“Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus hits 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?”— Howard Payne
Howard Payne, Dennis Hopper’s character from Speed, was all about challenging/taunting Jack (Keanu Reeves), Annie (Sandra Bullock), and the rest of Los Angeles police department. Dallas Cowboys new defensive coordinator Christian Parker seems to have taken a page from the same book, using a similar tactic.
Like Howard Payne,
Christian Parker is challenging his players with his own pop quizzes.
On any given day inside the Cowboys’ facility a surprise could be waiting for the players. They’re prepared, in a sense. They’ve already got pens or pencils in hand from taking notes during team meetings. They also know, at any given moment, Parker or one of the team’s assistants could stop everything and slide a paper in front of them. They have to be alert.
“He’s always randomly popping out quizzes,” said Cowboys corner Caelen Carson.
As someone who’s been praised for their ability to teach, something the Cowboys valued highly when they hired him, this is just another tactic Parker is using to help prepare his players mentally for the upcoming season.
It sounds simple, but it’s a practice that could pay off in a big way as far as preparation goes. These extra mental reps help to ensure each individual player not only knows what their job is on any given play, but what’s going on around them as well. This learning tool is multifaceted and should help create a more cohesive unit.
These quizzes are useful to the coaching staff as well. It lets them know which players are up to speed with the concepts and assignments, and which ones might need a little bit more work off to the side. The pop quizzes certainly sounds as if they are mutually beneficial for all parties concerned and could play a big part in Dallas’ defensive turnaround this year.
This is a great lesson in accountability, something we all would like to see more of from the Cowboys moving forward. Knowing that at any given moment they can be put on the spot with one of these pop quizzes, whether in meetings or on the field, players now have to take pride in the teaching/learning aspect of the game.
Sometimes little things get swept under the rug, but with Christian Parker at the helm steering the ship now has a first-time DC with the Cowboys, he’s proving to be a detailed oriented teacher both on and off the field.
“There’s so many ways to check understanding and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Parker said. “It goes back to the communication and making sure everybody’s on the same page. You don’t want guys to sit in there in silence and assume that everybody knows anything. So it’s a consistent process of getting those mental reps. You’re kind of tricking your brain, thinking this is another rep on the field, when you put her on paper.”
Despite being a first-time DC, this is yet another example of why Jerry Jones and Company have been so high on Christian Parker from the get-go. Although it’s been somewhat difficult to buy into the hype surrounding Parker’s hiring based on countless disappointments in the past, he has yet to give us any reason to doubt he’s the right man for the job.
Parker’s attention to detail and willingness to be a teacher on and off the field will hopefully result in a quick turnaround from what was a porous defensive performance a season ago. If giving pop quizzes aids in that transformation they should be all the better for it.
