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Mobile – It should play a part, but it should be a small part.
Talking about how guys perform in the Senior Bowl in practice and the game.
What you see here should be a part of the scouting evaluation, but not a huge part.
You still need to value the game film from their college careers the most.
Not to pick on him because he’s no longer with the team, but I’ve been told Mike Maccagnan really valued what he saw at the Senior Bowl a great deal, and an example of this impacting the scouting process was him picking Nathan Shepherd in the third round of the 2018 draft, which was too high. He looked good in practice down here, but that was against some average offensive linemen.
Once again, use the Senior Bowl as part of the equation, but a small part, not the be-all, end-all . . .
I’ve said this before, and I will say it again, the bigger issue for Brian Flores, aside from the stuff in the lawsuit, is related to his coaching style (which by the way I like).
He’s an old-school coach, like a Bill Parcells, who is tough on players, like on QB Tua Tagovailoa during halftime of the Miami Dolphins blowout loss to Tennessee late in the year, which knocked them out of playoff contention. He wasn’t happy with Tua’s performance and let him know it. According to columnist Dave Hyde of the Sun-Sentinel – Flores said Tua needed “better f-in play” from his quarterback. Tagovailoa claimed that Flores “doesn’t know how to talk to people.”
In sports, coaching has changed. You really can’t yell at players much without causing a big stir. The new generation doesn’t deal with it like players in the past. I’ve never seen Robert Saleh yell at a player. The yelling you see from him in photos or on TV, is either at officials or yelling words of encouragement to players. It’s not dressing anybody down.
So coaching has changed, so perhaps Flores would have been a better fit for the NFL of yesteryear. Don’t get me wrong, he deserves to get one of these HC openings. For goodness sake, he won seven games in a row after a 1-7 start to put the team in the playoff race. That isn’t easy to do.
But it’s his combative style that is scaring teams off, not the stuff in the lawsuit. It’s hard to coach that way these days with society getting a little softer . . .
Today’s Senior Bowl practice was moved inside to the South Alabama indoor practice facility due to the threat of rain and lightning.
The mainstream media wasn’t allowed inside the indoor practice facility, but only “media partners.” Isn’t “media partner” an oxymoron. How can you objectively cover people you are partners with?
So unfortunately I can’t provide any practice nuggets from today . . .
Great quote from Robert Saleh about the Senior Bowl week:
“It’s been said that you can hide at Combine, but with a week’s worth of work (at the Senior Bowl) it’s a lot harder to hide. Their ability to absorb the playbook. Remember, NFL game plans change every week.
“The other part is you’ll see it’s going to be adversity for these kids. Someone’s going to drop a pass, miss a block. Think of the pressure on these young men to perform their job under this pressure. When they make a mistake, how do they respond?”
This is why coaching one of the teams in the Senior Bowl is so valuable – you get a week to break down these guys to the nth degree, mentally and physically, as opposed to the “Underwear Olympics” at the Combine.
February 3, 2022
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