According to the inspirational tearaway calendar available at the checkout counter of your local CVS, the “little things” in your life matter. It is the accumulation of these “little things” that form the tapestry of what you may consider a life. If we show up for all the little things as if they were the very few big things, then everything achieves this pleasant gravity, this purposeful heft. Less, then, of what we do goes on a dreaded autopilot.
These are admittedly heavy thoughts and considerations for someone to make while watching Commanders kicker Joey Slye kick a game-winning field goal in front of a sparse crowd seated inside a crumbling stadium on an August Monday night a couple of weeks away from the beginning of football season. But Slye’s opponent, the Ravens, had not lost a preseason game since Barack Obama was president back in 2015. And earlier this week, a member of his own team, Sam Cosmi, called that a “stupid” record. Cosmi added, while talking to reporters: “Who gives a s---?”
Well, clearly, I do. The Commanders did when they celebrated walking off the field. And I think you should, too. This was, perhaps, the greatest preseason game in NFL history. More than that, it was a lesson in the little things.
The Ravens’ streak died at 24 games Monday night. Baltimore stopped a game-tying two-point conversion attempt with four minutes remaining on a hell of a tackle by Kyu Kelly. A few minutes later, they thwarted an even more serious attempt at a game-winning pass with 26 seconds remaining. A pass breakup by Ar’Darius Washington on a zero blitz was playoff-level dramatic, raising Joe Buck out of his monotone. So was the ensuing pass by Commanders backup-backup quarterback Jake Fromm to set up Slye’s field goal.
This matters less than the central idea: Even if all of this mattered to only John Harbaugh in his head starting eight years ago, and Harbaugh considered this little thing a big deal, and he treated it like a big deal, it’s a pretty radical concept.
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A lot of pocket coaching psychology is bogus. NFL coaches are among the unhealthiest people on the planet. They exist—and succeed—in a politically charged, Machiavellian environment. If a former NFL coach joined my organization I would fear them more than the office zombie hunter. Want a mind-bending experience? Try getting yelled at by one, it’s like getting a phone call from a rabid, sleep-deprived fox. So forgive me when hearing the same people say something canned and inspirational like 11 people, 1 heartbeat feels trite at best.
Harbaugh’s preseason quest in Baltimore was different. We live in a time where what is considered important is often conflated with what is seen and noticed. Taken out of that equation is our ability to appreciate something on its own, to love something for the sake of doing it. Our internal muscle to appreciate a good sunset without capturing it on our phone and shoving it through a million filters for Instagram, or painting a picture that no one will see, or completing a workout that doesn’t end up on Strava with the caption “Grind Time,” is woefully underused. Why we feel like posting, sharing or offering something up for external validation is what creates the meaning, is what potentially turns a little thing into a big thing.
But then, if that little thing remains a little thing, it is just discarded in a bin of foolish little things.
What if we treated more conversations we have with our friends, children and loved ones the way the Ravens treated the preseason? More meals we made? How would it enrich our lives and deepen our connections? How would it dislodge the emptiness and bleakness of a trip to the grocery store, or a waiting room at Jiffy Lube?
I’m not saying that every moment has to yield some kind of profundity. The author, mental performance coach and all-around fount of wisdom Brad Stulberg notes that there is a separate kind of trap from that mindset. But there is undoubtedly power and value in taking something that most of us ignore—hell, that a lot of teams collectively wish would just disappear—and holding it to a higher standard.
Harbaugh did not get a trophy for winning the preseason many years in a row. Outside of some broadcast booth backslapping, which equated the streak with the Ravens’ overall depth and how talented their acquisition process was, it’s a talking point that gets brought up once a year and discarded once the games “count.” Once “big things” are “big things.”
However, attention on this largely ignored portion of football ended up creating an undeniably great football moment. This could be true, too, about your paintings if you keep painting. About those sunsets if you keep noticing. In that way, the preseason streak was one of the great records in sports because it began as an anti-record, a purposeful celebration of obscurity that became anything but. It became big only after many little things were appreciated beyond expectation.
