https://deadspin.com/q-a-pepper-johnson-on-drinking-with-bill-belichick-sp-1828726414
This was a rare look behind the scenes. The whole thing is a great read, but this is what jumped out to me:
Not a shock, but great organizations listen to everyone. From Ray Dalio to Bill Belichick, this is what you have to do. He states clearly that the loser organizations (Bills, Jets) did the opposite. You "stayed in your lane".
One of the things that I enjoyed so much when I first started coaching in New England was we had the roundtable, so to speak. It was more of a rectangle but we had the knights at the table. And everybody’s opinion was worthy. We knew at the end of the day whatever coach Belichick said was what we were going to do. But your voice was heard.
Big shocker that with 32 teams there's lots of collusion. Interesting to get his perspective.
But what we noticed—we would have someone with a contract problem on our team. And I don’t know about the other team. All of a sudden this guy gets released, and he goes to San Diego. Or if he didn’t have a contract problem; let’s just say he was kind of a problem. And he would get released, and then all of a sudden someone from San Diego ends up on our team. Now if that’s not a trade without being a trade, I don’t know what is.
Teams really do glean gameplans from the media, and coaches will give big things away to the media.
Yeah. Well, again, a lot of the coaches are kind of in the dark now. Some coaches just pretty much tell you their game plans talking to the media, and whether the media guys picked up on that information or not, or was picking enough and making them give up information, they give up information.
We always like to assume rational coaching. But between egos, politics, and plain-old stupidity NFL teams do things a high school coach won't do. As much as we can make fun of each other on this message board for being a "Red Board GM", coaches and personnel often will make flat-out dumb decisions (like running Charles Sims or drafting a K 2nd round). Including not matching your coverages to your pass rush. Which is crazy...
I’m a strong believer of where the pass rush matches the coverage. This was one of the things that I could not get done with the Jets; I could not get the pass rush and the coverage together.
This is gold on matching the rush to coverage. I'd love to go through last season and look for these specific keys. Where's @Nobody when you need him...
If we are pushing the pocket and the secondary guys are [playing] off, then it’s just pitch and catch [for the offense]. If we’re pushing the pocket and your guys are close, now the pass rush is matching the coverage. If your guys are off and we’re shooting moves, or we’re running pass-rush games, now the pass rush matches the coverage. Because now the coverage is playing for down-the-field passes and we’re rushing the quarterback for down the field passes.
Obviously I'm a big analytics guy, but this is why you have to marry analytics with experience. Arm length only matters in context. And it also matters based on what you're coaching and how you understand a successful player (in this case defensive lineman) is built. And guess what, you can take what Johnson's talking about and apply analytics. But it requires a deep dive into what makes a great player beyond having a certain size or 40
.
And I’m semi-mad because a scout is telling me ... this guy’s trying to tell me that the defensive linemen need long arms like the offensive linemen, or they’ll never be able to beat them—the offensive lineman’s just going to hold them off. And I said, ‘Well, with all due respect, I don’t know what defensive line coaches that you’ve worked with have told you beforehand, but I teach from the ground to the man’s chest. And the guy can bring their hands from the ground to the chest the fastest are going to win the battle.’ That’s how I teach: We’re going to attack him, and offensive linemen are allowing us to do this now, because of where the game is going—they don’t get down in a stance no more, so they automatically are up, especially the offensive tackles. And he laughed at me, like, ‘He don’t know about arm length?’ And I lit off into them
There's a bunch of other great stuff in there, about Belichick and drinking, Malcolm Butler, why Mo Wilkerson was so sloppy and how poor Todd Bowles is at running an organization (duh).
