http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/dr_z/10/18/conservative.coaches/index.html
The conservative party
Cards' Green latest coach unwilling to take chances
Posted: Thursday October 19, 2006 11:11AM; Updated: Thursday October 19, 2006 12:34
Say on third-and-5, Chicago competes a little swing pass for a few yards, and you know the momentum will get the guy the first down. Not against Arizona on Monday night. The runner was stopped in his tracks, forcing a punt, time and again. Eric Green, the right corner, was in a tackling frenzy. I mean, these guys really wanted it.
The coach wouldn't let them have it. It isn't certain which coach. Dennis Green wouldn't take responsibility for the gutless play-calling that cost Arizona the game. I mean, what did you expect? By implication he indicated that the fault lay with offensive coordinator Keith Rowen, because he fired him the next day. A convenient bail out for sure. And who says the head coach can't get on the phone to the booth and tell his assistant what he wants run. Timeouts had been taken during the crucial period -- by the Bears, no less.
We all know that Chicago never should have been ahead. But that's been rehashed enough. The point is that after the punt return that gave the Bears the lead, Leinart and the offense didn't just fold up. The kid drove his team into field-goal range, and that was against a defense that didn't hold back. Chicago was throwing a lot of blitz pressure on Leinart, and sometimes it forced bad passes. One blind side hit in the third quarter had knocked the ball loose for a score.
But he was still hitting his hot reads often enough to set the Bears on their heels, and at the end he brought his team from its own 38 to the Bears' 24, second-and-3. And then the Cardinal coach (Green ... Rowen ... who knows?) took the game away from his team.
Anyone who had watched the contest had to know that no amount of running plays was going to get the Cardinals a first down, not when you've got one of the worst offensive lines in football trying to block the best.
Slobs trying to block athletes, lots of athletes, all crowding the box.
Edgerrin James was on his way to setting an all-time record for fewest yards gained (55) on most carries (36), an unbelievable chronicle of frustration and failure. Out of 19 third-down situations up to that point, the Cards had tried to run on only one of them, falling five yards short.
That was the track record of their running game. That's how much confidence they had in it, until, of course, they decided to play to lose.
I don't know what percentage of coaches in the NFL would have played it conservative in that spot and called two straight running plays, as Arizona did, or how many would have tried something a bit different, such as the kind of short pass to Anquan Boldin that had been driving Chicago crazy all night.
Get your first down, pick up a few more yards somewhere and you give your kicker a chip shot and take a lot of the pressure off. I'd imagine that most coaches would have gone conservative and played these kind of percentages.
Dare to be bold. Yeah, it sounds nice, but so few of them do it. They're basically conservative people. Sam Wyche dared to be different. Remember what they called him? Wicky Wacky. I might lose, say the coaches who take his lesson to heart, but by God, no one's gonna make fun of me.
What Green, Rowen or the combination found was the easiest way to lose. Run twice, get stopped, miss the 40-yard field goal, which isn't exactly a chip shot, go home with your loss, knowing that at least you didn't do anything unusual. Besides, it's the players who get the loss, right?
Bunch of chokes, right?
Coaches are always taking victories away from their players. What did Marty Schottenheimer do but close up shop and try to sit on a tiny lead for half a game.
San Diego vs. Baltimore earlier this season, remember? He isn't a bad guy, and on an organization level, he's a hell of a good coach. But it's just that old-boy mentality.
You'd have thought that he learned his lesson two years ago, when he shut it down against the Jets at the end of the wild-card playoff and set it up for a 40-yard field goal to win the game. Not exactly a gimme, but Marty decided to pay the hand he had and not draw any more cards. Nate Kaeding missed the kick and San Diego went home.
And you'd have thought that Jets coach Herm Edwards would have profited from watching Marty go down, following that slavish adherence to those kind of percentages, but next week he did the same thing in the divisionals in Pittsburgh. Only he told his QB to actually take a knee and lose some yards in order to set up a 47-yard field goal. And this was in Heinz Field, where no one ever had kicked one longer than 46. This one didn't break the streak, either, and the Jets said sayonara.
Why do coaches keep doing it? Why do they refuse to take the smallest bold step, with such a reward at the end of it? Beats me. You see it on the other side of the ball, too.
Have you ever rooted for a team that's on defense, and you practically beg: Hold 'em, please just hold them this time. And they're rushing four, only four, play after play, and no one's getting through. They're just getting tired. And there's this thrashing storm, going nowhere, in front of the passer as he takes his drop, sets his feet, looks straight downfield, and you know, you just know, that it's gonna be a quick post or a comeback or a crossing pattern good for 18 yards, minimum.
Atlanta vs. the Giants last Sunday. The Falcon defensive line is wearing down.
People are getting hurt.
They're out of ammo, but they keep storming the walls. They are being coached to lose. And they oblige. You don't pressure the passer, you don't win the game.
Floyd Peters, the great 49ers defensive coach who masterminded the famous Gold Rush, with Cedrick Hardman and Tommy Hart, used to say that he'd go to bed at night and wake up in the morning creating rush schemes. He'd dream of them and reach for his notebook and start diagramming them.
Sometimes he'd bring only four, but they were always twisting and looping and running stunts. It was never a static rush. If four didn't get there in time, he'd bring one blitzer, two, whatever it took.
"Sometimes I can use a rush scheme only once," he'd say, "and then back on the shelf it goes, and I start working things off it. Then when they catch up with that, it's shelved and I work on new ones."
Dare to be different. Dare to create. Don't lose the game for your team.
Collegiate Hypocrisy
A quick note after watching replays of the Miami-Florida International fight. What's the difference between NFL and college football? The Titans' Albert Haynesworth got a five-game suspension for stomping a guy on the ground. Miami's Brandon Meriweather got a single game layoff for the same thing. And the one game is Duke. I guess that's why they call them student athletes.
The conservative party
Cards' Green latest coach unwilling to take chances
Posted: Thursday October 19, 2006 11:11AM; Updated: Thursday October 19, 2006 12:34
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They knew it was the defining moment of their season, maybe, for the older members of the Arizona Cardinals, for their careers. And man, were they ever on their game. At least for three quarters. How could I tell? The concentration. I didn't see a Matt Leinart pass dropped. I saw tackling that was sure.Say on third-and-5, Chicago competes a little swing pass for a few yards, and you know the momentum will get the guy the first down. Not against Arizona on Monday night. The runner was stopped in his tracks, forcing a punt, time and again. Eric Green, the right corner, was in a tackling frenzy. I mean, these guys really wanted it.
The coach wouldn't let them have it. It isn't certain which coach. Dennis Green wouldn't take responsibility for the gutless play-calling that cost Arizona the game. I mean, what did you expect? By implication he indicated that the fault lay with offensive coordinator Keith Rowen, because he fired him the next day. A convenient bail out for sure. And who says the head coach can't get on the phone to the booth and tell his assistant what he wants run. Timeouts had been taken during the crucial period -- by the Bears, no less.
We all know that Chicago never should have been ahead. But that's been rehashed enough. The point is that after the punt return that gave the Bears the lead, Leinart and the offense didn't just fold up. The kid drove his team into field-goal range, and that was against a defense that didn't hold back. Chicago was throwing a lot of blitz pressure on Leinart, and sometimes it forced bad passes. One blind side hit in the third quarter had knocked the ball loose for a score.
But he was still hitting his hot reads often enough to set the Bears on their heels, and at the end he brought his team from its own 38 to the Bears' 24, second-and-3. And then the Cardinal coach (Green ... Rowen ... who knows?) took the game away from his team.
Anyone who had watched the contest had to know that no amount of running plays was going to get the Cardinals a first down, not when you've got one of the worst offensive lines in football trying to block the best.
Slobs trying to block athletes, lots of athletes, all crowding the box.
Edgerrin James was on his way to setting an all-time record for fewest yards gained (55) on most carries (36), an unbelievable chronicle of frustration and failure. Out of 19 third-down situations up to that point, the Cards had tried to run on only one of them, falling five yards short.
That was the track record of their running game. That's how much confidence they had in it, until, of course, they decided to play to lose.
I don't know what percentage of coaches in the NFL would have played it conservative in that spot and called two straight running plays, as Arizona did, or how many would have tried something a bit different, such as the kind of short pass to Anquan Boldin that had been driving Chicago crazy all night.
Get your first down, pick up a few more yards somewhere and you give your kicker a chip shot and take a lot of the pressure off. I'd imagine that most coaches would have gone conservative and played these kind of percentages.
Dare to be bold. Yeah, it sounds nice, but so few of them do it. They're basically conservative people. Sam Wyche dared to be different. Remember what they called him? Wicky Wacky. I might lose, say the coaches who take his lesson to heart, but by God, no one's gonna make fun of me.
What Green, Rowen or the combination found was the easiest way to lose. Run twice, get stopped, miss the 40-yard field goal, which isn't exactly a chip shot, go home with your loss, knowing that at least you didn't do anything unusual. Besides, it's the players who get the loss, right?
Bunch of chokes, right?
Coaches are always taking victories away from their players. What did Marty Schottenheimer do but close up shop and try to sit on a tiny lead for half a game.
San Diego vs. Baltimore earlier this season, remember? He isn't a bad guy, and on an organization level, he's a hell of a good coach. But it's just that old-boy mentality.
You'd have thought that he learned his lesson two years ago, when he shut it down against the Jets at the end of the wild-card playoff and set it up for a 40-yard field goal to win the game. Not exactly a gimme, but Marty decided to pay the hand he had and not draw any more cards. Nate Kaeding missed the kick and San Diego went home.
And you'd have thought that Jets coach Herm Edwards would have profited from watching Marty go down, following that slavish adherence to those kind of percentages, but next week he did the same thing in the divisionals in Pittsburgh. Only he told his QB to actually take a knee and lose some yards in order to set up a 47-yard field goal. And this was in Heinz Field, where no one ever had kicked one longer than 46. This one didn't break the streak, either, and the Jets said sayonara.
Why do coaches keep doing it? Why do they refuse to take the smallest bold step, with such a reward at the end of it? Beats me. You see it on the other side of the ball, too.
Have you ever rooted for a team that's on defense, and you practically beg: Hold 'em, please just hold them this time. And they're rushing four, only four, play after play, and no one's getting through. They're just getting tired. And there's this thrashing storm, going nowhere, in front of the passer as he takes his drop, sets his feet, looks straight downfield, and you know, you just know, that it's gonna be a quick post or a comeback or a crossing pattern good for 18 yards, minimum.
Atlanta vs. the Giants last Sunday. The Falcon defensive line is wearing down.
People are getting hurt.
They're out of ammo, but they keep storming the walls. They are being coached to lose. And they oblige. You don't pressure the passer, you don't win the game.
Floyd Peters, the great 49ers defensive coach who masterminded the famous Gold Rush, with Cedrick Hardman and Tommy Hart, used to say that he'd go to bed at night and wake up in the morning creating rush schemes. He'd dream of them and reach for his notebook and start diagramming them.
Sometimes he'd bring only four, but they were always twisting and looping and running stunts. It was never a static rush. If four didn't get there in time, he'd bring one blitzer, two, whatever it took.
"Sometimes I can use a rush scheme only once," he'd say, "and then back on the shelf it goes, and I start working things off it. Then when they catch up with that, it's shelved and I work on new ones."
Dare to be different. Dare to create. Don't lose the game for your team.
Collegiate Hypocrisy
A quick note after watching replays of the Miami-Florida International fight. What's the difference between NFL and college football? The Titans' Albert Haynesworth got a five-game suspension for stomping a guy on the ground. Miami's Brandon Meriweather got a single game layoff for the same thing. And the one game is Duke. I guess that's why they call them student athletes.
so lets start fresh.
. It's new and improved.
