It’s In His Head


I walked away from watching the TN-Auburn game on TV last night with two thoughts on my mind, lose the creamsicle uniforms and did Crompton seem to play better under the hurry up offense? Seems I wasn’t the only one who noticed. This morning one of the GoVolsXtra tweets confirmed what I thought. Dave Hooker wrote what I had been thinking:

Perhaps Jonathan Crompton just needs to play faster.

in his article Hurry-up only offense for Vols.

The only thing that I haven’t seen mentioned is why Jonathan Crompton needs to play faster – he doesn’t have time to think. With the hurry up offense, all Crompton has time to do is react. His problem is (and I have said this before), he lets things get in is head and it effects what he does. 40 seconds is plenty of time for negative self talk, second guessing and doubt.

I noted after the UCLA game that you could see the lack of confidence in Crompton’s eyes and his body language each play after he had an interception. You could see his frustration in the way he was throwing the ball. My recommendation at that time (and still is) was that he needs the help of a Sports Psychologist to help Jonathan get Jonathan out of his own head.

I may not be a big time college football coach, but I have a tiny bit of experience coaching. I see it all the time, the frustration gets in a player’s head when they have a bad play and it snowballs from there. I watched my husband bowl a perfect 300 game. My only advice to him was “don’t think, just do”. Practice build “muscle memory”, the body knows what to do if you don’t let the brain get in the way.

Jonathan, you are letting your brain get in the way.


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