Rams training their Millennials – WSJ article

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-rams-built-a-laboratory-for-millennials-1442257224

The St. Louis Rams conquered the defending NFC champion Seattle Seahawks on Sunday in the early surprise of the season. Their spectacular special teams and run defense, which stuffed Seattle star Marshawn Lynch on a fourth down in overtime, had something to do with it.

So did their innovative plan for teaching millennials.

The Rams have the youngest team in the NFL. Like most workplaces, the Rams were inundated with employees whose habits were vastly different from those of their the bosses. As coach Jeff Fisher put it: “Our players learn better with two phones and music going and with an iPad on the side,” he said. “That’s new.”

Fisher, along with general manager Les Snead, knew something had to be done. The average age of the Rams roster is 24.1, according to Pro Football Reference. “Some of our key players can’t even rent a car. The insurance companies probably have a lot of data that shows it’s a bad idea to rent a car to a kid under 25,” said Snead.

Snead’s conundrum was obvious: You are, he said, taking young people who in most fields would be entering an entry-level job with little pressure and putting them in a job where they have to perform at a high level under often intense public scrutiny.

“The next frontier in football is understanding the mind and figuring out how you can test and teach,” he said.

The first step? Like most workplaces that seek company-wide change, they needed consultants. The Rams brought in a group of academics who run a research firm to evaluate the Rams’ football teaching methods. (The Rams did not identify the firm for competitive reasons with other NFL teams.) Those consultants observed portions of off-season training and training camp. They also put rookies through a standardized test, Snead said, aimed to determine how their players absorbed information. The test is supposed to mirror exams like the GRE or LSAT—which are trying to gauge future performance, not how much you’ve already learned. It also, Snead suggests, gauges some intangibles such as “grit, perseverance and mental toughness.”

The Rams learned a few things that anyone who has spent time around a bunch of 20-somethings already knows: Attention spans are shorter but they are savvier than ever, because of their exposure to technology. They also need to know “why” to everything: If you explain a concept to them on the field, they need to know the reason behind it. Millennial players questioning everything is something that’s helped the Rams, the team says, because it forces coaches and executives to examine their own methods (Why are we doing this?). Lastly, they learned that younger players like to share everything, whether that’s directly or through social-media outlets like Instagram.

The Rams have already instituted a number of sweeping changes based on the early results of their research. Instead of having team meetings that last hours, followed by on-field practicing, the team now has 10 to 15 minutes worth of informational meetings and then hurries to the practice field to execute what they’ve just learned without pads.

For starting rookie offensive lineman Rob Havenstein, this is invaluable. Havenstein is part of the parade of rookies playing a crucial role on the Rams this season. He said that regular meetings can be slightly too comfortable. “If a coach asks you ‘what’s the call’ in a meeting you have a second to think about it, then you answer,” he said. On the field, Havenstein said “you have a snap and you make the call immediately or else you are just sitting there going ‘uhhhhh.””

Rookie quarterback Sean Mannion said that in a league where players are now studying video on multiple screens at all hours, the Rams use walkthroughs “so you don’t lose that 3-D spacing aspect. You can’t get that from a screenshot, you can’t emulate the spacing.”

Fisher has relaxed wake-up times. “Nobody wants to get up at 5:30, have a big breakfast and go into a classroom and fall asleep,” he said. He’s stacked the coaching staff with two types of people: older, veteran coaches who are “changing their ways” to adapt and young coaches who already know what the Rams are trying to accomplish.

Fisher said he’s put an emphasis on getting players to focus and listen. “It sounds a little goofy but it’s not,” he said, adding that most of his young players are visual learners who can best be reached by citing “a hundred different examples” of football scenarios. “You show them play A vs play B when B got your quarterback hit, B got you beat for a touchdown,” Fisher said.

The Rams younger players welcome the focus on visual learning. Linebacker Bryce Hager said teammates can communicate through apps like Instagram and Snapchat. (Many players spent the off-season scouting their new teammates’ Snapchat accounts.)

Snead is so committed to developing young players that he has a photo in his office of Simba from the beginning of “The Lion King” to symbolize they are growing their players into lions. Yet he admits the experiments are still in the “research phase.” Armed with studies, consultants, and player feedback, he’s confident the team will implement even more changes. “Every company is trying to train new employees differently, football players aren’t the only millennials. My thought is, let’s create a little bit of a lab here and see where it goes.”

• This topic was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by canadaram.