2015 St. Louis Rams: How GM Les Snead and HC Jeff Fisher Are Educating The Youngest Team In The NFL

The term millennial was popularized in the 2000 book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, by Neil Howe and William Strauss. It has since become a term for websites to write very dumb things about.

For a generation of humanity born roughly from 1980 to 2000, much of that dumb stuff is applicable to cultural phenomena and aspersions to how it affects business because we are all monkey robots to the program manager's manager's manager and learning something erroneous about millions of people by reading a bad article on Slate is much easier than talking to those same people.

You've got the picture of the PM's manager's manager in your head. We all do.

Now picture it's Jeff Fisher.

Kevin Clark of the Wall St. Journal has a fascinating piece on how the St. Louis Rams are managing the youngest team in the NFL (again) that is by nature stocked with millennials.  I won't excerpt it too heavily because you should go read it. It deserves your click and your pagetime.

Here's the core:

The Rams have already instituted a number of sweeping changes based on the early results of their research. Instead of having team meetings that last hours, followed by on-field practicing, the team now has 10 to 15 minutes worth of informational meetings and then hurries to the practice field to execute what they’ve just learned without pads.

For starting rookie offensive lineman Rob Havenstein, this is invaluable. Havenstein is part of the parade of rookies playing a crucial role on the Rams this season. He said that regular meetings can be slightly too comfortable. "If a coach asks you ‘what’s the call’ in a meeting you have a second to think about it, then you answer," he said. On the field, Havenstein said "you have a snap and you make the call immediately or else you are just sitting there going ‘uhhhhh.""

Rob "Uhhhhh" Havenstein is both right and now my favorite rookie on the Rams.

Uhhhhh, go read it and consider how "Simba" Snead is doing things differently to adjust to the youth of the Rams.