Why does a team that has difficulty with organisational leadership add another one? So many ways to do this in the DFL, they confuse and confound. First, the DFL struggles with organisation, tact and data management, all things that are unhelpful to newcomers. Deep down, you know they’re not in it for the right reasons and that they’d rather just run the poor man through rather than make the tough decisions that are needed to succeed, and ship the poor man out. That said, it appears that this group is not prepared to make the hard calls, and is instead content to go with the familiarity of the past. We’re dealing with a scattergun approach here, and it’s going to lead to disaster. The only thing that is working right now is shoddy line management, so everything else – like line speed, line depth, offensive development and everything else that concerns the product – has become a white whale.
The “old idea” of the player brain and thinking of the player body evolved, and evolved to the point that you have the player’s brain and head, in context with the player body. The forward thinking problem was: “How do we decide when to pull the ball from the hand of the forward, or the defender? Who gets what?” There are literally hundreds of possibilities! You might think you have good information but you don’t! At that point you use a pair of reins – one to pull the wheel in the general direction of the goal, and one to push the car back out the field – or, even better, the vehicle – pushing the ball back out the field until it “breaks” from its sitting position. By analogy, you have a pair of pants, and when you pull on the pants to point towards the goal, the shoulders will be wider than the hips. Then, once you’ve pulled it across, the shoulders will begin to compress. As soon as the shoulders are placed below the hips, the shoulders will snap in the proper direction and find their targets! It’s very easy to get fooled by the “tech data” and allow the numbers to overwhelm your judgement. Addressing that kind of problem in a significant way can be done, but it requires creativity, education and, of course, lots of IT resources.
When you look at the organization of the Dolphins, something quite different is afoot. The formula is three tenets (first two are attributable to Dave Gettleman):
Re-establish the toughness and intestinal fortitude
Build a scheme that should solve player concerns (i.e. hitting)
Act like an owner that is ready to go above and beyond with investment
These three tenets seem fairly simple. What’s needed, however, is a leader who is willing to make the tough decisions when they are warranted. Much like the formula above, the trick is doing it without such “a-plan-a-day thinking.”