We are in the dog days of summer football. Last week was the first real training camp, which is always prime time for knee-jerk reactions.
Chad Ochocinco had a pretty good first camp, which means he's headed to a Pro Bowl!
Ryan Tannehill struggled to adjust to the speed of the NFL game which means he is a bust!
Reshad Jones and the defense dominated the offense so the defense will be good and the offense will be bad! Or they both will be good! Or they both will be bad!
I am glued to Omar Kelly's twitter feed every day of camp, but before pads come on, it's tough to really know anything at this point. With that in mind, I will state the only 2 things I have really taken away from camp so far.
1. I Like Chad Ochocinco
I think my recent post about him being crazy may have made it seem like I don't like him, but I do. How do you not love a guy who proposed to his girlfriend and then went right back to playing Call of Duty? If we had to trade big draft picks for him or if we were paying him huge money, his nuttiness might be a concern, but for the veteran minimum, we can just sit back and enjoy the show.
2. Joe Philbin Doesn't Yell
I am not the first person to notice that Joe Philbin is not the yelling type, but he seems to have an almost supernatural calmness about things. To illustrate my point, below is a list of Google results. Keep in mind that Philbin's photo is the closest I could find to one of him yelling and he is probably just talking.
Obviously this isn't the most accurate way to gauge things, and I'm sure he has yelled at players before, but you get my point. When we had Cam Cameron, I wrote this post about how he needed to be scarier. Cam arrived as an offensive guru who was able to generate a huge offense in San Diego with players much better than ours, but he was also a pushover and ultimately players like Joey Porter walked all over him.
Obviously, yelling doesn't guarantee success. We just had a coach in Sparano who never stopped yelling. Eventually, the team went south and that yelling fell on deaf ears. But look at the coaches of the top 4 teams last year: The Brothers Harbaugh, Coughlin and Belichick. Which of those is the soft-spoken nice guy? There are a handful of nice-guy coaches who are successful like Tony Dungy or Dick Vermeil, but there are way more successful guys who either yell, or in the case of Mike Tomlin, give looks scary enough that they don't have to.
I hope Philbin is an offensive genius and this season is the beginning of a dynasty, but whether he succeeds or fails, people will say it's because of his demeanor. If he wins they'll say it's because of his ability to stay calm and if he fails they will say he wasn't tough enough on his players. Still, if he starts using phrases like "Fail Forward Fast", I'm gonna be nervous.