Summer Project: Catching On To Setting Personalized Goals
Wideouts look for consistent approach to improving
Mike Brohard
Knowing what they want is the first step. More importantly though is how to get there.
Chad Savage has an uncle who is a baseball coach, and he uses the word kaizen – simply translated to good change -- with his team every year. It’s something Savage, the Colorado State wide receivers coach embraced as a tool himself for his room.
“The big thing is I want our guys to be consistent in our approach. That’s our mindset in how we wake up and attack the day,” he said. “I want our guys to have that growth mindset coach Jay Norvell is always talking about – there’s always room to grow. The word we live by in our room is kaizen – the Japanese word that means 1 percent better every single day. If they’re consistent with that approach or mindset, then we’ll be in good shape.
“I don’t want guys to be complacent at all. I want guys to find a way to get better, be it in their releases, their secondary releases, their ball skills, their run game and blocking, understanding concepts – there’s always areas to improve on. If they can have that approach day in and day out, I think we’ll be in good shape.”
Stovall might not have latched on to the word kaizen as a youngster, but he understood the meaning from a different means. He had older brothers who went to college, so he learned from them by watching.
He took note of their success and mistakes. Latched on to their processes and mimicked what worked for them and what he could use. Now, when the sun rises, he’s ready to go.
“I wake up in the morning with the idea I want to get better at one thing today. Whether it’s conditioning, getting routes in with the quarterbacks and working on timing, you do it,” Stovall said. “The main thing is watching film and watching NFL receivers on how they develop themselves and what they go through daily and taking note upon that.
“For me, it’s just practice, repetition. If you’re not repping it, then there’s no way you can beat the system. It’s coming in day in, day out and be determined to reach a goal of being consistent. It comes over time.”
In his time at Colorado State, Thomas Pannunzio has bounced all around the field, from receiver to the secondary and back again. He finds himself with Savage’s group for his final season, so his intention is to be ready to compete full speed when camp opens.
The athleticism of the Rams’ main kickoff returner has helped him on both sides of the ball, but so has his drive, going from a walk-on to a scholarship player. He’s had to develop a routine wherever he has been, and now he’s doing it again as a wideout.
“For me, you have to start having habits and be dedicated to being the best you can be so when the season comes you can be reliable,” he said. “It’s having a daily routine that you can set to just get your workouts in, get routes in and get film in. Having a daily routine to get all that in is the biggest thing for me to be consistent.
“When I’m not at the facility, I work out in the morning and then I have one of the QBs from back home come and get some routes in. Then I try to watch a little bit of film to perfect my craft and get ready.”
Savage breaks down the year for his receivers into three parts – the season itself, the postseason and the place they now find themselves, the preseason. For each and every one, there are goals catered to the spot on the calendar.
“Right now, I have them doing four main goals,” Savage said. “So, for example, it could be I want to be a 1,000-yard receiver, or I want to travel, or I want to weigh 185 by game one. That might be the main goal and I want them to take four daily action steps on how to achieve that goal. If they want to be a 1,000-yard receiver, maybe they get on the JUGS machine four times a week. Or I’ll get in the film with Coach Savage or Coach Danny Shultz to watch cutups of this NLF receiver. Everybody’s goals are different.”
For the entire group, it’s getting timing down with the quarterbacks. All of them need to build familiarity with each other as they are a mix of old and new. Some of them already have a chemistry, but it’s not yet across the board. Which is where the Rams need it to be for the Air Raid to be as electric as possible.
“That’s one of the biggest things we have to work on right now. We’re all different,” Pannunzio said. “Quan and I are different than Tory Horton and E.J. Scott and Dante Wright. It’s them figuring out what our characteristics are. And it’s that Clay Millen is a lot different than Toddy Centeio who is different than Giles Pooler. It’s getting comfortable with them and them getting comfortable with us so we can be successful in this offense.”
So, they’ve gone about the task with a fairly set schedule, not wanting to leave things to chance or expecting it will all magically come together in fall camp. Stovall knows it correlates directly with the consistency Savage is having them all strive to attain.
He also understands it has carryover from what he does on the field to the way he approaches his life. One will impact the other, both in a positive way.
“You learn consistency throughout life and outside of football,” he said. “Outside of football is the real world. Learning your daily routines and things you build habits doing. Building habits creates consistency, so when you wake up with a certain mindset, that’s where it comes from.”
For the receivers, it’s a message they can relate to and translate from any language.