Judge: Just who is the worst?
Two teams remained winless by losing tough games, as Houston dropped to 0-4 and Cincinnati fell to 0-5. All around them they are hearing many negative things. If either game had ended at a different point, the comments would probably not be as negative as they sound today.
For the Texans and Bengals, the key is how they handle the situation from here.
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| Texans coach Gary Kubiak must stress to his players how close they have come to winning. (AP) |
My purpose in talking about this subject is not to try to give Houston's Gary Kubiak or Marvin Lewis of Cincinnati advice, but to let the fans know how these situations are handled and to make people understand all is not lost for these teams.
The first thing you must do is be positive. The players and staff at this point are surrounded by negativity everywhere they go. If you do not give them hope, who will? I have heard people make fun of the comments coaches make when a team is in this situation, such as "we are getting better" or "we are only a few plays away." In reality, many times it is true and that is what you must sell to the team.
I remember Fisher talking about a winless start he had. He went to the team with a tape made up of plays from the games they lost and showed that if a play or two in each game had been executed better, they would be 4-1 instead of 0-5. This is the kind of move a coach will make in this situation. It gives the players hope and renewed confidence in themselves.
Dungy told his team in the middle of a losing streak in Tampa Bay that it wouldn't be long before every game would be a sellout and people would not be able to get tickets for their games, which came true.
Another technique I have seen coaches use is to remind everyone of the other teams' records, who those teams are playing and that other teams will lose games in the future. If they can just take it one game at a time, those other teams ahead of them will come back to them as they move forward.
The coaches also must be consistent in their approach to the team. I know Gibbs was the same man in front of the team whether the Redskins won or lost. Every meeting on Monday would cover the same things: The reasons the team won or lost and how to improve on the points that were not good enough. The players are not going to react to a lot of theatrics by the coach. They want answers on how they can play better. They want a plan.
The next point is you cannot change your philosophy radically when things go bad. If your philosophy is well thought out and sound, then you just have to keep working on its fundamentals and execution. If you begin to waver on the philosophy, the players will sense that and lose confidence in you and what you are teaching them.
In Dungy's first year as head coach at Tampa Bay he started off 0-5, but he told the coaches to just keep teaching the same things they were teaching and the team would be successful. Sure enough, the program became a success.
You also must have a plan for each player and the team to improve. Sometimes it is more work on fundamentals, adjust points of emphasis in practice or change subtle parts of your game plan. The Dolphins' Tony Sparano did this when he put in the shotgun running plays for Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams. Sparano did not throw out his whole playbook; he just added a wrinkle to the offense, which I am sure brought some life to practice the week after they Dolphins lost badly to Arizona.
In the Bengals' case, there is reason for hope. The pass offense has started to come to life in the past three games. They moved the ball better against the undefeated New York Giants than anybody has done all year, losing in overtime. I think they believe they would have beaten Cleveland with Carson Palmer in the lineup. Against Dallas, especially in the second half, they moved the ball effectively.
They can point to their receiving corps getting better every week after an injury-plagued preseason. Their defense has improved to the point that if the offense gets clicking again, Cincinnati has a chance to win some games. When the players see the passing game working the way it did at times against the Giants and Cowboys -- two of the top teams in the NFL, and with both games on the road -- they gain confidence as a team and all play batter.
The Texans could have won the past two games against the Jaguars and Colts. They lost to Jacksonville in overtime and blew a 17-point lead to Indianapolis late in the fourth quarter. They played the undefeated Titans a lot closer than the 31-12 score indicated.
Houston's offense has improved in each of the past three weeks and should be pretty good from here on out. The defense played its best game of the year against Peyton Manning on Sunday, so it has plenty to build on. And the Texans have a lot of outside issues they have had to deal with that surely affected their performance in the first couple of games, but that appears to be behind them now.
The fight the coach must win is to keep the players thinking positive and continue to give them a plan that makes sense to the players. Make no mistake about it, the coaches are making the players accountable for their mistakes behind closed doors, but they have to make sure they build them back up. When you are down as a team you have to be more positive with the players than when you are on a winning streak.
Both of these teams are good enough to make comebacks this season if they can stay healthy and ignore the negativity around them.
