Joe Philbin wants players and coaches to enjoy time off during bye week

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
There are some coaches who will put in long, grueling hours at the office each day and some who will even sleep there overnight in order to cram in as much film review and preparation as possible. There have been some coaches who have been successful and some who have failed working that way. On the other hand, there are coaches who will spend just the right amount of time at the office and the right amount of time at home. As it is with the other way, some have been successful and some have failed. For Joe Philbin, he’s the kind of guy who’s going to balance his time and heading into the bye week, he wants everyone to enjoy their time off.

“We’re going to have the coaches get some time off, too. We’re going to come back to work on Sunday, but we’re going to give them some time away. They need some time away as well. As you guys know, my philosophy has always been we’re going to run 1,300 plays in OTAs, 1,700 in training camp, have four preseason games. We’re not going to re-invent stuff. So I’m not talking about re-inventing, but I’m talking about, potentially, there might be one wrinkle or two that we can add. Maybe it’s a new formation. Maybe it was one new pressure on defense that fits within our scheme overall. So but there is certainly, when you have too much time, I’m prone to doing too much and I know some of those things are true.” 

Philbin enjoys the bye week because it allows himself and the other coaches to evaluate their own team and find out what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong and then work to fix it for the upcoming week and for the rest of the season.

“Well, you kind of get a chance to kind of re-assess everything you’re doing. You look at a lot of different things. We’re going to meet this afternoon. The players are going to get out of here. We’re going to let them out. We’re going to meet with each side of the ball and the special teams to kind of get a quick synopsis of where we are, what we got to do to get better, what are the issues we’re facing, whether it’s third down, whether it’s first down, we got to use this guy more, this guy less. We’ve got to play more zone, more man, we’ve got to throw it deep more; run more screens, all those type of things. In the middle of the week, you always look at yourself in the middle of the week. But it’s kind of, ‘What’s that?’ And then you’re on to the next thing. So this week gives us an opportunity to kind of look at it, see if we can re-adjust, shift our focus a little bit.” 

His message to the players as they head off on their mini-vacation?

“Come back Monday October 6 at 7:30 a.m. ready to go and prepare to win a football game. We’ve been at it since July 24. They’ve earned their time off, enjoy it. Be smart and be ready to roll when we come back.”

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