Great Morning
I’m having a great morning, and it’s all because of the NFL yesterday. From about 6:30 or so yesterday evening, everything just changed. First, it was Tim Tebow and the Broncos pulling off that ridiculous win over the Bears. Yes, it can be argued (correctly) that the Bears gave them the game — Marion Barber and that wacky coverage change especially — but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s never over. Never. Even if there’s nothing else YOU can do, you can still keep working to force your opponent (Barber) to do something monumentally stupid like running out of bounds when the Bears would have won the game if he’d even just taken a knee.
The same goes for the NY Giants. When Dallas scored their last touchdown with five minutes left, everyone figured it was over — the game, the season, and Tom Coughlin’s coaching career. Eli Manning obviously didn’t think so, and neither did Jason Pierre-Paul.
Something Stupid
In both games, something stupid had to happen for the winning teams to win. For the Broncos, Barber had to have what was probably the worst two series of his career. For the Giants, Tony Romo had to overthrow Miles Austin (for whatever reason) on third down to force the Cowboys to punt. He completes that pass, even if it’s just a first down, and the Cowboys win — and given that the Giants were blitzing, and Austin had three steps on the nearest corner, my money was on him scoring if they’d connected.
None of that matters, though. What matters is that nobody stopped playing, because there’s always a chance the other team can do something stupid, or fail to execute, and leave the door open. For me, that’s a metaphor for life, and that’s how I’m operating today. This is TOTALLY cliched, but as athletes, we’re always taught to play to the whistle and beyond it, but we forget this all the time. And it’s when we forget this that someone sneaks up on us and whips our ass like the Broncos did to the Bears and the Giants did to the Cowboys.
Keep Playing
Even coaching, I tend to forget this all the time. We go through ebbs and flows in any season, and any kind of slide — a two game losing streak, or something of that nature — can get coaches down and pissed off. But if you keep playing, it ALL gets erased when you make the playoffs. With the exception of those years when we’ve run the table, the same thing has happened every year, because as coaches, we sometimes get in the mindset that our teams aren’t worth a shit if we lose a couple of games while someone else goes undefeated. It doesn’t matter. You still have to play, and if you keep working, they still have to beat you on the field to put you away.
Reminders
On multiple levels, as an athlete, as an employee, as a human being, I’m not “away” yet, but sometimes we all need reminders like yesterday, and sometimes they come from sports when we least expect it. Good shit.
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The Angry Coach is the strength coach, and also a positional coach, for a successful high school football program. Since 2001, an impressive number of his players have gone on to play college football, including several at the Division I and I-AA levels and two who have played professionally in the NFL. The Angry Coach has also worked with athletes at the college and professional levels in a variety of disciplines, including football, track and field, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, rowing and mixed martial arts (MMA). For professional reasons, the Angry Coach will not be using his real identity.
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