Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattyk72
I think chemistry is one of the most overrated terms in sports. Everything and everyone is tolerable when you win. If the Patriots didn't have those trophies they wouldn't be the Patriots.
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I totally disagree. Though the term "chemistry" drives me crazy. A much better term is team morale.
Winning helps build good team morale. Losing definitely hurts team morale. But if you've got good leaders on your team, they can help keep team morale from bottoming out when the going gets tough. Players go through a long season working their ass off. They also get paid a lot of money. If the team loses, and the players start losing faith in the coaching staff, or in the way the team is playing, they'll start to not care about whether the team wins or not. They'll start thinking well, we're not winning, but oh well at least I'm getting paid, or at least I can pump up my stats and get a big contract in the offseason. That breeds a selfish attitude, the player then begins to act in his own financial interests, rather than doing whatever helps the team to win.
At the beginning of the season, all of the players care about trying to win. The trick is to prevent the mentality of "mailing it in" after you've lost a few games. If you have prominent players on your team who stick with the coaches, keep working hard, and keep after other players; then players will follow that example. At this point, because he has worked hard and because he blocks guys 50-100 pounds bigger than him, if Clinton Portis speaks, the players listen. And after the team watched Randy Thomas get carted off the field last year in Dallas with a broken leg and his helmet raised in the air; and now after watching him return from that injury and have a tremendous year, when he speaks, the players listen. When he says Derrick Dockery deserves a raise, that gets noticed. The younger players will look up to Thomas and say hey, if I play tough and hard, he'll lobby for me. He'll be on my side. That's a guy I want to play with.
Those kind of gestures by the team's leaders can go a long way towards holding team morale together even in down seasons. Derrick Dockery has said he wants to stay a Redskin. Why on Earth would anyone want to do that, when you think about it? The team sucks, there is backstabbing in the papers, it's a mess. I'll guarantee you guys like Samuels and Thomas have a lot to do with it. Dock loves playing with them, and he loves having them recognize his skills and work ethic. He feels like he's a part of something, and it feels good to have older accomplished linemen accept you.
We need more of that. The leaders of the team need to stand up and say "If you don't want to be here, then don't let the door hit you. But I'm going to be here, and I'm going to work my ass off in the offseason, and I'm going to come back and play hard till the end, because I believe in what the coaches are doing." Players look up to that, and morale will get a boost from that attitude.
Now for all that to work, coaches need to enable the leaders. They need to listen to Randy Thomas and pay up for Dockery. They should have listened to Portis and kept Ryan Clark and Antonio Pierce. Not just because the leaders were right, but because of appearances. If the leaders appear to have sway with the coaches, it increases the chances that players will buy in and fall in line.
This is a TEAM. Coaches need to listen to players. Players need to listen to coaches. It has to be a two way street. The moment a coach ignores his players and his leaders, he loses the locker room. And that is the ultimate morale killer.