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My sister, wv-ewe, yelled at me for expressing this, but…and i dont mean to piss on protest whether its the womens march or the science march…but….wont these nice folks just go right back to their comfortable-sleep once a Dem gets into office? Where were they when Clinton and Obama were destroying the poor and handing over power to the banks and corporations who then turn around and destroy the biosphere?
Sorry, couldnt help it. Thats how i feel.
w
vI don’t know.
But the first order of business is to stop the hemorrhaging.
We can worry about long term patient outcomes later.
=================
Well, as i keep trying to tell the evil-liberal-ewe, the fact that i express my feelings about this on a little message board does not mean i have the power to shake up the Womens marchers or the Nerd Marchers. I mean, i cant DO ‘anything’ to help or hurt the marchers. So there’s that. I’m no threat to the ‘movements’ 🙂
The thing that infuriates me is — and you know damn well this is true — the nerds will go right back to sleep as soon as a Hillary or a Biden or whoever-Dem gets elected. They think Trump is the enemy. But Trump did not begin the destruction of the biosphere. Clinton, Obama, Bush, etc all had a hand in it. So where were they when the Dems were giving all this power to those wonderful Corporations and Banks ?
w
vYes that is all true and I understand your frustration. I share it.
Things most likely will go back to the way they were.
And there would be no marches or protests if Hillary had won and all those protesters would be happily living their lives while the biosphere slowly died.
All that is true. But right now, to me, that does not matter.
That is tomorrow’s worry. Today we have to address the issues that are right in front of our face. That’s about all we can do.
Or we can give up and wait for the inevitable. Just let it happen. I’m not quite there yet, though.
My sister, wv-ewe, yelled at me for expressing this, but…and i dont mean to piss on protest whether its the womens march or the science march…but….wont these nice folks just go right back to their comfortable-sleep once a Dem gets into office? Where were they when Clinton and Obama were destroying the poor and handing over power to the banks and corporations who then turn around and destroy the biosphere?
Sorry, couldnt help it. Thats how i feel.
w
vI don’t know.
But the first order of business is to stop the hemorrhaging.
We can worry about long term patient outcomes later.
=================
Well, as i keep trying to tell the evil-liberal-ewe, the fact that i express my feelings about this on a little message board does not mean i have the power to shake up the Womens marchers or the Nerd Marchers. I mean, i cant DO ‘anything’ to help or hurt the marchers. So there’s that. I’m no threat to the ‘movements’ 🙂
The thing that infuriates me is — and you know damn well this is true — the nerds will go right back to sleep as soon as a Hillary or a Biden or whoever-Dem gets elected. They think Trump is the enemy. But Trump did not begin the destruction of the biosphere. Clinton, Obama, Bush, etc all had a hand in it. So where were they when the Dems were giving all this power to those wonderful Corporations and Banks ? And dont change the subject to talk about strategy and alliances and all that. Thats a separate thread and a separate topic and i would no doubt agree with you and zn on that topic — just stick to my narrow question — Where were they when the dems were destroying the biosphere?
…oh and where was Gondor when Rohan needed help?
w
vORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
To Build a Winning Team: An Interview with Head Coach Bill WalshRichard Rapaport
https://hbr.org/1993/01/to-build-a-winning-team-an-interview-with-head-coach-bill-walsh
Joining the august company of Knute Rockne, Paul Brown, and Vince Lombardi, former San Francisco 49ers and current Stanford University football coach Bill Walsh is recognized as one of the most important figures in football history. Walsh, like other coaching legends, has done far more than produce consistently winning teams: in his case, three Super Bowl championships for the 49ers in eight years and an organization enshrined in the press as “The Team of the ’80s.” During his ten-year career with the 49ers and as a coach at the high school, college, and professional levels, Walsh developed a uniquely thoughtful style of play and a successful system of team management that has become one of the most respected in the modern game.
Less of a psychologist than Rockne, and never a disciplinarian like Lombardi, Walsh nevertheless produces winners through a businesslike approach to maximizing the potential of players and coaches. His ability to coolly analyze opponents, matching their weaknesses with his teams’ strengths, has made come-from-behind wins a Walsh football hallmark.
Believed to be too cerebral for a top position for which extreme macho was long considered an ineluctable quality, for years Walsh was forced to content himself with assistant coaching positions. Prized nonetheless for his skills on offense, Walsh was honored for honing All-Pro quarterbacks Dan Fouts, Kenny Anderson, and Greg Cook.
In 1977, at age 47, Walsh became Stanford’s head football coach. That year, he took a moderately talented Stanford team to a national ranking and a win in the Bluebonnet Bowl. In 1979, Walsh was named head coach and general manager of a dreadful 49ers team that had been virtually dismembered in the late 1970s by mismanagement and horrendous personnel decisions.
Walsh immediately began to develop long-range strategic and personnel plans for the 49ers. He also focused on what other coaches had considered the minutiae of the game: minute-by-minute choreographing of practices, breaking down individual and group tactics into parts, and defining responsibilities and setting objectives for both players and coaches.
This season, Walsh has been paid the ultimate accolade for a coach: former Walsh assistants are NFL head coaches in Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Green Bay, New York (Jets), and San Francisco.
Retiring after his third Super Bowl victory in January 1989, Walsh signed on as a football analyst for NBC Sports, eschewing numerous bids to coach professionally before stunning the football world in 1992 by returning as head coach at Stanford.
This interview was conducted by Richard Rapaport, who is a San Francisco-based writer and a contributing editor to San Francisco Focus and Forbes/ASAP. His political commentary appears frequently in Knight-Ridder and other newspaper chains around the United States.
HBR: Do you see a link between managing and coaching?
Bill Walsh: I see coaches and executives who have more similar skills today than ever before. When I was with the 49ers, I was both head coach and general manager, so my duties were more business oriented than those of a lot of NFL head coaches. Today’s NFL is a very complex world, and great football knowledge alone won’t get your team to the Super Bowl.
Historically in sports, there has been one central figure in the organization whose presence dominates everything and whose judgments people identify with. That one person is the dictator, and everyone else simply does whatever he says. In a lot of ways, the old system was much easier for all involved. The dictator gave orders and everyone else just followed them.
Now working successfully with the people in the organization demands more from the coach or the executive. In coaching, I think of it as the coach’s ability to condition the athletes’ minds and to train them to think as a unit, while at the same time, making sure each athlete approaches his own game with total concentration, intensity, and skill. There should never be a moment on the football field when a player doesn’t feel challenged both physically and intellectually. That is why the old bludgeon approach is leaving football the same way it is leaving business.
What is replacing the old approach?
Management today recognizes that to have a winning organization, it has to be more knowledgeable and competent in dealing with and developing people. That is the most fundamental change. The real task in sports is to bring together groups of people to accomplish something. In the old days, the approach was rather crude. The organization would simply discard a player who did not fit a specific, predefined mold. If a player did not conform to the way management wanted him to behave, or if he made the organization uncomfortable, it got rid of him. That was the typical response.
Today, in sports as elsewhere, individualism is the general rule. Some of the most talented people are the ones who are the most independent. That has required from management a fundamental change in the art and skill of communication and in organizational development. Most important, there has been much more recognition and acknowledgment of the uniqueness of each individual and the need that people have for some degree of security.
How does that translate into winning teams?
Those teams that have been most successful are the ones that have demonstrated the greatest commitment to their people. They are the ones that have created the greatest sense of belonging. And they are the ones that have done the most in-house to develop their people. That commitment has come through in the personality of the organizations. It is true of the Redskins, the Raiders, and, of course, the 49ers.
What is the biggest obstacle to creating this kind of organization?
The coach must account for his ego. He has to drop or sidestep the ego barrier so that people can communicate without fear. They have to be comfortable that they will not be ridiculed if they turn out to be mistaken or if their ideas are not directly in line with their superior’s. That is where the breakthrough comes. That is what it takes to build a successful, winning organization.
That approach was certainly critical to the success of the 49ers. It contributed to an environment where our team could be more flexible and adaptable in responding to the unexpected moves of our opponents.
I tried to remove the fear factor from people’s minds so they could feel comfortable opening their mouths. They knew they could be wrong one time and then, when they got a little more information, change their opinion and not be demeaned for it. In fact, I made a point of reminding our coaching staff that I expected them to change their opinions and impressions over time. It’s quite natural: the more information you develop, the faster things can change.
But having enormous self-confidence seems essential for a leader—especially in pro sports. What is the role of healthy versus unhealthy ego in a competitive organization like a football team?
English is a marvelous language until it comes to the word “ego.” We Americans throw that around, using that one word to cover a broad spectrum of meanings: self-confidence, self-assurance, and assertiveness—attributes that most people think of as positive.
But there is another side that can wreck a team or an organization. That is being distracted by your own importance. It can come from your insecurity in working with others. It can be the need to draw attention to yourself in the public arena. It can be a feeling that others are a threat to your own territory. These are all negative manifestations of ego, and if you are not alert to them, you get diverted and your work becomes diffused. Ego in these cases makes people insensitive to how they work with others and ends up interfering with the real goal of any group efforts.
The Turnaround CEO
What do you think are the essential management skills of a successful head coach?
The role of the head coach begins with setting a standard of competence. You have to exhibit a strong working knowledge of the game. The head coach must be able to function effectively and decisively in the most stressful situations. And the head coach must demonstrate resourcefulness—in particular, he is responsible for designing a system of football that is not simplistic. The head coach’s system should never reduce the game to the point where he can blame his players for success or failure simply because they did not physically overwhelm the opponents.
Successful coaches realize that winning teams are not run by single individuals who dominate the scene and reduce the rest of the group to marionettes. Winning teams are more like open forums in which everyone participates in the decision-making process, coaches and players alike, until the decision is made. Others must know who is in command, but a head coach must behave democratically. Then, once a decision is made, the team must be motivated to go ahead and execute it.
What does it take to create a decision-making process in which people feel they can participate?
It starts with the expectations the head coach sets. It is part of the job to expect everyone in the organization to be an expert in his or her particular area of responsibility, to refine their skills continually, and to be physically and intellectually committed to the team. The head coach has to make it clear that he expects everyone to participate and volunteer his or her thoughts, impressions, and ideas. The goal is to create a communication channel that allows important information to get from the bottom to the top.
On Organized Labor
During 49ers games, my coaches and I always tried to respond to what the players said. We knew that we needed their input. And it often made a difference. For example, in a game against New Orleans in 1987, I told the team at halftime that we would call one particular pass play when we got inside the Saints 30-yard line. In the stress of the moment, when we got there, I simply didn’t think of sending in the play. But on the sideline, Steve Young, our backup quarterback, immediately reminded me of it. He wasn’t a bit hesitant. I called it, and we scored.
I couldn’t worry about being embarrassed because I had forgotten what I said in the locker room. We were after results. We all wanted to win.
If that is what it takes to be a successful coach, what are the qualities that define the modern football player?
The key to being a modern football player is the ability to respond quicker, both mentally and physically, than the other player. Some people are naturally quicker physically. But to win, you need to be quicker as a team. You must beat your opposition to the punch every time.
Physical strength and speed are important advantages, but even more advantageous is having the training that permits you to respond intelligently to whatever confronts you. That means more precision, better execution, and quicker response than your opponents. Under the extreme stress of game conditions, a player must condense his intellect and focus it on thinking more quickly and clearly than the opposition.
How do you achieve that quickness and responsiveness in your teams?
It is all in the way you prepare. Preparation allows us to overcome the fact that we might not be the most physically talented team. During the 1980s, the 49ers may not have been as talented as the New York Giants or Chicago Bears, who had measurable advantages in speed or strength. But we were able to compensate in the way we prepared for a game.
Some coaches rely on relatively simplistic plans. When their plans don’t work, they say that it was the players who did not block hard enough, did not run hard enough, or just were not tough enough. We have gone beyond that pattern of failure and finger-pointing. The responsibility for the success of the team starts with the coach, who develops the plan that is then executed by the players—who are extremely well-prepared.
Being prepared starts with identifying the essential skills our team needs to compete effectively. The next step is to create a format to teach those skills. Here at Stanford, our practices and game plans are far more detailed than those used by most of our opponents. There is more to learn with our schemes, so we demand more mental commitment and concentration from the players.
How do you approach the job of structuring practices so your players will be prepared?
I believe in extremely precise, minute-by-minute, tightly structured practices. We focus far more intellect and put far more thought into what we do in practice than other teams do. We have five or six skills or techniques that we want each of our players to be able to use in carrying out his assignment, where our opponents usually will have only one or two.
Take an offensive lineman, for example. Before the ball is snapped, that guard or tackle might have only three or four seconds to decide what kind of blocking technique to use on the man in front of him. Say there are four blocking techniques he can use. By the way his man is positioned, by the situation in the game, by what he has learned to expect from his opponent, he will be able to select one of those techniques.
Many other teams take a more simplistic approach. They teach their players one approach, one technique. Our approach gives our players more dimension. When we are playing powerhouses like Notre Dame, Texas A&M, or Washington, we have to use our extra dimensions to compensate for being physically outmanned. That is the intellectual part of the game. That is the area in which we ask more of our players than our opponents are asking of theirs.
How do you teach those skills?
The most important tool for getting things done is the drill. For example, we work on drills to teach running backs about pass protection against blitzing linebackers. You have to identify the 6 different situations that can occur. Then you have to allocate the time to work on those 6 situations and also the 20 techniques that you want your running backs to be able to apply. In teaching those skills, sometimes you want to have your guards and tight ends participate, or even the entire offensive unit. All of that requires preparation, discipline, and focus from both coaches and players.
The way I coach, I know ahead of time how I am going to run the whole season’s worth of practices. I have established the priorities for what we need to accomplish and allocated the time in which to teach the necessary skills.
I establish the program long before we take the field so I can use most efficiently the time available for learning and so the players do not get bored or distracted. The players must know clearly and at all times exactly what it is that they have to get out of any given drill. After 35 years of coaching, I have found that you can’t do anything in less than 10 minutes or in more than 20 minutes.
Another distinction in drills is between those skills and techniques that can be taught individually and those that require groups. It is also critical to allocate time for team play and to build in practice segments that focus on the execution of particular plays and particular game situations that you want to be ready for.
Why is it important to prepare so many skills for so many contingencies?
Making judgments under severe stress is the most difficult thing there is. The more preparation you have prior to the conflict, the more you can do in a clinical situation, the better off you will be. For that reason, in practice I want to make certain that we have accounted for every critical situation, including the desperate ones at the end of a game when we may have only one chance to pull out a victory. Even in that circumstance, I want us to have a play prepared and rehearsed. Say it is the last 20 seconds of a game and we’re losing. We have already practiced 6 plays that we can apply in that situation. That way, we know what to do, and we can calmly execute the plays. We’ll have no doubt in our minds, we will have more poise, and we can concentrate without falling prey to desperation.
Can you recall a specific instance where this actually paid off for one of your teams?
In 1987, we were down 26–20 against Cincinnati. We got the ball back on their 25-yard line with two seconds left in the game. It could have been a hopeless situation. We put three receivers to the left and Jerry Rice to the right. Joe Montana got the ball, looked left, pump faked, and then threw right, where Rice was covered man-to-man in the end zone. It was a touchdown, and it won an important game for us. But it would not have happened if we had not been prepared.
You need to have a plan even for the worst scenario. It doesn’t mean that it will always work; it doesn’t mean that you will always be successful. But you will always be prepared and at your best.
“You need to have a plan even for the worst scenario. It doesn’t mean that it will always work.”
But the same applies to virtually every situation at every point in the game. Say you are on the defense and inside your own 25-yard line. The situation can vary, so there are a number of particulars you need to prepare for. You have third down and inches. Third down and feet. Third down and yards. Inside the 15-yard line, all that changes, and inside the 5 it changes again. Each situation is different, and for each you might have 15 different game situations to practice. You have to allocate time for all of them, you have to practice plays, and you have to work with individuals. And then all of the separate situations have to be pulled together to give a continuity to the team’s play.
One of the most impressive attributes of your 49ers teams was their ability to take what some people might consider a disadvantage and use it to their advantage. Did you work on developing this skill?
I can think of several cases where we consciously tried to work on the players to reverse what in football are usually crippling disadvantages. One was playing on the road. In football, the home-field advantage is often decisive. But we were able to bond together, play in enemy territory, and feed on the emotions of the situation, without being intimidated by the other teams or their fans.
To accomplish that, I would condition the 49ers to adversity. We would talk about how it feels to fly into enemy territory. We would discuss what crosses your mind when you take the field. It allowed us to turn our status as outsiders into our advantage. When I talked with the team, I would use examples from the early days of World War II as illustrations of the desperate and heroic fights we could emulate. By talking about what could be a disadvantage, we turned our people on. We made it an advantage.
The other example is the injury factor. Some teams come unraveled when a star player gets injured. With the 49ers, an injury often served to arouse the team to play harder. Again, my approach was to talk about it openly. I would make the point that reserve players always had to be prepared, and that when they got the chance, they should actually improve on the performance of the injured player. Again, I used historical examples from warfare. For instance, in the Civil War, the best trained people, the front line and even generals, were often the first to fall. Often it was the reserves who would achieve victory. So when our reserves took the field, they were conditioned to feel this way and they knew what was expected. They would feel much more positive about going into the game.
In teaching skills to your players, how do you organize your own thinking about the players you are trying to reach?
Take a group of ten players. The top two will be supermotivated. Superstars will usually take care of themselves. Anybody can coach them. The next four, with the right motivation and direction, will learn to perform up to their potential. The next two will be marginal. With constant attention, they will be able to accomplish something of value to the team. The last two will waste your time. They won’t be with you for long. Our goal is to focus our organizational detail and coaching on the middle six. They are the ones who most need and benefit from your direction, monitoring, and counsel.
How do you achieve a balance between group skills and discipline on the one hand and player individuality on the other?
They go together in defining the two directions you need to pursue at the same time. First, you develop within the organization and the players an appreciation for the role each athlete plays on the team. You talk to each player and let each one know that, at some point, he will be in a position to win or lose a game. It may be one play in an entire career for a certain player or many plays each game for a Joe Montana. But the point is that everyone’s job is essential. Everyone has a specific role and specific responsibilities. And each player has to be prepared both mentally and physically to the utmost to play that role.
“At some point, each player will be in a position to win or lose a game.”
Second, you talk to each player and indicate the importance of everyone’s participation in the process—that it is important for everyone to express himself, to offer ideas, explanations, solutions, formulas. You want everyone to enter into the flow of ideas, even ideas that may seem extreme in their creativity.
You are actually striving for two things at the same time: an organization where people understand the importance of their jobs and are committed to living within the confines of those jobs and to taking direction; and an organization where people feel creative and adaptive and are willing to change their minds without feeling threatened. It is a tough combination to achieve. But it’s also the ultimate in management.
Is there a situation with a player that exemplifies this balance between giving explicit direction and permitting individual creativity?
Take Joe Montana, for example. He is a perfect combination of the two vital aspects that are necessary for developing greatness as a quarterback.
The formula for the success of the 49ers offense was a highly disciplined, very structured form of utilizing the forward pass. To make our system work, Joe had to master the disciplines to know which receiver to throw to, when, and why. The success of the team depended on Joe’s ability to work within that framework. Consequently, the job of the coach was to use drills and repetition so that Joe developed almost automatic moves and decision-making ability.
But there is an extra quality that it takes for a quarterback to become a world champion—or, in Joe’s case, the best ever. And that is an instinctive, spontaneous, natural response to situations that arise in games. Part of Montana’s greatness was that 10% to 15% of the time his spontaneous instincts would break loose and make a phenomenal difference in the outcome of a game.
It is the job of the coach to find the best of both sides. We had to have a very structured system of football, and we also wanted instinctive and spontaneous play.
How do you go about the job of coaching a player like Montana to develop that kind of balance?
Early on, we had to encourage Joe to trust his spontaneous instincts. We were careful not to criticize him when he used his creative abilities and things did not work out. In practice, we worked with Joe repeatedly on specific plays. When he was placed in a game, we called only those plays because we knew that he should be confident that he could execute them. But we didn’t jump him the minute he would break the pattern. Instead, we nurtured him to use his instincts. We had to allow him to be wrong on occasion and to live with it.
Of course, with different players the problem takes on a different look. In the case of quarterback Steve Young, it was almost the opposite. We had to work with him to be disciplined enough to live within the strict framework of what we were doing. Steve is a great spontaneous athlete and a terrific runner. But we found that we had to reduce the number of times he would use his instincts and increase his willingness to stay within the confines of the team concept.
For example, we would be at a point in a game where we had designed a special play to break the defense wide open and score a touchdown. In his early days, Steve might not have had the discipline to wait for that play to develop. Instead, he would see an opening and run with the ball for a five-yard gain. He would let his instincts and emotions affect his patience with the play and his confidence that the entire team could execute.
As a coach, how do you know what it takes to bring out the best in a young player’s abilities?
Unfortunately, there is nothing exact about it. Experience is really the only teacher. I was 47 years old when I became an NFL head coach. Typically, that job comes to people when they are between the ages of 35 and 40. I was in a subordinate role as an assistant coach for a longer period of time than most, so I was forced to analyze, evaluate, and learn to appreciate the roles that other people play more than I might have. In retrospect, I was lucky.
College Football: The Professional Approach
But if developing your players is an inexact art, there are bound to be mistakes. How do you deal with them?
Again and again in the development and selection of personnel, you have to account for miscalculation. In professional sports, the person who is best at dealing with personnel is the person who recognizes his or her errors and deals with them the quickest and most effectively. That could mean adopting a long-term approach, or it could mean the release of a player.
Take our drafting of John Taylor in 1986. John came to the 49ers as a wide receiver from Delaware State. He had great physical talent, but not a lot of background in playing sophisticated football. We simply miscalculated how long it would take John to be ready to play in the NFL. Consequently, we were disappointed in him. John was not adapting well to the competition, he appeared confused and frustrated, and he had lost his enthusiasm.
But instead of giving up on him, we took a longer term, more patient approach. We waited an extra year to allow him to mature and grow into this level of competition and into the role we wanted him to play. Now he is an All-Pro and one of the great receivers in the game.
The other side to that would be the decision I made with Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson. He was a very bright, articulate, charming person, but he also had an uncontrollable drug habit. I made a calculated choice that involved a high risk when we acquired him from Dallas—that I could personally nurture and rehab and influence Thomas into once again becoming a great linebacker. It was a miscalculation on my part. I gave it every chance to work, but finally I had to decide that it simply was not going to.
When you reach that point, you have to make a controlled and well-planned retreat. You regret the decision that you made, but you have to live with it, and you have to work yourself out of it. That is one important facet of good management: deciding how to acknowledge your mistakes.
Do you simply gloss over them? Do you blame someone else? Are you so insecure that your ego will not let you do anything but maintain that your original decision was correct? I could have kept Thomas Henderson on the team, but then the 49ers would not have become world champs. Or I could have had the public blaming Thomas or blaming an assistant coach. But none of those approaches would have helped the team.
In this case, I did not want to publicly embarrass Thomas, but I did want to show the team that I was still in control and that drug abuse would not be tolerated. We simply had to move as smoothly as possible to release Thomas for any number of reasons, remove him from the picture. I made a mistake, acknowledged it, and decided what to do about it.
If the personnel issue is so overriding, do you have a methodology for the way you evaluate players?
We use a five-bracket ranking system to categorize people we are looking at. The first is the star player who cannot miss. The second is a player who will someday be a starter and play for a number of years. The third will make the team, and the fourth has an isolated specialty—covering kickoffs or fielding punts. The fifth is someone who will make the squad and help you by playing solidly in a backup role.
You want as many superstars as you can get. The more stars, the better. But the difference between winning and losing is the bottom 25% of your people. Most coaches can deliver the top 75%. But the last 25% only blossoms in the details, in the orchestration of skills, in the way you prepare.
When you go into a draft, what are the particulars you are looking for in a player?
It is always a combination of factors that add up to the right person. It’s his level of natural ability. It’s his competitive instincts. It’s also the history of that athlete; his ability to learn, retain, and apply what he has learned; and his ability to work under stress with other people.
Then you have to be able to project those qualities into the slot or role that athlete would play for your team. And you have to do that over time, thinking about the short, middle, and long term. For example, a player could come in and play a certain role in his first year, and then in his second year that role could develop or be enhanced. After a number of years, that player might end up in a feature role, and then revert back to the role in which he started as the wear and tear of the game begins to take its toll.
You have said that one of the most important attributes of any organization is the way it treats its people. In pro football, with frequent trading and the yearly competition from rookies for veterans’ jobs, cutting a veteran player or convincing him to retire is a big part of your job. How do you handle that part of the personnel issue?
Any good coach or manager has got to be responsible for phasing his people through the organization. It may be the most emotionally difficult part of the job. When you do it, you often end up as the most unpopular person in the organization. Yet it is part of the role that the leader must play. It has to be done and done continually. You have to be prepared to use your own professional judgment as to when and why it is time for one of your players to call it quits.
As the head coach, I forced myself to deal with this process rather than turn my back on it or hand it off to the assistant coaches. In fact, in this area you can only listen to the assistant coaches so much because, typically, they would rather have veteran players on the team. It makes their coaching job easier. Subconsciously, I think assistant coaches feel much more comfortable with ten-year players than with the rookies. The coaches have become friends with the veterans, they have great faith in them, they understand each other. And the veterans already know what the coaches want done out on the field.
In sports, there is an arc of utilization that describes most athletes’ careers. By that I mean a curve that a coach can use to project what a player can do now, next year, and ten years from now. A player may be a superstar this year, but with minor injuries nicking at him and starting to add up, he won’t be a superstar three years from now. And then in the next phase you have to begin thinking about replacing him.
Most people don’t realize it, but the players who get all the attention are usually the ones on the downside of their careers. Ironically, the organization is often paying the most money to the team members who are on the descending curve as players. When players are starting to wind down their careers but are still playing effectively, you have to remind yourself how to use them. You have to gauge how they practice, what you ask them to do on the field, what kinds of situations you use them in, how much playing time they get. These are all factors that ultimately lead to the point where you judge that a younger player could do the job as well. That younger player is on an ascending curve on the arc. That is when you have to make your move.
How do you go about making that move without dealing the veteran player a crushing blow?
There will be some suffering, and there is no way to avoid it. It’s simply part of the process. There will be agonizing, frustration, and anger. But the coach has to make the decision to improve the team. The real danger is if the decision aimed at improving the team leads to so much bitterness that the fallout causes other players to take sides. When the team becomes divided, the decision has done more harm than good.
That is why managing people’s emotions is such an important part of the coach’s job. You begin by acknowledging that your decision will cause some suffering. Then you do whatever you can to soften the edges, to reduce the anguish and frustration, to communicate your own sensitivity, and, in a sense, even to manipulate the player.
You recommend manipulating people rather than being honest?
The easiest thing is to be truly honest and direct. In fact, it sounds just great to say that you are going to be honest and direct. But insensitive, hammer-like shots that are delivered in the name of honesty and openness usually do the greatest damage to people. The damage ends up reverberating throughout the entire organization. Over time, people will lose the bonding factor they need for success. And over time, that directness will isolate you from the people with whom you work.
The real task is to lead people through the troubled times, when they are demoted or find themselves at the end of their playing days, and to help them maintain as much of their self-esteem as possible. These are the tasks that really define the job of the manager. A manager’s job is not simply having a desk filled with family pictures and a wall covered by plaques for good behavior. It’s developing the skills to understand and deal with people.
You have described a variety of tasks that the coach has to be sensitive to, including the ability to make tough decisions and the need to soften the edges when it comes to dealing with people. What has made your system so successful?
The bottom line in professional sports is winning. Everything has to focus on that product: winning football games. Other offshoots—the public relations, the merchandising, the high-sounding philosophical approach—mean little compared with being successful on the playing field.
But winning does not necessarily mean being a victor in every game. It’s not winning every game at any cost. We have to remind ourselves that it’s not just a single game that we are trying to win. It is a season and a series of seasons in which the team wins more games than it loses and each team member plays up to his potential. If you are continually developing your skills and refining your approach, then winning will be the final result.
But I have seen coaches who are simply too sentimental, who allow themselves to be too maudlin about “breaking up the old family.” They are going to lose sight of the bottom line. And there is another kind who are severe, tough, and hard-hitting. But they sacrifice the loyalty of the people around them. In that situation, people are always afraid that they are going to be the next to go. These coaches rarely have sustained success.
Somewhere in the middle are the coaches who know that the job is to win, who know that they must be decisive, that they must phase people through their organizations, and at the same time they are sensitive to the feelings, loyalties, and emotions that people have toward one another. If you don’t have these feelings, I do not know how you can lead anyone.
I have spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out how I was going to phase out certain players for whom I had a strong feelings, but that was my job. I wasn’t hired to do anything but win.
Ranking every NFL head coach, from Bill Belichick to the Class of 2017
You know Bill Belichick sits at the top of the coaching profession, but who slots in at No. 2?Pete Prisco
Call it the great coaching divide. That ís what we have in the NFL today. There ís New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, and the rest — no matter how you stack them — are way, way, way behind.
Belichick is arguably the greatest coach of all time, a sentiment bolstered by continued success in the era of free agency and roster turnover. Of course, Tom Brady cures almost any ills and allows Belichick to be bold with his roster, but even so he is a detail freak who gets the most out of his players and is unreal when it comes to game planning.
Add all that to his five Super Bowl rings and Belichick is the obvious No. 1 on my list ranking current coaches from 1-32. Nobody else is in the conversation and it’s not because there aren’t plenty of good coaches in this league.
Belichick drives fantasy players nuts because they never can tell what the Patriots will do on offense from week to week. And on defense, Belichick’s hybrid unit is as unpredictable as they come. It’s all testament to his greatness: You never know what ís coming.
He ís not afraid to take chances. Those Super Bowl rings — including the latest, the epic comeback vs. Atlanta after trailing 28-3 in the second half — are his skins on the wall. They allow him freedom to gamble, though any risk is always calculated.
I can’t read enough about Belichick and his philosophy. Books or stories about him are textbooks on coaching and team building. This might sound like I am slobbering about the guy, but he has made some bonehead decisions late in games — which I am quick to point out, much to the chagrin of Patriots nation — though none of them diminish his football genius; it just shows that even the best can screw up situational coaching.
Even though he got lucky getting Brady in the sixth round — that’s the only way to describe drafting the greatest of all time that late — Belichick also has helped mold Brady into the player we see today.
It’s always a treat to log onto Patriots.com and watch Belichick break down tape of players and plays. I recommend it to anybody who wants to take a look behind the curtain at this football savant.
For this list, I’m ranking 27 coaches who have experience, with the five first-time coaches tied at No. 28. It wouldn’t be fair to rank them since they have yet to coach a game. They have a long way to go to sniff Belichick territory. Then again, so does everybody else.
1. Bill Belichick, Patriots
Five Super Bowl victories solidifies this spot. It’s hard to consider any conversation about the best ever without his name coming up. How much longer will he do it is the question. He has a winning percentage of .673, which is 11th all time, one spot behind Don Shula. He has 237 regular-season victories, which is fourth all time, and he can tie Tom Landry for third if he wins 13 next season. Shula appears to be out of reach with 328, but he did it in 33 seasons. Belichick has done it in 22, although 14 of Shulaís seasons came with a 14-game schedule and one shortened to nine because of a strike. The guy is legend, and it ís a treat to watch him work — even when he blows the end of games. Yes, that’s another dig.bill-belichick.jpg
2. Mike McCarthy, Packers
There were some who wanted him fired the past two seasons. That was purely absurd. He has the second-best winning percentage (.651) of any active coach, behind Belichick. He has had double-digit victories in eight of his 11 seasons with the Packers, with only one losing season. He also has a Super Bowl win, but gets dinged some for his 10-8 playoff record. With Aaron Rodgers, some expect more. Maybe one more ring ends the debate.mike-mccarthy-packers.jpg
3. Andy Reid, Chiefs
He has had three losing seasons in 18 as a head coach, one of those in his first with the Eagles in 1999. He has had 11 seasons of 10 or more victories, including the past two seasons with the Chiefs. He has been to the playoffs 12 times, but reached the Super Bowl only once and has an 11-12 postseason record, which hurts. Even so, he’s a damn good coach. I know he doesn’t have a ring, but he has done some amazing things, which is why he’s in this third spot, above some guys who have won rings.andy-reid.jpg
4. Pete Carroll, Seahawks
He has been an NFL coach in three different spots, totaling 11 seasons. His has a .588 career winning percentage, but he has a .629 percentage in his seven seasons in Seattle, with one Super Bowl victory and was a yard away from a second. He has at least 10 victories in each of the past five seasons. His easy-going approach with players has paid off big. It’s hard to believe he turns 66 this September, but there is a lot of good coaching left in him.pete-carroll.jpg
5. Mike Tomlin, Steelers
In his 10 seasons with the Steelers, he has never had a losing record. That’s impressive. He has seven seasons of double-digit victories and is 1-1 in Super Bowls and 8-6 overall in postseason play. There are some who question whether he’s just a guy who oversees everything rather than a hands-on coach. I don’t buy that. He knows what it takes to win, no matter how he gets it done.terrybradshaw.jpg
6. Sean Payton, Saints
There are some who will say three consecutive 7-9 seasons should drop him, but I don’t buy it. Take a look at the roster. Yes, he’s responsible for some of it, but I think the blame goes above him. The defense has lacked play-makers. Payton is still one of the league’s best offensive minds. If he were a free-agent coach, he would be signed in an instant. He has five seasons of double-digit victories and no season worse than 7-9. He also won a Super Bowl. If they fix the defense this season — and they’ve made strides — they will be in the mix again to get back to the Super Bowl.sean-payton-saints.jpg
7. John Harbaugh, Ravens
He has five seasons of double-digit victories in nine with the Ravens, and he has one Super Bowl victory, that coming in the 2012 season. He has had only one losing season, a 5-11 stinker in 2015, and he’s only 13-19 the past two seasons without a playoff berth. It hasn’t helped that he has changed offensive coordinators like he changes underwear. That makes Ravens fans a little jumpy when it comes to their coach. This could be a big year for Harbaugh and his job status. Three non-playoff seasons would be tough to overcome.john-harbaugh.jpg
8. Adam Gase, Dolphins
He is a star in the making. Gase took over the Dolphins last season and got a team hardly stacked with talent to 10-6 and into the playoffs. He has great give-and-take with his players, knowing when to push and when to pull back. He is also a great offensive mind, which you need in this league today. One more thing: He is a maniac when it comes to working, which can be seen in his preparation. A few years from now, he might top this list when Belichick retires if he can keep it going forward.adam-gase.jpg
9. Bruce Arians, Cardinals
He had his first losing season as Cardinals coach in 2016, going 7-8-1 in what can only be described as a major disappointment. But, counting his interim stint with the Colts in 2012, Arians has a .648 winning percentage, third best among active coaches. His players love him, and he’s a keen offensive mind. If there’s one criticism, he needs to fix his special teams.bruce-arians.jpg
10. Bill O’Brien, Texans
O’Brien has gone 9-7 in each of his first three seasons with the Texans, making the playoffs the past two and winning a playoff game last season. That’s unreal considering the quarterback situation since he has been there. He has coached the heck out of this team without a true franchise passer. Imagine if he gets one? He’s a smart offensive mind who plays without a true weapon under center. That’s the definition of frustration. Yet he’s 27-21 over three seasons (.567). That is coaching.9696388.jpg
11. Chuck Pagano, Colts
Does this seem high for a guy on the hot seat after last season? Maybe, but he has a .613 winning percentage and still hasn’t had a losing season in five with the Colts. This is a team that hasn’t had a lot of talent, yet it has been to the postseason three times during Pagano’s tenure. The past two 8-8 seasons, coming in a bad division, don’t help his ranking. But the talent level wasn’t good and Andrew Luck has suffered nagging injuries. If he had been fired, I think another team would have hired him quickly.chuck.jpg
12. Dan Quinn, Falcons
He took the Falcons to the Super Bowl in his second season, and was a blown 28-3 second-half lead away from winning a ring. The decisions made late in that game will help him grow, and he has shown amazing maturity getting past it. One of the hidden stories behind last season’s Super run was how he became more involved with the defense in the second half of the season, spurring the turnaround. He has a great temperament to be a long-term success. In two years, I bet he’s much higher on this list.dan-quinn.jpg
13. Mike Zimmer, Vikings
It’s hard to evaluate him based on an injury-decimated 2016. No coach, not even Belichick, could have sustained success through that, and yet Zimmer got the Vikings to 8-8. The year before, Zimmer led the Vikings to a division title in his second season. I think that’s more of who he is as a coach than last season. His fiery approach is perfect for the modern NFL player. The offensive coordinator issues last season — with Norv Turner walking away — stain his résumé a little.mike-zimmer.jpg
14. John Fox, Bears
In his 15 seasons with Carolina, Denver and Chicago, he has been to two Super Bowls, losing both, and has five seasons of double-digit victories. He has had a rough go of it in Chicago the past two seasons, going 6-10 and 3-13, but he has had some injury issues. Even so, his belief that running the football wins games is out of date. Failing to change with the times on offense has held his teams back. His .533 winning percentage isn’t that impressive, but he was 38-10 in his final three seasons in Denver. If only they had won a Super Bowl.coaching-rumors-john-fox-bears-remaining-head-coach.jpg
15. Marvin Lewis, Bengals
He has the exact same winning percentage as Fox (.533) but has never reached a Super Bowl. In 14 seasons with the Bengals, he has six seasons with double-digit victories and four losing seasons, including 2016 when his team went 6-9-1 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2010. There’s pressure to win this season, or he could be out. There are a lot of Bengals fans who want him out, but ownership has been patient, and understandably so until last season. It’s hard to argue with his record the past six seasons.marvin-lewis.jpg
16. Ron Rivera, Panthers
He led the Panthers to an NFC title in the 2015 season before a Super Bowl loss to the Broncos. Carolina had a Super hangover last season and fell to 6-10 after going 15-1 the previous season. In five seasons with the Panthers, he has two seasons of 10 or more wins, but losing records in the other four. His winning percentage is .557, thanks in large part to the 15-victory season. He is a defensive-minded coach, and he loves to run it and play great defense to win games. That’s his style.ron-rivera.jpg
17. Jason Garrett, Cowboys
Garrett has a .558 career winning percentage and led the Cowboys to a 12-4 record and a division title last season. He has had only one losing season in seven as Cowboys coach, including his interim stint in 2010. He is 29-19 the past three seasons and overcame the loss of quarterback Tony Romo in training camp last season to make the playoffs with rookie Dak Prescott. That was impressive. Early in his Cowboys career, he was criticized for game management and play-calling, but he has improved those areas the past few seasons.jason-garrett.jpg
18. Jack Del Rio, Raiders
Del Rio has turned the Raiders into a legitimate Super Bowl contender. If quarterback Derek Carr didn’t go down last season, they could have pushed the Patriots in the AFC. Del Rio was previously the coach in Jacksonville and led the Jaguars to the playoffs twice in nine seasons. He has a .509 career winning percentage, but expect that to go up the next few seasons with this young, talented team.raiders.jpg
19. Dirk Koetter, Buccaneers
He went 9-7 in his first season with the Bucs, justifying ownership’s decision to fire Lovie Smith and make Koetter the coach after he served as offensive coordinator in 2015. Koetter is a bright offensive mind who has nice give-and-take with players. I always expected him to be a better NFL coach than college coach, where he served stints at Boise State and Arizona State. That’s because he’s a true football guy. He has no time for glad-handing the alums. I think Tampa Bay is finding that out, and his young team should push for a division title next season, which should move him up the list. I think he’s the right guy and will have long-term success in Tampa.dirkkoettermikeevansvoteprotestdonaldtrumpbuccaneers.jpg
20. Jay Gruden, Redskins
He has done a nice job turning the Redskins around, going from 4-12 in his first season in 2014 to 9-7 the next and 8-7-1 in 2016. He made the playoffs in 2015, but missed out last season with a Week 17 home loss to the Giants that hurts him some on this list. His winning percentage is .448, which isn’t pretty, but the first year drives it down. He is a smart offensive coach who needs to figure out how to get his team to play better defense. A change in coordinators this season might help.redskins.jpg
21. Jim Caldwell, Lions
Going into 2016, many expected Caldwell to struggle and maybe get fired with first-year GM Bob Quinn bringing in his own guy. But Caldwell got the Lions to the playoffs, where they lost a wild-card game to the Seahawks. If not for a late-season collapse, they would have won the division. They finished 9-7. In his three seasons with the Lions, he is 27-21. Before that, he was coach of the Colts when they went to the Super Bowl in 2009, his first year with the team. They lost to the Saints in that game. The Colts let him go after they went 2-14 without Peyton Manning in 2011.lions.jpg
22. Ben McAdoo, Giants
He took the Giants to the playoffs his first season as coach in 2016, going 11-5 before losing to the Packers in the wild-card round. McAdoo, who was the offensive coordinator before taking over for Tom Coughlin, continued as the team’s play-caller. The offense struggled in 2016 with McAdoo handling both roles. That will be something to watch going forward.mcadoo.jpg
23. Mike Mularkey, Titans
The Titans are Mularkey’s third team after previous stops with the Bills and Jaguars. Those two stints didn’t end well. He was 14-21 in two seasons with the Bills and 2-14 in one season with the Jaguars. After taking over as interim coach of the Titans in 2015, he was hired as the full-time guy last season and led the Titans to a 9-7 record. His outdated belief in running the football paid off last season as the Titans nearly won the division. The question is whether this team can continue to push for a playoff spot with that style.mike-mularkey.jpg
24. Hue Jackson, Browns
It’s unfair to grade Jackson by his first season with the Browns. They had little talent, quarterback issues and understandably finished 1-15. He was 8-8 in his only season as the Raiders’ coach in 2011. I still think he can be a darn good coach, but the body of work is so small. The Browns need to be patient and let him coach a few more seasons before passing judgment.hue-jackson.jpg
25. Doug Marrone, Jaguars
He was 15-17 in two seasons with the Bills, including 9-7 in 2014 before he quit. He was 1-1 as Jacksonville’s interim coach after taking over for Gus Bradley last season, which led to his hiring on a full-time basis. He is a no-nonsense guy who will bring discipline to the team, but how much is he going to be a puppet for Tom Coughlin?
doug-marrone.jpg26. Doug Pederson, Eagles
When a guy starts a rookie quarterback his first season as coach, it’s tough to evaluate him. But Pederson did a nice job getting the Eagles to 7-9, although they did start fast before fading. Even so, the former quarterback who learned under Andy Reid seems to have a good feel for being a head coach. As quarterback Carson Wentz improves, Pederson will look a lot better as well.doug-pederson.jpg
27. Todd Bowles, Jets
In 2015, it looked like the Jets struck gold with Bowles when he led them to a 10-6 record in his first season as their coach. He did it with Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback, which is even more impressive. But then last season, it all came apart. The Jets finished 5-11 and many were questioning Bowles. Can he turn it around? The talent isn’t good on his roster, and the quarterback situation is a mess. It will be a miracle if he does — no matter what type of coach we think he can become.todd-bowles-coaching-jets-sunday-patriots-hospital.jpg
28. (tie) Sean McVay, Rams; Anthony Lynn, Chargers; Vance Joseph, Broncos; Kyle Shanahan, 49ers; Sean McDermott, Bills
We have no idea how these first-year guys will perform, even if you think you do, so they land here. There is a lot to be excited about in these cities, but isn’t it always that way for first-time coaches?Syria chemical attack: Sarin gas likely weapon used in Idlib as experts say Russian claims ‘don’t add up’
Analysts say rebels lack money or expertise to stock deadly nerve agentExperts have dismissed Russia’s claim that a rebel chemical weapons facility caused the death of more than 70 people in Syria as evidence indicating the government’s use of a banned nerve agent mounts.
Britain, the US and France are among the nations accusing Bashar al-Assad’s regime of gassing civilians in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, but Damascus claims it destroyed its toxic stockpiles following an international agreement struck in 2013.
The Russian defence ministry put out a competing version of events claiming that legitimate Syrian air strikes against “terrorists” had struck a warehouse used to produce and store shells containing toxic gas, which were allegedly being sent to Iraq.
“From 11.30am to 12.30pm local time, [9.30am to 10.30am BST] Syrian aircraft conducted an air strike in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun on a large warehouse of ammunition of terrorists and the mass of military equipment,” said Major General Igor Konashenkov, according to a translation by Russian state media.
But witnesses and survivors said the bombs struck hours earlier, with images showing at least one hit a road rather than a building.
Hasan Haj Ali, commander of the Free Idlib Army rebel group, called the Russian statement blaming the rebels a “lie” and said rebels did not have the capability to produce nerve gas.
“Everyone saw the plane while it was bombing with gas,” he said.
“Likewise, all the civilians in the area know that there are no military positions there, or places for the manufacture of weapons.”
While Isis is known to have used mustard gas, the area around Khan Sheikhoun is controlled by a range of opposition factions including Islamists and groups linked to al-Qaeda.
Russia accused fighters of deploying chlorine gas in Aleppo but no evidence to support the allegations has been put forward by international agencies, who believe that sarin was deployed in Tuesday’s attack.
Beyza Unal, a research fellow with the International Security Department at Chatham House, said the banned nerve agent is expensive and difficult to purify and store.
“Something that needs a certain level of expertise and also money,” she told The Independent, saying any facility would need the ability to take oxygen out of the area where sarin is stored.
“I don’t think rebel groups would have the ability governments would have to purify nerve agents to a level that would make them stable,” Dr Unal added.
“I don’t buy the Russian claims…the story doesn’t add up.”
She added that images of bomb craters in Khan Sheikhoun indicated small payloads, rather than explosives of the type typically used to destroy an entire building.
Sarin can be fatal when either inhaled or absorbed through the skin, contaminating water and clothing to affect anyone coming into contact with symptoms including blurred vision, choking, nausea, weakness, convulsions, paralysis and respiratory failure.
Several volunteers who rushed to help victims of the initial bombing have themselves been taken ill, including Syrian Civil Defence members.
Hamid Kutini, a volunteer with the White Helmets, told The Independent he and several of his friends are unwell.
“I reached the area early after the attack and am still suffering now with weakness in my vision, a continuous headache, and I am not seeing colours well,” he said.
Mr Kutini said families were asleep when the bombs struck at around 6.30am local time (4.30am BST), with people calling the White Helmets reporting “strange symptoms” including drowsiness.
“We knew that some kind of poison gas was used,” he recalled. “The team found people fainting, and people with froth coming from the mouth, and shivers in their bodies…many died while they were asleep.”
Graphic footage showed rescuers dragging bodies and survivors out of buildings, removing their clothes and hosing them down with water in attempts to remove the toxin.
Doctors said victims started to choke, vomit and convulse with foam coming out of their mouths and pin-point pupils, showing symptoms of possible sarin gas exposure.
Amnesty International said many of at least 20 children killed appeared to have died in their beds, with the lack of visible wounds on their corpses pointing to a chemical attack.
A nurse working at the al-Rahma hospital, which was later bombed, told the charity he heard the bombs strike but with a dull “thump” that was unlike a normal “explosion sound”. Minutes later, the casualties started pouring in.
The youngest victims were the first to succumb to respiratory failure and paralysis, a doctor said, adding: “Children are the first ones to die, they cannot fight this. We only had one child who, thank God, survived.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the symptoms were consistent with “exposure to organophosphorus chemicals, a category of chemicals that includes nerve agents” that are banned as weapons of mass destruction.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) seconded the analysis, saying medical teams that treated affected patients in Bab al-Hawa found symptoms “consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas”.
Doctors also detected the smell of bleach on some victims, “suggesting they had been exposed to chlorine” as one of at least two different chemical agents.
Hassan Elbahtimy, from the Centre for Science and Security Studies at King’s College London, said all evidence available so far pointed to the use of sarin in Khan Shaikhoun.
“In this conflict, it is the regime that ultimately is more capable to mount chemical attacks,” he told The Independent, pointing to the previous sarin attack on Ghouta in 2013.
“They were supposed to have declared all their chemical weapons, including sarin stocks, which got destroyed under international supervision.
“If this turns out to be sarin and the regime is responsible, it means either they did not get rid of all their stocks or managed to reconstitute some of their production and handling capabilities.”
Dr Elbahtimy said Khan Sheikhoun was a “significant” target for Assad’s forces as it borders a motorway connecting government-held cities with rebel strongholds in the north.
The area saw intense fighting in 2016, with previous allegations of chlorine attacks levelled at the government.
Ammar Abdullah, a citizen journalist, told The Independent he had seen chlorine gas before but it was “nothing like this”, adding that friends from Damascus compared the symptoms to those seen in the Ghouta attack.
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ADDED BY EDIT APRIL 17: JUST ANOTHER ARTICLE ON THIS I HAD.
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Syria chemical weapons attack toll rises to 70 as Russian narrative is dismissed
Weapons expert says Russian claim that airstrike hit ‘terrorist warehouse’ in Idlib province is fancifulhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/syria-chemical-attack-idlib-province
At least 70 people have been killed in northern Syria after being exposed to a toxic gas that survivors said was dropped from warplanes, an attack that sparked comparisons to the most infamous act of the country’s six-year war.
At least another 100 people were being treated in hospitals in Idlib province where the strike took place at dawn on Tuesday. Several dozen others were transferred to Turkey, some in critical condition.
Condemnation mounted throughout Tuesday as the US, Britain and EU blamed the Syrian government for the carnage, hours before the start of a donor conference on Syria in Brussels.
Donald Trump denounced the carnage as a “heinous” act that “cannot be ignored by the civilised world”. But he also laid some of the responsibility on Barack Obama, saying in a statement that the attack was “a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution”.
Theresa May said she was appalled by reports of the attack and called for an investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. “I’m very clear that there can be no future for Assad in a stable Syria which is representative of all the Syrian people and I call on all the third parties involved to ensure that we have a transition away from Assad. We cannot allow this suffering to continue,” she said.
UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the latest death toll in Khan Sheikhoun at 72 by Wednesday morning, including 20 children.
The Syrian military said it “categorically denied” responsibility. Russia, which has heavily backed the Syrian regime, said its planes were not operating near Idlib. Early on Wednesday, the Russian defence ministry claimed a Syrian airstrike had hit a “terrorist warehouse” containing an arsenal of “toxic substances” destined for fighters in Iraq. The ministry did not state if the attack was deliberate.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Hamish de Bretton Gordon, director of Doctors Under Fire and former commanding officer of the UK Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, said this claim was “completely untrue”.
“No I think this [claim] is pretty fanciful, no doubt the Russians trying to protect their allies,” he said. “Axiomatically, if you blow up sarin, you destroy it.”
“It’s very clear it’s a sarin attack,” he added. “The view that it’s an al-Qaida or rebel stockpile of sarin that’s been blown up in an explosion, I think is completely unsustainable and completely untrue.”
Hours after the attack, a hospital treating the injured was also hit. Images taken inside the clinic appeared to depict the blast as it happened. Photographs and videos taken at the scene and in evacuation areas nearby showed rows of small, lifeless children, some with foam visible near their mouths.
Save the Children said at least 11 children were among the casualties.
Jerry Smith, the operations chief of the UN-led team that supervised the removal of Syria’s sarin stockpiles following the gas attack on the rebel-held Ghouta area of Damascus four years ago, said: “This absolutely reeks of 2013 all over again.” In that attack, more than 1,300 people were killed. The UN said the perpetrators probably had access to the stockpile of sarin held by the Syrian military at the time, as well as the expertise to use it.
In the aftermath of the Ghouta massacre, a UN team supervised the surrender of Syria’s sarin supplies, the removal of which was supposed to have been completed early in 2014. However, suspicions have remained that a portion of the stockpile was not declared to inspectors.
Tuesday’s attack struck Khan Sheikhun, where there are thousands of refugees from the nearby province of Hama who have fled recent fighting. The town is also on a crossroads between Hama and Idlib and is considered vital to any regime offensive towards the northern city of Idlib.
“In this most recent attack, dozens of children suffocated to death while they slept,” said Ahmad Tarakji, the head of the Syrian American Medical Society (Sams), which supports hospitals in opposition-controlled areas in Syria. “This should strike at the very core of our humanity. How much longer will the world fail to respond to these heinous crimes?”
Sams said its doctors had determined that the symptoms of the patients were consistent with exposure to organic phosphorus compounds such as the nerve agent sarin, which is banned by the chemical weapons convention.
Smith said: “If you look at the footage itself, the victims don’t have any physical trauma injuries. There is foaming and pinpointed pupils, in particular. This appears to be some kind of organo-phosphate poison. In theory, a nerve agent. What is striking is that it would appear to be more than chlorine. The toxicity of chlorine does not lend itself to the sort of injuries and numbers that we have seen.”
Tuesday’s strike came days after the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said the Trump administration was no longer prioritising the removal of Assad, and that the Syrian people would ultimately decide his fate.
The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, made similar comments on Monday, affirming a shift in US policy that began under the Obama administration.
Critics of the stance have said that the absence of a credible threat has given the regime licence to commit war crimes with impunity as its backers, Iran and Russia, steadily claw back years of battlefield losses.
The UN security council said it would hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the attack, after a request from Britain and France.
“Everyone is horrified and the children are in total shock,” said Mohammad Hassoun, a spokesman for civil defence rescue workers in the nearby town of Sarmin, which received 14 of the wounded from Tuesday’s attack. Hassoun said the victims were bleeding from the nose and mouth, had constricted irises and suffered from convulsions.
“The total number of wounded is incredible. So far it’s over 200,” said Mohammad, a doctor at another hospital in Idlib. “We received over 20 victims and most of them are children, and two of them in the ICU are extremely critical. There are a lot of injured.” Mohammad said the victims he had seen were drifting in and out of consciousness. Many were on respirators.
Few hospitals in Idlib have the capacity to deal with the symptoms of chemical attacks due to the repeated bombing of medical facilities by forces loyal to the government and lack sufficient oxygen tanks to treat victims.
Idlib is one of the last bastions of rebel control in Syria, and has been subjected to a relentless campaign of aerial bombardment despite a supposed ceasefire brokered this year by Russia and Turkey that was aimed at paving the way for political negotiations.
The raid in Khan Sheikhun indicates Assad’s growing confidence. He has wrested control of territory from the rebels, including the entire city of Aleppo, in recent months. His regime has benefited from the unflinching support of Moscow and Shia militias backed by Iran, as well as waning support for the opposition by its allies in the region and the new US administration.
The attack will refocus attention on the failure of the international community to prevent the worst abuses in Syria’s war, and casts doubt on a signature achievement of Obama’s government, which negotiated the presumed destruction of Assad’s chemical arsenal in 2013.
That deal followed the sarin gas attack on Ghouta, which nearly prompted a US intervention in the conflict. Since then, chemical attacks have continued on a smaller scale, mostly deploying chlorine gas, which was not covered by the deal because it has industrial uses.
However, a similar devastating attack to the Idlib strike took place in east Hama last December, with at least 93 people dying and several hundred more being wounded after exposure to what local authorities described as a nerve agent. Western intelligence agencies believe sarin was used in that attack, but were unable to retrieve biological samples that could prove their fears.
Smith said the recovery of samples would be pivotal to the investigation of the Idlib strike. “It is one of the most important things now to get biological samples, interviews and environmental samples, ideally from witnesses who can also give statements,” he said.
Rams Head Coach Sean McVay – – April 10, 2017
(Opening remarks)
“I think starting out this has been a long time coming for us. I know our whole coaching staff was really anxious to get to this day. Get around our players – start to get to know these guys. Really what Phase 1 represents for us is a chance to meet with our players and then they’ll get familiar with our strength and conditioning staff. It’s exclusively meetings for us as coaches and then a lot of strength and conditioning –getting themselves ready for Phase 2. But really the emphasis for us right now is on learning our systems and establishing our identity. We feel like today was a good start for us.”
(On the first impression he had of his team in terms of their general football IQ and the first impression he wanted to convey to the team)
“I think when you really look at it, you walk into that first team meeting – I was definitely very excited for it –but there was full attention, guys were locked in, they were engaged, they were ready to go, we had everybody there. I think it was definitely, exactly the way that we wanted to come off as a coaching staff. Really right now, it’s about building relationships with these guys. We got a chance – within the framework of offense, defense and special teams – to just kind of get the general things. Offensively, we’re talking about our style of play, our approach. Then we’re introducing formations, motions, and personnel groupings to the skilled players. It’s very early in the process. We’ve got some time right now, so we want to make sure we do a great job establishing a foundation so that it can be conducive for that long term success. But I think today went as well as we could’ve hoped and looking forward to tomorrow already.”
(On what the core message was when he first addressed the team today and how much time he spent thinking about what he wanted to say in that first team meeting)
“I think it’s really important, like we talked about, establishing our identity. We’ve sat down as a coaching staff, as an organization and really going back to the interview process. Talking about what we felt like was going to be conducive for having a long-term vision for our players – what was going to help us have that sustained success over time and it’s about establishing our identity. You see the t-shirts that people are walking around with, with the ‘We not Me’. It’s always going to be about the team. All the decisions that we want to make are going to be from a standpoint of what’s in the best interest of the team, before any personal agendas and that’s what we want to embody as a coaching staff and with our players as well.”
(On whether the t-shirts were his idea)
“It was a collective idea – the ‘We not Me’ approach. It was our idea.”
(On whether the whole team was present today)
“We did. Everybody was accounted for, as far as I know. It was the turnout that we expected. I think the players felt as excited as we were as a coaching staff. Getting that feeling from those guys was exactly what we were hoping for and that’s what we got.”
(On how he keeps from going too fast too soon to start the offseason)
“I think it’s important for you to lay out a foundation, have a long-term vision, (we know) that we have 10 weeks with this offseason program. We’ve laid out the first two weeks, knowing that today we had an hour and a half with the meetings and then for the next three days this week, we’ll have an hour and 40 minutes. I think it’s very important for us, within the framework of each position, to allocate that time accordingly. If we have that foundation built, then it can kind of allow us to stay on track. For me, the excitement is something where you get excited to come in here and really getting these players in here, you feel like a coach again. We’ve all been chomping at the bit and I think I share the same feeling as our entire coaching staff, that’s it’s nice to feel like a coach again, get these guys in here and get into the meeting room. And then really, Phase Two will represent getting to be on the grass with them and start to teach and work some drill work on the field.”
(On if he got a chance to meet with QB Jared Goff)
“We’ve had little conversations here and there. Today really represents that first time where you’re meeting. It was all kind of skill-based, we were together the entire time with our quarterbacks, tight ends, receivers and our running backs. Once we get further into it, then we will start to have more individual time. I think those times are great opportunities for me, (offensive coordinator) Matt (LaFleur) and (quarterbacks coach) Greg (Olson) to get to know those guys. You want to be able to allow your coaches to coach, empower those assistants. I think when we start to have that individual time allocated to the meetings, that’s when the position coaches can get their things going.”
(On how much of a feel he thinks Jared Goff has for the offense right now and how much work is ahead of him)
“I think for our quarterbacks as a whole, there’s a lot of work. It’s just making sure we have that one day approach. If you look at it where you want to go from A to Z, then you end up getting overwhelmed with the amount of information. But I think as long as you just take little steps at a time, that continuous improvement one day at a time, then I feel like that will lead to the things that we want. But we’re just focused on making sure that these guys have a good ownership and we’re trying to get these guys, ultimately, to be an extension of our coaching staff. It’s going to be a process, we have to be patient and committed to it, but I think with the demeanor and the disposition that I sense from all three of our quarterbacks, we feel good about that happening.”
(On if bringing in CB Nickell Robey-Coleman means that DB Lamarcus Joyner will move to safety)
“I think when you look at it, just evaluating the tape, you flip the tape on, you watch Lamarcus Joyner, this guy is a football player. He shows up and you want to find as many ways to get him on the field as possible. Whether that’s him at nickel – which I think he’s one of the elite players at that spot in this league – or the safety, I think you see an instinctual player that has a great feel for the game. And I think our coaching staff has done a nice job targeting him as a player that we have to make sure that he’s on the grass, he’s competing. And anytime that you add depth like a Nickell (Robey-Coleman) does add, where he’s played a lot of football, it gives you some versatility to move a special player like Lamarcus around potentially.”
(On how much of a premium he puts on receivers with speed)
“It’s extremely important. I think one of the things you felt fortunate looking at some of the receivers they have in Washington, guys that could take the top off coverage. When you’re trying to operate with some of your play-action game where you have your three-level throws – the top-shelf, the intermediate and then that flare-control underneath – somebody that can stretch the field vertical, and if a team isn’t honoring it, then you make them pay with those big plays. The offenses that I’ve been fortunate to be a part of, we’ve done a nice job creating explosives. And that’s definitely something that we’re looking to do here and those speed guys give you the best opportunity to be able to do that.”
(On the adjustment for Lamarcus Joyner to move to safety)
“I think it will be an adjustment. I think our coaching staff has done a nice job figuring out ways we can make that transition smooth. There are some different exit angles when you’re talking about playing a deep half or the middle of the field. I think, from an underneath defender, he’s been doing things like that. A lot of those things that you ask a down safety, when you’re playing in your single-high defenses, to do are very similar to what he’s done the last couple of years from that nickel spot. I think it’s just getting comfortable, he is an instinctual player, and just understanding some of those exit angles, some of those break points, based on starting from 15 yards off as opposed to down where you’re 10-yards within the line of scrimmage will be a little bit different. But I think you’ve seen examples of great guys be able to do both across the league and we’re hoping that he’ll be able to do the same thing for us.”
(On if there are other guys he anticipates making positional shifts like OLB Robert Quinn)
“I think when you really look at a 3-4 to 4-3, with Coach Phillips’ system, like we’ve talked about a little bit, they are a one-gap penetrating front. For all intents and purposes, Robert will line up as the Will linebacker, but he’s a rush player, he’ll play a similar role to what DeMarcus Ware did in Denver for Wade the last couple of years. I think he’s going to still be, he’s going to be an elite rusher in this league for years and that’s what we’re hoping to do with him moving forward. I don’t think his role will change too much. I think you look at some of the additions that we made on the offensive line with (T) Andrew Whitworth, we’ll shuffle some guys around and then bring a veteran with (C) John Sullivan in. I think it’ll allow us to be able to move some guys around, get a feel to see if this is a position that they’re a little bit more comfortable with and will ultimately make us better as a unit up front. Defensively, I think Lamarcus is probably the best example of a guy that will have to do that transition. Other than that, we feel good about where the guys are at and the personnel we have on defense.”
(On if OL Rob Havenstein could play right guard)
“I think when he was coming out, you looked at Rob as a potential guy to be able to move inside and do some of those things. Really, going back two years, I thought he’s put some excellent tape out there as far as playing that right tackle position. You talk to people that have been around him – we’ve got (assistant offensive line coach) Andy Dickerson, who will working with our offensive line again this year – him being able to communicate what a sharp guy Rob is, how he’s able to process things above the neck. I think he and (OL) Greg (Robinson) working in coordination, in unison, will be able to help both of those guys. And then you add John Sullivan to the mix, I know from being with him in Washington, he did a great job communicating, has a really impressive big picture understanding from that center spot. And then looking at ‘Rog’ (OL Rodger Saffold) at left guard and Whitworth at left tackle – and you see good things out of (OL) Jamon Brown. I think we’ve got some good depth up front and I’m excited to see how these guys process that information and then translate it to the grass once we get the OTAs started in Phase Three.”
(On how healthy John Sullivan was last year and if his back issues are behind him)
“Yeah, that’s what we’re hoping. When you really look at it, if you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have known he had any back issues. I think he’s put great tape throughout the course of his career on film and when he played for us last year, it was 130-or-so snaps, I thought he did an excellent job. You really can’t undervalue or underappreciate that communication from that center spot – handling the cadence, handling the calls up front – because it all starts with that spot, most of our calls fit off of that. John was a guy that I was really impressed with, Being around him in Washington, you almost felt like you were talking to a coach. You talk about your quarterback wanting to be an extension of the coaching staff, the center position is very similar where he’s got to have a big-picture ownership of what we’re trying to get done, what we’re trying to accomplish up front. And John is certainly someone that’s shown he is capable of handling that.”
(On if there will be any give and take as far as terminology is concerned within the schemes)
“I think when you really look at it, from our systems, what’s very important, we’ll talk about our language that we’ll use now. I think it does help to have an understanding of what something was called prior to this, to help with that communication. But we are going to utilize Coach Phillips’ system with the defensive terminology. And then we’ve kind of collaborated with some of the coaches that we have offensively. And then you also try to make sure, when you’re teaching it, does this make sense? You get a chance to really go back and evaluate some of the terminology that we might’ve used in Washington and how we can make a couple of tweaks – from a starting point, if you know nothing, this at least makes sense from a teaching progression. So that’s something that we want to be aware of that we will do. And then when you look at what ‘Bones’ (special teams coordinator John Fassel) will do, that’ll be very similar. I think the success that they’ve had on special teams is something that we feel good about. And now the challenge is, can we take it to the next level for those guys. That’s kind of how we’ll approach that. But I think you always just want to make sure that, from a teaching progression, your words mean something so that it can resonate and stick with the players.”
(On why accountability was important for him to emphasize in the team meeting)
“I think any time that you’re really just looking at football as a whole, I think it’s very important for each player, each coach, to be accountable, take full responsibility for our performance, for your actions, no excuses, no complaining. We’re looking for mentally tough players, mentally tough coaches – you take accountability, you take full responsibility for whatever was done. And if it’s something that we need to get corrected and fixed, we all do that and we move forward and we don’t blink. That was kind of how we implemented the accountability process and why that’s so important for us moving forward.”
***
Rams QB Jared Goff – – April 10, 2017
(On his initial reaction to the first team meeting with Head Coach Sean McVay, as well as his first impressions of him)
“Yeah, it’s been a great day. I think there’s some really good, new energy here. Coach McVay and the rest of his staff have done a great job exuding that energy and really letting us feel it. I think it’s really a fresh start for a lot of people. I think it’s a really good feeling. Just freshness is the best way to describe it.”
(On if this “freshness” makes him want to get on the field faster than he can, with respect to the league rules)
“Yeah, of course. You always want to get out there and do your thing, but a lot of the ground work we need to do first, and learning the new stuff. Getting on the same page, with not only the coaches, but with each other, and just knowing what we need to do on the field before we get out there.”
(On how much of an adjustment it is for him to learn a new offense)
“There’s going to be, obviously, some time to put in for everyone. That’s part of a new staff. I think the league sets it up to where you get to start earlier, and get a chance to get in there and get a head start on it a little bit, which does help. The next few weeks, we’ll dig into it, and pick it up as fast as we can until we get on the field.”
(On how much of a feel he has for Coach McVay’s new offense)
“Good feel, good feel. From what I know, and from what I’ve seen, it’s obviously a great offense. And from what I’ve heard, I’ve talked to quarterbacks around the league and coaches and what not, and I haven’t heard a bad word about it. So, I’m excited for it.”
(On if the changes made to the offensive line this offseason reassures that the team is committed to protecting him)
“Yeah, I think so. Anytime they make any sort of investment on the offensive side of the ball, especially, it’s always helpful for myself and for everyone on the offensive side of the ball. I think that all of the additions we made offensively and defensively were all great. Obviously, (LT Andrew) Whitworth is going to be great for me, as well as (C) John (Sullivan), and (WR) Robert (Woods), and even (RB) Lance (Dunbar) will be great. All of those guys, I’m excited for them, and they’re excited to be here.”
(On his experience working with Tom House and Justin Dadue on his throwing mechanics this offseason)
“It was great. It was down in Newport (Calif.), so not too far. Nice little drive down there, it was fun. It was great. I had a lot of people recommend it, coaches included, and I went down there and did a lot of work for them. I felt like I came away a lot better player. I’m excited to continue to work with them”
(On anything in particular he took away from working with Tom House and Justin Dadue)
“Just the way they explain things makes so much sense. I was able to get so much out of it. I don’t know any particulars as far as mechanically. There’s just so much that goes on in a throw that you really didn’t know until you go down there and can experience it, and can go through it. Now you know when you do make a bad throw, you want to limit them. But when you do, you know why. It’s not just, ‘Oh, that was a bad one,’ and move on. You know why and how to fix it.”
(On how will going through this phase of OTAs be different for him as opposed to last, in terms of establishing leadership)
“Obviously, I’m much more comfortable with the guys. I’ve been here for a year. I know everyone’s name. They all know my name. I can talk to, basically, anyone. I have a really good feel for everyone. That’ll obviously help. As well as just being comfortable around the facility. Knowing where everything is, comfortability – you can’t overstate it. It’s really important, as for the quarterback position, and leadership overall.”
(On knowing he’s the presumed starter, as opposed to this point last year, and if that changes the way he approaches this season)
“Same thing, it’s great. Day-in and day-out, I’m going to do my best to continue to get better and continue to improve, and be the best player I can be. Obviously, it’s helpful knowing coming into it that who I’ll be working with – the (offensive) line, the receivers, all the people I’ll be working with is helpful. At the same time, it’s a daily process to continue to get better.”
(On his expectations for the impact that can be made as a result from the changes that were implemented in the offseason)
“I think I speak for the whole team, I think we’re a lot closer to where we want to be than people may think. We’ve got the players, we’ve got the talent, we’ve got all the pieces we need, really. It’s just about putting it together now. The coaches and the system we’re going to run is going to be the glue for everything we need. I know everyone is excited to be here, excited to be back. Like I said, I think we’re a lot closer than a lot of people may think.”
***
Rams Linebacker Alec Ogletree – – April 10, 2017
(On the first day back for the offseason program)
“It’s exciting. First day back, everybody’s excited to be here, to get back to doing football. It was a long offseason – and ours kind of got shortened this year because you can come in earlier (with a new head coach). It was a good first day, got good work in. Just great to get back around the building.”
(On how much communication he’s had with defensive coordinator Wade Phillips)
“I’ve talked to him throughout the offseason, a little bit here and there. The guy is a legend coach. For me, as a young linebacker, to be under a guy like him is definitely going to help me out a lot. Like I said, first day and I’m definitely excited to get back in the building and just kind of start the install and learn different stuff.”
(On his first impression of Head Coach Sean McVay in the team meeting)
“Very energetic – he’s a guy that brings a lot of emotion and he wanted to set a different culture for us. I felt like, for day one, coming in as a new head coach, he did a great job of addressing the team and letting us know what he expects from us and what we should expect from him.”
(On Coach McVay’s message to the team)
“Like I said, just a whole different culture. Just making sure we’re accountable and dependable, all kind of different stuff like that to set a different culture for us and get us on the right step going forward.”
(On if accountability was missing last season)
“I think we didn’t do what we needed to do last year, obviously. But this is a new year and that’s what our focus is on now. We have a whole new coaching staff – even new players in the building. For me, going on my fifth year, I’m definitely excited for this opportunity now.”
(On if he has already noticed a different culture)
“Yeah, it could just be from having a new coaching staff or whatever. But just meeting Coach McVay and the rest of the coaches, you can definitely tell it’s a different culture, as far as what they expect from us and how things are going to go. It’s exciting for me and some of the guys that have been on the team for a while. We feel like something that’s kind of been missing from us, from this organization. It’s going to be good, we’re definitely excited about it and ready for move forward.”
(On if he knows enough about Coach Phillips’ defense to know what might be different)
“I don’t know a ton about this defense, but I’ve actually played a little bit in college. I guess with (former defensive coordinator) Gregg Williams kind of last year, we kind of would interchange as far as 3-4 and 4-3. With this defense, it’s definitely going to open up a lot of guys on the front end to have one-on-one pass rush – me and the other linebacker, Mark (Barron), to be in coverage and help rush also. It’s definitely exciting and we’re just ready to get to it.”
(On if Sean McVay seems like the youngest coach in NFL history when he’s addressing the team)
“He definitely seems like a guy that’s been around a while. You can gravitate toward a guy like that because he’s young, energetic and you can definitely tell he has a lot of wisdom about him. He’s got coach Wade (Phillips), got (assistant head coach/linebackers) Joe, all these different coaches that have been in the league a while to help him along. Like I said, he’s going to do a great job for us.”
(On how much responsibility he feels to learn everything quickly and help out as the middle linebacker)
“I feel a great deal of responsibility. What I did last year, in my first year starting at middle linebacker, that’s what I did, I took pride in getting ahead of the curve and trying to learn as much as I can before the meetings actually took place. I tried to do that this offseason as well, to learn a couple of things here and there before the first day we get here. Like I said, it’s been good, pretty easy install, it’s not as complicated as it was for us last year. It’s going to be good.”
(On how OLB Robert Quinn can adapt to his new role in the 3-4 defense)
“It’s really kind of the same for him. From my understanding, what we’re going to ask him to do is going to be pretty much the same – do you and do your ‘Bernie’ (sack dance celebration) and all that stuff. It’ll be good, we’re definitely looking to get him back and stay healthy. Having him on the edge and (OLB) Connor (Barwin) on the other, just all the guys out there is going to be real good for us.”
(On how much it will change the defense if Quinn can stay healthy)
“He’s a game-changer. When he’s on the field, you have to account for him. like you said, to get him back and make sure he stays healthy is definitely going to help our defense out a lot and help our team out a lot – just having him on the field and out there contributing.”
(On if he has had any communication with the team regarding his contract situation)
“It’ll happen when it happens. Right now, my focus is being here for OTAs and going through the install. I’ll be here, not really worried about the contract thing.”
(On his first impressions with the new additions on defense)
“Great guys. Meeting them for the first time, actually seeing them on TV on other teams and seeing how well they did. Definitely thrilled to have them on the team here with us.”
***
Rams Running Back Todd Gurley – – April 10, 2017
(On how he thinks the offense is shaping up after free agency and how it may help him)
“I’m just focusing on what’s now, not really focusing on the future. We added some great guys from other teams. Taking it day-by-day, let that come when it comes.”
(On how he thinks he fits in with Coach McVay’s offense and if he’s had the chance to familiarize himself with the offense)
“No not really. But I know he’s had successful offenses in the past. We wouldn’t have hired him if we didn’t think he was a good coach. Definitely looking forward to it. ”
(On what kind of impressions Coach McVay has made on the team so far)
“You just see the energy out of him. It’s his first head coaching job and I’m pretty sure he’s excited. Has a great offensive scheme and like I said, we’re just ready to work with him. He’s hyped up about it, just like we are.”
(On whether there is anything he is looking to focus and work on during the offseason program)
“Just getting better, just getting better every day. Taking it day-by-day and making it a better offseason than I’ve had in the past.”
(On whether this year’s offseason has been different than how he spent last year’s offseason)
“Yeah, different than last year. Obviously, a long process. Last offseason, I took a lot more time off than this year – just getting back into it.”
(On how easy it was to flip the page on 2016 and move on to 2017)
“It’s easy. It’s another year. I’ve been playing this game my whole life. It’s just another offseason. Each offseason you want to make it better than the previous year – just focus on getting better.”
(On what the first team meeting with Coach McVay was like)
“Just the typical team meeting – putting in all the rules, what we expect out of this season, what he expects from us. We’re just excited. He’s a great guy, great coach. We’re just ready to work with him.”
(On if he’s had the chance to look at the offense Coach McVay intends to put in place and what he’s excited about in terms of Coach McVay’s approach offensively)
“No, not really. Obviously, like I said I’m just focusing on day one installments. When practices come, then we’ll have a chance to get a feel for it and see what we like. But like I said, we’re just excited.”
(On if Coach McVay seems like a realty young guy compared to coaches he’s played for in the past)
“Yeah, I mean he is a young guy (laughs). But, he’s got that energy about him, that swagger about him that you like in the coach and it’s definitely great to see that. Just the energy, his background, what he’s done with offenses the past couple of years. It’s always a good thing to see that.”
(On what stands out to him as the reason for not being able to get the running game going last year and what he thinks needs to be done to prevent that from happening again in 2017)
“We just all lost and didn’t win our one-on-ones as much as we should have won them. Kind of just move on from there.”
***
Rams DT Aaron Donald – – April 10, 2017
(On if the team needs to prove anything this year)
“I think that’s the mindset you’ve got to have anytime you’re starting fresh, new coach and everything. We all left with a nasty taste in our mouth. I’m pretty sure everybody was grinding out there, preparing ourselves to get ready for the OTAs and upcoming season, so this won’t happen again. That’s what the change was for. I got to sit down and talk to these coaches, and get to pick from their brains a little bit. I’m just excited to get started.”
(On what it means for him to work under defensive coordinator Wade Phillips)
“Same thing, we’re still going to be a three technique, and still penetrate, get up field type of guy. I got to come here during the offseason and go to sit down and talk with him. I like his game plan and how he’s going to use us, and the position he’s going to put us in to have success, and try to make plays, and try to win games.”
(On how the transition into a 3-4 scheme impact the defense, and if he expects any complications or adjustments from the returning defensive starters)
“It’s a 3-4, but like I said, it’s still a nose tackle, it’s still a three technique, and things like that. It’s called a 3-4 because, I guess the guys on the side are standing, but like I said, it’s the same for us. We’re still doing what we’re doing, penetrating, getting up field, and trying to make plays in the backfield.”
(On how exciting it is working with defensive coordinator Wade Phillips)
“Real exciting. He’s coached a lot of big time players, and he’s one of the best to do it. Anytime you go from one great defensive coordinator in (former defensive coordinator) Gregg (Williams), and then go to another one, it just makes me a better football player. I get to learn from these guys.”
(On the difference in temperament from Williams to Phillips)
“Yeah, he’s more laid backed than Gregg. But, he’s still a great coach.”
(On if he’s had prior playing experience in a 3-4 defensive scheme)
“My sophomore year in college, it was the same as this defense. It was a 3-4, but really a 4-3. I played a little bit of (defensive) end. I moved around a lot, so I’m used to it.”
(On if he thinks Phillips will move him around more than what he’s used to in the past)
“We’re going to see. I’m comfortable wherever he puts me. Like I always say, rushing the passer – it doesn’t matter if it’s outside, inside, nose tackle, I can do it. I did it before, so I’m just comfortable wherever he puts me.”
(On his impression of Coach McVay during the first full team meeting)
“He’s got the mindset to win, and like he said about holding everybody accountable. I think that’s what we need to do. Not letting each other get comfortable, not letting each other slack, pushing each other so we can have success on the field come game time.”
(On if he’s noticed a different culture around the organization)
“Yeah, everybody came with a fresh start, a different mindset. Like I said, we left with a real bad taste in our mouths last year, horrible taste. I’m pretty sure everybody is ready, and I’m ready too. So, we’re going to push each other, hold everybody accountable, and try to get ready through this process to get ready for upcoming games.”
(On how much he prides himself on holding his teammates accountable)
“Anytime you can sit there as a leader, you got to. You got to do things a certain way. I’m not the vocal guy, so I lead by example. Me doing what I got to do on the field, off the field, and letting these guys watch what I do, and just trying to lead by example. And that’s not making bonehead mistakes and things like that. You got to be a little smarter at times, and not let frustration get to me. But, it’s a part of growing.”
Old argument getting new legs these days.
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Many Doctors Prefer Single-Payer Health Care Because of Demands by Insurance Companies
MDs are increasingly becoming collection agents for insurers, who pad their higher incomes.Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
After the House bill defunding Obamacare and Medicaid failed, progressives in Congress and activists have been pushing for what they’ve wanted all along—to open up Medicare enrollment as a step toward a single-payer health system.
A new poll of 500 physicians by the business networking website LinkedIn found that nearly half, 48 percent, were in favor of a single-payer system, with 32 percent opposed and 21 percent undecided. What’s stunning about LinkedIn’s survey was not just the show of support for single-payer, but the comments and explanations from physicians about their industry’s greed-driven codependent relationship to insurers.
“As a doctor, it’s really against my best interest to support single-payer healthcare,” said Sean Kivlehan, the associate director of the international emergency medicine fellowship at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in LinkedIn’s report about the poll by Beth Kutcher. “It reduces my earning potential. At the same time, it’s about human rights and taking care of people that need help—that is why I do this work.”
Anyone who’s been surprised by medical insurance bills, high deductibles or spoken to the non-medical specialists after seeing physicians to try to find less expensive ways to access new drugs has crossed paths with this often-hidden codependent relationship. What’s never discussed by caregivers or insurance companies is how insurers rely on physicians’ offices as collection agents—and then in turn, pay these providers more money than they might otherwise earn in a single-payer system.
Kutcher reported that many medical professionals said they would accept earning less if it meant fewer dealings with insurers (which averages four hours a week), less insurance bureaucracy, more time with patients, and a freer conscience as a result.
“Even though doctors acknowledged that they might take a financial hit under a single-payer system, many respondents said it would be more than mitigated by getting out of the collection business,” she writes. “In other words, even if they earned less, there would be more patient care and less of the aggravation that comes with negotiating with and tracking down payment from multiple insurance companies.”
What’s stopping more physicians from supporting single payer? Some cited the political arguments about free markets, saying that competition and financial rewards in medicine have driven new advances and that could be stymied. More telling, however, was a trap awaiting medical school graduates. Many owe $100,000 or more in student loans, and partnering with private insurers as collection agents helps them get out of debt.
“Unlike other countries with single payer healthcare, medical school in the United States is very expensive—79% of med students were graduating with more than $100,000 in debt, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges,” Kutcher writes. “U.S. doctors need to generate a substantial income to pay that off—something that doctors in other countries don’t need to worry about.”
The way this ends up working goes to the heart of why for-profit healthcare is bad for physicians, bad for their staffs and bad for patients—bad for everyone except insurers and others whose profits come from pressuring doctors to collect more in fees.
Incredibly, the poll’s interviews with doctors suggest this nasty cycle is getting worse.
“While commercial insurance providers may be the most lucrative payers, they’re increasingly moving toward plans that require doctors to collect more money from patients before they can even submit a claim for reimbursement,” Kutcher wrote. “As many as 29% of people with employer-sponsored health insurance are enrolled in a high-deductible plan, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And people with high-deductible plans are more likely to delay care for financial reasons.”
The way patients see this system is when they interact with the billing staff at doctor’s offices. A study in the peer-reviewed journal, BMC Health Services Research, found that billing and insurance expenses totaled $70 billion for medical practices in 2012. The poll found two-thirds of the 500 doctors surveyed “implemented measures” to collect from patients with high-deductible plans. A fifth said they had to hire financial counselors.
It’s not new to hear doctors complain about arguing with insurers after their treatments are rejected or health plans don’t cover certain drugs. It’s also not new to hear doctors complain that it’s hard to get to know patients after they change insurers and medical records get lost in that transition process.
But the reality is a stunning snapshot of healthcare in America: Private insurers are increasingly treating physicians’ offices as their collection agents, pushing medical office front desks to grab more money from patients, while doctors have little choice but to go along to pay off their student debts, or accept it as the way to earn a six-figure income.
No wonder the prescription from nearly half of the physicians surveyed by LinkedIn is to get private insurers out of the healthcare field. The for-profit system is sick and isn’t allowing too many doctors to practice medicine the best way they know how.
Jay Gruden eyeing three ways to fix Redskins’ red-zone woes
Meaningless stats. Yards to nowhere. That was the chief gripe against a Redskins offense that last season rolled up the third most yards in the NFL (6,454) yet ranked 29th in red-zone scoring.
Despite all that productivity, with quarterback Kirk Cousins topping 4,000 passing yards en route to a second consecutive single-season franchise record, the offense was among the league’s least effective when it mattered most.
Once inside the opponents’ 20, the Redskins scored touchdowns just 45 percent of the time. A respectable goal for red-zone efficiency is above 60 percent — something achieved by 10 of the league’s 32 teams in 2016 and three of the four to reach the conference championships. (New England, Atlanta and Green Bay were 64 percent or better; Pittsburgh was just above 54 percent).
Based on offseason moves, it might seem the Redskins’ front office has addressed the problem by adding height to the receiving corps — 6-foot-4 Terrelle Pryor, for starters, and 6-3 Brian Quick, who’s expected to add depth.
But in remarks at last week’s NFL owners meeting in Phoenix, Coach Jay Gruden conceded that other fixes are required for the Redskins to finish more drives this season rather than settle for field goals. The coach highlighted three things he believes will help: In addition to bigger wide receivers, a more impactful running game and continued progression by Cousins.
“There’s other issues, without a doubt,” said Gruden when asked whether height was the solution. “Our running game has got to improve down there, or what runs we call down there have to improve. And some of the pass concepts, we’ve got to get our quarterback more comfortable. And sometimes when you call a pass down there, when they drop eight guys in coverage, it’s hard. The windows are very few and far between. It’s something Kirk can work on as far as buying time and keeping plays extended for a little while longer. So there are a lot of things we can work on as coaches and the players can work on and we can get them fixed.”
Given the number of offseason changes — a new play-caller (Gruden), new offensive coordinator (Matt Cavanaugh), new quarterbacks coach (Kevin O’Connell) and the radically overhauled receiving corps, the offense must come together quickly in minicamp and the preseason.
Here’s a closer look at how Gruden intends to cure the red-zone woes:
>> Bigger receiving corps: After allowing the combined 2,000 receiving yards of Pierre Garcon and DeSean Jackson to depart via free agency, the Redskins made a conscious decision to reload with height and length, signing Pryor and Quick during free agency. Second-year player Josh Doctson, at 6-2, is the wild card. Limited to two catches his rookie season before Achilles ailments landed him on injured reserve, last season’s first-round pick has proclaimed himself “100 percent” on social media.
“I like big receivers personally, but I also like little ones like Jamison [Crowder, at 5-8],” Gruden said. “But I think it’s a great advantage to have, when you have 6-foot-5, 6-foot-3 with a guy that has a 40-inch vertical, then you throw Crowder in there with a great change of direction.
“… There are some things that you are more comfortable doing with a bigger [receiver], like watch them run under a catch and all that stuff. The physicality at the line of scrimmage and some of the route concepts might change a little, but not a whole lot.”
>> More potent running game: The depth chart heading into offseason workouts is clear: Rob Kelley finished the 2016 season as the Redskins’ starter, so he’ll start 2017 workouts in the same role. Gruden hasn’t written off Matt Jones, the third-round pick in the 2015 draft, whose fumbles exiled him to the bench for the final nine games of last season. But to earn back a spot in the rotation, he’ll have to regain Gruden’s trust in competition with Mack Brown and, quite possibly, a rookie added in the NFL draft.
For now, it’s Kelley’s starting job to lose.
“Not one time did I feel like it was too big for him, not once,” Gruden gushed of Kelley’s performance as a rookie free agent. “That’s a hell of a thing to say for a guy out of Tulane who only had a couple carries his senior year. He came right in, he competes on every play. He had some of the greatest two-yard runs that I’ve seen. He gets back to the line of scrimmage, he keeps his feet moving, he protects the ball, he’s going to get better in pass protection. Catching the ball, he does a nice job. He dropped a couple here or there, but for the most part he catches the ball. I really think, the vision that he has, I think he’ll be more patient as a runner this year.”
Chris Thompson’s role as third-down special appears secure. But drafting a back isn’t out of the question. Said Gruden: “There are some special players in this draft that if they’re available it would be hard to pass up, quite frankly.”
>> Cousins’s progression: This is largely out of Gruden’s hands. It’s on Cousins, in his third year as an NFL starter, to improve in the intangibles that distinguish great quarterbacks. It starts with timing and familiarity with his receivers, and Cousins has already started working with Pryor and Doctson in throwing sessions supervised by ESPN analyst Jon Gruden. Their height — with Pryor and Doctson six and four inches taller than Jackson, respectively, is something Cousins must adjust to.
Beyond that, a coach can’t do much more than call a smart play once a team is in the red zone. Given the cramped confines inside the 20, it’s on the quarterback to buy time, extend plays and improvise, if need be.
“I think [Cousins] will get better the more he plays, without a doubt,” Gruden said. “But it’s something that you can’t just say, ‘Okay, I’m going to work on this today.’ It’s just got to be a ‘feel’ thing and a patient thing. The more he plays, the more he feels it, the better he’ll be. … I think you can’t force the issue either. Then you’re asking for trouble — more interceptions and sacks and all that — so that will come more natural to him. But that’s part of the process of growing as a quarterback.”
from http://www.turfshowtimes.com/2017/3/30/15122154/la-rams-2016-nfl-draft-grade-mel-kiper-jared-goff
Post-draft grade: B-
I suspect a lot of people think I should hammer this draft class, given Jared Goff’s first-year struggles, but there’s a problem with that: We said all along that Goff would struggle early on based on the system he was coming from at Cal and the lack of help on this Rams roster, so should we be surprised? I wrote at the time, “I’m a fan of Goff … [but] they’ll need to be extremely patient and find ways to protect him.” When Goff played, the Rams had no run game to take pressure off him and didn’t pass-protect well, and his receivers were a parade of dropped passes, including some that bounced off hands and chests and right to a defender for a pick. Does this look good so far? Of course not. Is it all because of Goff? No way.
After Goff, that’s just about it. They like Tyler Higbee’s potential, but he had just 11 catches. Same story with Pharoh Cooper, who had 14. It’s all about Goff at this point, I just hope he gets a real shot — and some help.
New grade: C
Topic: different folks on McVay
from Inside the Minds of the NFL’s Six New Coaches
Understanding their football philosophies gives insight into the draftAndy Benoit
…
Sean McVay
Los Angeles RamsAs an offensive designer, McVay relies heavily on geometry, especially through the air. Many of his pass designs involve multiple routes working together to exploit a predicted defensive coverage. He tries to regulate those coverages with his receiver spacing and distribution. He’ll figure out what a defensive coordinator calls versus specific formations in certain down and distances, and he’ll align his receivers in places that compromise those calls. This can be very nuanced. For example, there’s a big difference between a receiver lining up, say, 12 yards from the sideline versus 10 yards from the sideline. Where receivers align in relation to each other is also huge, as is presnap motion. With this sort of approach, you need a variety of different styles of receivers. As the offensive coordinator in Washington, McVay had a true speedster in DeSean Jackson, an inside possession receiver in Pierre Garçon, a shifty slot weapon in Jamison Crowder and a mismatch-making tight end in Jordan Reed. The skill sets of all four players complemented each other. The Rams’ receiving corps is decidedly less diverse. (And less talented.) Ex-Bill Robert Woods is essentially Garçon minus some strength and Crowder minus some quickness. Tavon Austin looks like a slot receiver but isn’t patient enough to play there. The rest of the receiving corps is comprised of backups. To run McVay’s scheme, the Rams need several new wideouts.
The 7 Biggest Cons In The GOP’s Obamacare Repeal Pitch
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/eight-biggest-cons-obamacare-repeal
In the face of bad reviews from health care policy experts, the insurance industry and providers, and a revolt from some members of their own caucus, Republican leaders are scrambling to sell their Obamacare replacement bill by employing a boat loads of half-truths, inaccuracies, contradictions and metaphors.
The legislation, the American Health Care Act, would pay for a major tax break for the wealthy with massive cuts to Medicaid, while shifting around the tax credits provided by Obamacare to the benefit of young people and middle-income earners, with the old and low-income earners bearing the burden.
Here are the seven biggest cons Republicans are peddling in their pitch to sell Obamacare repeal.
Obamacare is “collapsing.” –House Speaker Paul Ryan This is the con of yesterday, the con of today, the con of tomorrow. It plays twin roles of justifying Republicans’ rush to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and giving them cover if and when there is dissatisfaction with what they replace it with: You think this is bad, but it would have been worse if we let Obamacare collapse.
However, the CBO last week made clear — backing up what multiple other analyses have said — that Obamacare is not in or heading towards a death spiral.
“In CBO and JCT’s assessment, however, the nongroup market would probably be stable in most areas under either current law or the legislation,” the CBO said.
Yes, there have been some trouble spots, but the premium spikes seen this year were predicted by many to be one-time correction after insurers had underpriced their plans when first entering ACA marketplaces.
“Although most insurers will still report an underwriting loss for 2016, the losses will be smaller than in 2015. This means the changes made to network design and premium pricing are gaining traction, though more still needs to be done,” a report by S&P Global said late last year. “For 2017, we expect continued improvement, with more insurers reporting close to break-even or better results for this segment.”
To be fair, the CBO also said that the Republicans plan was not likely to lead to a market collapse either. It would, however, produce a new system of winners and losers, with insurance being more attractive and cheaper for younger people, as older consumers are pushed out.
“A lot of Obamacare, you really don’t have insurance because the deductibles are so high.” –President Donald Trump Republicans aren’t wrong in that there has been a trend towards higher deductibles, as consumers under the ACA have veered toward lower-premium, narrow-network plans. But as the CBO pointed, deductible and other out-of-pocket costs will rise even higher under their legislation.
There are a number of reasons that this stands to happen. One is that the bill repeals in 2020 the ACA’s cost-sharing reduction payments, which subsidizes insurers so that they can keep out-of-pocket costs down for low-income consumers.
It also repeals the ACA’s actuarial values requirement, which under the ACA set the standard for how much of a patient’s care plans have to cover. This will incentivize insurers to offer plans to that cover a smaller share of total medical costs, but with a cheaper premium that will be more attractive to young people. The repeal of actuarial values will also make it harder for consumers to compare the plans their shopping for, the CBO said.
We’re being more transparent than the Democrats’ “back-room deals, in the middle of the night, last-minute deals.” –Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA)
Even before Republicans had the opportunity to repeal Obamacare, a favorite GOP talking point is that the law was rushed through on a party line vote. This account skips over 15 months of of public hearings and the attempts by Democrats – led by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and then Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) – to get Republicans to the table in health care reform, not to mention a presidential primary where some of the major questions Democrats were grappling with were extensively litigated in public.
Yes, towards the end of the process, some last-minute changes were made to the bill to shore up its needed 60 votes in the Senate. But that doesn’t compare to a process where a bill was dropped publicly on a Monday, marked-up in two simultaneous overnight committee hearings on a Wednesday, with the intent of bringing it to the floor two weeks later, and with a CBO score coming somewhere in between. “Medicaid is a program that by and large has decreased the ability for folks to gain access to care.” –Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price
The GOP line about Medicaid, which stands to see the biggest changes of all the aspects of the Republicans’ legislation, is that it’s already useless for its enrollees – an assertion thats been contradicted by numerous studies, including Commonwealth Fund’s recent finding that states that expanded Medicaid saw greater gains in health care access than those that didn’t.
Here’s White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer trying to argue otherwise:
And I think it’s really interesting — I mean, one of the things that Dr. Price mentioned that is so apropos of this is, having a card does not mean you have insurance. It’s like handing someone a blank check — it doesn’t mean that you have money, it means you have a check. And I think what we’ve seen over the last few years with Obamacare is you can have an insurance card, but that doesn’t mean someone is going to take it, and it sure doesn’t mean that it’s going to be affordable. And there’s a big difference between having a card and having healthcare that’s affordable. And that’s the difference that we’re trying to solve right now.
Not only are Republicans misrepresenting Medicaid in its current state, their proposal to overhaul Medicaid stands to make coverage worse for enrollees.Here’s why: the GOP bill transforms its federal financing from an open-ended match rate to a per capita cap where the funding states receive is limited by the number and types — in five broad categories — of enrollees in their programs each year.
Because the metric the bill uses to increase the cap rises at a lower rate than traditional Medicaid spending, and it doesn’t anticipate unexpected hikes in spending, like the introduction a new drug, the share of the program states will have the burden of paying will grow over time. States will either have to find new revenues — by way of taxes or budget cuts elsewhere — to make up for the shortfall, or cut their spending on the program. Shrinking the number of people on the program via work requirements, enrollment caps or otherwise, doesn’t make senses as a money saver in a per capita capped system because that means even less funding from the feds.
Instead, the pressure will be on states to reduce the benefits they offer enrollees, impose cost-sharing requirements, or squeeze providers on the payment side. All three options point in a direction where states will be less generous, less comprehensive and more narrow, in terms of providers, in the Medicaid programs they offer residents, instead of more.
“It will drive down reimbursement over time, and we’re going to start stripping care away,” Randy Oostra, president and chief executive of the provider network ProMedica Health System, told the New York Times. “They may have Medicaid, but it’ll be so stripped down that they basically won’t have coverage.”
The initial drop in coverage is no big deal, because “freedom.”
The CBO anticipated an immediate drop in coverage if and when the GOP plan is implemented due to the repeal of an individual mandate right way.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has spun this has a positive, arguing “[O]ur plan is not about forcing people to buy expensive, one-size-fits-all coverage.” The point has been echoed by other Republicans.
“CBO said that after we restore the freedom for people to buy health insurance if they want it, 14 million people will choose not to buy it. It will be their choice once again, no longer a mandate in Washington D.C.,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) said at a mark-up of the bill last week.
But the lack of individual mandate has broader effects.
Healthy people will be the most likely to abandon their insurance plans without the mandates, creating sicker risk pools and driving up premiums for those who remain.
“In 2018 and 2019, according to CBO and JCT’s estimates, average premiums for single policyholders in the nongroup market would be 15 percent to 20 percent higher than under current law, mainly because the individual mandate penalties would be eliminated, inducing fewer comparatively healthy people to sign up,” the CBO said. CBO does a “pretty good job with numbers — coverage is not their strong suit.” –Tom Price
Not surprisingly, Republicans are cherry picking the news they want to tout from the CBO report. The ugly coverage numbers are not to be taken too seriously because the CBO is “notoriously bad at anticipating what’s going to happen in the marketplace,” according to Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO). But the CBO’s findings concerning government savings – which the GOP needs, both to meet Senate rules and shore up conservative support – is “an accurate reflection,” Sen. Mitch McConnell said.
The distinction makes no sense because the two numbers are intricately linked. The CBO’s deficit analysis is derived from the same modeling that determines coverage levels, and thus, how much the government would be spending on tax credits for those on the nongroup market and other costs of the GOP legislation. So if Republicans are right, and the coverage loss isn’t going to be as bad as the CBO says, then the deficit reduction is also not going to be as good.
Republicans can use the “regulatory apparatus” to “make certain that patients are helped and that costs are decreased.” –Tom Price
Another vein of GOP CBO-bashing is that it was “not believable,” as Health and Human Service Secretary Tom Price said, because it did not study the effects of “phase 2,” meaning the regulatory reforms the GOP has also planned to take on alongside the legislation. For one, Republicans haven’t been very clear what Price intends to do regulation-wise — beyond a handful of small-scale insurer gimmes that probably won’t lower premiums much. So it’s hard to see how they expected the CBO to take that into account in their scoring.
But there is a bigger problem in Republicans’ reasoning, beyond what the CBO did and did not score. It’s widely assumed that Price’s approach to watering down the ACA’s requirements will focus on the the 10 Essential Health Benefits. Here, still, his abilities are pretty limited, at least in regards to moves that could actually bring down premiums. Anything too aggressive invites the possibility of a lawsuit.
“Because Price can’t exclude big categories from coverage, he’ll struggle to redefine the essential health benefits in a manner that will drive down costs,” University of Michigan Law School professor Nicholas Bagley wrote on the TakeCare Blog.
Ed. note: Due to an editing error, this piece was mistakenly published with an additional “con” listed, involving Medicaid flexibility for the states, that didn’t take into account the changes to the bill released Monday night. That item has been removed from the post.
And the Dems have to stop letting them.
I’m sick to death of all of this talk about “the free market” and “competition” and if we only set private, for-profit insurance companies free from all regulations, a thousand flowers will bloom. If we only let them “compete” for customers, premiums will go down, everyone will be covered, and consumers will get what they want.
Bullshit. In reality, no “free market” solution can ever, ever work when it comes to health care insurance. It’s mathematically, actuarially, and logically impossible. Why? For obvious reasons. Chief among them being this: The interests of a for-profit, private insurance company are in direct conflict with the interest of anyone who is sick, or hurt, or needs continuous care. If the private, health insurance company pays for the patient’s health care, it loses money. It only makes money when it doesn’t. It’s not the same thing as selling an Iphone. It’s not the same thing as selling a TV. Insurance companies can’t engage in some price war with their competitors, increase coverage, lower deductibles, cover everyone and still stay alive. Period.
Beyond that, all of this neoclassical, fresh water garbage being spewed by Mulvaney and (Ayn) Rand Paul about markets and getting the government out of the way conveniently forgets a few rather important matters. Especially these:
1. The government already covers the indigent.
2. The government already covers the elderly.(splitting this into two parts to make it easier to read, etc.)
How the Broncos’ defense upended the NFL by moving past X’s and O’s to something more simple
“We’re different — a lot different,” Sylvester Williams said.Aug. 15, 2016
link: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/08/20/broncos-defense-upended-nfl-simple/
It is the Broncos’ “Bear” call. Sylvester Williams, a hulking, 313-pound nose tackle, the largest player on Denver’s defensive line, a guy who gets paid to get in the way, drops into pass coverage.
“That ain’t normal,” Williams said. “But that’s one of my favorite plays.”
His job on this play is to keep a running back from catching the ball. No defense ever asks a nose tackle to play like a cornerback. The Broncos are not like everyone else.
“We’re different — a lot different,” he said.
When the Denver defense lines up next month to open the season in a rematch against Carolina quarterback Cam Newton and the Panthers, it will be trying to duplicate one of the most impressive playoff showings of all time, capped by a brilliant Super Bowl. In that game, Denver sacked Newton six times, intercepted one of his passes, scored a touchdown and nearly scored another. It put that defense in a discussion among the great defenses of the past 30 years.
But the league does not quite know what it sees in the Denver D. The Broncos are an outlier in the staid NFL. They confuse fans and hardcore insiders. With defensive coordinator Wade Phillips, a football lifer who learned from his dad, Bum, the Broncos are conservative radicals, a stick-to-basics defense that bucks the trend of complicated schemes in favor of beautiful simplicity.
The best defense in the NFL plays in plain sight. And nobody can pin it down.
“They say they know what we’re going to do,” Phillips said, “but can they stop us?”
JUST GO PLAY
To borrow a board game tagline, the Broncos’ defense takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master. Bum Phillips upset the defensive order in the 1950s when he was coaching small town high school football in East Texas. He developed a way to number defensive lineman to make it easy for kids to know their roles. And he introduced a 3-4 defense — three linemen up front, four linebackers in the middle. His ideas trickled up the ladder.
Paul “Bear” Bryant borrowed Bum’s ideas at Texas A&M in the late ’50s. The NFL, with many teams still using five-man fronts built to stop the run and ignore the pass, soon followed. And the 3-4 defense began to take hold.
Wade Phillips, who also came up through the Texas high school ranks, spun the 3-4 even further. He recognized that the 3-4 can be the most adaptable defense in football. It’s built to let players do what they can do best. If a linebacker is good at coverage, let him cover. If a cornerback can rush the passer, cut him loose. And if a 313-pound nose tackle is quick enough to chase a running back, go for it.
“That’s our philosophy. Just do what the guy can do,” Phillips said. “I can think of a lot of different defenses. But it’s about what the players can do. I’ve always thought that way. When I coached in high school, some guys can’t play very well at all and you have to get by with what they can do. Maybe I got that from my dad. But when I started coaching, it just made sense to me that way.”
But the Broncos can play very well. They can do just about everything. So the simple structure of the 3-4 allows them to be unpredictable. Positions and roles are only words for roster sheets. In theory, the Xs and Os are starting points. In practice, players play everywhere.
“It is simple. That’s Wade’s goal. It allows you to just play,” Broncos cornerback Bradley Roby said. “The best defenses that I’ve seen, and the research that I’ve done, the common thing I get is they’re simple. Everybody knows their job, everybody knows their adjustments and everybody plays together. Wade’s defense, being simple, it allows our athletes to just go play.”
PLAYING TAG TEAM
This moldability allowed the Denver defense to baffle offenses last season. After the Broncos held Cincinnati to 200 yards passing in an overtime victory in late December, the Bengals’ receivers could not agree on what defeated them. The Broncos played a zone defense. No, it was man-to-man. No, they switched at halftime. No one seemed sure.
The truth is between the lines. Bill Green, a legend in Indiana high school basketball, developed a hybrid defense in the late 1960s and ’70s, that starts as a zone and morphs into man-to-man. Instead of defending one-on-one everywhere, a player defends face-to-face in his area, then withdraws if that player crosses a boundary.
Phillips loves this idea. If Broncos cornerback Chris Harris starts on the right side covering A.J. Green, for example, he can follow him around like a jacket until Green wanders too far, then Aqib Talib takes over.
“We play a matchup zone,” Phillips said, not afraid to reveal his playbook. “It looks like man until you pass him off to somebody else. We started it from basketball, way, way back. Everybody was playing 2-1-2 zone and if the ball went to one side, they stayed in place. But then later on they started moving over. We thought, “Well, we can do that. We’ve got five receivers going out, that’s the same concept as basketball.’ ”
The Broncos’ defense is a tag-team. It plays one-on-one until it decides to play two-on-one. This helped them hold opponents to the fewest yards and the fourth fewest points in the NFL last season.
“It’s simple, but it’s not easy,” Roby said. “There’s a lot of pressure. The heat is on. But that pressure is what makes us work at our best. We’re used to being in man coverage when the game is on the line. When I was younger, in college, any time I’d get a man call, I’d be nervous. But not now.
“In the end, it’s a one-on-one league. As a defense, we win those battles the majority of the time. If it’s a left tackle one-on-one with Von Miller, he’s winning that in two seconds. Teams have to catch us slipping, really.”
Even longtime veterans of the game get confused by Denver’s defense. During the Broncos’ first preseason game, at Chicago, former safety and now broadcaster John Lynch commented about how aggressive Denver was blitzing the quarterback. This set off a battle of semantics after the game.
Phillips retorted on Twitter, saying the Broncos never blitzed. They rushed four defenders, sometimes five, but they never blitzed. A rush is not a blitz. When a defense blitzes the quarterback, they are sacrificing numbers in the secondary in order to add an advantage at the line of scrimmage. It’s a gamble.
“The true meaning of a blitz in football is six guys are rushing and five guys are covering five receivers,” Phillips said. “If a backer or a safety gets a sack, they usually say it’s a blitz. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But a dog (rush) is five people. And a four-man rush or a three-man rush is different.”
Under Phillips, the Broncos rarely blitz. They don’t need to. They can send a four-man rush with Williams and defensive end Derek Wolfe and two linebackers, maybe Miller and Brandon Marshall, or two linebackers and two corners, or a corner and a safety with a lineman and a backer. The combinations are endless. It’s all a rush. And the Broncos can just as easily get to the quarterback without gambling on a blitz.
That way, they can keep their numbers advantage in coverage and still pressure the quarterback. Between options A and B, the Broncos choose all of the above.
“It’s simple — get to the ball,” Williams said. “That’s Wade’s No. 1 rule. Get to the ball. At the end of the day, if you get to the ball, you make plays, you do your job.”
Defenses are necessarily reactive. The offense possess the ball. It dictates the terms. It moves first. The Broncos’ defense, though, is impatient. It doesn’t want to wait for the other team to act first. So Denver often makes the first move.
“We’re a play-making defense,” Williams said. “We’re designed to get up the field. We’re not holding up blocks. We’re not two-gap. We’re making plays. I love this defense.”
SIMPLY CRAZY
Phillips, who was out of football and semi-retired in 2014 before he returned to the Broncos, waited a lifetime for a defense to match his philosophy. He was Denver’s defensive coordinator from 1989-92, then head coach in ’93-94. The Broncos reached the Super Bowl once in that span, in 1990, a blowout loss to the 49ers. His defenses were good. But they weren’t great.
This defense is great. The difference now is personnel. The Broncos have one of the best defenders in the league, in Von Miller, and the best cornerbacks, in Roby, Harris and Talib, and they have defensive linemen who can play in pass coverage and linebackers, such as Brandon Marshall, who can cover ground like a sprinter.
And unlike many other teams, the Broncos’ defensive playbook is thin. The scheme is straightforward. Players play. Chase the ball. Get it done. Phillips figured this out over decades. His idea is to turn over the defense to the guys on the field.
“He’s got a lot of swag,” Williams said. “We have very few calls. He says to the defense, ‘Just make plays!’ That’s his mindset. He’ll call the call, then let us play football. It’s a player’s defense.
“Coach Wade is a genius, man. We trust him because he trusts us.”
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