You'd think the drafting of Okoye would be enough motivation for Okoye. What do these guys seriously need to get ready for a game? Do they need the parents that DD is apparently dealing with in his kid's leagues to come out and yell at them? YOU'RE PAID MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO PLAY A GAME! THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS BE A F***ING ADULT AND TRY YOUR HARDEST YOU MORON!
he's saying motivation is a problem for him and some others on the team. that they need some sort of external motivation.
Re; Okoye/motivation I actually read that as a veiled shot at Kubiak's ability to motivate the team. This isn't the first time, either. At least a year ago, an unnamed player laughed when a reporter asked to compare Kubiak to some coach's really powerful motivational speech. I don't remember, so don't "LINK?" me on it. Point being, I interpret this as another sign of one of Kubiak's signature weak points. We missed the playoffs last year because he could never get 2 halves of quality ball out of the roster (hell, rarely 3 quarters). Alarming that we've now seen 2 home duds barely a full month in. The other thing I'll say is, Okoye sucks hard. Absolutely worthless, and has been his entire time here. Complete bust. Cody isn't much better, I don't know that I've ever seen him disengage from his man to make a play. GRAB AND PUSH! GO! We'll make up for it by drafting a couple more TEs in April.
Maybe I should've added a nice little emoticon to imply that my post was totally meant in jest. I'm not sure, but I think you'll be fine. Besides...Chubbs was my favorite character in Teen Wolf. :grin: <--there's the emoticon!!!
Ah, my slender days, how I pine for them still......even though our best player had ankle to ankle carpeting, we still had a good team. I was the PG. DD
oh these athletes are too much at times. bunch of primadonnas that get paid millions and talk about motivation. amobi, how about you just get off your ass? eh? eh?
A recap of Kubiak's press conference via ""JR" the Texans message board. Link: http://boards.houstontexans.com/showpost.php?p=337668&postcount=9
Do Kubiak's press conference comments ever really "move" you, give you hope, express any fire, any passion? They just seem so bland and repetitive. Something is missing. The players sound the same way. Well, if they had a fan forum press conference, I promise you it would be alot more colorful.
Sloppy recap of Gary Kubiak show on SR610: Joined by Coach Kubiak. Rich and Rob here, appreciate you joining us. Coach, obviously a game where nothing went right. Health of some guys? Brisiel? Mike will miss a couple weeks. A sprained MCL. Hopefully we can get him back after the bye. Caldwell will be the starter. Studdard will get going again. Arian looks good. He ran with the team. McManis has a hamstring issue. Andre Johnson is fine. Sore but is ok. He wasnt 100% but made some plays. Dickerson? Got his knee banged. He and Jacoby will be day to day. Sharpton has broken bone in his hand and will play with it. I'm sure you didnt see the game going the way it did but what happened? I'll give them credit, they did it in all 3 phases but we sure helped them. Penalties hurt us all around. Struggled in the return game. Defensively, 3 and out and 18 play span where we gave up big yards and plays. It wasnt one phase or one group. It was everyone including coaches. How discouraging is it? We're disappointed. We put in the work and stunk. It was not a good day. I believe in my team. We have been inconsistent. It wont be any different this week. If we play like this week, we wont win next week. Got to fix our problems and try to get better. Was the gameplan trying to establish the pass? First 3 plays were designed to throw. It wasnt a good start. No balance. Never tested the running game. 8 or 9 runs in the first half. We didnt get anything established. No excuses. What did Giants do to stop the running game? It was moreso, we're down 21, we gotta make plays. I got aggressive with the play-calling. Its just the way the game went. ... [Caller]: How much can you contribute Jackson's struggle to the D-line? It's all tied together. Kareem not the only guy they're attacking. Other guys too. LBs have to do their jobs and job up front. WE're struggling against the pass and we'll get tested. Yesterday, 8 or 9 minutes left in game, Giants kept throwing it. We'll continue to get tested. No sacks yesterday, we gotta get better as a group. Kareem is the focus, he is the rookie, 1st round pick, etc, but as you point out, he's not the only one. How is he holding up or what's his mindset? He's a tough-minded young man. This league is different. A new challenge. Because he is young, people will go after him. In the end, it will make him better in my opinion. There were moments Brice was in and Jackson out, this was just the rotation correct? That was planned all along. We wanted to play Brice and McManis too. [via question on HT.com] What does the team have to do to get consistent pass rush? What can be done in the secondary? It's consistency. I can sit and pull 3 series that were good. I can pull bad stuff too. It's finding a way to play 4 quarters. If there is a silver lining, you did have 4 takeaways in past couple games. Yeah, but we gave it right back yesterday. Winning turnover battle usually means success. [Caller]: How is Molden coming along? Will he see PT anytime soon? We'd like to get him involved. He has missed time with injuries though. Hopefully he can stay in one piece. How about Nolan? He did ok. 'Gene played a bit more than him. He can tackle better. He did good stuff. Almost gave up a big play, discipline right there. He can get better. We'll give him some more chances. Where does Osi U. rank? He's pretty good. They're physical up front. Tuck on the other side. They did a heck of a job yesterday. They got some hands on some of the balls. Risks when you go into 3 step drop? Yes, but that is why we cut and things like that. We got to do a better job. [Caller]: Have you decided to look at a veteran CB? We're going with these young guys we have. We picked up Paymah. He is a vet. We believe in our young guys. We gotta get better as a team and help them out. ... About the speech to the team, you made reference of trying to get same edge at Reliant as you do on the road. What is it about not having the same edge at home? My intentions were not to say we didnt have edge. When your "up against it" on the road, I can see the focus in the guys eyes and how they do things. It cant be different at home. We have to have the same focus. It's very good on the road but have seen flashes of it not being where it needs at home. There has been a lack of focus. We need to check ourselves and make sure we're doing things the same. Surprised the Giants were called for more penalties because it seemed like they came at inopportune times. Yeah, came on ST. On D, all penalties were first down conversions. On O, they were big plays or on TDs. Other thing interesting, we had 5 plays over 50 yards. All those plays followed by penalty, sack, or something negative. [Caller]: Matt was on talking about O not getting into rythym, can you explain why you didnt go into no huddle or 2 minute offense after INT in the 3rd? Funny, we said we were going to uptempo offense at half. Everytime we made play, we shot ourselves in the foot. Unable to execute? Yeah, we wanted to keep rythym if we could. [Caller]: Why do we give WRs so much cushion? And why no bootlegs or out routes? I agree. We gave up a lot of hitch routes. We had guys in position but..we were playing 8 man box and they were willing to throw hitch and were successful. Boots and that go hand in hand with how well we run the ball. Obviously we didnt do that well enough. ... How is Owen Daniels and the comeback? That was the best he played. He was a bright spot. He looked like himself. That's the OD I know. He and Kevin are most underrated players in blocking. Our guys do a good job. We expect that out of them and they're willing to do it. [Caller]: With Andre, didnt seem like he was 100%. Why were we asking him to run 40+ yds or more with his injury? He was ok. I wouldnt put him out there if I didnt think he could do what we wanted. I thought he played well. Not 100% but good enough to help the team. He got through clean and he'll be better this week. ... [Caller]: Physical teams, its a trend, they beat us up front. How do we overcome this? To me, we are trying to get physical ourselves. Nothing particular you run but gotta get physical yourself. In this league, no telling what it will take to win in any given week. We got 11 games left, we gotta find a way to be in every game. We got out of it in Dallas and NY. As far as Schobel, he's retired. We gotta get the guys we have ready See anything from Mark Anderson? We'll look hard at him this week. He got some speed and PR ability. Trying to catch him up. [Text message]: Are you looking at any FAs, considering you're banged up at WR and D-line? We got some issues at WR and D-line. We're getting challenged depth wise. Gotta stay focused with the guys you got here though. Rick always working and looking but I work with these guys I got with me. The Chiefs will be at Reliant. They suffered they're first loss. Early thoughts? They done a great job. They're building through the draft. Got some playmakers. On D, they had some players for a few years now. Romeo is a good coach. Charlie leading the O. THey're sound. They held Indy to 19 which is tough. We gotta fix our stuff. They're giving up 14 points a game. They're big. Got edge protected. DOnt give up big plays. Surprised no undefeated teams left? A little surprised. At the same time, balance in this league, it's more and more equal. Any given week, anything can happen which is what I'm preaching to my players. How did Cushing look? Glad he was out there. He was active, looked sharp. Got some pressure. Got to get his body back going but he'll be ready. Appreciate the time. Good luck this week. Ok, have a good evening.
Is it just me, or does Kubiak always sound overly pessimistic about his own team? He has an "aw shucks, we weren't good enough" attitude after losses. Then he turns around and talks about how good KC is. It's kinda hard to be a good motivational coach when you're always talking about the shortcomings of your team and at the same time praising the other team's coaching and talent. I'm not saying sugarcoat everything. But I think this team has a lot of talent- more than KC for sure. Contrast with Rex Ryan, who is always saying his team is the best and has the talent to win it all. He might be full of crap, but he has the team believing it.
I try not to take too much away from press conferences though. Bellicheck is the same way except with less emotion. He'll just go "We weren't good enough today, we have to play better." and that's pretty much what Kubiak was saying. Kubiak always comes off as...idk weak...in press conferences. It can work either way though. Overconfidence is bad, having your team think they are just better and can win when they want to is bad. I honestly think the Texans motivation and mental believe their own hype. They don't seem to be worried about losing games in the 1st or 2nd qtr because they think they can win them in the 2nd half. I know this because the players in their quotes said they expected to win the Redskins game, even though they were down they just expected to win it. I'm pretty sure the same thing went on at halftime during the Giants game and Cowboys game too...that they thought they were the better team and just expected to come back and win it.
This is interesting. Ric always made fun of people about this - but this is really about leadership. It's easy to say "oh, they make millions; they should play hard." But look around any office or other job and you'll find people not working hard. Those people should be thrilled they have a job and are making $50,000 / yr or whatever. Yet, they will still slack off. It happens everywhere, in every environment, no matter how much people make or what the particular activity is - retail, office, doctors, lawyers, engineers, business people, athletes, etc. What's odd here is that he actually came out and admitted it publicly. No office worker will admit to his boss that he's a slacker. If it's just him, I'd chalk it to up to him having motivation problems that need to be dealt with (or him released). If it's true that it's a multitude of guys, then there's a leadership problem. One of the key jobs of a leader is to motivate people to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. If that's not happening, then there's a lack of leadership somewhere on the team - whether it be the coach (boss), the other players (coworkers) or whatever. With just one quote, it's hard to make any sort of insightful judgment, but it's something that McNair and Kubiak need to look into. It's easy to blame the player - and that absolutely may be where the problem lies - but it could also be a sign of a deeper problem within the team.
not to pick on you major, but I've always hated the correllation between the average joe worker and a professional athlete. I work 5 days a week for approximately 48-50 wks per year. My day ranges in hours from 8.5 - 12 depending upon volume of transactions. So generally, after a couple of burnout weeks, I will go into maintenance mode (read slacking) for a day maybe a day and a half. This helps to counter burnout, and every employer I have worked for has completely understood. However, when pitches are on the line and reports have to be churned out, I and most of the employed population, puts their head down and knocks out their responsibility. This fat lazy sob, works 16 'crunch' days a year. I would understand him taking it slow during a practice or even better, a training camp day, but not NOT NOOOOTTTT during a game day. cut the fat lazy b*stard just like his ass would get fired in the workplace. let's see if that serves as motivation. end rant
I understand the theory, but human nature suggests that this kind of stuff happens everywhere. I'm not saying it should - just that it does. Study after study shows that no matter the work environment, leaders tend to face the same types of problems and challenges with their employees. A similar corollary would be finances. You'd think making millions of dollars a year, athletes would be in good financial shape. But as it turns out, they run into the same problems as people who make less - because they build a lifestyle around $1MM income and just get used to that as the "standard". The same can be said for the poor in our country when compared to the poor in the 3rd world. Everyone adjusts to their "normal". Similarly in the work environment, despite it being a totally different scenario and different standard, you'll have most of the same issues you'd have in any other work environment. I agree that most people work harder during "crunch time", and similarly, I think most people will work hard during the game - if nothing else, there's a pride issue that should drive them. Who wants to get their ass kicked by an offensive lineman? But there will always be those few that don't, and there tend to be more of those when there's a leadership problem. Separate from that, one of the limitations with the quote is that we don't know what exactly he was referring to. He may have simply been referring to himself and others slacking during some practices which then resulted in sloppy/crappy play on gameday. Or he may have actually been saying a bunch of people didn't play hard on gameday. All I'm saying is that it's something that Kubiak would be advised to investigate further to figure out if this is just a problem with one guy, or if there's something deeper going on here.
I understand that slacking occurs in all jobs. Moreover, I believe the amount of work that goes into prepartion for game day to be significant. I would think that the typical person/player would do their slacking during the prep week when processes are mundane and tedious, with no apparent reward. Maybe loaf it during some excercises while still getting in the necessary work. But to loaf/go through the motions/play uninspired etc.... on a gameday is flat out disrespectful. Disrespectful to your team, yourself, you coaches and most importantly, the hard working fans that support the team (read monetarily making their fairy tale world a reality by overpaying for their product). I also agree with your assertion that this is only a symptom of a greater illness. The weaknesses in Kubiaks coaching are readily apparent. All that rant said and out there, I believe there is a hell of a lot of overreaction going on with how bad a shape we are in. Kubiak is a flawed coach, but he is slightly above average and good enough to get us in the playoffs. Defensively, they've got to change their whole approach. Offensively, they need to stop having so many passing plays be slow developing, down the field type passes, and more importantly, they need to start going much heavier on the run.
Expect to not make the playoffs again....Our couch is sticking it out with this secondary just like he stuck with the kicker who lost us a hand full of games by himself last year.....He never learns.
so what is he supposed to do? sign a stree fa to save the day? sticking with a kicker does not equal sticking with a cornerback
