Haz and leadership
 

This thought came to me when I was replying to another topic and it made me to start to question Haz philosophy of coaching and developing team leaders. Is it possible Haz wants too much control and he does not allow players to be leaders?

The saints have moved out the most vocal players on the team each year. these are players Haz called distractions and players who were made scape goats for the teams failures. For many years we all thought these players were team leaders.

One of the biggest questions for the saints the last few years is who is going to be the on filed leaders? We never had this question with the saints until the HaZ era. Is it possible HAZ and Co. don't know what a leader is? Could it be HAZ over protects his players and controls their play too much? Maybe Haz does not allow his players to develop into leaders? When will HAZ give us a version of the "woulda coulda shoulda" speech.

Haz and leadership
 

I, for one, would agree with your analysis of Haslett. I have always thought he was a control freak, I think in his mind it makes up for not knowing how to pull a team together. If he can keep deflecting the attention off of his short-comings by laying the blame on these so-called trouble-makers then he can buy himself more time. I would almost be willing to bet he will shift the blame to his coaching staff next, and although they do need to take some of the blame for our earlier demise it starts at the top.

Haz and leadership
 

Well, he\'s had enough time to put his own choices in place. There\'s really no players left from the Ditka days (Fontenot and McAfee is all I can think of). So he no longer has the excuse of \"someone else put him here\". He\'s chosen the players we have now (along with Loomis, of course).

I can understand canning people that don\'t fit your style, though. I\'ve laid off enough people over the last few years to undertand that - people that had the necessary skills to do the job, but people that resisted the direction chosen by leadership. These were people that caused unnecessary problems at nearly every opportunity. It was better for the company to simply replace these individuals. The alternative was to fight through constant resistance, when there\'s others out there that would do the job without causing problems. So I can understand him scrapping potential leaders -- that is assuming they fit this scenario. That is -- assuming he made the right choices.

Bottom line - if we go 10-6 or better this year, then I\'ll applaud his decisions (control freak labeling or not). If we go not better than 9-7, then I\'ll continue to question him. But if we go 8-8, then I\'ll agree he\'s made the wrong decisions, and those decisions have hurt the team.

We shall begin to see in just five short weeks.

[Edited on 4/7/2003 by LordOfEntropy]

Haz and leadership
 

Any coach can try as much and as hard as he wants to make someone a leader. It just don\'t happen. The guys on the teams pick the leaders in one way or another. It\'s the same 2 old sayings - leaders are born not made & there and leaders and then there are followers. Haz & co can try anything they want, but there\'s always gonna be a few leaders and the rest will be followers. All head coaches are control freaks to a degree. They have to be or they wouldn\'t be here. I don\'t think Haz over does it at all. Truth is, we really have only an inkling of what goes on in the locker room and between the players and players & players and coaches. Being vocal doesn\'t automatically make you a leader. Sometimes, it just makes you a whiner. These coaches know their careers depend on whether or not this team is successful. They\'re not going to try and sabotage it on purpose. A player/person either fits the team the coach wants or they don\'t. Bottom line...\"play by my rules, or go.\"