Bread and Circuses, or Who Gets the Thumb Down

Although it has been happening at a low level since the spring, today is the first of the big cuts. I'm afraid to look.  My maternal instincts are repelled by the thought that some of these young men, who have given their all throughout the long, hot summer since being drafted or picked up via free agency, are about to end up on the auction block again.  Them, and a whole lot more guys from other teams.  And of course there are the soon-to-come bloodbaths, as the Steelers staff is forced to choose between guys that they would like to keep to get down to the final 53.

Naturally, I have some thoughts on this.  Rather than descend into bathos by talking about how much it must suck to be one of the guys that gets cut, I'm going to think about it from the coaches' viewpoint, and muse for a moment on the issues of talent, effort, and potential, after the jump. 

I don't have any idea how the coaches actually look at these issues, but if I were a coach, one of the things that would interest me a great deal is the question of talent vs. preparation.  Several books have come out in the past few years about this very question, and the conclusion that the authors have come to, based upon recent research, is that talent is largely illusory, and that preparation is all.  I frankly find their arguments interesting but ultimately not entirely convincing.  They do, at least, admit that there may be physical reasons why someone is likely or unlikely to excel at certain things.  For example, I don't expect that Mike Wallace would ever be a successful left tackle, prepare as he might.  Then there are the cases that are a bit less clear, like the 5'2" running back at Clarion University.  (If you didn't see the article, check it out here.)  But three questions I would definitely be asking myself when determining who to cut are 1) how much raw ability does this guy appear to have; 2) how well has he used that ability thus far, and 3) how much potential does he have to improve in the future?

How much raw ability does this person have?  That's a harder question to answer than you might think, even if you ignore the whole talent vs. preparation question.  For a football player, there are some fairly obvious things you can begin with.  How suited is their particular makeup to the position(s) they play?  I began to understand more about this after reading The Blind Side.  The author's description of the very specific physical type required for a left tackle was an eye-opener for me.  After reading that I began to understand some of the things that had puzzled me in posts as a new fan - discussions about Willie Colon's short arms, for example.  And of course you have the added wrinkle of assessing not just what a player was born with, but what they've got left after playing high school and college football.  I presume that to a certain extent you have to go with your gut in deciding whether a player is likely to continue to have problems with, say, a blown out knee.  The medical professionals are more likely to be able to tell you if something is sure to be a problem than to be able to assure you that something is not going to be a problem, so you have to add that risk to the equation.  

Once you've gotten past that, you can look at some of the measures of basic athleticism, like the tests they run at the combine.  That may give you an idea of how gifted a player is, and how well he has used his abilities thus far, but it may mostly tell you how well he prepared for the combine.  It doesn't tell you whether his combine numbers were an anomaly.  You might never see numbers like that again from a guy, or he might in fact be capable of much better than he did at the combine, for a variety of reasons.  Now that you have seen him in camp, you've begun to get an idea of whether he is shaping up to be the player you hope that you drafted.  That is, assuming that he didn't get hurt the first day of camp and sit out half the practices...  

There is another aspect of "talent" that is even harder to assess.  I don't know how the coaches do it, but if I were considering a player I would look at how intelligent he is, practically speaking.  I wouldn't much care if he could diagram a sentence or excel at differential equations.  I would care a great deal whether he can process a lot of information quickly, and whether he has the practical common sense to know how to use that information.  Can he remember which route to run?  Can he work out when things are going awry, and make the necessary adjustments?  But even more than that, I would care whether a guy is curious.  Is he interested enough in what he does to want to know how it is that the great players at his position achieved what they did?  Is he curious enough to find out why things are done the way they are, and wonder whether there is another way to skin that particular cat?  There may be no "I" in "team," but a team is the product of the individual contributions.  As long as the players all have the same goal of winning games, and are willing to work with the coaching staff towards that goal, greater individual contributions are likely to equal greater team play.  I wouldn't be very excited about a player who just did what they were told and left it at that.  I'm not looking for rebels, but I am looking for active participants, for those who don't take the easy way out.

There are very few perfect players.  I have become increasingly convinced that football is rather like a Greek tragedy, in which many of the best athletes have a fatal flaw.  Depending on what that flaw is, it may or may not prevent them from having a successful career.  You have, for example, the freakishly good athlete whose lack of discipline in their personal life means that they eventually end up suspended, in jail, or dead.  You have the workout warrior who is dumb as a sack of rocks, and try as they may, they can't remember reliably where they are supposed to be when.  And so on.  So I would have to get over wanting the perfect player and start figuring out whether I can make better players out of the ones I have to work with.  And a large part of that equation is the second issue, preparation.  Or work ethic, or heart, or whatever you want to call it.  Do they want to excel badly enough to go above and beyond expectations, whether it is working out, studying film, or just being willing to throw themselves at a guy that is twice their size?  

But there is another element to this - are they coachable?  Because you need guys who not only want to excel but who believe that you and your coaching staff can help them to do that better than they could help themselves.  Mike Tomlin uses the expression "prideful" to describe the players, generally when they are losing.  By that I presume he means that the guys take pride in what they do, and aren't willing to think that, say, a 9/7 season is good enough.  But pride cuts both ways, and if it bleeds over into arrogance you've got a problem.  It's a bit like the fine line he spoke of in terms of aggressiveness vs. getting slapped with big penalties.  I wouldn't have wanted to be Keenan Lewis getting the dressing down from Tomlin as he pulled him out of the game on Sunday night (on national television, no less.)  And yet Tomlin didn't seem entirely displeased when he discussed it in his interview yesterday.  In football, as in so much of life, the dividing line between great and stupid is often rather thin.  

Finally, there is potential.  What if you've got a guy that you are almost certain is going to be terrific in a year? What if it is two years?  What if you are almost certain that he is going to be terrific in three years, but right now he just isn't getting it?  How do you balance your future needs with your present necessities?  The practice squad might not be a viable option for one reason or another, and then what do you do?  If it were me, I would wish we had a farm team...

All of this musing has brought me to one main conclusion - that I'm really glad it isn't my decision who goes and who stays.  I can't imagine how the coaches can work intently day after day with these fine young men, and then have to tell them that they didn't make the cut.  I'm sure that the members of the coaching staff are losing a lot of sleep right now.  Here's hoping that they make the right choices.  And when they have made them, here is a momma flutter of the handkerchief to the guys that didn't make the cut.  I wish you all the best, and thank you for what you have brought to the Steelers, whether it was for a few months or for multiple seasons.  And I really wish it didn't have to be thus.