Allen Park — In a small conference room at the team’s practice facility, Detroit Lions offensive tackle Taylor Decker cycles through a few dozen film clips from last season.
Start. Stop. Rewind. Start again.
He’s providing narration for each snap, doing his best to describe the nuance of what went right, or wrong, while trying to avoid an overreliance on professional terminology, almost like a waiter slowing their speech and putting an emphasis on enunciation to benefit a tourist from another country. Occasionally, Decker stands to physically demonstrate, shuffling in the limited space around the table and chairs that eat up most of the room.
The purpose of the conversation morphs through the two hours it lasts. Initially proposed as a shared film study to provide a better understanding of what goes into playing the tackle position, it quickly becomes clear it’s a topic that would be difficult to relate to a casual fan.
From there, it develops into offering a behind-the-scenes look at Decker’s weekly process. While millions tune into a three-hour game on Sunday afternoon, only a small percentage of that audience realizes the hours upon hours of preparation that goes into the contest.
Decker is a natural fit to lay that out. The former first-round pick, entering his seventh season as Detroit’s blindside blocker, previously expounded on the thoroughness of his preparation earlier in his career, revealing he kept journals on each pass-rusher he faced, to act as a reference guide for future matchups.
But as those details are gathered, it comes across as somewhat mundane. Does anyone really care what the hour-by-hour schedule for an NFL player looks like?
No, it’s Decker’s personal evolution that stands out. Those journals he meticulously kept at the beginning of his career now collect dust. In fact, his entire approach has been streamlined as he’s gained experience. Seven years in, he knows exactly what he’s looking for when he turns on the tape.
But it’s what Decker doesn’t emphasize during that process that’s most interesting.
Overthinking it
Perhaps you’ve heard a quote about football being more mental than physical, with some variations insisting the game is up to 90% the former. That’s preposterous, of course. No amount of positive thinking is going to give an average Joe the speed, strength, instincts or superhuman frame needed to effectively play in the NFL. But for those blessed with the physical gifts to reach the highest level of the sport, mentality can certainly be a separator between being good enough to hold on to a roster spot and performing at a Pro Bowl level.
Decker happened to be pretty good out the gate. A three-year starter at Ohio State, he was a Day One starter for the Lions. Famously, at least around these parts, he got torched on the opening series of his first preseason game by five-time Pro Bowler James Harrison, but Decker settled down nicely and exceeded all reasonable expectations as a rookie, declaring himself as a foundational piece for the franchise through his play.
Year 2 started with a setback. During an offseason practice Decker suffered a serious shoulder injury. It required surgery, costing him half the season. And, like many young players, he succumbed to external pressures and came back too soon, resulting in a subpar performance. To date, it remains the worst season of his career.
Beyond the lingering effects of the injury, Decker firmly believes he was hindered by his mindset that year. To compensate for missing the first half of the season, he tried to make up for it in the film room, consuming extra tape. Through that process, he reached a point of oversaturation that impacted his confidence.
“I think it was detrimental because I made myself mentally exhausted on top of not feeling physically ready to go out there,” Decker said. “I came back way too early and I was watching so much film that I was psyching myself out. I wasn’t going out there confident. A part of that was the mental side, knowing I probably shouldn’t be out here, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
A significant component to that rattled confidence came from watching upcoming opponents dominating snaps or entire matchups. Coincidentally, that was a lesson Decker first learned from that preseason matchup with Harrison as a rookie, but it wasn’t driven home until two years later.
As a player, you never want to avoid studying what your opponent does best, but Decker realized that was already going to be covered thoroughly in the classroom with his position coach, and believed he’d benefit more from a positive approach.
Decker started his mental rehab re-watching the film from his rookie year, a not-so-subtle reminder to himself that he was capable of executing at a high level. And going forward, he committed to not subjecting himself to unnecessarily dwelling on the opponents’ best performances during his private film sessions away from the team.
“I’ve already seen those clips, regardless,” Decker said. “I’m not going to sit there and mull over them and just get in my own head about it. You can find any left tackle in the NFL, no matter how good they are, they’re going to get beat by somebody. Everybody is so good, it just happens, so I try to stay away from those games, honestly.”
The evolved approach consists of capping his week of preparation watching how one of the league’s dominant players at his position handled the upcoming opponent. Two of Decker’s favorite tackles to watch are Trent Williams and Tyron Smith, who have been named to a combined 17 Pro Bowls.
“I just like watching them play,” Decker said. “If you watch somebody who plays your position playing against the guy you’re about to play and he’s playing well, it gives you confidence.”
While there’s no way to definitively draw a direct correlation, the results point to the strategy being effective. Decker has steadily rebounded from his sophomore slump, earning a second, lucrative contract from the Lions ahead of the 2020 season. That extension coincided with his emergence as one of the game’s best pass-blocking offensive linemen. Analytics site Pro Football Focus has graded him among the top 10 tackles in that area each of the past two seasons.
‘The game you play …’
Beyond the changes to his mental approach to film study, Decker’s improvements have also overlapped with some on-field evolution.
Early in the 2018 season, his third in the NFL, Decker was accused of tipping plays by special adviser to Lions owner Sheila Hamp, Chris Spielman, who was then working in a color commentary role for Fox Sports.
A former Pro Bowl linebacker for the Lions, Spielman pointed out on the broadcast of Detroit’s Week 2 matchup against San Francisco how Decker’s head movements gave away whether the offense was going to run or pass on the play.
Decker disputed those claims shortly after that game, but years later acknowledges he was just doing what he was coached to do at the time. In the years since, Decker is not only more conscientious about tipping his hand before the snap, he’s engrossed in the concept of the game within the game, ad libbing within Detroit’s current offensive scheme to keep the opposition off balance.
A prime example is Decker’s setup. Early in his career, he acknowledges when he came to the line in a two-point stance, you could safely bet the Lions were passing, 100% of the time. Now, he uses his stance to keep opponents guessing, readily taking advantage of inexperienced players across the line of scrimmage.
“Young guys especially, if you put your hand down, they think it’s a run every time,” Decker said. “There will be times when you’ll audible from a run to a pass, I’ll start in a two-point, even though it’s a run, we’ll audible to a pass and I’ll switch to a three-point and they think, ‘Oh, it’s a run.’ It’s just the game you play, because I know this guy is a young player and I’ve seen on film guys can jump him.”
Jump sets, an aggressive pass-blocking strategy where the offensive lineman aims to get his hands into the defender as quickly as possible, is a skill Decker has grown much more comfortable using in recent years, and it’s a tool he utilizes like a pitcher’s off-speed offering to further keep his assignment off-balance.
Often, Decker’s decision to show a different stance or jump set an opponent is outside of the play’s design, but the veteran has a dual trust in himself and the coaching staff to execute, furthering his mental edge within a game. He does this all while maintaining his strong fundamental base of quickness out of his stance, sound footwork and patience with his hands that have allowed him to have steady success since entering the NFL.
“There’s the general principles for how things should be done, but you can add a little spice to it,” Decker said. “Maybe I’m supposed to technically drive block this defensive end, but I can make him run up the field and run himself out of the play while give myself a little bit of an advantage on pass plays, if I’m pass setting and it’s a run.”
Breaking it down
So what does a week look like for Decker? After a game, he watches the film twice that evening, first focusing on his individual performance, then the entire offensive line. He already has an idea how he played, but he needs that visual confirmation ahead of Monday’s meetings, when the coaching staff will nitpick every detail. He never wants to be caught off-guard by a critique and also wants to be able to offer his own thoughtful opinions on play calls and blocking schemes.
And even though he’s distilled his personal process down in the name of efficiency, Decker still watches more film than most can imagine Monday through Saturday. As a position group, they’ll watch hundreds of plays, many 10 or more times each. On Wednesday, the study focuses on run game and play-action, Thursday is for third-down, two-minute offense and exotic rush packages.
At home, he likes to watch games in their entirety. He finds added value in seeing the flow of the game as opposed to watching a hundred consecutive first-and-10 cut-ups. He’ll review a couple matchups on Wednesday and a couple more on Thursday, after which he writes a scouting report on his blocking assignment, something position coach Hank Fraley requires of each player in his room.
Another lesson Decker learned early in his career is to not ignore the backup in his film study. As a rookie, he got so zeroed in on Green Bay’s dynamic starting tandem of Julius Peppers and Clay Matthews, Decker neglected to watch any film on Nick Perry (Detroit King), a former first-round pick. As it turns out, Perry saw a lot of snaps that week and worked Decker over pretty good. Pro Football Focus graded it as his worst pass-blocking performance that season.
On top of studying his opponents, Decker diligently re-watches his own practice tape each day, particularly his pass-blocking sets. He wants to make sure he’s being detailed-oriented with his footwork and hitting his landmarks. It doesn’t matter how well you know your opponent if you aren’t doing your job correctly.
Finally, Decker winds down his week with getting his mind right, watching Williams or Smith dominate, envisioning himself doing the same. While it might not be the approach for everybody, it works for him.
Decker is unique, not only because he’s in tune with his emotions and what affects him mentally, but that he isn’t afraid to talk about it. He openly discussed crying when telling his parents about agreeing to an extension with the Lions a couple of years back, and he didn’t bite his tongue when fans and some media outlets speculated he should be traded while he was rehabbing another offseason injury last year, a spiral break of his finger that required a plate and five screws to repair.
“I don’t feel like it’s been deserved,” Decker said about the speculation. “I do feel like people within the building, and I do feel like a lot of fans appreciate me and what I can do for this team. But yeah, the media pretty much all year has been pretty negative around me, so I’m not going to act like I like that. I think it was (expletive). I’ve played a lot of football here and I think I’ve played well.”
Revealing those layers is good reminder there’s a person behind the football player, something further emphasized by the life events he’s experienced this offseason. Decker got married in February and he and wife Kyndra are expecting their first child in November.
“Just going through the process so far puts things into perspective,” Decker said. “What are your priorities in life? Being a football player, especially when you’re young, you can have blinders on and become very short-sighted, which, at the time, maybe football is all you’ve got.
“But we have some guys — (guard Halapoulivaati Vaitai) Big V’s got a family. He’s got kids,” Decker continued. “You see him being a dad, and it just kinda puts things like that into perspective. I’ve always wanted a big family because I come from one. So it’s something I’m really looking forward to and I’m excited for it.”
jdrogers@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @Justin_Rogers