EPISODE 5: I'VE FOUND THE PROBLEM, YOU'RE SATISFIED!

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Work, work. let's work. We're in the trenches, breakin' down the defensive line from technique and fundamentals to NFL and college football analysis. You're listening to Big Dawg Trench Talk. Work, work, work.

Whassup Big Dawg? This is Coach Rolle and welcome to another episode of Big Dawg Trench Talk. Thank you for subscribing to Big Dawg Trench Talk, where you know your progress is our success. I do this for one reason and one reason only, and that is to make sure that as coaches and as players, that we are the best dawgs in the trenches that we can be. The topic that we're going to discuss today is very important to me. I've experienced this as a coach, as well as a player.

As a player, there were times when I sat in the film room and I watched film, trying to figure out why was I not playing to the best of my ability. There were times as a coach that I would watch my athletes, my dawgs, and I would try to reason and figure out why are they not playing to their fullest potential? Well, I think I know the problem.

Episode number five. I found the problem, Big Dawg. You satisfied. Now, let's talk trenches. I have taught linemen, all kinds of different tricks and schemes and how to be proactive in your pre-snap and that's another podcast, when we'll talk about being proactive in your pre-snap. There are different things that I have discussed with my linemen and I've done all kinds of drills to have the mass of those skills, because we know, as coaches, and as players, we know that drills develop skills. Why do we do drills? Because they develop skills. That's why we do drills. They develop skills. The proper drill will establish and develop the necessary skill. It's important that you have the right drill for the necessary skill.

But, I've done that. I've done all of that. And yet still I've worked with young men that were not productive in the trenches and I was as creative as I could be. So here I am as a coach, trying to figure out, "Gosh, how do I get my linemen to be run stoppers? To be, persistent and determined, to make a play or make a tackle" and I realized that I was fighting against something that was almost impossible to win against. To me, this is a curse word, this is a bad word, this is an enemy of mine and I realize that I saw it in the nature, or I saw it in the mentality of the guys I was trying to train.

And I realized that this thing was in them and it was preventing me from progressing them and I recognized it as an enemy and as a villain. To me, it's a bad word, its an evil thing that was keeping me from progressing them or keeping them from progressing, and that was satisfied. The word satisfied.

I'll give an example. Watching these young men play, this was a long time ago, a long, long time ago, but I always think about this. I watch these young men play and I know they had loads of potential to be great and to do great and look good in the preseason, great summer training, thought they were well, thought they were developed and ready to go. First game came, first game was not what I expected. I didn't like that. I didn't like how they performed, so we took it up a notch, you know, more drills, quicker, faster, harder, again, again, again. Trying to make it muscle memory. And it was. So, second game came, same thing. It was not productive. This is what I did coach, hear me out.

So, we circled up and I took them behind the goal post and I needed to have a conversation with them. I needed to stop what I was doing because evidently what I was doing wasn't helping. Something was wrong. So, here we are, behind the goal post and I had them circle and I stand in the middle. And when I do that, I'm looking in their eyes, I'm looking in their eyes and I'm trying to identify their mentalities and their will. You know, dawg means driven attitude wills greatness. That's the acronym, D A W G.

I didn't see it. I didn't see the will. I didn't see the hunger, so I'm sitting there lookin' at 'em and I looked in everyone in their eyes and I said, "Oh, I see, you're satisfied. You're satisfied with your production. You're satisfied with being a football player. You're satisfied that you have a jersey on and you get a chance to play in front of people. You're satisfied that you're not being productive. You're okay with that."

I told 'em, I said, "Where I'm from and you look at the guy's eyes across from you or when you look at your teammates' eyes, you see hunger, you see thirst. You're looking at a young man, or a man, that has a desire to eat. It's almost like you have two dogs and one piece of meat and somebody gotta eat and I ain't eaten in three months. And whey you look at that guy, your teammate, from where I'm from, that's