Any significant contribution by Kindle should be considered an added bonus to this team.
In other words, expect nothing and take what you can get.
PP
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Any significant contribution by Kindle should be considered an added bonus to this team.
In other words, expect nothing and take what you can get.
PP
To give you a little background, I've been a Longhorn fan for quite sometime, even marrying a UT fanatic, and I have known the name Kindle for quite some time.
When the Ravens signed him, I had very cautious optimism. He struggled in Mack Browns system (a very straight forward defensive scheme) but had success since they catered a lot to his talents since he is a freak athlete.
His problem now is that he's an athlete among athletes and has to apply his smarts. I'm sure he's a nice enough guy, but that's his knock. It doesn't surprise me at all he's not grasping the intricacies of an NFL defense.
There are three ways to learn; visual, audible and kinesthetic and he may be the latter. Pat Kirwan wrote a chapter about it in his book.
He has Jason Brookins disease.
Ten cent head.
He is exactly the type of guy to run with the new breed of TE's these days, I hope now that he has the playbook down he can get on the field more.
He ain't costing us anything (540k) next year so who cares, we are playing with house money now with all the draft picks we have nailed recently.
Now that he has had a year to physically heal, and a year to get the playbook down, we should be able to figure out real quick next year if he is gonna make it. Kruger dicked around for 2 years and then all of the sudden figured it out, so it can happen. And Ozzie says by the end of year 3 you know what you have with draft picks, and that will be the case with Sergio.
Time to put it all together on the field starting in training camp and then into preseason to make his case for playing time.
Interesting about drawing and filling it in himself, helping him learn. They do a lot of that at Montessori schools. As opposed to lecture -> note -> memorize -> regurgitate. It's a different way of encoding the information. I knew people in college who relentlessly "re-copied" their notes. Yes, they re-wrote their already hand-written notes. I thought they were crazy but that's how they learned. Mostly biology majors -- folks who had to memorize long lists of things, and all the taxonomies and classifications. I never could deal with any of that stuff, but I can see the comparison with a complicated NFL playbook.
It's not like he's learning some easy system -- the Ravens have a highly evolved defense that is difficult for opponents to figure out -- it stands to reason then it's also hard to learn.
I can say from first hand experience that when you write stuff down it is almost burned into your brain for some reason. I used to hate trying to memorize all this shit for school, but started doing just what you said and it was AMAZING how much stuff I could retain. I am almost exclusively a visual learner doing things with my hands as well, so it isn't like I have problems seeing something and remembering it.
OK, but he wouldn't be the 1st player to struggle learning how to play in the NFL - James Harrison got cut 4 times in his first three years (3times by PGH, once by us), primarily due to his inability to learn the playbook:
"He was just like any other rookie(2002)," says Steelers veteran linebacker James Farrior. "He didn't really know the D. We'd be in practice, in training camp, and he might not know what he was doing so he'd just stop and throw his hands up and tell them to get him out of there."
"In late July '04, the Steelers called after linebacker Clark Haggans suffered a freak injury lifting weights. They wanted Harrison back for training camp. It wasn't the same Harrison. He went to camp armed with 1,000 flash cards, and laid on a mattress on the floor at night with his playbook and handwritten notes."
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playof...ory?id=3855349
It takes some guys longer than others. So I'm still cautiously optimistic.
I see good points all around this thread. They didn't put a huge financial investment into Kindle, so what they get out of him will be gravy. There might be a good upside with a very low downside.
Great point about Harrison. It took him getting cut and going to bigger lengths and doing non-standard things to learn the playbook and become a good player. Kindle being willing to put in the time shows, IMO, something about his character and desire to get to the field. (I think it also shows that Monachino is a coach we want to keep. You guys who said he'll one day be DC, I believe, are on the money)
As far as Kindle's inability to learn the playbook, there is also the physical aspect that his accident probably impaired. If Kindle's having issues with complicated actions like driving a car or walking steps (actions themselves predicated upon muscle memory and in the case of driving, intuition), I'm sure he's having a tough time developing the muscle memory that helps him to physically remember what to do in the moment without having to overthink it. This is on top of the basic mental-only learning that goes on in football.
I don't know what kind of ROI the Ravens will get on their minimal investment in Kindle, but it sounds like if he continues to work hard to better himself as a player, it might pay off for both him and the Ravens.