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Both of them
Join Date: Sep 2006
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Grimm has simple approach
Grimm has simple approach
Quote:
There is a day's growth of whiskers on the face, sweat stains on the cap, and the gray pullover athletic shirt has seen better days. It's Week 2 of training camp, and Cardinals assistant head coach Russ Grimm doesn't much care how he looks.
What he really cares about is how the offensive linemen he's coaching look.
No off-season move was more important to the Cardinals and coach Ken Whisenhunt than the hiring of Grimm, once among the game's better offensive linemen and now regarded as one of the NFL's leading teachers of offensive-line play.
The dog days of training camp - this where Grimm is in his element, working on the field with players during the day and instructing them in the classroom at night. He has definite ideas about how to coach and how to teach, a philosophy gleaned from guys he played for, such as Joe Moore at Pittsburgh and Joe Bugel and Jim Hanifan with the Redskins.
If he had to describe it in one sentence, it's this: "I want to coach it the way I wanted to be coached."
He's not a yeller or a screamer, although Grimm will raise his voice. "You have to take him to the extreme to get him to yell," says Cardinals right tackle Oliver Ross, who played for Grimm with the Steelers.
What's the extreme? Committing the same mistake again and again.
"I always say, 'Hey, the first time you make a mistake, that's my fault because I didn't get the point across,' " Grimm says. "The second time you make it, we're going to have a problem."
Grimm begins the teaching process long before his players put on pads. It starts in the classroom, with one play on the board and blank sheets of paper in front of the players.
Effective simplicity
Some coaches like to hand out playbooks containing intricately designed plays, complete with footnotes that explain how assignments can change depending on the defensive look.
When Grimm is teaching, each player draws the play. Grimm goes over the assignments and how the play will look against various schemes.
"It's always better if you make them write it down," Grimm says. "They're better at taking notes than if you give them the whole play with all the little descriptions underneath. I make them write it down, and then we go over it every night.
"I start with the play, I make them understand what everybody else is doing on the play."
It sounds complicated, but Grimm reminds his linemen of this: When the ball is snapped, either you'll have a guy in front of you or you won't. He gives them a set of simple rules for either situation to avoid any blown assignments.
"I think maybe his approach is unique," says Whisenhunt, who worked with Grimm with the Steelers for six years. "He kind of takes what we're doing and puts it into rules that simplify it for the offensive line. He has a great way of categorizing their responsibilities and putting it together that, to me, has been pretty unique."
Grimm's method eliminates the need for multiple calls at the line of scrimmage. When they break the huddle, his linemen might note the defensive front and where the middle linebacker is. Maybe there will be one other call. But that's it. And that's unusual in the NFL. "There's none of that panic up there," center Al Johnson says. "Hopefully, it equates to a lot less mental errors, a lot less confusion."
Big credentials
Grimm has received a considerable amount of attention since joining the Cardinals.
He's been on the cusp of making the Pro Football Hall of Fame the past two years, and he's been a finalist for head coaching positions. In Arizona, he's making more than $1 million a year as an assistant, far more than the team ever has paid for an assistant.
He insists players take ownership of the offensive line. He constantly tells his guys, 'This is your offensive line, not mine.' In a game, he notes, he's standing 25 yards away with a headset on, not a helmet.
He is trying to produce chemistry in a starting group that returns only one starter, right guard Deuce Lutui, playing the same position he did last year. This group dynamic is one reason Grimm doesn't believe in grading individual performances each week.
To Grimm, individual grades don't matter. A player who misses five blocks out of 70 plays could grade out at 93 percent, but what if the other four guys do the same? That's 25 missed blocks in one game, a disaster.
The offensive line, Grimm said, is a different kind of position. It's not about one guy. Or one coach.
"I'm not playing; I quit playing a long time ago," he says. "The biggest thing is, I take a lot of pride is seeing them having fun and being successful. That's what my job is about."
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Grimm has simple approach
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