Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Grunhard says it a lot and it's one of the most insightful things I've heard from a talking head.
The most valuable commodity in football is reps. And with limited practice time, there is only so much 'groundwork' you can do in-season when you're also trying to do weekly installs against a different opponent each week.
This idea that a football coach should just have his team prepared for any eventuality ignore that basic underlying premise - you just can't. There's simply not enough time. There aren't enough reps. Sometimes you simply cannot practice a particular scenario and when it surfaces, someone's gotta man the rudder.
My good friend resigned his commission as a Major and he said the one thing he always took away from the Army was that when everything is going to shit, the guy that survives and thrives is the guy that takes that extra moment to pause, get his wits about him and then act while everyone else is losing their minds.
Reid's willingness when shit is going sideways on him to take a moment, keep his head, call that time-out and get everyone on the same page is a feature, not a bug. That's someone with a clear enough head to realize that right now his guys simply need a bit of a soft re-set to back away from the putt, line it back up and give it a go. He can't ask his players to do that because in that moment just have too much stuff they need to worry about. But from the sideline, he can. He can recognize that they need that re-set. That willingness to act as a true general when he knows that he can't just leave it up to his guys to steady themselves is a sign of a GOOD coach, not a flaw.
You're looking so hard for reasons to be contrarian with Reid that you're coming up with stuff that simply doesn't make sense.
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First, thank you for your intelligent reply as opposed to Mega's very insightful "stupid" comment.
Second, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on whether this philosophy of Andy's is a feature or bug. There are certain situations where you need to be both smart and quick at the same time, and if you fail to do one or the other, then you lose. If Andy cannot get effective plays in quickly enough, especially when I've witnessed other coaches be able to do it (Belichick has used an array of speeds from slow to quick no-huddle to his advantage many times), then to me that's a flaw compared to other great coaches. Calling an effective play and getting a play off quickly are not two mutually exclusive things. This is what andy fails to realize and what other great coaches have been able to do successfully.
Wouldn't you agree that it gives your team an advantage if you can get effective plays called in and do it quickly at the same time? I'm not saying it's easy to do, otherwise belichick and other great coaches wouldn't be so special, but it certainly can be done and has been by other great coaches.
When you have the ball on offense, you can dictate the pace and manipulate the clock to your advantage. Andy basically forfeits this important tool every game with his backwards philosophy. For example, the chargers loss last year where he could have ran more clock and left the chargers with less time to come back. However, Andy, either because his plays are too complicated and he needed a stop to figure things out or because his players needed to "calm down", had to stop the clock to get the right play in.
I'm not looking to be contrarian on Reid. I've witnessed his philosophy bite him in the ass numerous times over 2 decades. Like I said, I think we can win a super bowl despite it, but historically, he has not had good luck in finishing a season with a super bowl with his philosophy. The history seems to be on my side in this debate and I think common sense is as well. There are always exceptions where things change so I'm hoping this year is one of those times.