Last week, Scott Frost's comments about why his coaching staff won't be yelling at players went viral.
New Arizona State head coach Herm Edwards learned a similar approach during his time coaching in the NFL, but the reasoning behind it is quite different. Frost doesn't believe in having his staff yell at players because he wants guys to be able to execute their assignment without the "fear of failure." For Edwards, who admits that he used to run some of the quietest practices in the NFL, the approach is more about focus.
Dungy shares the following with AZ Central:
"I can remember an article (a Florida writer) wrote here in Tampa when we first got here in 1996 that said he never had been around a professional football practice that quiet.”
“You instruct people and tell them what to do, but it’s a teaching environment,’’ Dungy said. 'That’s what we wanted to create. We would get players who were motivated and we’d get players who were hungry and we would just teach them, so we felt like we didn’t have to have that high decibel range all the time.'”
Edwards also notes in the article that simply changing volume from a shout to a whisper forces the player you're coaching to focus more on what is being said simply because they have to listen closely to hear what you're saying. Yelling on yelling on yelling simply turns into noise after a certain amount of time.
He also shares that the volume certainly gets raised with some coaches, including himself, on occasion, but also adds that words are very powerful and "how you address an athlete is very important."
Head here to read more on the changes that Herm has brought to Arizona State so far into spring ball, including how he's using his SportsCenter ties to motivate players.