The Second Day of the Combine

Second day of the combine starts up!

Sun is out…what a fantastic start to the day here in Switzerland.

The long and winding road (that Beatles’ song again) from Konstanz to Luzern promised a nice day.  It would certainly be muddy on the outdoor field, but the sun would make it a pleasant October day.

The US coaches are all looking forward to this day.  Our chance to work with the guys.

I’ve seen most of these coaches on the football field before … they are the very good teachers and motivators.  Looking forward to watching them have a chance to coach these eager players.  The energy from yesterday will be amplified (college word) now that we are actually playing real football.

The goal of the second day of the combine will be to actually conduct workouts for the various positions.  Norm wants each of us to spend as much time as we can with our individual groups.

He would take the QB’s and running backs, Mike the wide receivers and tight ends, Bob the offensive line.  Defensively Otis would lead our charge.

We were tasked with working the players with specific drills and also to talk to as many as possible and get a sense of who they are.  Norm gets it … the fun part about working in football is getting to know new people.

Plus, these are not only new players … but we are in an entirely different country.  Change in language, traditions and obviously a different approach to the game of football!

Unlike at the NFL Combine we don’t have the “scouting report” about the players we would be working with ahead of time.  This would be a “blind” workout.  With the exception of a few players I knew …these were unknown prospects (suspects?).

I spend a few minutes with some management guys before we really got going. They seemed excited and basically asked me for a quick assessment…I told them I thought things were going very well.  Hell…it’s football why wouldn’t it be exciting?!

Really, the previous day went better than expected in my eyes.  That fired them up … I was happy and I hoped each of them understood that this would be a great day.

We get to watch the best of the Swiss players work and compete.

Football is never perfect and it is not an exact science.  I encouraged everyone to enjoy this DNP (Damn Near Perfect) day.

It seemed that everyone was beginning to see the vision … and we were all doing our best to work on this challenging project.  Starting everything from scratch – no players, no practice field, no stadium… so much more to address.

I truly wanted everyone to enjoy the day (I know that we six coaches from the US live for this stuff)  and we needed as many people to take part as possible … get involved by talking to the players and coaches… also to revel in the sunshine (OK … maybe the word revel is going too far!)

But, really this was the beginning of a whole new chapter in Swiss football… in coaching you learn not to look for perfection because you will waste your time (especially with some of the guys we had at the tryout) just try to find effort and excellence!

In sports, you have suspects and prospects.  Almost everyone we had at the combine were suspects.  But, they were eager and excited to compete and that’s all you can ask for.  It was our job as coaches to find those few prospects running around in the mud.

Now that all of the BS meetings were over with we were finally getting down to football!   Anyone who knew football had to be very happy with the direction the combine was moving.

There were several players in particular I was looking forward to seeing work.  I thought that one linebacker in particular –  John Falk would bring a lot of energy to the defensive side of the workout.  Plus, we had identified a few young receivers who might be interesting to bring on board.

Also, there was a defensive back (a police officer) from the the Konstanz Pirates who might be a practice squad player then there was also a young linebacker – Julian Conus who I had been told about earlier.

Julian would eventually make our roster and be a big part of our special teams with the Guards.  Late in the season he also played on the defense as he showed impressive development.

I thought we were at a good place right now.  We had made a great deal of headway considering it was October.  The Guards had come a long way in a few months….  still a long way to go … but let’s build this team one step at a time.

To me – let’s look at this team building process with optimism.

Listen … I can bullshit with the best of them.  My friend John Cordova calls me “Henry Kissinger Clemons” because I can get along with pretty much anyone (Well Switzerland in my second homeland … so I am neutral – right?).

Let’s look on the bright side .. the sun was shining and we could see the mountains surrounding  Luzern. Absolutely beautiful!

Now the field was a little mucky and maybe Paul Simon’s “Slip Sliding Away” might be appropriate.  Hah … what a life!