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Work, work. let's work. We're in the trenches, breakin' down the defensive line from technique and fundamentals to NFL and college football analysis. You're listening to Big Dawg Trench Talk. Work, work, work.
Whassup Big Dawg? This is Coach Rolle and welcome to another episode of Big Dawg Trench Talk. Thank you for subscribing to Big Dawg Trench Talk, where you know your progress is our success. I do this for one reason and one reason only, and that is to make sure that as coaches and as players, that we are the best dawgs in the trenches that we can be. The topic that we're going to discuss today is very important to me. I've experienced this as a coach, as well as a player.
As a player, there were times when I sat in the film room and I watched film, trying to figure out why was I not playing to the best of my ability. There were times as a coach that I would watch my athletes, my dawgs, and I would try to reason and figure out why are they not playing to their fullest potential? Well, I think I know the problem.
Episode number five. I found the problem, Big Dawg. You satisfied. Now, let's talk trenches. I have taught linemen, all kinds of different tricks and schemes and how to be proactive in your pre-snap and that's another podcast, when we'll talk about being proactive in your pre-snap. There are different things that I have discussed with my linemen and I've done all kinds of drills to have the mass of those skills, because we know, as coaches, and as players, we know that drills develop skills. Why do we do drills? Because they develop skills. That's why we do drills. They develop skills. The proper drill will establish and develop the necessary skill. It's important that you have the right drill for the necessary skill.
But, I've done that. I've done all of that. And yet still I've worked with young men that were not productive in the trenches and I was as creative as I could be. So here I am as a coach, trying to figure out, "Gosh, how do I get my linemen to be run stoppers? To be, persistent and determined, to make a play or make a tackle" and I realized that I was fighting against something that was almost impossible to win against. To me, this is a curse word, this is a bad word, this is an enemy of mine and I realize that I saw it in the nature, or I saw it in the mentality of the guys I was trying to train.
And I realized that this thing was in them and it was preventing me from progressing them and I recognized it as an enemy and as a villain. To me, it's a bad word, its an evil thing that was keeping me from progressing them or keeping them from progressing, and that was satisfied. The word satisfied.
I'll give an example. Watching these young men play, this was a long time ago, a long, long time ago, but I always think about this. I watch these young men play and I know they had loads of potential to be great and to do great and look good in the preseason, great summer training, thought they were well, thought they were developed and ready to go. First game came, first game was not what I expected. I didn't like that. I didn't like how they performed, so we took it up a notch, you know, more drills, quicker, faster, harder, again, again, again. Trying to make it muscle memory. And it was. So, second game came, same thing. It was not productive. This is what I did coach, hear me out.
So, we circled up and I took them behind the goal post and I needed to have a conversation with them. I needed to stop what I was doing because evidently what I was doing wasn't helping. Something was wrong. So, here we are, behind the goal post and I had them circle and I stand in the middle. And when I do that, I'm looking in their eyes, I'm looking in their eyes and I'm trying to identify their mentalities and their will. You know, dawg means driven attitude wills greatness. That's the acronym, D A W G.
I didn't see it. I didn't see the will. I didn't see the hunger, so I'm sitting there lookin' at 'em and I looked in everyone in their eyes and I said, "Oh, I see, you're satisfied. You're satisfied with your production. You're satisfied with being a football player. You're satisfied that you have a jersey on and you get a chance to play in front of people. You're satisfied that you're not being productive. You're okay with that."
I told 'em, I said, "Where I'm from and you look at the guy's eyes across from you or when you look at your teammates' eyes, you see hunger, you see thirst. You're looking at a young man, or a man, that has a desire to eat. It's almost like you have two dogs and one piece of meat and somebody gotta eat and I ain't eaten in three months. And whey you look at that guy, your teammate, from where I'm from, that's what you see, you see hunger, you see thirst, you see a man that's not going to take failure as an option, that's what you see. You see, like their eyes are on fire, what they call the eye of the tiger. You see it. And they in hunt mode. that's what you see. That's how it is where I'm from and the guys around you are ready to do whatever it takes to eat. It's huntin' season. And that's how you it's time to play some football, 'cause something clicks on the inside of 'em, when you look at 'em and you know its time to go to work.
These guys have actually had knots in their stomach and these were knots of hunger pain and these guys wanted a way out and these guys wanted more for themselves. They didn't want to be the statistic. They wanted to do more with their lives and they knew that football was that way. The didn't have a choice. They didn't give themselves a choice. Their will told them to out will the guy in front of them. No, they didn't have the technique. They didn't have a lot of great coaching, but one thing they did have was the will to win, they had that.
So, I'm looking at my athletes and as I'm looking at them, you just see this conviction that begins to rise in them. They're convicted because I called 'em out. I actually was trying to call them out, I wanted to call them out. I wanted to call out satisfaction and at that moment they had to make a decision as to what they were going to do. But, I told 'em I wasn't satisfied with the fact that you just playin' football. If that's your goal, was to just be a football player and not accomplish anything, left me know so that I can lower my expectation or lead the team or not coach you as a D-line coach, cause you can do that all by yourself.
If I'm gonna be your coach, you gonna be one of the best to do it. Let me know what your goal is, cause without a goal, you don't have no go. You got no purpose and no drive without a goal. What's your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you satisfied with being blocked, with not making plays, with not making tackles? I think I've found the problem. Big Dawg, you satisfied. And there isn't any coach in the world that can feed somebody who's satisfied. I can't feed you if you full. Question is, what are you full on? What's your meal look like? I get to wear a jersey, I get to play football, I'm popular cause I play football, it's cool cause I finally made it to college football, so I'm good. No, you're not good! What else do you want out of this?
Even sometimes you see NFL guys that have arrived and that's it. They're satisfied, because their eyes light up when they see their checks and the drive is gone. Because their goal was to get there, but not do anything once they've arrived there. Satisfaction is the enemy of a progressor. Satisfaction is the enemy, it is the constant feud with progress. It's hard to progress when you're satisfied. You can't eat if you're full. I looked at 'em and that's what I saw. I was disgusted by it and I told 'em. I told 'em the truth and they were convicted because that's exactly what it was. And at that moment, I realized that there was not a drill, a skill, wisdom, coaching points that I could give these young men to get better, cause I kept running into a wall called satisfied. It was a very interesting conversation I had, and nobody had anything to say.
The next week I watched these young men play. I trained 'em, did different drills, things that I saw they could tighten up on and do better. Well, coach, Big Dawg, let me tell you, the next game we played, it was a different group of guys. The way that they came off the ball, the way that they used their hands, the way that they played flat on the line of scrimmage, and pursuit was great. They were just persistent in what they did, determined in what they did. You saw a different dawg. You saw a different animal out there playing within those four quarters. It was different. Because I had broken through a wall.
So we had a conversation when I met with them again that Monday and actually, no, it was two weeks after that game. They started picking things up and they started making a lot of progress in their game and I went back and said, "You know, you guys are playing great right now. Technique is great, you know, you're doing really good with your hands, your feet placement where it needs to be. I made some adjustments depending on the athlete, made some different things that I was now tweaking to make them that much better individually.
Fast forward to Thursday walk through, a young man came to me, a couple of them came to me and said, "Coach you remember that conversation we had over there behind the goal post?" I'd kind of forgotten about it and I said, "Oh yeah, okay yeah, I remember when we was talking about you guys being hungry." He said, "Coach we'll never forget that." He said, 'When you told us that we weren't hungry enough, that's when it clicked. You were right. We were satisfied and we didn't want to play the game just to be playing the game. We re
