Poker
On the Game Day Roster
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2007
- Messages
- 299
- Reaction score
- 113
Watching the first run of Paul Brown: A Football Life on NFLN got me thinking about a potentially interesting discussion topic related to BB and his ultimate legacy. I'm tossing out some of my ideas below and I'd love to hear the additions of this great community.
The documentary highlighted many aspects of Paul Brown that we know and love about BB--The incredible dominant winning record, championships, the control freak obsession with details, smart players, superb staff.
One really notable aspect of Paul Brown's legacy is his deserved credit for some many football innovations. In fact, it is justifiable to use the even stronger term "INVENTIONS" to describe these contributions. Among the highlights (for those who don't know) that Brown invented in football, and was the first to use: Full time coaching staff; a playbook; classroom instruction of players and tests; the taxi squad (precursor of practice squad etc); the "west coast offense" (invented by Brown and Bill Walsh in Cleveland, taken west by Walsh). In fact, in the documentary, BB himself talks about how amazing all these inventions by Brown are, how they are all still used today by everyone, and calls PB the father of modern football.
So that got me thinking: For Bill Belichick, with benefit of time, say 20-25 years from now, what truly important innovations, breakthroughs or even inventions might find themselves in his top 5-10 list? The ones where football experts and historians say BB figured something new out and implemented it way ahead of everybody else. And then others copied it and used it or tried to.
Clearly, he's a great "incremental innovator" whose built on all these earlier inventions by making them better, extending, tweaking, And obviously a big difference is he's doing all of it in an era of salary cap and free agency. I generally think BB doesn't get a lot of press or recognition for this aspect, even compared to some recent stuff credited to a guy like Chip Kelly--such as speed of plays, training/nutrition ideas, etc Here is a list of some of my candidates for BB's innovative/inventive brilliancy when the story is written down the road.
- Brilliantly simplifying all the data and noise of a complex match-up to the top 3 determinants of victory then relentlessly focusing and executing on those even at the cost of others.
- Innovative schemes an game plans that change dramatically game to game. Even if they seem wild, ballsy, crazy, unbalanced. Great examples are defensive game plans in the HoF where he was willing to let Thurman Thomas run for 100 yds for Buffalo in the SB to minimize the Kgun. Similar with Rams SB and keying on Marshall Faulk. Or winning by having TB and the Pats O purposefully throw the ball 5o times and run it 5 times, which nobody else intentionally does. Maybe being credited with inventing a new kid of two tight-end offense that led to new heights?
- Innovative brilliance in seeing how to use overlooked players in new, flexible ways
- Invented and innovated new ways to focus and tune out distractions--producing unprecedented consistency from week to week and year to year. I think BB will be recognized by football history for this superb gift. A lot of his famous BB sayings and almost platitudes will be part of it (Do Your Job, It Is what it is, We're on to Cincinnatti, We don't control that, we're only thinking about the next game, Ignore the Noise etc) but I think the brilliance of it is that while is all sounds trite it is all true, accurate, and it works so well.
- Probably history will also recognize some of BB's inventive brilliance as a GM--trading down/back to create more picks and value; trading or cutting seemingly very good players go early vs too late.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Again, winning is about a lot more than inventions or breakthrough innovations. Boring but consistent detailed execution, film study, etc all is critical. But the Paul Brown story got me thinking about breakthroughs.
The documentary highlighted many aspects of Paul Brown that we know and love about BB--The incredible dominant winning record, championships, the control freak obsession with details, smart players, superb staff.
One really notable aspect of Paul Brown's legacy is his deserved credit for some many football innovations. In fact, it is justifiable to use the even stronger term "INVENTIONS" to describe these contributions. Among the highlights (for those who don't know) that Brown invented in football, and was the first to use: Full time coaching staff; a playbook; classroom instruction of players and tests; the taxi squad (precursor of practice squad etc); the "west coast offense" (invented by Brown and Bill Walsh in Cleveland, taken west by Walsh). In fact, in the documentary, BB himself talks about how amazing all these inventions by Brown are, how they are all still used today by everyone, and calls PB the father of modern football.
So that got me thinking: For Bill Belichick, with benefit of time, say 20-25 years from now, what truly important innovations, breakthroughs or even inventions might find themselves in his top 5-10 list? The ones where football experts and historians say BB figured something new out and implemented it way ahead of everybody else. And then others copied it and used it or tried to.
Clearly, he's a great "incremental innovator" whose built on all these earlier inventions by making them better, extending, tweaking, And obviously a big difference is he's doing all of it in an era of salary cap and free agency. I generally think BB doesn't get a lot of press or recognition for this aspect, even compared to some recent stuff credited to a guy like Chip Kelly--such as speed of plays, training/nutrition ideas, etc Here is a list of some of my candidates for BB's innovative/inventive brilliancy when the story is written down the road.
- Brilliantly simplifying all the data and noise of a complex match-up to the top 3 determinants of victory then relentlessly focusing and executing on those even at the cost of others.
- Innovative schemes an game plans that change dramatically game to game. Even if they seem wild, ballsy, crazy, unbalanced. Great examples are defensive game plans in the HoF where he was willing to let Thurman Thomas run for 100 yds for Buffalo in the SB to minimize the Kgun. Similar with Rams SB and keying on Marshall Faulk. Or winning by having TB and the Pats O purposefully throw the ball 5o times and run it 5 times, which nobody else intentionally does. Maybe being credited with inventing a new kid of two tight-end offense that led to new heights?
- Innovative brilliance in seeing how to use overlooked players in new, flexible ways
- Invented and innovated new ways to focus and tune out distractions--producing unprecedented consistency from week to week and year to year. I think BB will be recognized by football history for this superb gift. A lot of his famous BB sayings and almost platitudes will be part of it (Do Your Job, It Is what it is, We're on to Cincinnatti, We don't control that, we're only thinking about the next game, Ignore the Noise etc) but I think the brilliance of it is that while is all sounds trite it is all true, accurate, and it works so well.
- Probably history will also recognize some of BB's inventive brilliance as a GM--trading down/back to create more picks and value; trading or cutting seemingly very good players go early vs too late.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Again, winning is about a lot more than inventions or breakthrough innovations. Boring but consistent detailed execution, film study, etc all is critical. But the Paul Brown story got me thinking about breakthroughs.
Last edited: