Former NFL coach Bill Parcells has a connection to a few members of the Kansas City Chiefs roster and front office, specifically GM Scott Pioli and head coach Todd Haley. Personally, he's the guy I enjoy reading about and watching more than anyone else involved in football.
So I'm always curious what he has to say and, in an interview ESPN 101 in St. Louis this week, Parcells dropped an interesting nugget on the lockout. We've talked about whether the Chiefs will be hurt by the possibility of the lockout cutting into training camp, or even the season, but Parcells says that decreasing the preparation time may not be as bad as you think.
"Coincidentally I always felt like you really do a better job with less time than more time because when you have less time and you have to decide what is really of the utter most importance and you focused immediately on that.
"Whereas when you have a lot of time to time deliberate as to what to do a lot of times you kind of get off on little tangents. You're trying to work on stuff that you're not really sure of yet. I think when time is of the essence you make decisions that are important [saying] ‘We have to absolutely do this' and you kind of get to it, so I think that's probably the way I would approach it."
I can see the logic in that, for sure. But I'd still say that every NFL coach will want as much time as possible with his players (and I'd also bet Parcells would say the same thing if he were coaching).
We're entering the third season in which Haley has been a head coach so he probably has a pretty good idea of what his schedule will look like and I'd also guess that he has schedules set up for all kinds of possibilities such as a one-week or two-week training camp.
Parcells continued, "I would be kind of writing down ‘Okay I need to get this done. This done. This done'. However long this list is and these are the important things and then these are the ancillary things that I'm hopeful that I could work in, but I just think you approach it with what's important or most important. You try to put the emphasis there."
I hadn't really thought of it this way but I wouldn't be surprised if someone has brought this idea up to Haley.