I personally think the JDR treat-them-like-men approach is better, and your point about Coughlin softening up his approach before he won the Superbowls tends to support that. Gus' approach seems more like treat-them-like-children.
But that's not what the criticism of Gus is about. "Sprinkles" is about a coach who has treated winning as a bonus, not as the goal. That not-important-to-win mentality was needed while the roster was rebuilt with young players to avoid them getting discouraged. This year, having that mindset in the players and coaches was a liability. Gus is the anti-Lombardi.
Of course, there are other factors in the criticism of Gus that are way more important. The failure of defensive players to develop and the pathetic schemes that allowed second and third tier QBs to carve us up is a much stronger basis of criticism. I had some criticisms of Coughlin and JDR when they were here too, but again they were not about their style of coach-player relations.
Quote:So fear is not a legitimate motivational/instructional tool for a coach?
I know this question wasn't directed to me, but I'm going to answer this question anyway...Fear should never be used as a training or instructional tool...I have seen many supervisors, bosses and owners (albeit not in pro sports) consistently use fear of losing your job, getting demoted, suspended, transferred to a different division, et.al to try to make employees perform better, yet the only outcome I have personally witnessed was that the employees fear became so great that they performed even worse...I'm not saying that when someone makes frequent mistakes and gets corrected causes fear to the extent of performing worse, I'm saying when a boss constantly threatens you with your job, threatens to suspend you, transfer or demote you, as tool for controlling you, the results won't be favorable...Any employee or pro athletes should always know if you don't follow the rules and perform as expected that there will be repercussions including demotion, termination, transfer etc...
Quote:The discussions regarding Bradley make me question what makes our fan base tick.
....
My question to the board is what is the ideal balance a coach should have in terms of dealings with players? If you were hiring the next Jaguars coach, would you err more towards the disciplinarian or the more relaxed approach? Why?
I've said it before, but we really don't know how hard or soft Bradley and his staff are on the players in closed practice drills and especially in the film room when pointing out their errors. We can only guess.
That said - I don't mind a "player's coach" as long as they require a standard of play and most importantly to me - they demand disciplined play.
Which to me means limiting the stupid penalties and staying true to your role in the scheme despite poor play by a neighboring teammate. (unless asked by coaches to help them out) The number of repeated stupid penalties from the same handful of guys, the number of missed gap-fits, and the number of out-of-position secondary players/blown coverages tells me he may not be demanding enough discipline from these guys.
My hope is that: as this roster moves into the next phase or maturity and completeness, he will ramp up his demands and expectations for his players.
I don't mind his positive approach. I don't mind that he's not an eloquent speaker. I don't mind that he's a player's coach.
I just don't want to see the same mistakes happen 3 or 4 weeks in a row next season and I want to see some effort to make adjustments when opponents are picking apart one area of the defense.
Obviously - more talent on defense is going to give him more to work with, but the unforced mental errors have come form seasoned vets and young players alike. That stuff has to be severely curbed.
In short - I'd like to see
relaxed, but demanding of a particular standard of play. No tolerance for boneheaded errors that kill offensive drives or give free first downs to opponents.
Bruce Arians seems to have the best balance in my opinion. Straight talking as they come and has no problem letting his players know what he thinks of sub par play. Also manages to be a players coach who they all love.
Quote:When teams lose, things that were once thought of as positive traits become negative.
The team basically quit in the final 2 games (vs Saints & Texans), yet Bradley continues to give the public audience the same speech he gave in Year 1. The Process is Old. The learning curve is over. We don't what to hear that you now realize you should have added additional protection, you should have blitzed more, you should have done this, you should have done that. Figure it out in your game plan or figure it out at halftime. Based on that alone, Bradley has come across as soft in the public eye. Regarding Coughlin, his message was not getting through during the final 2 years. The players stopped listening.
There's no 1-recipe that needs to be followed to be a good coach. Good talent, good game planning, attention to detail, and great effort and execution solves everything.
** At this point, I'm concerned with all of the above.**
A decent take.
Quote:Last time I checked, we're all human so we just complain to complain. I legit think the only way we could have someone not complain is win 10 years in a row 16-0 with the super bowl and even then someone will complain that winning gets old at that point...
speak for yourself!
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Quote:I would lean more towards the Bradley type, but I am a bit biased in this as I'm actively learning how to better manage people and develop teams.
To me, the underlying concept of the "Coughlin Approach" if I can name it that, is that the Player does not want to get better. Coughlin made those rules and treated the players as if all they were at the Practice Facility to do was to screw around and get paid. To me, coaches like that try to develop behaviors via rules and this is very much an Old School type of thought. I've always thought of it as "I'm going to punish you for doing what I don't want until you learn to do what I want." I feel like this is an inefficient way of working as the player spends more time figuring out what not to do rather than learning what to do. This is similar to the NFL's policy in general regarding On Field behavior; we're going to fine you until you do what we want. Well, why not teach them how to do what you want first?!
All of that being said, one thing that Coughlin pushed to his coaches and the players was that it was perfectly clear that he was interested in what they were doing. Whether it be good or bad, you knew that the Head Coach was concerned about how you acted pretty much every minute of your life. There is something to be said for that as I feel like Del Rio did not have this sentiment. He was happy just as long as you returned the results he wanted. Once you stopped doing that, he wasn't there to support you.
I view the "Bradley Approach" in that the Staff is focused more on developing and maintaining an environment where the player can grow on a consistent basis and learn how to self-judge their own performance. The "just get better" statement that gets thrown around a lot is a tool which is aimed at getting the player to evaluate himself consistently and to take ownership of his performance. In other words, it's not "I better not do that because Coach will be mad and I'll get in trouble", it's "I see what I need to get better and if I want to be a better player, this is what I have to do." As a staff, you aren't focusing on stopping bad behavior you are focusing on promoting good behavior. "This is what you need to do in order to improve."
The thing to me about the latter approach is that you are putting trust in a player that he wants to be great. And you are working towards giving him the tools to do just that. You aren't trying to stop them from doing bad things, you are encouraging them to do good things. That approach appeals to me.
The latter approach is pretty good, but unfortunately some players like Gratz don't have what it takes to "get better" on their own. It's interesting to see how New England takes any player on their roster and they instantly become 10x better than they were before.
We need Josh McDaniels.. Has learned the "Bellichick" way, has the OC prowess to make BB and the boys kick some butt. Made his mistakes, learned from them, and is ready for the second HC try. We would be perfect for him.
Then all we need is a DC and some safeties.. Caldwell will take care of that.
Flame away losers.. same ones that didn't even want to interview Andy Reid..
When we get to a point where we are winning consistently, you can be sure there will always be a select few who will want to run whoever our coach is out of town. It's true for any fan base. See Andy Reid in philly a few years ago. He had 3 losing seasons in 14 years and at the end the fans were ready to burn his house down with him in it. Granted his last year there was his worst mark at 4 and 12, but do you think Philly would take him back now? I'm betting they would. Anecdotally, I spoke to a few philly fans in passing in the year or two prior to his firing and was hearing the same thing repeatedly that Reid had to go. I even heard that after the 2010 season when they were 10-6. I remember thinking: Are you kidding me?
The point is there are always going to be pessimists calling for a coach to go, even good ones. More fans will join that chorus if the record is or gets bad. As far as approach goes, I think you can win with differing styles. I understand and agree with Coughlin's style to a point because what he was trying to do off the field was instill a greater sense of discipline which you would expect to help reduce or eliminate mental errors on the field. With most NFL games being decided by one score or less, you're probably just as often beating yourselves as you are getting beat by the other team. Case in point: See the Jaguars this year. Instilling discipline in a team as young as the Jaguars are, especially on offense, is probably more challenging though. And discipline by itself isn't going to win you a lot of games. You still need talent.
As far as Head Coaching approach/balance goes, remember, you can come in as a super strict disciplinarian (like TC did) and have a lot of rules that the players will hate but must follow or be fined or punished in some way and then at some point in your head coaching career, pull back the reigns on some of those strict rules and fines and still be a successful HC who adjusted his coaching style to a less strict style which the players will like more then the super strict style.
If you come in as a player friendly, buddy, buddy type of HC, and are NOT overly strict in your rules, then you will have an extremely hard time trying to become more of a disciplinarian type of HC if things aren't going well for you under the player friendly type of coaching and you feel the need to get stricter with your team. That's usually a recipe for disaster.
Quote:As far as Head Coaching approach/balance goes, remember, you can come in as a super strict disciplinarian (like TC did) and have a lot of rules that the players will hate but must follow or be fined or punished in some way and then at some point in your head coaching career, pull back the reigns on some of those strict rules and fines and still be a successful HC who adjusted his coaching style to a less strict style which the players will like more then the super strict style.
If you come in as a player friendly, buddy, buddy type of HC, and are NOT overly strict in your rules, then you will have an extremely hard time trying to become more of a disciplinarian type of HC if things aren't going well for you under the player friendly type of coaching and you feel the need to get stricter with your team. That's usually a recipe for disaster.
But you don't need to be overtly strict in any case. What you need to do is to make certain that the rules are understood by everyone and hold to those rules. Del Rio was infamous for punishing guys on an almost arbitrary basis and it drove the Locker Room nuts. You don't have to be a yeller, you just have to enforce the rules.
That little bit of missing discipline is the reason why opposing TE's are always wide open on 3rd and long lol
Quote:That little bit of missing discipline is the reason why opposing TE's are always wide open on 3rd and long lol
This team has always done poorly against the TE independent of the coach.
The key thing is you need to be consistent with your approach. TC has always been consistent, so is Gus. Consistency with their approach is what lost JDR and Mularkey the locker room.
Quote:The key thing is you need to be consistent with your approach. TC has always been consistent, so is Gus. Consistency with their approach is what lost JDR and Mularkey the locker room.
I agree with this.
Quote:We need Josh McDaniels.. Has learned the "Bellichick" way, has the OC prowess to make BB and the boys kick some butt. Made his mistakes, learned from them, and is ready for the second HC try. We would be perfect for him.
Then all we need is a DC and some safeties.. Caldwell will take care of that.
Flame away losers.. same ones that didn't even want to interview Andy Reid..
The BB coaching tree creates overrated fruit.
Quote:We need Josh McDaniels.. Has learned the "Bellichick" way, has the OC prowess to make BB and the boys kick some butt. Made his mistakes, learned from them, and is ready for the second HC try. We would be perfect for him.
Then all we need is a DC and some safeties.. Caldwell will take care of that.
Flame away losers.. same ones that didn't even want to interview Andy Reid..
We'd have probably won a few extra games with Reid at coach, but we probably would have missed out on Bortles as a result. And I don't think Reid would have had the same record here that he's had in KC with our roster. Whether keeping Bradley now is a good idea or not I'll leave for one of the various other threads on the subject, but I think we're going to be in a much better place next year talent-wise than we would have been had Reid been hired instead, mainly because of Bortles potential. That's assuming Reid would have even been interested in the Jags job. Coaches like that don't tend to walk into complete rebuild situations. Might tarnish the legacy so to speak.
On mcdaniels... You might be right. He might have learned his lesson. He was just so embarrassingly bad in Denver. He appeared to be trying to be the players' friend. That's ok to an extent as a coordinator. I don't think that translates to head coach though. After this year, if Gus gets canned, I think we'll have enough talent on the roster to be attractive to a proven head coach who might come available next year or already be available.
Quote:The latter approach is pretty good, but unfortunately some players like Gratz don't have what it takes to "get better" on their own. It's interesting to see how New England takes any player on their roster and they instantly become 10x better than they were before.
I think its because there's a "standard" there. You're
expected to improve and measure up.
They teach its NOT ok to lose.....and if you do ....you're gone.
The old adage success breeds success.
I had to laugh that in the early process he wasn't hard on the players because we didn't want them to get discouraged from the losing.
Heck, these are
grown men who have played football nearly all their lives. Have they lost during that time? SURE they have....did they quit?
Probably not if they reached the pros.......so they KNOW what it is to lose and by golly if it gets them bummed out enough to quit now .....we don't need them.
I don't want to hear anymore about this ice cream stuff and we don't want to hurt their feelings.
Treat them like men and they'll respond like men Gus.
Quote:This team has always done poorly against the TE independent of the coach.
It seems that way because we watch Jags games, but it's not just the Jags. Just about every team has trouble covering TEs. NFL defenses won't commit a defensive back against a guy who blocks 2/3 of the time.