Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, you are putting an assload of words in my mouth that I never said and never approached saying. Let’s start from the top:

Do you think receivers, when they ventured into the middle of the field against the Oakland Raiders when Jack Tatum was still playing, weren’t the "least bit concerned" about getting their heads knocked off? As opposed to all the other teams playing back then? I sure do.

When did I EVER say that this doesn’t happen? I never never never said that. You think I’ve never seen a receiver shy from a hit? It happens on a week to week basis, for crying out loud! I said that saying a team has to play “smashmouth football” is pointless because it doesn’t address what they have to do. It’s the result, if it’s anything at all, but it’s not in any way the process. And if “smashmouth football” means “hitting harder than the other guy,” then there’s a whole mess of worms that opens. How do you hit harder when you’re going up against somebody bigger? It’s not just because you try harder. It’s leverage, mechanical advantage, direction and deflection of force, the position of the shoulder, the way the knees drive. It’s the DETAILS.

The problem with the word “smashmouth” is that it’s unbelievable general. It almost means nothing. So you don’t think that Jack Tatum was the most physically talented guy? Then HOW did he get such an advantage over everybody else? It wasn’t by saying “Okay, I have to try harder here!”

Let me give an example that might help. Take hitting a golf ball. If you’re hitting a drive, and you’re trying to hit it farther than the next guy, what does that entail? It’s not just swinging for the damn fences. You have to get your hips right, watch the position of your head, and so on… you have to be better on a technical level, not on some magical heart level.

It amazes me sometimes how far behind football analysis and thinking is in this regard. The way such a majority of fans believe that you can just gut your way through everything. I mean, even in boxing, which is the definition of the “kick the other guy’s ass” sport gets more credit than that. I never hear about how a boxer just wanted it more. I hear about how x came out sloppy with his footwork, how y excelled on defense, how z wore a out by keeping him off-balance and attacking the body. I head about HOW a guy did what he did.

So yeah, I believe that a guy like Jack Tatum can absolutely intimidate a receiver. He can cause a flinch in the middle or get a guy to pull up early on third down. But it’s not because he’s magically just playing tougher. He’s doing the small things that give him the advantages to win the individual altercations. But he’s not saying “I’m going to go out and smash him in the mouth!” He’s saying “I’m going to go out and drive low, holding my center of gravity here…. etc. etc.” It’s not always conscious (that’s the beauty of training), but that’s HOW it works.

Dick Butkus?

SmashMouth Football is an ATTITUDE. Period.

Some teams/players/coaches have it and some don’t.

Ronnie Lott? SmashMouth

Normally I wouldn’t even grace arguments that are rooted in old examples with a response. It’s the same impulse that causes guys like Bruce Jenkins to say “man, pitchers used to throw 350 innings a season” while ignoring things like the changes in the game or the way 7 out of 8 of the guys they cite were out of the sport by the time they were 30 because their arms were shot.

But let’s ignore that for a second. How did Butkus make such an impact as he did in any given game? By being the wrong position? By tackling with his feet? You know, as long as he was tackling with his feet in a smashmouth way, I guess it would have been just as good!

Listen, as much as any other sport, the NFL is about skill. That doesn’t always mean the biggest guy or the guy who can hit the hardest. Let me give you another example, if we’re playing the example game:

Jerry Rice. Never the biggest. Never the fastest. But more than any other player in the game, he knew how to come off his first step to be a little faster. He knew how to turn his hips on a break to get that advantage. He knew how to leverage every single situation in his favor by being a master of the details of the game.

When you say "I don’t believe for a second that there is a player in the game who doesn’t play as physically or with as much effort as they realize they can" you are just showing how naive you are.

This is almost where you take the most liberty with anything that I said. Again, I NEVER NEVER NEVER said that there is a player in the game who doesn’t play as physically r with as much efforst as they realize they can. You made a really convenient edit there, and it’s maddeningly disingenuous. And if you insist on taking editorial liberty with my words, I won’t even bother engaging you. What I ACTUALLY said was: “With a few extreme exceptions (Randy Moss, anybody), I don’t believe for a second that there is a player in the game who doesn’t play as physically or with as much effort as they realize they can.”

Yes, there ARE player who dog it. Those are the exceptions. The extreme exceptions even. You bring up one example of that in Antone Davis, almost as if to prove my point. you go on to say:

You make the mistake of thinking that all players love the game and are giving it their all when they’re on the field. For some, it’s little more than a paycheck. Those guys aren’t "SmashMouth."

Ahem, excuse me, but to be perfectly blunt: No I don’t. Again, I NEVER NEVER NEVER said that players are playing hard for the love of the game. I said that, with a very small number of extreme extreme exceptions, players are playing with as much effort as they can. Period. I gave no reason why they are. Some play because they love the game, yes. Many don’t. When it comes down to it, though, 95% (excuse me for being vaguely arbitrary there) of the players in the NFL are playing for their livelihood. Some lve the game. Most need the game. You know what: you want to keep your job in the NFL? Then you play the game hard. If you dog it, you get beat and you lose your job and you’re stuck bagging groceries in craptown, Wisconsin because your lack of a degree from Florida State doesn’t count for anything in the real world. Hey, you know what else? You want to stay healthy in the NFL? You want to not get your neck broken? Then you better DAMN well play the game hard, because the next guy is coming for you and he knows what he has to do to drive your neck into a ground.

So yeah, these guys absolutely know what is at stake if they take a few plays, a game, a season off. If they dog it a little. If they don’t put in the effort. There is a hell of a lot more at stake for these guys than the love of the game to get them to put everything out on the field. Don’t let your Randy Mosses and your Antone Davises blind you to the fact that most of the players on every single team are 100% replaceable commodities, and that they know that as clearly as anything else about their careers.

Guys play hard. Every one of them has a reason to put their all in on gameday (for more reasons than I even outlined here), and almost every one of them understands it.

So please, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not the one being naive here.

See, what a lot of people don’t want to understand is that coaching matters. Ditka is/was as intense a player as there was in the NFL and he coached that way. Buddy Ryan was a master seargant in Korea when he was either 18 or 19. Players who were coached by those two guys played Smash-Mouth football or they played for somebody else.

I’m pretty sure that I said very directly that coaching matters. I’m also pretty sure that I went on to describe the details of how coaching matters. It appears you either didn’t read my words or you ignored them or you didn’t care or you don’t understand me.

Again, I’ll ignore that you’re uselessly arguing me from twenty years ago.

And again again, NEVER NEVER NEVER did I say that coaching doesn’t matter. What I did say is that coaching isn’t a matter of intensity. It’s not lighting a fire in your guys or running a military operation. It’s about making sure that your players know what they have to do to play better football. From teaching Vernon Davis when to try to make a catch versus when to try to break up the interception to teaching Chiloh Rachal how to get his hands under his guy’s pads a half second earlier. It’s about making sure your guys are aware of the details and that they are masters of them. Ditka managed to drive those details in by being intense. Ryan drove those details in by literally pushing his guys like soldiers. It doesn’t matter how you do it. You want your team to look touger, faster, stronger, scarier, more motivated? Then you get them to play better from the top down. You don’t just drill into them “BE TOUGHER, DAMMIT”

Great coaches like Ditka and Ryan and Parcells and Jimmy Johnson bring out the "most" out of their players. Crappy coaches don’t. After Johnson left discipline went out the window. Switzer won a Super Bowl with Johnson’s players but Aikman constantly complained about how lax things were under Switzer.

So, by things being lax under Switzer, you don’t think that could mean he was letting the details slip? There are plenty of successful coaches who were “lax.” Who weren’t slavedrivers. You want to look back in the past? What about Dick Vermiel? He might be the most player friendly coach in the history of the game. He’s also one of the most successful. Weird, I know.

BTW: You can watch for yourself. Compare the next two years under Singletary with the past two years under Nolan. With largely the same players you’ll see a difference in attitude and mentality under Singletary. Actually, it’s already been visible.

It has already been visible, and it to be perfectly frank it has absolutely NOT been an attitude change the way you make it seem. I’ve said it again and again. Singletary is COACHING the team better than Nolan was. In every instance that somebody cites a guy or the team playing harder or more motivated, I can identify coaching reasons why it appears that way. And I’ve said them here. Over and over.

Much of the reason the team is playing better is because the right players are playing. Shaun Hill’s playing. Jason Hill and Josh Morgan got healthy but, more importantly, got playing time. Bryant Johnson’s playing time has gone down. We’ve seen Manny Lawson starting games again. And so on. Player management has been remarkably better under Singletary.

The team controls the ball better, largely because of 1) Shaun Hill, but also 2) Singletary exerting pressure on Mike Martz to control the ball. We know Nolan left Martz to his own devices. We’ve seen Singletary in conflict with Martz. We’ve seen his impact directly.

Individual players? I already mentioned the coaching improvements we’ve seen in Vernon Davis. How about the improvements we’ve seen in Rachal since he was given his starts? What about the recently improved play of Abrayu Franklin? Keith Lewis?

You make the mistake in thinking that there’s no difference between Mike Ditka and Mike Nolan. Or first round tackle Anthony Munoz and first round tackle Antone Davis.

This is so far from any mistake I made that I’m not even going to address it. You’re basically making things up at this point.

All of your talk about "technique" is blinding you to things like attitude and heart and desire. Undersized guys like Bob Sanders "seek and destroy" cause of things like attitude heart and desire. You’re missing out on one of the most important elements of life in the NFL.

Rather, I think you overvalue ideals like attitude and heart because you don’t have to think about the game as hard if you can use them as crutches. I’m not saying heart and attitude don’t exist. Again, I NEVER said that. All I ever said is that the difference they make is smaller than many people want to believe. These people are playing at an absolute elite level. They didn’t get there by lacking heart or attitude. They all (again, minus the extreme examples) have it. It’s what got them to where they are I see it. I watch it. Yes, I do see it with my own eyes. I enjoy it as much as you. I’d just sincerely believe that the idea of the “intangible” is far too often just a rhetorical cover-up for not being able or willing to identify the tangible element that is actually at play.

I’d rather do the work to understand what is making the game work on the field than sit back and marvel at “grit” all day. Call me naive about that if you want. Just please, do not twist my words, put words in my mouth, or make things up altogether for the sake of trying to make me look inferior.

But the Chargers just match up poorly against Tom Brady.

Norv won 2 playoff games last year.