Ohio State’s Braxton Miller moving from QB to wide receiver
July 23, 2015Ball Played: Bauer and bats sour for Indians
July 24, 2015Happy Friday everyone. I’m on vacation, but that doesn’t preclude me from writing some stuff for you anyway. A part of my vacation is spending some time to write. So while we’re waiting…
Don’t undersell the value of the Browns familiarity with their defense
I’m reading a pretty interesting book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and In Business. You never know what you’re going to get with a book like this. It might be really preachy, or boring or dry, or it might be really entertaining. This is one that’s mostly the latter. While discussing the science of habit, this book tells lots of stories along the way. They discussed how Target stores used stats and data to figure out which of its customers were pregnant and were able to figure it out down to the trimester based on shopping habits. The book discusses how Starbucks built their training program upon teaching employees to form good habits in terms of customer service.1 When they talked about Tony Dungy and his coaching methods with the Bucs and the Colts it had me thinking good thoughts about the Cleveland Browns defense.
First of all, I like the Browns defense because I like the personnel for the most part, but that’s just half the equation. Joe Haden can only be so good all on his own, for example. Defense, like the rest of football, is like a cohesive group dance. Everyone needs to know their moves and the better they know them, the better the results will look. That’s where Tony Dungy came in with his defenses.
Dungy wanted to reduce the amount of overthinking his defense was doing. He wanted corners and safeties to look for the two or three little indicators that would tell them where to be or where to go. By focusing on smaller sub-sets of factors and basing reactions on those observations, he wasn’t remaking the way players played their entire lives as much as he was enabling them to react faster and use their peak athletic ability without having to overthink.
That’s really difficult for any defense to achieve when they’re learning a new scheme. Despite some of the late season outcomes, it really felt like the Browns defense got better as the year went along. Of course with the Browns offense struggling mightily down the stretch, the losses mounted and the defensive stats took a beating too. But if you go back and think about it, didn’t it seem like the defense was still peaking in December against the Colts despite the loss? You have to think that’s at least in part due to the team knowing what they needed to do and an increasing familiarity and comfort with where they needed to be without thinking too hard. That should only be better this season with so many returning key players like Haden, Dansby, Whitner, and plenty others.
The only question becomes how the Browns defense reacts when they get into high pressure situations. The other part of the Tony Dungy story with the Colts and Bucs is how they had a tendency to play worse in high pressure situations when players stopped trusting the habits they’d built up that let them react almost like a reflex, and instead thought too hard and ended up making worse decisions or being out of position. It would certainly be nice to find out because that would mean the Browns are playing in a high pressure situation.
Some really good podcasts this week…
You should really subscribe or at least go on Facebook and like our new podcast page. Make sure you catch my podcast with Dave Sterling where I role played what I think Mark Shapiro should say to fans. Lastly, here’s the audio player for the one I did with our friend @sportsyelling .
Your weekly moment of soccer zen…
Distance cycling isn’t just for the Tour de France.
Deftones on Monday night!
This Monday night I’m going old school and seeing Deftones for the first time in a long time. I think the last time I saw them was at The Odeon when they were warming up for a tour in May of 2003 to support their album Deftones. They opened that night with Minerva which just kills me every time with how giant and layered it is. I love this band. The first time I ever saw them was opening up for Pantera at Blossom on August 15, 1996. I am 20 years in with Deftones and I feel lucky that I still get to see them play live. Can’t wait. Here’s a live performance of Minerva from Rock Am Ring 2004.
That’s it for me this week! Have a great weekend.
- That part was especially interesting because Starbucks realized at some point that they’re selling customer experience almost as much as they’re selling fancy coffee. [↩]
9 Comments
I was in a band once. They called us the Tone Deafs.
HI-YOOOOOOOO!
NE Ohio product Jessica Eye fights Saturday.
Go Jessica!
Some reading material concerning the Haywood contract…
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/13309223/cleveland-cavaliers-trade-second-round-pick-rakeem-christmas-indiana-pacers-set-larger-deal
Deftones? Wilco? No WFNY writers will ever be allowed to DJ my blowout bashes.
Well, he was at the Pantera m/ show when he first saw the Deftones, so I’m willing to cut him a little slack.
For now.
Glamtera? No thanks. Walk on home, punk.
Yeah…1986.
But, not in 96.
You noticed this as well huh?
Hulk Hogan…
https://media4.giphy.com/media/l41lO8vRXzSB0CkqQ/200_s.gif