Quote:
Originally Posted by Brock
You can argue that some players got better when Haley was coach. I didn't see any evidence at all that Haley knew what he was doing when actually coaching a game. I wanted to like the guy, then he would blow a 2 minute drill, or he would fake a punt from his own 30 with Brodie Croyle. His gameday coaching was on par with Herm Edwards. Maybe worse at times.
|
Yeah, there's truth to that. But again, he was a young coach, and I'd rather a good coach who can't manage games than a good game manager who can't coach. There are a lot more bad game managers in the league than we realize. I'll also make one excuse for Haley -- the majority of his wild-eyed chances were taken in years where we were very uncompetitive. I think he knew we weren't going to win many games with our 2009 squad unless we took stupid risks. Remember that in 2010, we didn't see a lot of those mistakes.
In terms of developing players... I think that's BS he didn't help much. We forget that Dorsey and Bowe and a whole bunch of other players were overweight and entitled. They came into camp overweight, and didn't seem to care. His demand that Branden Albert drop weight was a terrific decision. His conversion of Tamba Hali into a lighter weight 3/4 OLB... tremendous decision. Dwayne Bowe didn't begin intense training with Fitzgerald until Haley came on board. DJ went from a scatter-brained freelancer to a pro bowl LB. He wasn't afraid to take a chance on Jovan Belcher. He didn't give up on Tyson Jackson even though everyone else had. And let's not forget, he did all of this development organically. He didn't have the huge salary players a lot of coaches get. He worked primarily with bottom-of-the-barrel players.