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https://www.dailynews.com/2020/05/10/al ... -distance/

Alexander: It’s hard – but not impossible – to coach from a virtual distance

Rams' Sean McVay, like the rest of his coaching brethren, tries to figure out the best way to navigate pandemic



By JIM ALEXANDER | jalexander@scng.com | The Press-Enterprise
PUBLISHED: May 10, 2020 at 8:29 a.m. | UPDATED: May 10, 2020 at 8:30 a.m.

How do you coach when you can’t really, you know, coach?

The first thing in football’s new normal, Sean McVay said, is to trust the players. You can have virtual meetings to impart information, and you can make sure the athletes have the proper tools to keep themselves in condition on their own. But as long as the coronavirus pandemic continues, and teams can’t actually take the field as a group, the onus is on the players to follow the plan.

Yeah, it’s tough on players. It’s tough on coaches, too.

“It’s not normal,” the Rams coach said during a recent Zoom conference with reporters. “I mean, the thing that you get the most excitement from is being able to get out on the field, work with the players, connect with them on those levels. That’s where the real joy comes in.

“But I’m just grateful that we’re able to connect in some form or fashion. Everybody else is having to deal with this, so let’s make the most of it. Let’s do the best we can with the circumstances and the situation that we’re dealing with. And then whenever that time comes that we’re able to get together, hopefully we’ll be able to accumulate enough great information above the neck.

“They’ll stay physically in shape (enough) based on some of the programs, and just the overall intrinsic motivation that the players have, that it’ll allow us to try to be seamless as we can when we transition back into playing real football.”

Is it working?

“It’s different, very different,” wide receiver Josh Reynolds said in a video conference with media after last month’s first day of virtual team activities. “It started off crazy. I guess McVay sent us a link without audio, so for the first 10 minutes we were all trying to hear each other. I guess Brock (Michael Brockers) was the only one able to talk to people because he was the one yappin’ it up the whole time.

“But it was good to see everybody’s face and kind of get back into the swing of things.”

VTAs will never truly replace OTAs, organized team activities, as the preferred method of off-season work. The Zoom conferences do allow teammates to renew acquaintances, and while it’s a different type of bonding it’s still bonding.

Defensive tackle A’Shawn Robinson, signed as a free agent from Detroit, is trying to get up to speed with the Rams’ defensive scheme and his new teammates. The new way is OK, but you can tell he misses the old way.

“Just getting there (on the field), being able to hang out and get to know the guys, to see that body language on and off the field, you’re missing that,” he said in a recent video conference.

Team chemistry is affected. Conditioning is affected. The Rams can send each player up to $1,500 of conditioning equipment (and Reynolds said he was going to order a Peloton exercise bike), and Reggie Scott and the training staff are well aware that in other years where training camp or off-season work was affected (aka lockouts), increased soft tissue injuries were among the consequences.

And virtual meetings without on-field reinforcement affect the information flow, both for visual learners (who need to see something to pick it up) and especially kinesthetic learners (who need to engage in an activity to understand it).

There still is no definite idea of what the future will look like. McVay acknowledged that training camp at UC Irvine is still uncertain; even if the Rams go, the specifics will likely change and there will almost certainly be no fan presence, unlike the team’s first four summers at UCI.

(Plus no training camp likely means no Rams-Chargers joint appearance on HBO’s “Hard Knocks.” That is a blow.)

And while no one in the league is allowed to speculate on what might eventually happen to the schedule, by edict of Roger Goodell, it’s likely SoFi Stadium in Inglewood will open without fans. The Week 1 Sunday night tilt with Dallas could be played on time, could be moved back or could even be scrubbed altogether, although that third option figures to be the absolute last resort.

So right now the idea is to prepare as if the season will go off as expected, but be flexible and prepared for anything.

“We’re moving forward with the anticipation, the optimism that we’re going to play a full season and we’re going to kick off against the Cowboys,” McVay said. “And that’s really the only thing I can do. You know, it’s a cliche, control the controllables, but it’s true. Any wasted energy and attention on anything else kind of takes away from it.

“Hopefully we’re going to have a game. But right now, let’s have a great third week of this virtual offseason. Let’s take advantage of being able to get more rest and those types of things. And in this moment I think it’s been a great opportunity for a lot of people to reflect and be able to have a perspective that maybe you wouldn’t otherwise.

“Certainly you don’t wish we were going through these things, but I feel pretty good right now.”