When Dick Vermiel was head coach of the Rams he would wander around from position group to position group, coaching fundmentals.
Bill Walsh, in chalk talks with position groups when installing a play, would emphasise and coach detailed fundamentals relative to the play design.
Ol' Pete in Seattle always puts fundamentally sound teams on the field. His videos on tackling are used by coaches at all levels (including at least one local high school here in the Bitterroot Valley) to teach the fundamentals of sound and safe tackling.
Much as I loathe the insufferable cheating ba$###d, Bill Belichick insists that his players not make mistakes when it comes to fundamentals. Example: On defense,his teams make secure tackles. (It's OK to roll up on a quarterback's leg and wreck his career if you have a shot to do so in a pre-season game, and it's OK to gouge the eyes of an opposing quarterback while he's on the ground if you're sure the officials aren't looking, but we don't talk about those things out-loud. After all it's the Patriot way.)
Vince Lombardi insisted on excellence at the fundamentals as part of a team effort aimed at excellence.
Mike Martz, when asked about coaching fundmentals when the Rams were slipping in several fundamental areas, said, "When they get here, they're supposed to know how to play football." Different approach.
The fundamentals of tackling is a don't-get-me-started issue with the Rams, as is the need for emphasising the fundamentals in coaching team-wide. Simply put, I don't see enough of it - possible exceptions this year, OL, DL, and WR's.
What you've pointed out here is
right way to catch a football,
wrong way to catch a football. Pretty fundamental - it's what I learned in high school and what I coached. Sometimes, depending on ball placement, you have no choice. But it looks as if, here, Higbee could hasve raised one arm, lowered the other and made a fundamental ly clean catch. The fact that a professional athlete can get away with doing something wrong doesn't make it right.
Watch the falling-over-backward one-hand grab that Odell Beckham made on typically wild errant pass from Eli, or watch the front shoulder left-handed only-one-guy-could-have-caught-it touchdown from Warner - a ball placed in a soup can where only Fitzgerald, with one hand, exactly the way they practiced the play, could have caught it.
Those throws, and throws like them and the resultant catches, are outliers, athletic marvels. But watch those two players the rest of the time - or watch any great wide receiver's hands. Cooper Kupp is a great example. So, for as much as I've seen, is Puka.
They make a good, sound fundamental thumbs and forefingers toward the ball catches as often as they can.
Tight ends? Different coach - and I haven't seen enough catches to form an opinion one way or the other. But given the scattered approach to fundamentals that I see on the Rams, I have to wonder,
IF this screen shop is representative, how the TE position coach has been coaching Higbee.
Emphasis on the fundamentals leads to excellence - regardless whether you're teaching music, writing, fly casting, ot football. The experts stick to the basics.
