Know Thyself
NFL GAME PLANNING AND “QUALITY CONTROL”
Looking in the Mirror Has Become a Vital Part of Game Preparation
By Vic Carucci
This article was reprinted with permission of NFL Insider magazine
Knowing the opposition is only part of an NFL teams game preparation. It also must know itself. Like other businesses that practice “quality control” – analyzing their own products to find flaws or improvements-NFL teams devote considerable time and resources to critiquing their strengths and weaknesses.
Through self-scouting, they scrutinize everything they do in a never-ending quest to maximize their effectiveness and avoid becoming predictable. “It’s important to know what your tendencies are,” Green Bay Packers coach Mike Sherman says. “I do think that certain play callers, whether on offense or defense, have a tendency to go back to what’s been good to them and can have a history of calling certain things in certain situations.
“Most of the time you’re very aware of what’s been successful, but sometimes you’re not aware of things that are holding you back, things you’ve kind of hung on to because of an experience with a certain defense or play. Self-scouting will tell you, `Cut your losses and move forward.”‘ Most clubs employ two quality control assistant coaches-one each for offense and defense-to paint a self-portrait that is reviewed during and between games, so the head coach and his offensive and defensive coordinators can respond accordingly.
It can be a cold dose of reality for thoughts that are often influenced by perception. “A lot of times you’ll say, `Hell, we’ve run this play so many times, we just cant run it again this week,”‘ Sherman says. “And then you’ll look at the data and see that you’ve only run it once in a game … and that was in the preseason. But you practice it every single week, so you think the play is used up and old, and you haven’t even used it in a game yet.”