Teaching Moments En
Masse
The Bears-Packer game
ended at 10:50 PM last night, and Clare called three minutes later with a
question. “The announcers keep saying
how good a coach [Marc] Trestman is.
Then how can they lose, 55-14?” A
good question.
Basically, Cris
Collinsworth was showing how not to provide color
commentary. What he saw before him was a
team in total disarray, this coming off a bye.
The 3-4 Bears had an extra week to recover from their 51-23 whipping by
the Patriots and this is how they respond.
Cris, a good football coach doesn’t let his team get outscored 101-37 in
back-to-back games.
Clare called because her
inner coach was upset. So, I tried to
turn the football apple into a softball orange.
What would you do, I asked? I
reminded her of similar situations during her years of playing, of coaches who
lost their players and those who never had them. How do you avoid that?
The simple answer is,
by winning, which is the product of talent and preparation. Clare tells me that even Division I players get
confused when a coach hitting grounders shouts out “6-4-3” for a short to
second to first double play. I’m pretty
sure that would be Lesson One on Day One from Coach Clare. Old man Halas played enough baseball with the
Yankees to appreciate that.
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