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Dan Campbell is a great head coach. But there’s always a capacity to improve.
For Campbell, the next level becomes finding a way to properly regulate his tendency to be aggressive.
Aggressive. It’s the buzzword that now stuffs all critics in a locker.
There was a time, not that long ago, when coaches faced with a key decision opted for conventional over unconventional. If they did the unconventional thing and it didn’t work, they’d be criticized and scrutinized. If they did the conventional thing and it didn’t work, what could anyone say?
Enter analytics, the effort by mathematicians to infiltrate NFL front offices (and to get NFL paychecks) without possessing traditional football skills. It worked in baseball, so they decided to move it to football. Even if it doesn’t work nearly as well in football as the mathematicians insist.
With formulas that can’t ever consider all factors relevant to an 11-on-11 dance played out under unique circumstances and with wildly varying consequences, analytics experts try to quantify the unquantifiable. By introducing a new way of thinking about well-settled football norms regarding punting and kicking field goals and going for one not two after scoring a touchdown, the unconventional started to become conventional. Coaches who did the unconventional thing simply could say, when questioned about it, that they were guided by the analytics.
At some point, analytics and “aggressive” became synonymous, even if the words absolutely aren’t. Eventually, coaches who otherwise would have attributed the decision to go for it to analytics started to say they were just being aggressive.
Now when they roll the dice and it doesn’t work and they get asked about it, they just say they were being aggressive and that’s the end of it.
It shouldn’t be. Coaches should be strategic, not aggressive. Sometimes, sound strategic considerations point to being wifully aggressive. Sometimes, they point to being deliberately passive.
On Sunday, Campbell’s blind…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/dan-campbells-fourth-down-decision-180029518.html
Author : ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-01-29 18:00:29
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