme conditioning matters. Sacrifice size in the name of speed and out athlete the opposition
To be fair, Chip Kelly has a brilliant football mind and could probably run any number of systems, but a team who brought Kelly in would undoubtedly be hanging their hat on the hope that the "Duck" offense would make their team dangerous. And it's likely it would leave a lasting mark on the NFL for a period of time until other teams figure out the finer nuances. Speed can kill in the NFL, RG3 is a prime example. However, look at the Raiders. They always value "fast" players. They haven't fielded a competitve squad in quite some time.
In order to run the high octane "Duck" offense, teams would need to mold their roster to a high octane roster. Smaller, shiftier guys. Which means they'd have to build their defense, at least in part, to match that tempo. At a clinic a few years ago, Oregon's defensive line coach spoke and he said that the first few practices in Oregon he thought Kelly was crazy. The offense wants to run a play once every 15 seconds. He said the defense had to get smaller and more athletic to accomplish being able to defend them. Therein lies a problem... Do you mold your defense to give your offense a quality look in practice, which is invaluable to an offense... Or do you mold your defense to stop other NFL teams (which is the purpose of a defense, is it not?) at the expense of giving your offensive football team a good look. It's quite a trade off. But now your scout offense is also effected. Facing a bruising back this week? You likely don't have many guys who can play that "role" in practice because you have a team of LeMichael James and Varners.
That's part of the ecosystem. You must find balance. Both in what your opponents do and what you do. You must have a plan. You must execute trades and drafts and free agent signings. Draft day trades may look like they are born out of no where, but I'm willing to put money on the fact that those trades are spoken about weeks in advance. There always needs to be a plan, and everyone, including your own team must be constantly evaluated.
The director of pro personnel has a job to rank EVERY player in the league by position. Including his own. When free agency rolls around, if an upgrade is available, they know it. It's run in a similar fashion to a draft board. At the same time, the director of college scouting is compiling a list of pretty much every prospect, and who fits and who doesn't. They also have to try to find comparisons to current pros in order to figure out a ceiling or a floor. Then all of the information goes back to your GM, who has to compile it and make complex decisions all the while trying to plug holes, fill the team for the future, dealing with contract disputes, etc.
In season, teams aren't quick to sign free agents with no familiarity to the system. It's too hard to bring a guy in from another system in mid season and get them acclimated quickly enough. That's why you often see guys who were cut brought back. They have some familiarity. And occasionally you'll see guys brought in with a background in a similar system to what you run.
Now factor in having a coaching turnover in any way, on either side of the ball. You now have guys meant for one system trying to play in a new system that doesn't necessarily fit their strengths. Which means a learning curve and a building curve. That's why teams tend to stick with "tradition" when hiring new coaches. Pittsburgh has remained a 3-4 team for years, and Mike Tomlin was smart enough to resist the urge to change from a 3-4 team to the 4-3, which is what his background was in.
It's all part of the ecosystem. It's fragile. And the slightest change can throw a team into a catastrophic death cycle. I've read some, at least in my opinion, very good thoughts and analysis on matters from coaching changes, to scheme changes, to why a coach should be kept around or not. I've also read some fairly ill informed rhetoric compiled out of haste, which was the mistake of the early years in the Dan Snyder era.
Keep in mind how fragile a football ecosystem is