In press conference Haley said he would fight like hell to get Boldin if he was more available.

I love Anquan. We had two great years together. He was very productive. The emotion of the game got blown out of proportion in our sideline dispute. Anquan is a heck of a player. Probably the toughest player I’ve ever been around. You can’t match his toughness. I’d be fighting for him if he was more available.

this came from the post where he was interviewed by the clowns from Pittsburg

Something to the effect of “That kind of intensity got us to the superbowl and all of a sudden it’s a distraction?” That was the thrust of his remark. I can’t recall anything from Boldin about his relationship with Haley, but Haley has lots of respect for him, and that kind of intensity we saw in the NFCC is apparently not all that unusual for THEM, even if it looked off-the-charts to US. And it looked off the charts to ME when I watched it. I’ve gone so far as to point that incident out as a negative for a young HC.

It’s a rare thing to be with a group of people you can let it all out with, like that. A HC is in a unique position to transmit that kind of brutal honesty and single-minded purpose to 53 players plus coaches, if he can pull it off. And he can if he’s fuckin’ right most of the time and not obstinate about it when he ain’t. I think that this relates to treating players like men and expectin’ ’em to act like men.

This seems to run counter to the way he monitors the weight room. But I know from my experience as a math teacher that if you don’t insist on a certain amount of work and let them know you’re watching (grading daily work), you’re going to lose a certain percentage of the class, because they won’t do the work if you don’t insist, they’ll fall behind, and have their asses handed to ‘em on the test (which you don’t want). A lot of people have a Herm Edwards mgmt style. “They’re all adults. They know what’s expected of ’em.” The trick is to treat ’em like adults and yet stay after ’em every day.

And who amongst all learners seem to benefit the most from close monitoring and structure? The young men. A woman or an older guy who’s seen some lean times and is back in school for a better life will work all day and night if they have to, in order to meet your expectations, and they end up expecting more from themselves than you every expected. A young guy thinks he’s smart/talented/gifted and figures he’ll be able to get by on the test if he crams the night before. And there are a million other things he’d rather do than apply himself to your shit every day,and he’ll take off as many days as you let him get away with.

These are all young guys complaining about this with the exception of Waters. Young guys coming off six wins in two years aren’t in a position to demand respect just because they’re being told to do better conditioning. If Haley’s cursing them out in hallways, that’s one thing…if he’s doing stuff like this that directly affects performance and they’re unhappy, they’re the problem, not Haley.

Right now they’re just trying to keep their jobs under a hardass HC’s gentle ministrations. it’s different when you’re all on the same side tryin’ ta beat the guys on the other side. I’m not one to chew people out, myself. It’s easy enough to devastate someone just by being frank about their performance, without going to those lengths. Nevertheless, I get the sense that Haley knows what he’s about, and is miles ahead of Mills when it comes to ramroddin’ a 53-man outfit.

A good counterpoint would be Wade Phillips in Dallas. He’s coming into the upcoming season saying he’s going to crack the whip more, but frankly I suspect that either he won’t run things any differently or if he does he’ll get laughed at by his players. You can come in as a hardass then lighten up, it doesn’t really work the other way.