It's a process
I stumbled across this today while browsing the internet, and I found it so compelling that I saved a copy of it. It's a pamphlet that the Seattle Seahawks hand out explaining the process behind their roster moves and their free agent acquisitions to potential free agents.
If you've been following along with the story line, the Seahawks dominated their way to the Super Bowl this year using one of - if not the - youngest rosters in the NFL, along with a roster full of undrafted players. I read this the way that I read how Billy Beane put together the 2002 Oakland A's team - Moneyball or sabermetrics.
Some thoughts on this...
I believe that in order for your team and your program to be successful long term and consistently, there needs to be a process in place. The process is similar to fundamentals. As in rowing, when things aren't going well, you can come back to your basics. This is the same belief that I have for your program.
I believe, perhaps naively, that once you've established yourself and your system or process, you should never have to "rebuild." I don't know how most view that word, but when I see the word, "rebuild," and it's not attached to a new coach or new staff, it means that somewhere along the line, there was a failure. Somewhere the program got away from what made it successful, and started going down paths that led to short term success at the expense of long term stability and growth.
This doesn't mean that you don't adapt and grow with your system - Billy Beane is now looking at high school prospects where he wasn't earlier in his tenure as the A's GM - but the fundamentals of your system or process remain the same.
I believe that instead of "rebuild," a program should always be thinking, "reload." This goes into my thinking of training and recruitment. I like to train my boats together a majority of the time, flipping between lineups, and seats so that everyone is coming up together before we split off into set lineups and boats. One thing that I saw early in my career were boats that lost an athlete struggling to maintain their speed and ability to race. I decided that one of the things that I wanted in my program was the ability to take pieces and plug them in as I need, and while there may be a drop off between person A and person B, the drop off would be acceptable, wouldn't hurt the overall product, and wouldn't disrupt the chemistry or flow of the boat.
This is how I view the process, and why I believe in "reloading," not "rebuilding."
If you've been following along with the story line, the Seahawks dominated their way to the Super Bowl this year using one of - if not the - youngest rosters in the NFL, along with a roster full of undrafted players. I read this the way that I read how Billy Beane put together the 2002 Oakland A's team - Moneyball or sabermetrics.
Some thoughts on this...
I believe that in order for your team and your program to be successful long term and consistently, there needs to be a process in place. The process is similar to fundamentals. As in rowing, when things aren't going well, you can come back to your basics. This is the same belief that I have for your program.
I believe, perhaps naively, that once you've established yourself and your system or process, you should never have to "rebuild." I don't know how most view that word, but when I see the word, "rebuild," and it's not attached to a new coach or new staff, it means that somewhere along the line, there was a failure. Somewhere the program got away from what made it successful, and started going down paths that led to short term success at the expense of long term stability and growth.
This doesn't mean that you don't adapt and grow with your system - Billy Beane is now looking at high school prospects where he wasn't earlier in his tenure as the A's GM - but the fundamentals of your system or process remain the same.
I believe that instead of "rebuild," a program should always be thinking, "reload." This goes into my thinking of training and recruitment. I like to train my boats together a majority of the time, flipping between lineups, and seats so that everyone is coming up together before we split off into set lineups and boats. One thing that I saw early in my career were boats that lost an athlete struggling to maintain their speed and ability to race. I decided that one of the things that I wanted in my program was the ability to take pieces and plug them in as I need, and while there may be a drop off between person A and person B, the drop off would be acceptable, wouldn't hurt the overall product, and wouldn't disrupt the chemistry or flow of the boat.
This is how I view the process, and why I believe in "reloading," not "rebuilding."
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