… And I remind you that the MOST important things a coach has to accomplish is to 1. have the ability to lead your team during adversity. 2 get them to play hard for 4 quarters even through adversity. And 3. produce a competitive team most weeks. and I would content that the Pats have been a LOT more competitive each game than, say, the Cowboys or the Jags. Both of whom had better rosters than the Pats going into the season. I contend Mayo had achieved ALL those things and more, despite mistakes being made that you would expect to see in a very young and inexperienced coaching staff
But there are STILL 7 more games to be played. This is a team that been competitive for vast majority of this season. But it is a team that has not yet "learned" how to win those very close games or not to lose those games at the end. We saw that in most of the 20 years starting in 2001. Lots of close games that we won a great many of when WE made the great play or the OTHER team made the mistakes at the end that we didn't. And while I don't expect this team to suddenly do what the Chiefs have done all season, I DO expect them to show incremental improvement each game. I expect them continue to pl.ay hard even though they know right now they are not making it to the playoffs. And this is going to be very hard when your team is playing out the string when you still have 7 more games to play. THAT will be the mark of good coaching. This season is to grow and develop and wins or loses matter less. BTW I am a charter member of the club that will find us with a high enough draft pick to be able to trade down and still get on of the top 2 OTs, or DE's
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Ken, I have tremendous respect for your knowledge and the way you’ve expressed it as perhaps the best contributor on here over the years. But, that said, I disagree with your list of the most important things a coach must do.
Your third point should be first, I would remove “most weeks”, and I think you left out the biggest part of the job: preparing players to play, so they are in the best position to succeed, do their jobs, and win the game.
Coaches need to teach players how to improve, how to develop their individual skills and to meld into a cohesive team. They have to dive into the details of how to play each position, fix and improve technique for each and every player on the roster. Then they need to game plan, get every player on the same page, and then make adjustments on the fly as needed.
To me that’s the biggest part of the coaches’ job. It’s the nuts and bolts of their profession. How they do all that is going to be what gets the team to buy in to their leadership. A coach that’s good at fluffing might get to lead through adversity and get players to play hard at first, but they won’t be able to sustain delivering competitive results and pretty soon the players will see through the superficial image and realize there’s no substance. I’m expecting that will happen soon with Mayo btw.
I’m convinced that what makes coaches like Scarnecchia and Belichick successful isn’t so much their ability to motivate or lead, it’s their ability to teach and make players better. That is the foundation that lets them motivate and lead. Good players recognize it, and want to play for coaches that bring out the best in them. That is the essence of coaching to me: bringing out the best in those you’re coaching. That subsumes the points you listed and encompasses my point about teaching and developing skills.