Lashlee wants SMU players to embrace the grind, finish spring strong
The SMU football team returned to spring practice on Tuesday after having a week off and has to fight through the monotony in the final stretch until the Spring Game.
Spring can be an interesting time in the development of a team. The Mustangs aren’t looking to be a finished product when spring is over, they don’t even have all the players they will have for the season yet, but they do need to put in the work to be ready when the time comes.
“I thought we had six good days before the break. The first day back from the break, I thought the defense really didn’t skip a beat,” SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee said after Tuesday’s practice. “They were flying around, had good energy. Thought the offense was pretty sloppy. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the break or just a bad day or what, but that’s got to get better. The guys’ intentions are good. They’re wanting to get out of spring what we’ve got to get out of spring, which is different than fall camp. It’s all about the fundamentals, execution, details. It’s not always about the end result of plays and stuff. So sometimes people are getting better in areas and you may not see it on the defense or the offense, but it’s all about that process.”
Spring isn’t always the most exciting time to begin with. Coming off a break and with practices mounting it can get even harder to stay focused and get the necessary work in.
“It’s really easy in life or in football or anything to get bored doing the routine things over and over and over,” Lashlee said. “But the reality of it is, the good football teams can do routine things over and over and over again. There’s a lot of areas for us to improve based on last year, but this is a new team and so we’re learning these guys. We do have a lot of guys returning on both sides.”
It’s not just this spring that has practices stacking on top of each other, but the last two years too. For the players who have been on the team, things have been the same for a while.
“I think that’s the challenge, it’s the third year in the system, both defensively and offensively, particularly on the offensive side a lot of guys who have been here both of those years,” Lashlee said. “It’s like, how do you come out and not get bored running the same this and that and really work on being so good at it that we should be able to hold a sign up and tell the defense we’re about to run and still execute. That’s what we’re trying to get to, we’re clearly not anywhere near that right now.”
Coaches can’t always tell the players who will embrace the grind during the recruiting process. But there are some signs they can look for.
“Everybody’s got a different personality. I think you want to find people that love football,” Lashlee said. “If they love football and they want to be great and they have aspirations and plan at the next level, whether they do or not, then they’re going to buy into whatever it is they have to do to be the best version of themselves. Then it’s our job as coaches to communicate that, hold them accountable to the standard and not let them get distracted or bored.”
There is no such thing as the perfect player, just players who continue to get better and develop. It’s up to the coaches to try and get every player to continue to work towards that perfection, though.
“That’s the beauty of this game. You’re always striving for perfection, you never get there. It’s kind of like the real world,” Lashlee said. “But it’s hard. It’s human nature to either get bored, get lazy and so it’s our job to keep on track and put in front of them, ‘Hey, this is what we got to get better at today, so we can keep making those strides.’”
