On Monday night, Denver Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett got blasted by the NFL world for his atrocious clock management and his decision to kick a long 64-yard field goal with the game on the line. Hackett admitted the mistake on Tuesday, saying that he regretted his late-game decision-making. One analyst has a simple way to make sure it doesn’t happen again: play more video games.
While it may sound like to suggest that an expert coach paid millions of dollars to make critical decisions should turn to video games to improve his job performance, John Hollinger of The Athletic makes the point that while video games may not be a perfect representation of the actual sport, they are excellent at simulating late-game situations much like the one Hackett faced on Monday.
“People think I’m crazy when I say this, but I’ve long argued that coaches should play video games to get reps on late/close decisions. There’s still stuff in NFL/NBA that is obvious to gamers but real life coaches struggle with,” Hollinger said in a Tweet.
Hollinger’s point makes sense. Like everything else, you get better at coaching through repetition. And video games like Madden or NBA 2K could allow coaches to repeat those crucial late-game scenarios more often, in a shorter amount of time with less pressure. It’s not much different than a flight simulator.
Perhaps Hackett should listen to him so he doesn’t make that mistake next time.
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