I don't usually check other teams' boards, but I found some of this interesting. A moderator there copied
this entire thread and the
Rams Headhunting This Weekend? thread, then pasted them over at Rams On Demand. The typical responses from Rams fans are the same old, same old. Genital-related variations on our team name, Pete the Cheat ignorance, and hating our bandwagon fanbase. None of the individual responses were worth posting here, but if you're curious:
http://ramsondemand.com/threads/what-se ... eux.33844/
There was a post in another thread that I'll respond to, just in case the Roderator comes back.
(Hi Roderator! We actually welcome informed football discussion over here. Feel free to pop in and educate us on life as a Rams fan. We have regular contributors from other teams here all the time. If we don't see you around, farewell and don't forget your Ram Rules!)
So an article in St. Louis Today raved about the awesomeness of Pete and John's drafting & development of young talent. It insinuated that Pete and the Hawks have done more with their picks than Fisher and the Rams have with theirs.
Here is the article and the Rams fans responding to it. Spoiler alert: they
really didn't like it. And here's the post to which I'll respond:
ROD member":3ad936x2 said:
Seems to me that if this was all skill due to "outworking his peers" then the Seahawks would not have waited until the 3rd for Wilson or 5th for Sherman. Wouldn't they have picked them in the first round if they knew it all along? Or did they *really* need to make sure they got Kris Durham in the 4th before getting around to Sherman?
No question Seattle has done a nice job but a huge steaming helping of luck has a lot do with late round picks blossoming. Or perhaps we should call Tommy Lasorda the greatest baseball draft mastermind ever for "outworking his peers" on picking Mike Piazza in the 62nd round (not just because he was his nephew)...
(TLDR response: You have no clue about the culture of this Seahawks team, not an iota of understanding for Pete Carroll's philosophy, and if you're curious how a winning organization does it, continue reading. If you want to maintain a steadfast defense of your career .455 winning percentage head coach and believe that luck is a primary tool in building a winning program, go right ahead. As for the "if they were so smart" line of thinking, at least we got these good players, late in the draft as they were. What does that say about your team? If luck is where preparation meets opportunity, the Rams must not have been very well prepared and unable to create opportunities in the later rounds to identify these great players that we "lucked" into.)
The emphasized line in the ROD member's post is exactly how mediocrity perpetuates. Accepting a non-truth like that, a boring convention of thought, is nothing more than an excuse of the underachiever. As long as you believe that developing late-round draft picks is a random practice, it will be. Pete's philosophy is exactly the opposite of this false supposition. That's partly why the Seahawks are contenders the past 3 years and defending champs, and the Rams continue to tread water below .500 ... or maybe it's just because their QB can't stay healthy. But then again, they've had chances to shore up that position and they felt okay having Shaun Hill as their backup.
When Pete came back to the NFL, so much of what he does was looked down on, ridiculed even. He was "a joke" and "a cheerleader" who the players would "never respect." That wasn't just message board cowboys and basement bloggers either. Those things were discussed on mainstream media, and loudly.
Every one of those misperceptions has proven 100% false. These players love this guy, they love the GM, they love each other. Pete's approach has this whole team, all 3 phases, playing for each other. Maybe that sounds like a dime-a-dozen cliché, but it's very real and it's a big reason why our team is kicking ass.
A quote from our GM, John Schneider, in
a Sports Illustrated article that came out just before Super Bowl XLVIII on how the Seahawks built this team: “I think the biggest thing with our relationship is we both recognize that nobody has all the answers, and we’re continually pushing the envelope every single day trying to get better," Schneider told the Seattle media last week. "Regarding Pete, one of the biggest things with him is that he’s a no-ego guy. All he wants to do is win games and be successful. He just has a unique ability to bring out the best in people, and he’s done that with me.”
Pete's approach to the fundamentals is so rudimentary in a way – the Hawk tackling, for example – that I suspect other coaches don't give those aspects as much detailed attention. I encourage Rams fans to go back and watch some Seahawks games. Notice how our players tackle. They all have the same 3 distinct forms. There's
an informative video of how our staff teaches tackling here if you're interested.
These kinds of things lend themselves to consistency across position groups, beyond draft status. Notice how little we blitz. Seahawks bring 4 the vast majority of the time. We run a couple subtle variations off our base defense, with a healthy dose of nickel packages. Nothing flashy. Lots of rangy players, quick play acquisition, and fast movement to the ball. No gimmicks. No weird alignments or false fronts. Our #1 defense, for 3 years now, has stifled offenses with good fundamentals, speed, ball-hawking, and film study.
Our late-round studs like Sherman, Chancellor, Wright, Maxwell, Simon, etc., didn't just show up and play like pro-bowlers. They didn't even show up and start right away. These guys have been developed, trained, taken care of, and introduced to significant playing time gradually. Out of all those guys listed, only Wright and Sherman got a lot of PT their rookie season, with 12 and 10 starts respectively. All these guys have unconventional attributes that were not as valued on most NFL teams. How many squads were starting 6'3" 200 lb corners before Sherman came on the scene? The Seahawks were. We already had a 6'4" 220 lb CB on the other side.
Our front office looks for guys that 1) have unique characteristics to play a role in their system, and 2) can be coached to play that role. If any of you are actually interested in how a successful program is built, do yourself a favor and read Pete's book, "Win Forever: Live, Work, and Play Like a Champion". You could even get the CD version and have him read it to you. If you don't want to know, if you're happy to recite the same old derogatory tripe, have at it.
But don't just take my word for it. Steve Kerr, first year coach of the Golden State Warriors credits his teams' amazing 23-4 start to an atmosphere he modeled after Pete Carroll's. He says in
this write-up: "Are players engaged, are they enjoying themselves, are they competing? All those principles Pete talked about, and we talked about different ideas of ways to make those things come to life. To me, that's his gift." And from
another article about how Kerr sought out Carroll: "It's about being loose but competitive. Encouraging individuality but all under a team system, led by one man. In Seattle it's Carroll. With the Warriors, there's no doubt, it's Kerr."
Even if you don't want to investigate the secrets of championship team building, maybe you can understand one thing about how Schneider and Carroll draft. They are very actively anti-conventional. They do not draft BPA. They create a long list of eligible draftees, deemed so by the 2 points previously mentioned (unique skills, and coachable). They then assign a grade to each, which determines when they are willing to take each player. That's why we got Sherman in the 5th instead of the 1st. If Sherm wasn't there in the 5th, they would have developed another CB prospect.
Believe me, we are not delusional enough to think that every single pick was evaluated 100% correctly. That's preposterous. But the only luck involved is that every other team's evaluators weren't smart enough – or didn't have faith in their developmental abilities – to select Richard Sherman before we did at 154.
Our first pick last year, Paul Richardson (unique skills: elite speed, great hands), had the highest grade on their list. When the Seahawks came up at 32, John and Pete decided Richardson would still be around later, so they traded down to 40 and added 108 from Minnesota. When Richardson was still there at 40, they traded with Detroit down to 45, along the way exchanging our 146 for their 111 and 227. Richardson was there at 45, and we added 2 net picks along the way. Eventually, we turned that 111 into a 123 and a 199 in a trade with Cincinatti. We had 3 more picks than we started the draft with.
Notice a pattern? Our FO is confident that our coaches can develop late-round players into contributing players, so they get more picks. That doesn't mean they can develop ANY player into a contributor. Pete can't see the future, but in his "always compete" philosophy, the more hungry, uniquely talented guys he starts with, the better chance he has of turning one or two coachable players into NFL-caliber contributors.
It's not magic, it's numbers. And it doesn't always pan out. Not all those guys made the team. But having those extra guys in camp pushes the guys ahead of them to raise their game to keep a roster spot. Kiero Small, our 227 pick from Detroit, looked pretty good. Many of us wondered if Derrick Coleman was going to be edged out. It didn't happen. So for every Sherman that dominates, there's a Small that doesn't make it.
When Wilson showed up, he had to beat out the previous starter and a high-priced FA. He earned his job with a unique skill set, unrelenting dedication to improve every day, and a willingness to tailor his game to the role Pete envisioned for this teams' QB.
There's no desperation with our drafts. We rarely trade up, especially in the early rounds. Even in 2012, when John Schneider REALLY wanted to draft Russell Wilson in the 2nd round, Pete was certain he would still be around in the 3rd. With our #1, we got an athletic freak Swiss army knife pass rusher/OLB; #2 became a pro-bowl MLB starting from day one (whom the Rams wanted, and missed out on by trading down and drafting two duds instead); #3 got us our Super Bowl winning franchise QB. Huge core contributors just like that.
We got "F" grades for that 2012 draft from "experts" because we don't follow conventional ideas, including the idea that late-round bloomers are just "a huge steaming helping of luck."
Our FO sees all draft picks as potential contributors. While most teams bury late-rounders behind incumbent starters, our FO puts those guys, and UDFAs, in situations to succeed, giving them experience at a limited number of things they think the players can handle. Along the way, they develop the strengths of those late rounders and emphasize very specific fundamental tactics so that by the time the players might be needed, due to injury or whatever, they are usually ready to go.
We just set a franchise record with 596 yards of offense against the NFL's #4 defense with UDFAs at LT and C. They have 8 career starts between them in their combined 5 years and the LT is actually a G, yet they crushed it when called upon.
Sherman got the start because Walter Thurmond went down; he thrived because his skills were valued here and he was taught well. According to most teams, he was too tall, not fluid, and not fast enough. Chancellor was too big and slow to play safety. He mostly sat his first year, learned the system, and since has become our Pro-Bowl enforcer. Irvin was a reach. Wilson was too short to ever be a starter, much less a winner.
Did you know that Pete Carroll was a DB coach and defensive coordinator for 11 years in the NFL before his tenure at USC? (He was also a head coach for 4 years, with a 33-31 record.) It's not luck, and its not coincidence that Pete Carroll has always been a DB specialist and now he has 3 Pro-Bowl (2 All-Pro) DBs, 2 of whom were drafted in the 5th round. That's not luck. You think they just threw darts at the draft board and landed 3 of 4 starting DBs in the 5th round or later? And they just luckily became the best backfield in the NFL?
Sure, not all draft picks make the team. There's just not enough openings every year. But if someone can come in and earn a spot, they'll get it. If someone gets beat out, or doesn't fit, they get cut or traded. Ask Matt Flynn. Ask Percy Harvin.
We here at seahawks.net know all this. But we're not blind devotees. There are hundreds of members on this forum, and hundreds of threads. In them you'll find all kinds of critiques and criticisms of our own team, whether it be individual performances, coordinator concerns, or even failed personnel moves.
So I invite you lurking Rams fans to let down your guard of puerile puns and misinformed condemnation. Come on over and share what you know and love about your team. If we are wrong about your coach's tendency to field undisciplined, after-the-whistle business-giving teams, let us know why. If we are confused by your loyalty to a 20-26-1 coach, who has had 14 seasons of .500 or worse football in his 20 years as a head coach, please stop by to illustrate the error of our ways.
If you can get beyond name calling and provide some insight, we would truly enjoy the discussion. I assure you we are not as "high horse" as you think. I can see how we come off as a bit arrogant at times. I guess 3 straight successful seasons, with the league's best defense, a great young QB, a great RB, and the best home field advantage in the NFL has had a positive affect on our confidence. Oh and playing this weekend for the #1 seed as we defend our dominating championship reign has something to do with it too.
Haha! See, I know I was needling you right there. Notice no name calling, no profanity, no personal attacks. Sometimes it's just hard to be humble when you're on top of the world. Hey, your team got us last time. Hats off. That should have felt good for you all. I hope you feel good about this week's matchup. The Rams might play us tough again. But your team will lose. Badly. Don't think so? Come on over and tell us why. If you're content to think luck will bring you a championship, well, good luck. And Merry Christmas.
