Oct 5, 2026 · 14 min · 8 segments
What happens when a coach knows the game, explains the game, and the players still do not understand it? This episode begins with the Parable of the Sower and a conversation about one of the most…
As he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds came and devoured them.
Others fell on rocky ground where they didn't have much soil, and immediately they sprung up because they had no depth on the earth.
Others fell on good soil and yielded fruit, some one hundred times as much, some sixty and some thirty.
But there is also something in that image that makes sense when we think about teaching.
Because the same message can reach different people in very different ways.
You can explain the same defensive concept to the entire team and get completely different levels of understanding.
One player gets it right away, another needs to see it drawn on the board, another needs to walk through it physically, another needs to watch it on film, and another way to understand it in a slow walkthrough but still struggle once the game speeds up.
They understand matchups, they manage substitutions, they see when something is not working and they make adjustments quickly.
A coach can understand exactly what should happen and still struggle to help a player understand it well enough to recognize it and execute it under pressure.
And a slight of phrase, while I always have told them, can be dangerous if it becomes the end of the teaching process.
Maybe the player heard it, but hearing something once doesn't mean understanding it.
As he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds came and devoured them.
Others fell on rocky ground where they didn't have much soil, and immediately they sprung up because they had no depth on the earth.
Others fell on good soil and yielded fruit, some one hundred times as much, some sixty and some thirty.
But there is also something in that image that makes sense when we think about teaching.
Because the same message can reach different people in very different ways.
You can explain the same defensive concept to the entire team and get completely different levels of understanding.
One player gets it right away, another needs to see it drawn on the board, another needs to walk through it physically, another needs to watch it on film, and another way to understand it in a slow walkthrough but still struggle once the game speeds up.
They understand matchups, they manage substitutions, they see when something is not working and they make adjustments quickly.
A coach can understand exactly what should happen and still struggle to help a player understand it well enough to recognize it and execute it under pressure.
And a slight of phrase, while I always have told them, can be dangerous if it becomes the end of the teaching process.
Maybe the player heard it, but hearing something once doesn't mean understanding it.
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