Our ILBs and the Importance of Position Coaches

[AngusMcFife]

I agree Clarence Brooks was a great position coach, but those guys are rare. Because usually then they go on to be DCs. 

I put blame on the players for not developing. No position coach will ever hold back a determined athlete with talent from not succeeding. Players are ultimately responsible for what they become. Position coaches can help sometimes, but won't make or brake a player. 

[diamondbull424]

4 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

I agree Clarence Brooks was a great position coach, but those guys are rare. Because usually then they go on to be DCs. 

I put blame on the players for not developing. No position coach will ever hold back a determined athlete with talent from not succeeding. Players are ultimately responsible for what they become. Position coaches can help sometimes, but won't make or brake a player. 

Disagree. Some players have a different DNA like Lamar Jackson where they have their own personal QB coach that they’re drilling and working hard in the offseason to improve flaws. They have direction and no what they want to attack.

Other players however, go into the NFL as an athlete that’s a ball of clay and go to the NFL with a 9-5 work mentality. Flacco was seemingly this guy during his tenure. Hard worker but he lacked his own personal direction and didn’t seem to have the extra drive to seek out his personal direction.

Now this would seemingly prove your point. But the kicker is that a great coach can understand the psyche of their player and manipulate that to motivate them to make improvements. That and great coaches can provide structure for players that are unsure of what it takes to be great but are willing hardworkers.

Imagine how much better Flacco might have been if he had a QB coach that, when he was young started to develop him and erase bad habits; that they instead provided him a system of what he needed to do to improve his game and really knew what needed to be said to drive him towards improvement.

Not all players have that fire, but it’s professional sports. Coaches get paid a lot of money to unlock bits and pieces of a players potential. Thus the fault falls more onto the coaches. Especially when the failing players are young, their brains aren’t even 25, the age as to where most cognitive development has reached true maturity. Whereas the coaches are generally 40 and up with plenty of life experience to their credit. The onus is on those coaches to relate and make things make sense to their budding prospects so the team can best be successful.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

11 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

I agree Clarence Brooks was a great position coach, but those guys are rare. Because usually then they go on to be DCs. 

I put blame on the players for not developing. No position coach will ever hold back a determined athlete with talent from not succeeding. Players are ultimately responsible for what they become. Position coaches can help sometimes, but won't make or brake a player. 

You can have the hardest working player in the world, but if you put that player into a scheme where he's not a fit, you won't get a good player and maximize that potential. Likewise, if you cannot coach him up on technique and maximize his strengths, again you won't get a good player.

[AngusMcFife]

5 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

You can have the hardest working player in the world, but if you put that player into a scheme where he's not a fit, you won't get a good player and maximize that potential.

That would fall on the DC, not the position coach. 

Quote

Likewise, if you cannot coach him up on technique and maximize his strengths, again you won't get a good player.

So are suggesting that the LB coach is doing this incorrectly? With Wink Martindale looking on, who has coached the LBs from 2012-2017? Seems like a far fetched scenario. The techniques that a position coach are implementing are handed down to him by the DC. 

I think it is ridiculous to blame position coaches, who have virtually no power at all. It's like blaming the waiter for a bad meal at a restaurant. A team is lead by its HC, and lesser extent OC and DC, who set the tone and manage everyone below them. 

[RavensTillIDie]

1 hour ago, AngusMcFife said:

 The techniques that a position coach are implementing are handed down to him by the DC.

I guess it can vary from coach to coach, but that's not quite how I remember it from high school. And from various interviews from current and former NFL players, many have credited their positional coaches for the progress they made in their football career as opposed to their coordinators. Not to say this in a catch all manner, but like most manager types, I always saw the coordinator's role as seeing the big picture, i.e. getting ready for game day, designing schemes, exploiting tendencies of the opposing team, choosing the appropriate personnel, allocating playing time, making adjustments, etc. Whereas the role of a position coach is more akin to that of middle management, i.e. oversight of the day-to-day activities, helping to foster good technique, working on correcting flaws, conducting drills, being a relay/barrier between players and coordinators/the HC.

I know middle managers get a bad rep, but they're still needed. Without them you'd have the inmates running the asylum and way too much responsibility on the plate of one manager (coordinator) to handle. So, to say position coaches don't add value on their own is kind of asinine, imo.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

2 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

That would fall on the DC, not the position coach. 

Yes and no. I don't think any of our guys are playing out of position. What I do disagree with Martindale on is giving Jefferson the green dot, but that's now taken care of itself.

2 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

So are suggesting that the LB coach is doing this incorrectly? With Wink Martindale looking on, who has coached the LBs from 2012-2017? Seems like a far fetched scenario. The techniques that a position coach are implementing are handed down to him by the DC. 

Yes, that is what I am implying. 

2 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

I think it is ridiculous to blame position coaches, who have virtually no power at all. It's like blaming the waiter for a bad meal at a restaurant. A team is lead by its HC, and lesser extent OC and DC, who set the tone and manage everyone below them. 

Position coaches do the day-to-day coaching of the players, though. Are you saying that if our WR's cannot catch, it's the OC's fault? If the WR's can't run legal pick plays, it's on Roman? No, that's 100% on Bobby Engram. Likewise, if our pass rushers aren't using proper technique that's the LB's coach. If our LB's aren't developing, that's the LB's coach.

[Ray Reed]

19 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Clarence Brooks is sorely missed, man. RIP. We haven't developed a single DL since he passed.

CB was the GOAT, man. So sad.

[AngusMcFife]

2 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Are you saying that if our WR's cannot catch, it's the OC's fault? If the WR's can't run legal pick plays, it's on Roman? No, that's 100% on Bobby Engram.

No, it's the players. Position coaches can only do so much in practice. In games it is up to the player.

If I were to estimate, I'd say 50% up to the player, 45% up to the OC to utilize the player correctly, and maybe 5% position coach to train him up. A position coach can upgrade a player with a B grade to B+/A- at most. But he can't turn a D into a B.  

[diamondbull424]

1 hour ago, AngusMcFife said:

No, it's the players. Position coaches can only do so much in practice. In games it is up to the player.

If I were to estimate, I'd say 50% up to the player, 45% up to the OC to utilize the player correctly, and maybe 5% position coach to train him up. A position coach can upgrade a player with a B grade to B+/A- at most. But he can't turn a D into a B.  

This is just so off that it’s amazing.

[Danand]

2 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

This is just so off that it’s amazing.

While I don't agree with his numbers, I do agree that a lot of it is on the players - especially their ability to take in coaching and understand the nuances of the game.

It is also off to believe our coaching is so bad, that is the reason players like Tim Williams and Bowser never developed like we hoped. Or a Willie Henry broke out like many thought. Especially when a 5th round pick in Judon developed, or an UDFA like Ricard suddenly is close to a starter, or Pierce or...

Of course there are bad, good and great position coaches. New England got so much out of their oline with Scarnecchia, he retires and it goes down a spiral, he returns and they get back to past dominance. 

The Ravens have very few players who joined another team and succeeded, which is pretty telling and a credit to our coaching staff.

[Danand]

We signed some random DB from the Patriots to our practice squad and released Coke Herdman - so much for our confidence in him to be a possible replacement if we traded away Hurst. Does anyone know anything about A.J. Howard?

[diamondbull424]

1 hour ago, Danand said:

While I don't agree with his numbers, I do agree that a lot of it is on the players - especially their ability to take in coaching and understand the nuances of the game.

It is also off to believe our coaching is so bad, that is the reason players like Tim Williams and Bowser never developed like we hoped. Or a Willie Henry broke out like many thought. Especially when a 5th round pick in Judon developed, or an UDFA like Ricard suddenly is close to a starter, or Pierce or...

Of course there are bad, good and great position coaches. New England got so much out of their oline with Scarnecchia, he retires and it goes down a spiral, he returns and they get back to past dominance. 

The Ravens have very few players who joined another team and succeeded, which is pretty telling and a credit to our coaching staff.

In no world are position coaches only responsible for 5% of a players development.

Whats more Pierce “broke out” in a component he was already elite in at the collegiate level. Judon was one of the best sack artists at his level and has never had more than 10 sacks... he has to be schemed open to acquire his sacks as he rarely beats his man 1on1, his run defense is the only element to his game where “some” improvement can be gleaned from how he looked as a rookie to how he looks now.

Peanut is someone you would have a case for as he looked terrible as a rookie, looked below average as a 2nd year player, then looked like a breakout player last season and the first couple games of this season.

Pittsburgh developed that OL with strong coaching, Chuck Pagano worked wonders with our secondary, Our DL depth declined when Brooks left, Flacco thrived much more when he had a dedicated QB coach versus Cam Cameron.

You Both are also acting as though the only job of a positional coach is to teach technique and that’s part of the problem. They’re also there to breakdown film study to young players, to find out the psychology of players to best figure out how to push their motivations to the next level.

The fact that we have so many players that spark to life in contact years, yet are mostly nonexistent outside of that says a lot to some of the positional coaches not finding ways to amplify their groups effort.

The players obviously bare the biggest responsibility for their own development, hence why Lamar improved more from year 1 to year 2 than Flacco had at any point in his career, likely due to his offseason work with a “QB guru”. However the fact that Flacco still experienced quality gains when he had someone to assist him in coaching is proof that coaching is significant. Coaching is more like 45-50% player, 15-20% coaching, 30-40% scheme.

Edited October 9, 2019 by diamondbull424

[drd23]

Since this discussion moved well beyond just tracking roster transactions it deserves its own thread

[Danand]

2 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

In no world are position coaches only responsible for 5% of a players development.

Whats more Pierce “broke out” in a component he was already elite in at the collegiate level. Judon was one of the best sack artists at his level and has never had more than 10 sacks... he has to be schemed open to acquire his sacks as he rarely beats his man 1on1, his run defense is the only element to his game where “some” improvement can be gleaned from how he looked as a rookie to how he looks now.

Peanut is someone you would have a case for as he looked terrible as a rookie, looked below average as a 2nd year player, then looked like a breakout player last season and the first couple games of this season.

Pittsburgh developed that OL with strong coaching, Chuck Pagano worked wonders with our secondary, Our DL depth declined when Brooks left, Flacco thrived much more when he had a dedicated QB coach versus Cam Cameron.

You Both are also acting as though the only job of a positional coach is to teach technique and that’s part of the problem. They’re also there to breakdown film study to young players, to find out the psychology of players to best figure out how to push their motivations to the next level.

The fact that we have so many players that spark to life in contact years, yet are mostly nonexistent outside of that says a lot to some of the positional coaches not finding ways to amplify their groups effort.

The players obviously bare the biggest responsibility for their own development, hence why Lamar improved more from year 1 to year 2 than Flacco had at any point in his career, likely due to his offseason work with a “QB guru”. However the fact that Flacco still experienced quality gains when he had someone to assist him in coaching is proof that coaching is significant. Coaching is more like 45-50% player, 15-20% coaching, 30-40% scheme.

Neither of me or Angus acted like position coaches only teach technique. Its just something we didn't add. Yes, position coaches teach technique, they teach and help to study film and they work as mentors and teachers and friends to their players - some coaches/players have great chemistry and others doesn't, which sometimes is a reason a player doesn't work out one place but breaks out with another team.

Pierce wasn't deemed worthy of a draft pick, so you can't just take away coaching and say he was already "elite" in an area of his game. This is the case with several players the Ravens have starting or being backups with significant contribution. 

If a player doesn't give a max effort until his contract year, that speaks to the players mindset more than coaches being able to push them. 

What I think is the real issue in this discussion, is that some in here have some favorite players and when those players don't work out, there has to be some excuse/explanation.

Instead of thinking it might be the players who are the issue, it is easier to blame coaching/scheme.

[AngusMcFife]

9 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

This is just so off that it’s amazing.

It's hard to estimate, because the good position coaches are almost always promoted to OC/DC. It is rare to get a lifelong position coach like Clarence Brooks. Dante Scarnecchia is another rare example. Mike Munchak is another one, he went from OL coach to HC back to OL coach - never a coordinator!