Analysis AMA - Ask Me Anything (Saints Preseason Game 1) (1 Viewer)

[AGW85]

It's a really really common issue, especially with good athletes, that you would think doesn't show up at the NFL level, but it does.

Everyone has a comfort zone. A lot of coaching up players (and the reason why you do drills and get as much repetition as you can) is correcting their fundamentals--I'm talking hands, eyes, feet. When we talk about "coachable" players, we mean players who have the ability to exit their comfort zone first in drills, and then take that uncomfortable (but correct) technique and apply it to unit, team, and ultimately games.

Sometimes you have players who just do not meet the bar athletically and don't possess the mental or physical talent to apply the technique properly. But the most frustrating situation for a coach is when you have a GREAT athlete who struggles to apply (trust) his technique. A lot of times this happens because at whatever lower level he was playing at before (could be the transition from high school to college, college to pro, etc.), he was such a dominate athlete for his position that he could just stick to what was comfortable/familiar and succeed.

I'm not saying this "is" Trevor Penning... but the shoe fits.

Also, offensive line in particular is an extremely uncomfortable position. You're taking these huge men and telling them to put their body in positions and to do things with their feet that almost go against nature. This is why a lot of offensive linemen do ballet and yoga and stuff like that. They're being asked to defy physics and exit their comfort zone on every snap. To move in a way that in NO OTHER CONTEXT would they be asked to move.

To do that--and do it successfully, unconsciously, without thinking "Ok, put my foot here, left hand here, bend this way"--takes a lot of repetition and TRUST in the technique. Penning is not consciously saying "i don't trust this, it's BS"... it's just so uncomfortable to him, mentally, that he is not able to be confident in it.|

In short, he's violating what I refer to as the "Don't worry. Focus!" principle.

I just read Mike Triplett's article on Cam Jordan. Mike quoted Cam as saying almost exactly the same thing you said, Dan, about technique. Cool stuff:

“When you're off the edge, you get three, four steps, there's a second where you have time to gather and react. You move interior and everything just happens a little bit faster,” Jordan said. “I would say it's not a huge learning curve because I've dabbled before, but it seems like it's sort of becoming comfortable for me. I have to make it comfortable. And that's the name of the football game is, ‘Be comfortable at uncomfortable positions.’

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