The Day After: Matt Rhule trying to give the gift of focus

[Sir Purr]

"I'm going to go try to win the last three games, so I'm going to put the guys that earned the right to start or play in," he began, settling in for what clearly was going to be an extended metaphor, a parable perhaps.


"I just don't think it's a great message to the team to start making this a tryout," he continued. "The question earlier about how to keep guys' eyes from glossing over, if we learn one thing this year with a young team, if we learn how to finish a season with 28 days of focus in December, if we have a chance to be a playoff team next year, our ability to focus around Christmas, to focus around Thanksgiving, to go win games at the end of the year when you're beat up, when practices are shorter, that's a skill.


"Who can be great at the end of the season when you're dealing with all these things? How do you handle making sure you have a Christmas present for your wife and also making sure you know the third-down game plan? I'm dead serious. It's the ability to eliminate distractions and stay focused.


"So instead of trying guys out, I'd rather try to get the whole organization to understand how important December is. And try to win games in December. And if we're not good enough to win, to give an honest fight. We didn't play great yesterday and we still had a chance to go win a game."


There were more words, but that was the essence of what he's trying to sell this year, this month, and this week.


Rhule wasn't thrilled with the technique some of his players played with at times, the lack of precision of assignments.


But he also wondered whether he put some of those players in position to succeed, by giving some of them extended game reps when they barely practiced the previous two weeks because of the bye and the assorted absences that kept some guys away last week.


He wasn't crazy about quarterback Teddy Bridgewater wasting a chance to use the two-minute warning to craft a better third-down play.


"Teddy made a decision to run a play when we asked him not to," Rhule said. "Watching the tape, I see what he saw, but it shouldn't happen that way. That'll be made clear moving forward. There's a time and a place. You can't have quarterbacks play in the black and white, there has to be some gray area, . . .


"In that area, I think he thought he had a little more grace to get that done, but it's not what we wanted."