The Pittsburgh Steelers have lengthy had a training workers that excels at halftime changes. Courting again to the times of Dick LeBeau, Mike Munchak, and plenty of different expert coordinators and place coaches, the Steelers have thrived within the second halves of video games.
Even the 2024 group, for no matter you wish to say about them, was significantly better within the second half than the primary. Halftime changes, and even sideline changes, are probably the most vital elements of teaching. You possibly can solely recreation plan for a lot, and sooner or later, it’s important to evolve on the fly to match the wrinkles of opposing groups.
Ben Roethlisberger talked at size throughout his Footbahlin podcast a few rising pattern towards the tip of his profession that I’m positive is ubiquitous now within the Steelers’ locker room, and all locker rooms within the NFL, for that matter. That’s, in fact, the utilization of cell telephones at halftime in NFL locker rooms. As an alternative of being locked into what the coaches had been saying or reviewing the tape to attempt to right points from the primary half, Roethlisberger seen numerous gamers checking their social media or textual content messages to see what individuals needed to say about their play.
That is going to be a ‘Get off my garden!’ kind of publish about habit to cell telephones and social media at the present time. And who am I to speak as a 30-year-old blogger who spends most of my working days scrolling X and YouTube? However that can be central to the core obligations of my job description, whereas it clearly isn’t for NFL gamers in the course of a recreation.
Under is what Roethlisberger needed to say.
“There was a pattern my final couple years of taking part in that form of got here within the league that, I can’t keep in mind when — it might have been 5, six years as I used to be ending — however the pattern acquired progressively worse,” Roethlisberger mentioned. “Guys would are available at halftime and go proper to their locker and seize their telephones and be taking a look at social media, taking a look at issues like that…Not all people, but it surely acquired progressively increasingly.”
He then described how every place group had its personal space of the locker room to fulfill with place coaches throughout halftime earlier than the coordinators and the top coach addressed the workforce as an entire.
“The linemen would all the time be collectively. You by no means noticed these guys on telephones,” Roethlisberger mentioned. “However you’d see different guys as a substitute of being with their group, they had been of their locker taking a look at their telephones.”
Mike Tomlin spoke about his efforts to attach and get messages via to the brand new era of athletes throughout HBO’s Laborious Knocks. He spoke in regards to the energy of positivity and displaying gamers pictures and movies of themselves making massive performs. It’s form of a rudimentary try at speaking with the youthful era, however a minimum of an effort is being made.
Many gamers now come out of school with money within the financial institution due to NIL offers, and so they virtually grew up on-line, with smartphones, social media, and the web an enormous a part of their upbringing. It’s an inescapable a part of the tradition at this level, but it surely does appear a bit odd that there are not any workforce guidelines relating to the sort of conduct at halftime.
That being mentioned, and Roethlisberger acknowledges it himself, he’s not within the locker room. Perhaps guidelines have modified since he left, however he made it sound comparatively unchecked over the ultimate 5 or 6 years of his profession.
Absolutely no person has forgotten in regards to the notorious Antonio Brown locker room stay stream following their playoff win over the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. Coincidentally (or not), that was the Steelers’ ultimate playoff win practically a decade in the past.
“To me, that might all the time drive me nuts,” Roethlisberger mentioned of the cellphone pattern. “You’re not coming in occupied with what you probably did within the first half. You’re coming in occupied with what are individuals both saying about me on social media…If you happen to’re coming in checking since you’ve acquired a sick somebody at residence, otherwise you’ve acquired perhaps a spouse that’s pregnant, issues like that, perhaps. However this could occur method too typically for these sorts of issues to occur. I simply suppose that generally that may be a part of a mentality.”
Roethlisberger asserts that this pattern has maybe hindered the workforce’s means to make efficient changes at halftime.
“You gotta have a singular focus while you’re on the sector. And what can I do for the second half? What did I do good and unhealthy within the first half, after which what can we do to enhance within the second half? That’s what halftime changes are for,” Roethlisberger mentioned. “Once I was taking part in, we used to say we’ve the perfect coaches at halftime changes and even sideline changes.”
He particularly talked about that he isn’t taking something away from the present workforce as he isn’t within the locker room to see these dynamics. However his ideas are fairly attention-grabbing while you zoom out and have a look at the bigger pattern of participant engagement (or lack thereof) within the locker room at halftime, which I’m positive shouldn’t be a difficulty that’s remoted to the Steelers.
Ought to groups implement stricter guidelines on halftime distractions, or is that this simply an unavoidable actuality of the trendy period?
