denverYooper
01-20-2012, 09:33 AM
PB's point about tackling in Studs and Duds brings up another thing that I've been mulling over: when you look at teams who tackle well (9ers, Ravens), is that because those coaches teach good fundamentals or is it the raw material? I mean, Sam Shields is not a good tackler but he was a receiver until late in his college career and didn't need to tackle for much of his life. Patrick Willis and Navorro Bowman came out of the womb tackling. DJ Smith has looked good, too.
Maybe M3's focus next year will be tackling, but hasn't he called out this problem and "focused" on it in the past? From my experiences in sports and music, imprinting fundamental changes to the point where they become automatic takes a significant amount of time. The gross rule of thumb I've learned is that it takes 10,000 repetitions to impart those kinds of changes to motor pathways.
It could be that they just need *at least* an offseason of getting back to good tackling fundamentals, and they don't need 10k tackles apiece to get there, but color me doubtful that even that will suddenly turn any Packers not named DJ Smith or Clay Matthews into tackling machines. At the very least, I'm definitely not sold on the idea that a few handfuls of padded practice is going to be enough to erase behavior that has been engrained through many years of repetition.
Maybe M3's focus next year will be tackling, but hasn't he called out this problem and "focused" on it in the past? From my experiences in sports and music, imprinting fundamental changes to the point where they become automatic takes a significant amount of time. The gross rule of thumb I've learned is that it takes 10,000 repetitions to impart those kinds of changes to motor pathways.
It could be that they just need *at least* an offseason of getting back to good tackling fundamentals, and they don't need 10k tackles apiece to get there, but color me doubtful that even that will suddenly turn any Packers not named DJ Smith or Clay Matthews into tackling machines. At the very least, I'm definitely not sold on the idea that a few handfuls of padded practice is going to be enough to erase behavior that has been engrained through many years of repetition.