Mario Cristobal: "If you let it, human nature can destroy a program"

If you allow yourself to think rather deeply for a second, one of the primary jobs of coaches is to push back against human nature. Allow me to explain.

Think about it; human nature often urges us to take the path of least resistance, to take the easy way out sometimes, to stay well within a confined comfort zone. All the while, coaches push for the opposite, the goal being to push players beyond the limits of what they previously thought possible to achieve their full potential. Players that stay in their comfort zone, always taking the easy way out can often turn out to be the downfall of them individually, and the program as a whole.

With that in mind, Oregon co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Mario Cristobal's recent comments on the Ducks depth chart to The Oregonian should actually make a lot of sense.

"There's a reason why that board is magnetic. You get to move them quite easily instead of having a permanent fixture in there and I think that when you do that as well, it makes everybody better, it certainly does. If you go home going, 'Whoa, my job's on the line, this other guy is kind of creeping up right behind me and he's got an opportunity to take some of my reps, you're going to put in that much more time, it's just the nature of the beast."

"Human nature, if you let it, will absolutely destroy a program inside out. Because of what? Complacency. We won't allow that here."

As an assistant under Nick Saban the past few seasons, Cristobal has had a front seat on how to defend against complacency within one of the top programs in college football so that quote carries some significant weight.

There are a lot of different perspectives on what a coach is and what they should be, but Cristobal's comments scratched the surface of something I believe is vital whether you oversee just a position group, a coordinator overseeing one side of the ball, or a head coach in charge of an entire program. You have to be comfortable enough in yourself to push back against complacency in individuals and in your program as a whole.

Head here to read more from The Oregonian.