There is rarely a press conference with Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon in which he fails to refer to his “five-buckets” approach to coaching or at least one of the buckets.
The players often mention it and, broken down, the buckets are physical, technical, schematic, psychological and health.
“It’s not rocket science,” Gannon said during training camp. “It’s just if you look at it, what we ask these guys to do and how can we help them, it’s how can we serve them? What do they have to do on a daily basis? I think we’ve got it pretty wired in the five buckets. I wish we could put it into just three, but it’s hard to.
“The players’ role is to maximize themselves. It’s like, ‘OK, JG, you say that, but what do you mean?’ So, we try to lay it out for them. ‘Here’s what that means’ and in my opinion, there are five ways they can do that. They’re all interlaced together. You’ve got to be working on all five really every day.”
During training camp, rookie running back Trey Benson admitted the psychological area was one that he was learning about.
So it was fast-forwarding three months to this week that Gannon was asked about the success Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith has in two-minute situations. Without mentioning it as a bucket, Gannon said, “I would use the word he’s a gamer. He’s brought his team back and won some games, and I think it goes into his skillset. I’m sure he is psychologically trained where the moment’s not too big because it’s not. His skillset is one that in known-pass with the game on the line; he’s hard to defend. He really is, and he does a good job of making the correct decisions and giving his team a chance to win, which he’s done.”
Gannon was then asked how the psychological bucket is implemented by the Cardinals brain trust.
“We educate them,” he said. “We spend a lot of time on it. We’ve got the right people in the building, the actual experts, to educate the players and educate the coaches so the coaches can coach the players on some things. We talk about it, we do. I feel like that’s an advantage that we have because of the people that we have in place. I think they do a really good job of it, and our players take to it. They really do, so that’s a resource that we need to use, and we have used, and we have to continue to use, and we need to use them better.
“Just like all our other resources, just be disciplined to your process, but tweak it and do it a little bit better. I’m definitely glad we have those guys and I’m glad that our players understand the value of it.”
So, coach, how much do the team’s veterans help with that?
“A lot,” Gannon said. “Those are the guys that kind of lead the way on a lot of that because we do have a lot of young guys. They know the advantages of it. How they use that piece, that bucket and that resource; everyone’s a little bit different.
“You could be amazed at some of those conversations and it’s cool to see because at the end of the day, all you’re trying to do for the players (is) serve the players. All you’re trying to do is make sure that they can become the best player that they can be, and what’s in between your ears is a huge piece of that.”
As physical as the game of football is, mental consistency and focus has to be on point.
If Sunday ends with a good result for the Cardinals, a large part of it will be from a full psychological bucket.
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