Washington Football Team: Parallels between Ron Rivera and Ted Lasso
Believe in Your Players
The most important thing a coach can do is encourage their players and show that they have faith in their team. In the show, Lasso focuses more on giving his team uplifting words and instilling that belief in the team. One of the first things he does as a coach is add a sign that says “Believe” in the locker room.
Some of the quotes he tells his players might come off as cliché, but they are the types of things that can make or break a young player’s confidence. He preaches belief to his players and it starts to get through to the team as the season progresses:
"So I’ve been hearing this phrase y’all got over here that I ain’t too crazy about. ‘It’s the hope that kills you.’ I disagree. I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you. See, I believe in hope. I believe in belief."
Coach Rivera has taken similar actions in Washington and has earned his Riverboat Ron reputation by taking risks, which is his way of showing his faith in his players’ ability to execute.
Washington has the fifth-best fourth-down conversion percentage in the NFL, converting on 63.6% of their attempts.
Another scenario where Ron showed his confidence in his team was in Week 6 against the Giants, when he decided to go for the win by going for two after scoring with 36 seconds left.
In spite of the attempt failing and the team taking a loss, those are teachable moments for a young team. After the game, Rivera explained his decision: “It tells your team that you believe in them.”
Current and former players both understand what Rivera is trying to accomplish by taking these risks on fourth-down and at the end of games and appreciate his actions.
After the Giants game, Quarterback Kyle Allen talked about how he loved that the coach challenged the team and was instilling that mindset:
"I understand it and I love that he’s doing it. He wanted to see what we were made of… It’s an aggressive mentality and he’s been that way ever since I’ve been with him. Sometimes it’s going to work, sometimes it’s not going to work. You’re going to live with it, but for him and this team, it’s all about creating this mentality."
Former Panther tackle Jordan Gross also talked about how it feels to have a coach believe in you in those key situations and how it impacts your behavior:
"You get hungry for that. You walk around with your chest puffed out. It would carry over to practice to where, ‘This guy has faith in us. We have to be who he thinks we are.’ We’d talk about that in meetings: ‘Let’s practice to make him have that kind of confidence in us again.’"
What goes hand in hand with belief is making sure players move on from mistakes quickly and don’t second-guess their decisions. Coach Rivera commented on developing that mentality for the Washington Football Team after the Week 6 loss to the Giants.
"When you start looking back and start second-guessing yourself, now you get into a situation where: ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’ Sometimes you freeze yourself. If the players know that’s what we’re going to do and how we’re going to play, now it starts taking hold of who they are. That’s what we’re trying to get across to those guys."
In the show, Lasso would try to teach that same mindset to his players of moving on quickly from mistakes or losses: “You know what the happiest animal in the world is? It’s a goldfish. It’s got a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish.”