Ultimate Football Guy Duce Staley Fights Through Shredded Vocal Cords To Chew Out Lions Players In All-Time 'Hard Knocks' Moment
Get this man some tea! Some throat coat!! Anything!!!
If you're on a coaching staff led by Dan Campbell, your Football Guy quotient better be off the charts. Duce Staley is the running backs coach and assistant head coach. Even before this whole situation went down, Staley established himself as an undeniable tone-setter on the practice field and on game day.
Dare I say we've now reached the apotheosis of Football Guy.
Staley refused to let trivial matters like the basic ability to vocalize get in the way of coaching his position group up to the max. I know the players are locked in on the task at hand, and were coming off a subpar showing in joint practices with the Colts. Still, I commend them for keeping a straight face here. Although I've always taken pride in my work and wouldn't be thrilled about getting verbally berated to this degree, I'd be all like...
Maybe a more effective method would've been to pull each guy individually aside and surreptitiously scold them. BUT hey, the cameras were on, it was the heat of the moment, and Staley was FUMING.
Being able to hold a player's attention when you're this angry and this hoarse is a legitimate skill. It bodes well for Staley's ambitions to be a head coach someday. I hope the Lions have some sort of end-of-season banquet and feature a video reel of highlights that has this on it so everyone can have a good laugh after the fact. Or hell, it may even get spliced into a film session during the season to add some levity to the grind. Whatever the Lions themselves decide to do, this Staley footage should be a mandatory feature on any cutup when someone asks, "What does it mean when someone is a FOOTBALL GUY?" There is no better example of it.
We might be in for another rough season on the field in Detroit, considering the team is still in a rebuild and Jared Goff, all due respect, is the quarterback. Unless we see three or fewer wins from this team, Lions management better give their collection of coaches more time. They deserve a real shot to turn things around with a fully-realized roster reconstruction. What seems obvious is these Lions will go down swinging and won't suffer from a lack of effort or coaching.
Staley, albeit in hilarious fashion in this instance, epitomizes the GRIT that Campbell has been preaching, and it seems like everyone is buying in. Let's hope it translates to more wins in 2022, because that'll mean Campbell stays in place. It also increases the likelihood we get to see Staley get his own shot at a lead job one of these years.
Before you try to tell me Coach O was the guy who made this cool, he has a natural gravelly quality to his voice. If it's during the season, Ed Orgeron is never NOT hoarse during an interview. If you want a full-tilt Staley when his pipes are flowing, look no further than his exchange earlier in Hard Knocks with defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn. Another classic clip from the show.
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Twitter @MattFitz_gerald