I find this interesting and not just because I follow the Titans to a degree that would surprise even most people who know me.
Anyway, NFL position coaches are one of the rare places in high profile sports where the job is mostly about teaching. While most folks don't know who these guys are (sadly and unfairly, most of them are guys), they are likely some of the most highly paid and heavily scrutinized teachers in the country.
(How much of an impact can they have? One of the reasons given for the New England Patriots' successful season is the return of their offensive line coach from retirement. The Patriots offensive line, with pretty much the same players, went from being one of the worst in the league last year to one of the best.)
Their job is mostly focused on people development. There's an aspect of evaluation, too, though actual decisions about which players make up the team more heavily influenced by the scouting staff and general manager (and head coach in some cases). Unlike college coaches, NFL position coaches don't recruit players to a program. Their job is take the players they have and develop their skill set according to the larger vision of the head coach or coordinator.
So, they teach.
This firing raises those questions because the Titans' head coach has been friends with the more senior coach he fired today. The guy actually came out of retirement to coach the wide receivers. It doesn't seem personal. This seems like the head coach had an issue with how he was teaching.
I'm curious as to what actual instruction looks like at an NFL level. How do coaches develop their craft? How do they teach complicated game plans that can change significantly even in-game? How are position coaches evaluated at the end of the year?
A few weeks ago, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich hinted at the approach one takes with adult, professional athletes.
Gregg Popovich with a great response when asked it was his fault his players weren't motivated to play tonight pic.twitter.com/jdIUHB34Eh— gifdsports (@gifdsports) December 9, 2016
"No Knute Rockne speeches." (Since I read more sports media than is healthy, I take special pleasure when future Hall of Fame coaches knock down sports cliches.)
While I really don't have an idea what teaching looks like at an NFL or NBA level, it's worth noting that U.S. Soccer hired Teach Like a Champion author Doug Lemov to consult. He's been working high-level coaches across the country to improve how advanced soccer players practice. He reflected in a recent post:
Had a pretty amazing day in Chicago on Wednesday, talking teaching with a group of (mostly) MLS professional soccer coaches who are enrolled in US Soccer’s new Pro License course. The group includes guys who I admire as coaches and who I followed as players. I was a little bit starstruck… but I got over that fast because the conversation was so rich.
Interestingly, we didn’t watch any footage of soccer training. We watched classroom footage and applied the principles to teaching during training.The closest we got to watching “practice” was an amazing video of music teacher John Burmeister (who I’ve written about before) wokring with an upstate New York youth orchestra. His session is a master class on having a clear and specific goal and breaking the session up into rounds of progressive challenge, each with a single piece of feedback to focus on and execute.
The rest of the post is worth reading for its discussion of how to actually run a highly successful practice. One of the things I appreciate about Lemov is how he's evolved his focus to the intricacies of practice, then looked across disciplines -- teaching, music, soccer -- to apply it. (Hell, he wrote a book about it.)
Great teachers run great practices. I wish I could observe more high-level coaches when they're planning and running practice. I bet I'd find quite a few things to apply in my classroom.
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