Good Coaching or Good Players? You Decide...

I got into a heated debate with one of my friends tonight (49ers fan, but He's not a Webzone member). I told him about the 49ers hiring Mike Solari as the team's new offensive line coach. I also explained Solari's background, and that I thought he could really help our O-line players and make them into better players. He seems to think that good coaching will not improve bad players and that no matter what, we need to totally rebuild the O-line. However, I believe that good coaching can make bad players into better players.

What do you think?

[ Edited by PTulini on Jan 22, 2010 at 00:16:02 ]

It's 50-50.

The player needs to have the natural ability, dedication for improvement, and mental capability to handle complex playbooks at the NFL level.

At the same time, a coach needs to also have the mental capability to learn and teach specific schemes at a high level, and have the ability to connect with his players and establish the coach-player relationship.

Failure in any of these categories may and will lead to a decline in overall performance.

Originally posted by GEEK:
It's 50-50.

The player needs to have the natural ability, dedication for improvement, and mental capability to handle complex playbooks at the NFL level.

At the same time, a coach needs to also have the mental capability to learn and teach specific schemes at a high level, and have the ability to connect with his players and establish the coach-player relationship.

Failure in any of these categories may and will lead to a decline in overall performance.

You may be right?

Originally posted by GEEK:
It's 50-50.

The player needs to have the natural ability, dedication for improvement, and mental capability to handle complex playbooks at the NFL level.

At the same time, a coach needs to also have the mental capability to learn and teach specific schemes at a high level, and have the ability to connect with his players and establish the coach-player relationship.

Failure in any of these categories may and will lead to a decline in overall performance.

It's more than that.

In any venture that requires skill you've got a certain percentage of players that will excel no matter what. Doesn't matter what team they're on, what handicaps they're faced with, what restrictions they have. My experience has been that about 10% of the population is like this.

On the other hand there's a chunk of people that will fail no matter how easy you make it for them. Give them the best team possible, the best weapons, the best coaches, the cushiest salary, whatever and they'll still fail. I also think it's about 10% of the population that fits this.

The vast majority of people fall in the middle. They can be coached to be better. Doesn't mean you'll be a Pro-Bowl/Hall of Famer but you can become very good. Look at Denver's offensive line for a good example of this. Just like with their RBs they can take offensive linemen from later rounds and plug them in and they perform just fine.

That's an aspect of coaching.

If Solari can improve our existing line by 25%, without getting new players, we can make a deep run in the playoffs.

If we can get some better players and improve our existing ones the sky is the limit.

I think we have four cases in point on the Defense - Goldson, Sopoaga, Franklin, and Brooks. All these playes have fundamental talent but all have needed coaching to pick up the fine points of their craft. Franklin needed coaching on simplifying the requirements so that he could focus on one gap play. Sopoaga needed to be moved to DE, where he fit better, and has needed several seasons to develop. Goldson seemed to be able to play better in practice but had some kind of mental issue of how to translate his practice behavior to game time behavior, and after 3/4 of the season was over it began to dawn on him how to do it. Brooks has needed lots of attention from all of the team to keep him focused and able to get his skills hooked to a plan. All four of these players will need continuous attention to detail but all of them have natural talent and have responded to coaching.

Now with Solari we will see if the Oline responds well to the coaching. I see Staley and Rachal as being the most responsive to coaching because they are young and recently out of school. Heitmann does pretty well but might be even better with good coaching and some support from the guards. Baas and Snyder will be the mystery points. Baas has potential, but I don't think Snyder has sufficient skill to be a starter, backup maybe. A dark horse is Boone. Might be able to develop under better coaching. But an infusion of talent would be great as well. Davis, Iupati, Carter, Saffold, would all be welcome additions and could infuse their talents for the team. We will see if Solari can develop a cohesive oline and be ready from the start of the season.

OP - have you ever played sports? If you have, I am sure you have had bad coaches, and good ones. IMO good coaches can help a struggling player overcome holes in their game. Bad coaches... not so much, they might actually exacerbate the holes.

I think that if you have good Coaching paired with the willingness to be coached on the part of the player at any level then that's pretty much all you need.

Once the Coach feels he can no longer coach the player;

Or the player feels he's too good to listen to the coaches;

Then there has to be natural ability to fall back on.

So it's technically 4 or 5 things that decide whether or not the it factor can possibly exist.

But I think that Coaching and Willingness to be coached rank right at the top.

Bill Walsh the great communicator took players with average ability and molded them into great players and Men. Rice is one of the few players that had the talent right out the gate. But even he needed guidance.

Steve and Joe were not HoF candidates when they came to the 9ers.

But Bill saw what they COULD be and coached them to greatness.

~Ceadder

With all of the high draft picks that we have on our line you would have to believe no GM could miss on all of them. Besides that, how about Justin Smiley? He seems to be doing well down in miami.

has to be a combination of both players can be naturally good but good coaching will always make the team better

With good players you can compete. With good coaching you can win.

Originally posted by insanemike27:
With all of the high draft picks that we have on our line you would have to believe no GM could miss on all of them. Besides that, how about Justin Smiley? He seems to be doing well down in miami.

Every team has drafted players that go on to other teams to have more succesful experiences than they have with their previous teams.

Too many people only use our team as an example. Check out the 31 other teams folks.

all i know is that iron mike made these guys play harder then i have ever seen when Nowin was coach

Originally posted by PTulini:
I got into a heated debate with one of my friends tonight (49ers fan, but He's not a Webzone member). I told him about the 49ers hiring Mike Solari as the team's new offensive line coach. I also explained Solari's background, and that I thought he could really help our O-line players and make them into better players. He seems to think that good coaching will not improve bad players and that no matter what, we need to totally rebuild the O-line. However, I believe that good coaching can make bad players into better players.

What do you think?

Your friend is right Solari could not improve the Seahawks Offensive Line. They didnot draft OL with high picks over the last few years. But there is alot of talent on the 49ers line. Staley 1st round, Rachal second, Bass second, Snyder 3rd, so there is more talent here. Eric Heitman is among top 5 or 6 centers in the league.

Question is are we going to zone block and take advantage of the athletes we have. Or are we going to call that run up the middle 95% or running plays.

Originally posted by PTulini:
I got into a heated debate with one of my friends tonight (49ers fan, but He's not a Webzone member). I told him about the 49ers hiring Mike Solari as the team's new offensive line coach. I also explained Solari's background, and that I thought he could really help our O-line players and make them into better players. He seems to think that good coaching will not improve bad players and that no matter what, we need to totally rebuild the O-line. However, I believe that good coaching can make bad players into better players.

What do you think?

I agree bud, good coaching can make a player better, but its a big task for a coach to improve a guy who hasnt played up to par.

Thats why i cant understand the whole Sullivan sucks thing, he had terrible WR's here, Lloyd, Wilson, Battle, etc... But has had Morgan, Crabs and they had good yrs.

Originally posted by AB83Rules:

Originally posted by PTulini:
I got into a heated debate with one of my friends tonight (49ers fan, but He's not a Webzone member). I told him about the 49ers hiring Mike Solari as the team's new offensive line coach. I also explained Solari's background, and that I thought he could really help our O-line players and make them into better players. He seems to think that good coaching will not improve bad players and that no matter what, we need to totally rebuild the O-line. However, I believe that good coaching can make bad players into better players.

What do you think?

I agree bud, good coaching can make a player better, but its a big task for a coach to improve a guy who hasnt played up to par.

Thats why i cant understand the whole Sullivan sucks thing, he had terrible WR's here, Lloyd, Wilson, Battle, etc... But has had Morgan, Crabs and they had good yrs.

Remember Brandon Lloyd's best year came under Sully. As for Crabtree, Sully spent a lot of time during the bye in the classroom with him and then they would go out on the field and put that into practice. He took a kid who missed all of TC and preseason and in 2 weeks had him starting for us (originally Crabs was going to see some snaps but not start ahead of Morgan). Morgan was a 6th round pick and was a starter on opening day in his 2nd year.

And as far as terrible WR's, he never coached Wilson but he was given Marcus Maxwell, Rasheed Marshall and Brandon Williams to work with and where are they now ?