Coaches often have tenuous grasp of obvious

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/06/2012 (4854 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Now that the training camp axe has begun chopping away in earnest, you can be certain that a number of players have been evaluated incorrectly.

Pre-season games are a frustrating concept for more than just the fans. For the players, in what is quite often the only opportunity they have to secure an income as a professional athlete, exhibition contests are marred by inaccurate and flawed evaluations, and it often starts and ends with the coaches.

From the periphery, it may appear like all you have to do in the pre-season to earn a spot on a squad is to put up some gaudy numbers and make yourself stand out from the pack, which is often the case.

Yet in the 15 pre-seasons I went through, the results and statistics from these games are largely misinterpreted due to emphasis being put on the wrong measurables. Therefore pre-season games and even to an extent training camp, are often little help for determining the true value of your roster, unless, of course, the following variables are identified and emphasized.

Who are you playing with?

The only pains of sympathy I’ve ever felt for quarterbacks are the third- and fourth-stringers that enter a pre-season game in the final stanza. They are often surrounded by such inferior talent that even Peyton Manning could not look competent playing with them. I’m talking about fringe offensive linemen who could not block a sports reporter wielding a notebook. How much time are you going to have in the pocket to go through your progressions and showcase your skills before you are forced to scramble for your life?

And if you do have the time, you just might be unlucky enough to be paired with receivers that don’t know their plays or audibles or how to adjust their routes to the coverage. How else do you explain the stories of guys like Kurt Warner and Trent Green, two prolific NFL QBs that spent almost as much time in their storied careers riding the pine and getting cut from the CFL (Green) and stocking shelves at the local grocery (Warner) as in the spotlight? There isn’t much that Casey Printers said in his tenure that I agree with, but when he asked his coach on HBO’s Hard Knocks with the Kansas City Chiefs, back in the day, how he was supposed to make chicken salad out of chicken-bleep, it was more than just an excuse for being cut.

And it’s not just depth chart misfortunes and interdependent positions that create false negatives. I’ve been in pre-season games where I’ve missed a call and the guy playing next to me wouldn’t echo it because we were competing against each other. Subtle forms of sabotage and misinformation campaigns are rampant in pro football. In addition, I’ve seen players light it up in camp on Day 1, feign an injury on Day 2 and take the rest of camp off, and make the team based on the success of that single day.

Who are you playing against?

What used to surprise me, even more in my time down south, was how coaches were completely unaware of how your performance in the pre-season, and in training camp, had as much to do with who you were playing against, than simply how good you were. In my first pre-season, as an undrafted, rookie defensive tackle, I had an interception and two-and-a-half sacks in limited time over four games, and I received a lot of press and commendations that resulted in an improbable practice roster berth. I was often playing against offensive linemen of similar status and calibre, but they weren’t anything like what I would be facing once I made the active roster.

I’ve seen coaches berate players to no end and get incredibly frustrated over their day-to-day inconsistencies as they swapped between facing starters and back-ups, be it in games or in practices. “Why can’t you play like you did yesterday?” a coach would scream at a player who went from competing against number twos or threes, to sharing some reps against the starters. It was obvious to all of us why this player was bouncing on both sides of the ledger, but nobody ever had the nerve to explain that to the coaches and evaluators.

When it comes to deciding who makes the team, you can only hope that just as much attention is paid to who the players are playing with and against, as to how they perform when the bright lights are shining.

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

Twitter: @DougBrown97