When the past is this bad, embrace the future

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/08/2010 (5724 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Richie Hall, the head coach of the Edmonton Eskimos, is not having an easy go of it this 2010 CFL season, as I’m sure neither is Wally Buono of the B.C. Lions nor Paul LaPolice of the Blue Bombers. Currently on their bye week, the Eskimos are 1-6 and the side effects of that record have made headlines across Canada.

The general manager has been fired, one Hall of Fame assistant coach resigned without warning and the offensive line coach has been kicked to the curb. Times are just as tough in Winnipeg and B.C., as all three populaces are restless about these storied, proud franchises whirling in obscurity in the standings more than a third of the way through the schedule.

So what do you do as a second-year head coach in the CFL when things are seemingly falling apart all around you? In Richie’s case, you make the best out of a bad situation with a last-chance grasp at salvaging the season.

Before the players left for their bye-week break, Richie Hall announced that the franchise was throwing out the first seven games of the season. Obviously that will not be reflected in the standings — you can’t just dismiss the first seven or eight games that you played — but it is an interesting approach and symbolic gesture. When the Eskimos return to action, they will, by all accounts, and in the mind of their leader, be playing an 11-game season.

This is a thought-provoking strategy for Hall to employ for several reasons. First and foremost, it separates the players from their record… somewhat. When you are 1-6 or 2-6 or whatever, the win-loss column is an ugly and difficult stain to get out of your psyche as a player. Though every week you try to wipe the slate clean and move on from your failures from the previous games, unsuccessful records stay with you like a bad barbed-wire tattoo. Everything brings you back to it. Interview questions revolve around your losses, moods and personalities are strained because of it and people literally look and treat you differently because of the record you represent.

One of the oldest clichés in professional sports is that once you get to the highest level of athletics, competition is 90 per cent mental and only 10 per cent physical. If this is true, then the lack of confidence and baggage that accompanies a dismal record has a lot to do with the performances put on by the players going forward. If your record is that of a loser and you feel like a loser and are treated like one, the feeling will only manifest itself on the football field. So when Richie Hall tells his players and the nation that they are starting anew and are now at the beginning of an 11-game schedule, he is attempting to have his players drop some of the shame and negativity that they have been saddled with and leave it behind them for good this season.

There are two defined stages of reaction when things go wrong in football. The first stage involves outrage, all sorts of people up in arms, berating and having meetings to no end. By the time you get to one and six, the players have almost become numb to it. You can only hope to provoke a reaction by condemning and criticizing for so long before it simply becomes business as usual and the tantrums and theatrics are tuned out. By reinventing the schedule, Coach Hall will also, in my mind, effectively be changing the atmosphere and the way his staff will be interacting with his players, though try as he might, he won’t be able to shield them from the judgments of those outside the inner circle. If they are truly starting over so to speak with an 11-game schedule, to be convincing it must not be managed in the same manner as when things got out of hand. The attitudes and mentalities must be that of optimism, opportunity and hope for what lies ahead. All ties to their past of 1-6 need to be cut for the concept to have any chance of being bought into by the players. Whether enough time has elapsed for the players to dismiss what has already transpired for more than a third of the season though, and to put the past behind them, shall be discovered in short order.

 

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.