[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by DeezNutz

Whoa, Vermeil was not someone who ran "easy" practices, but he was someone who was petrified of rookies.

So there's a bit of balance there.

I've slept a lot since then, but if memory serves, he ran long practices, but I'm not sure how "hard" they were, from a conditioning standpoint. I also seem to remember that he regularly let veterans sit out, to keep from taxing them. This is even more subjective, but I don't remember thinking at any time that that team had any special degree of toughness, either. I remember a kind of softness that I was hoping Herm might offset (being a defensive-mind coach; I'm sure I talked about this in 2006), but he only seemed to make it worse.

I know a lot of people mock the "right 53" thing, but I actually really like that approach, at least in theory, finding (talented) players who'll buy into the system and fight their asses off. I think that's something that's been missing here for a long, long time. A team that will knock you on your ass. Or rather, a talented team that will knock you on your ass. I still believe that's the ultimate failure of Vermeil's tenure here; the cerebral, "I'm going to out-finesse (and out-stat...) you" approach rather than an "I'm going to line up and beat you" attitude.

But that's a tangent.