Vance Joseph on coaching at Senior Bowl: ‘You have so many young guys who can’t make it through meetings’

They’re looking at the basics.

Not simply the ones that apply to all that happens on the football field — blocking, tackling, running and throwing — but also those that are vital to what takes place in daily NFL off-field live. Such as meetings.

‘You have to win the meeting’

Yes, Vance Joseph, the Denver Broncos’ coach who is leading the North college all-star squad in Saturday’s Senior Bowl, is paying close attention to how the college prospects on his roster handle themselves in the meeting room.

“That’s so important because it’s NFL, it’s a league of meetings,” Joseph told Alex Marvez, Rick Neuheisel and Mark Dominik on Late Hits. “You have to win the meeting. You have so many young guys who can’t make it through meetings, they can’t sit still. They can’t take notes, they fall asleep, body language is awful.”

‘Who’s awake? Who’s ready to go?’

That was why, during his very first meeting with the North team, Joseph made a point of closely watching the dynamics in the room.

“Who’s awake? Who’s ready to go?” the coach said. “That’s so critical in our league, because we meet more than we practice. We meet two-and-a-half hours a day, we practice an hour-and-a-half a day.

‘They can’t play if they can’t take information and process it’

“That meeting time is critical, if guys can take information and process it. If they can’t, they can’t play. It doesn’t matter how tall, fast (they are) and how high they jump. They can’t play if they can’t take information and process it.”