USA Today had a good piece yesterday on four of the NFL's new head coaches, the challenges they face, and what they're doing to help turn their teams around.A few things in the article really jumped out at me:
Emphasis on changing a losing culture: Said new Falcons coach Mike Smith (pictured above) : "When you change the culture, you have to change people's behaviors. And when you change behaviors, you change their habits." Added new Dolphins coach Tony Sparano: "Everybody in this building — administrators, everybody — we've told about changing the culture. It can get easy to get comfortable losing and easy to say, 'It's not my fault.' When I look at it and see the team starting to come together and starting to form a personality and maybe the personality it's taking on is a little bit of the head coach, I start to say, 'Hey, we really are doing this.' "
More than X's and O's: As assistant coaches, they could focus almost entirely on coaching. Now, as head coaches, they're dealing with daily media interviews and decisions about pre-game meals and road-trip itineraries. Said Coach Smith: "We're putting in new verbiage for the offense and defense. I'm still trying to figure out who's on our roster. "[Administrative detials are] important to our support staff, but it's the last thing on my mind."
Applying what you learned under head coaches: "[New Ravens coach John] Harbaugh knew exactly how he would run mini-camps, organized team activities, training camp and practices. He borrowed from Andy Reid's system with the Eagles." Said Coach Harbaugh: "How much we practice third-and-long, how much we practice first-and-10, blitz stuff, that's what I learned from him."
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