There is an expression in football that little things add up to big things.
There were plenty of examples of that during last Thursday’s 34-20 B.C. Lions loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg.
As Lions head coach Buck Pierce tries to transform his team into a championship contender, the focus is on those little things.
Perhaps the best example was a play in the first quarter in which the Lions defensive front had done a pretty good job of neutralizing a Bomber running play. Almost all the gaps were cancelled and Winnipeg running back Brady Oliveira looked to be stopped for little or no gain at the point of attack.
Notice I said almost all the gaps were covered.
The problem on this particular play is that two Lion defenders were cancelling the same gap — leaving an outside gap open. The end result was Oliveira bouncing it outside and gaining 43 yards. One missed assignment saw you go from holding the opposition to a one-yard gain to watching Oliveira truck through your secondary with a full head of steam for a chunk play.
It’s those types of little things that Pierce and his staff are trying to eliminate by setting a standard of excellence. Do the little things right and they’ll add up to big things.
But how do you go about getting players to do focus on the little things?
It’s about habits and we are not talking about habits in the games. We’re talking about developing winning habits in everything you do as an athlete both on and off the field. It starts with developing those winning habits – every single day.
You hear players talking about alignment and assignment all the time but it’s much more than that. It is - as former Vancouver Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet liked to say – about breaking the ceiling. It’s about pushing yourself to another level you didn’t know existed. Breaking that ceiling is what separates good from great.
You break that ceiling by pushing yourself to be the best you can be in every single thing you do and that’s done by developing winning habits.
Running 40-yard sprints? That means running 40 yards – not 38. Watching game film on an opponent for an hour at home? That means 60 minutes of watching attentively – not having the game film run for ten minutes while you go to your front door to pick up your Skip order. And it also means you better be ordering something healthy from Skip.
It means pushing yourself in every drill and every practice so much so that those habits transfer to games. If you think you can go through the motions in practice and just turn it on in games, you’re cheating yourself and your teammates.
But Pierce and his staff can’t be the only ones demanding that level of commitment.
To have a winning culture, you need a buy-in from the team’s leadership group as well. That leadership group has to set the standard and enforce that standard with their teammates.
The players have to demand excellence from one another. They have to be accountable to one another. And they have to do it while caring for one another.
Only then are you on the road to starting something special.
The Lions are hoping they have started on that road.
EXTRA POINTS:
* Quarterback Nathan Rourke didn’t participate in practice when the team returned to workouts Tuesday in Surrey. Rourke injured his oblique muscle in the fourth quarter of the Winnipeg game and was replaced by veteran Jeremiah Masoli. Pierce told the media that Rourke is day-to-day but this agent believes that the Lions will err on the side of caution and won’t play Rourke against Winnipeg.
* Missing the rematch against the Bombers would be disappointing for Rourke, who was not thrilled with his performance in Winnipeg. Rourke was 12 for 27 passing for 249 yards in the contest, which saw him drop to 0-5 versus the Bombers during his career. “I want to play. Especially because we don’t play these guys (Winnipeg) the rest of the season. I don’t feel like I played my best the other night, so it means a little bit more,” Rourke told the media following practice.
* If the Lions are to beat the Bombers this Saturday (4 p.m. TSN, CKNW 730) they will have to a better job on the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. The Lions should get a boost on the defensive side with the return of defensive end Sione Teuhema, who has finished serving his two-game suspension for violating the CFL’s Drug Policy. Also close to returning is linebacker Josh Woods, who is still rehabbing a torn ACL suffered in last year’s season opener. Woods was expected to be an impact player for the team last season and his return will be welcomed.
* With his eight points in the game against Winnipeg, Lions kicker Sean Whyte (2,131) cracked the CFL’s Top-10 all-time leading scoring list by overtaking Terry Baker (2,125). Whyte is now 106 points behind Edmonton legend Dave Cutler (2,237), who is in ninth.
Veteran B.C. sports personality Bob “the Moj” Marjanovich writes about the B.C. sporting scene for Efteen. This column is brought to you in part by:
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