The coaching profession is a line of work where, at one end of the spectrum, there are guys that are always looking for new things and innovating in different areas, and then on the other side of things there is the camp that keeps the old school element of football alive...sometimes to an extreme, and not always in the best interest of the game or players.
That leads me to this social experiment that I came across on Twitter late last night, where @OpenCrossPlant points out that this lesson is one that should be hung up in every coaching staff room in the country.
Below is the original tweet I came across, and I also dug up a video explaining the social experiment.
https://twitter.com/opencrossplant/status/1102346466125889536?s=12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgJ8-IaBSeY
From my perspective, the message at the end of the experiment that coaches can take away is to challenge the status quo. Don't get lured into the belief that something has to be done a certain way just because that's the way they've always been done.
One real life application of that happening today is the way practice regulations are changing. New Jersey, and a few other other states, have been in the news recently for cutting the allotted full-contact practice time down to just 15 minutes a week, a change being done with player safety in mind.
Tackling is another thing that has undergone a dramatic change over the past 10 years because of guys challenging the status quo.
It doesn't take a vivid imagination to see that the lesson can easily be related to scheme as well.
Thanks to innovators and forward-thinkers in our profession, the game of football has undergone some massive changes over the past decade or so, largely because influential people have been able to buck the mindset that was shared by those five monkeys in the social experiment.