ANYTHING FOR AN EDGE
Using perceived slights as motivation is an NFL staple, but does it work?
Players made their final walk-through in the afternoon. Game preparations seemed complete. Then-Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher had one more video clip to show his players before they retired to their hotel rooms the night before a January 2006 AFC wildcard playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
It wasn’t of Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer passing to Chad Johnson or Cincinnati’s blocking schemes or blitz packages.
It was from a month earlier, when Bengals receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh — after Cincinnati’s 38-31 win at Pittsburgh — wiped his cleats with a yellow “Terrible Towel” in Heinz Field.
To the Steelers and their impassioned fans, the gesture was akin to a parishioner blowing his nose on the pope’s pallium.
“It was the only clip I showed them,” Cowher, now a CBS commentator, said by phone this week. “I said, ‘I want you guys to sleep on this. Get a good night’s rest, and we’ll see you tomorrow.’ ”
The next day, the Steelers knocked Palmer out of the game in the first quarter and scored 17 unanswered second-half points in a 31-17 win at Cincinnati. They went on to defeat the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos on the road and the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl to become the first sixthseeded team to win an NFL championship.
Did Houshmandzadeh’s bulletin-board material affect the outcome of the Steelers’ playoff opener? Did it provide motivation for them during their title run?
There’s no consensus in the NFL about the effectiveness of these motivational tactics.
“Does it give you a little more juice? Sure,” said former Jacksonville Jaguars tackle Tony Boselli, a Hall of Fame finalist. “But once the game’s kicked off, you’re playing football. It’s not like you’re going to play harder.”
Said former NFL center Matt Birk: “It’s the oldest motivational tactic in the book: ‘This guy doesn’t respect you. He said this.’ Whatever. Unless someone were to come out and say, ‘Hey, these guys are clowns. We’re going to blow them out of the water,’ when coaches try to play that card, for the most part people kind of roll their eyes.”
Even Cowher concedes he doesn’t know how much motivational fuel was generated by disrespecting the Terrible Towel … but reminding his players of it didn’t hurt.
“We felt somewhat disrespected, and we kind of played the underdog role through the playoffs,” Cowher said. “Even though they’re professional athletes and you shouldn’t have to motivate them, they’re still playing a kid’s game, and when people say or do things you think are disrespectful, it takes any athlete, any competitor, to another level.
“You personalize it. If you can somehow make every game personal — and sometimes bulletin-board material can do that — it just heightens your focus and heightens your resolve.”
Coaches have used bulletin-board material to motivate players since the days of leather helmets and the Tformation. For decades, this took the form of newspaper quotes posted in the locker room. Sometimes, it was a television or radio clip.
“I saved them during the course of the week,” said Cowher, who coached the Steelers from 1992 to 2007. “As they walked in on Saturday, there may be a sheet at each locker that may include a number of quotes that gave them food for thought.”
With the advent and expansion of social media — Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, et al — over the last two decades, there are so many more platforms for players to incite and infuriate opponents.
“Anybody who says they don’t read the papers is a liar,” said Birk, a former AllPro center who played for the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens from 1998 to 2012. “How can you miss anything these days? It’s not just the newspaper.
“It doesn’t make you play any harder. But if there is a guy out there talking smack … it’s like back when you’re on the schoolyard and a guy’s talking all sorts of junk and then he gets shown up. You’ve got to make a big deal of it to him, like, ‘Hey, maybe you shouldn’t have been mouthing off.’”
Last month, the Jaguars had a chance to clinch their first division title since 1999 with a win on the road against the San Francisco 49ers. “This is a hat and Tshirt week,” Jaguars line backer Telvin Smith said, referring to the gear given to players to celebrate division titles. Told of the quote, 49ers linebacker Reuben Foster said, “A hat and Tshirt week? Oooh, OK … well guess what, we’re gonna have to take them off.” The 49ers won 44-33. A month later, those same Jaguars felt disrespected by the Steelers and running back Le’Veon Bell, who tweeted about a rematch with the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game the night before Pittsburgh was to play Jacksonville in a divisional game.
The Jaguars whipped the Steelers 30-9 in October. Coach Doug Marrone was sure to mention Bell’s tweet in a pregame meeting. A few hours later, his players relished a 45-42 playoff win over the Steelers.
“It’s disrespectful. It’s stupid as … to be honest with you,” Jaguars defensive tackle Malik Jackson said, using an expletive. “You don’t give a team that came in here and smacked you in the mouth ammo to come out here and be on you all day.”
Former NFL defensive back Toi Cook recalled a game during his sophomore year at Stanford when then Cal coach Joe Kapp said that the “weak links” on the Cardinal defense were Joe Cain and Toi Cook.
“He made it seem so personal, it got me pissed off,” said Cook, who played for the New Orleans Saints, 49ers and Carolina Panthers from 1987 to 1997. “I had two interceptions that day. [Bulletin-board material] does play into it. I read the paper every day because I was looking for inspiration and information.”
But can inflammatory actually influence the outcome of a game?
“Once the ball’s kicked off, I think people kind of overestimate it,” Birk said. “It’s not like all these story lines are going on in your head when you’re out there. You’re in the huddle, the play’s called, here’s my assignment. You’re very much laser focused on the task at hand. All the peripheral stuff sort of disappears.”
If there is a master manipulator of bulletin-board material, it might be Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who will be looking for his sixth Super Bowl title when the Patriots play the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 4.
“Whoever he’s playing that week is the best team he’s seen on tape all year, the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Cowher said. “He’ll just shower you with accolades to make sure nothing is created.”
On the f lip side, Belichick can create a slight where one doesn’t seem to exist. In the lead-up to the AFC title game between the Patriots and Steelers after the 2001 season, Cowher issued an itinerary for the Super Bowl — which was one week, and not the traditional two weeks, after the conference title games — to his players and staff in case the Steelers made it.
Belichick got wind of the memo and made sure his players were aware of it before New England’s 24-17 victory.
“Bill took it and kind of ran with it and said, ‘Look at the Steelers, they’re looking past us,’” Cowher said. “We really weren’t … but hey, all’s fair in love and war.”