by Pete Carroll
The point here isn’t that I was liberated by the fact that my team’s situation was hopeless but rather that I was freed up because I wasn’t worried about the outcome. All I had to do was “let it happen,” just watch the ball, and swing the bat, with nothing else going through my mind. As expected, that great shot didn’t change the outcome of the game, but it was the slow-motion magic of that homer, and not the final score, that has stayed with me for all this time. In that moment, I had the experience of fully being a natural, instinctive athlete, without concerns or worries.
That is the mentality that we, as coaches, want to re-create for our players.
We want our players to be free of distractions and totally absorbed, ideally just like a child, fascinated with the game itself and not necessarily the outcome.
One of my most vivid illustrations of the Inner Game in football was back in 1997. It was late in my first season in New England, and we had barely survived some staggering ups and downs. Jacksonville was next up on our schedule, and they had been on a tear, particularly at home, where they had won thirteen games in a row. My team was battered after losing our top running back, Curtis Martin, our top receiver, Terry Glenn, and our top defensive lineman, Willie McGinest, to injuries. Our chances of repeating as division champions, let alone making it to the play-offs, looked slim. We needed this game to stay alive in the race, and all the odds seemed stacked against us. Jacksonville’s fans were notorious for being loud and raucous, creating a definite home-field advantage, and they had thirteen straight wins at home to prove it.
It was Saturday night at the hotel in Jacksonville, an hour before our last team meeting prior to Sunday’s game. I was racking my brain for some pearls of wisdom that might give us an edge as we approached this daunting challenge. I have always valued this meeting as my final chance to impact the players. The tone would vary depending on the circumstances we were facing and what I thought the team needed to hear. In the case of Jacksonville, I wanted to neutralize everyone’s concern about their home-field advantage. We needed to enter the game with a single shared mind-set. It was a real competitive challenge, with the local and national media absolutely convinced that Jacksonville was going to win.
Realizing we had a great challenge ahead of us, I went back to the principles of the Inner Game and decided to introduce the players to the concept of creating peak experiences, or playing in “the zone.” I also pulled out a favorite teaching approach of mine, the Socratic method, where you enlist participation from your students by asking questions to the entire group. I asked if anybody in the room had ever pitched a perfect game or a no-hitter. I had already confirmed that strong safety Lawyer Milloy had done so in high school. Sure enough, Lawyer took the bait, raised his hand, and told us all about it. I made sure he told us about what it felt like, in great detail. He remembered feeling “invincible,” and I made him describe it. He had never felt so “powerful” and in such “total command” of a game as he had felt on that day. Of course, he was proudly telling us about his conquest, and we were amused with his story and delivery, as the seed had been planted. I asked others to share events in their background where they had felt similar sensations of extraordinary powers and invincibility.
Quarterback Drew Bledsoe told a story of his feelings prior to the Patriots’ game against the San Diego Chargers in 1996. He told us that he saw the game in his mind before it happened. He knew that he would play one of his best games ever and that the Patriots would roll over the Chargers. As he played in the absence of fear, he felt that supreme confidence, and knew that he would perform extremely well. He did just that.
As the stories flowed, the energy of the night was well in order. The beauty of the Socratic method is that as you pose a question to the group and pause to call for a response, everybody in the room is thinking of an answer. They were all recalling their most perfect moments in sports, what we referred to as “peak experiences.” I took the opportunity to define “peak experiences” and used the phrase “being in the zone.” The team was collectively sharing thoughts of their most memorable peak experiences, and everybody seemed to be engaged. I made sure everyone in the room had an idea of what we were talking about, fielding questions and observations. When I felt we had come to something of a common understanding of “the zone,” I posed another question. I asked the team, “Do you realize that every time you take the field you have an opportunity for a peak experience?” I told them that the zone doesn’t have to be something that just mysteriously happens and that, with the right collective mind-set, we had the opportunity to create our own zone in our very next game.
First and foremost, we had to know that we were capable of winning this game. If there was any question, we were probably going to wind up as Jacksonville’s fourteenth home win in a row. It was everybody’s job to get his mind right by game time. I reminded them of all the ways we were going to outplay the Jaguars. It was their job to first believe it and then go out and execute the plan precisely. If they could ultimately trust in their ability to win, they could take the field with the “knowing” that would allow us to play instinctively with supreme confidence.
Second, we had to find total focus in the midst of one of the most difficult settings in the NFL. I directed them to acknowledge that the field would be the same size as always, 100 yards long and 53⅓ yards wide, with two end zones, twenty-two players, seven officials, four quarters, a normal halftime, and sixty minutes to play the game. The only difference from playing at our home stadium would be the decibel level of the Jaguars’ loyal following. And it was going to be extremely loud. So in reality, the only thing that was going to challenge our ability to totally focus was the potential distraction of the noise, which might affect our communications and our ability to concentrate. Earlier in the year, at Buffalo, we had established a way to quiet an otherwise hostile crowd. We played well early and gave the Bills fans nothing to cheer about. We won 31-10. I reminded the team that the only thing we wanted to hear was the silence of the crowd.
The meeting had created a great feeling. The players had connected with one another by sharing their stories and baring their souls. They also had fun contributing to one of those special meetings that teams sometimes experience. So the scenario could be summed up simply: We needed to trust, we needed to focus, and we needed to get off to a good start by playing well early. I ended the meeting by focusing our attention past the outcome of the game. I proclaimed that someone was going to experience the zone on Sunday and that the weekend would not officially be over until we returned home with a win, and with one of them sharing their zone experience at the Monday morning meeting in Foxborough. All we had to do now was play the game.
Everything went well leading up to the game, and the stage was set. At kickoff, the crowd was crazed, the air was perfect, our will was strong, and our hopes were high. We didn’t know it yet, but we were just about to witness one of the best starts to a game we could have imagined. A common assumption is that rookies don’t always pay attention in meetings, especially toward the end of the season, but our rookie linebacker from Florida State, Vernon Crawford, was not only attentive that Saturday night, he took our message to the field on the very first play of the game.
Jacksonville won the coin toss, and we were poised to kick off. Our kickoff team, like others in the NFL, was basically manned by young, inexperienced players. This was a typical bunch of half-crazed headhunters hoping to do the right thing but always fearing they were just about to screw it all up. Vernon was about to become an instant hero, at least in my book. As our kick-off team raced down the field, Jacksonville’s returner started to turn up into the left side of our coverage team, only to run head-on into Vernon Crawford. What resulted was a colossal hit that sent the football rocketing skyward. Vernon had made the hit of his life and forced a fumble on the opening kickoff of a huge game. A scramble for the football ensued, and we recovered it! The referee had barely signaled our recovery of the ball when Vernon Crawford cam
e sprinting off the field screaming, “I’m in the zone! I’m in the zone! I’m in the zone!” Vernon really was paying attention!
The game started on the highest of notes and continued to crescendo from there. We delivered a tremendous upset, considering the circumstances. On that day we were invincible, and we performed with great precision and power. We played like we were in the zone, and the feeling affected us throughout the remainder of the schedule. One of my favorite sayings comes from the famous coach Lou Holtz. He preached that “the best players don’t always win, but those that play the best most always do!” This certainly held true for the Patriots on that Sunday in Jacksonville, Florida. It fueled a very strong finish to an AFC Eastern Division Championship season that didn’t end until the second round of the 1997 play-offs.
This may be my single best example of using the Inner Game concept in a team setting before a game. However, it is certainly not the only time I have used the concepts of total focus and supreme confidence to boost performance. It is a supremely confident athlete who will have the best chance to perform up to his or her potential.
With that in mind, I have always felt it is my duty to show my players exactly how they can develop their confidence. They have to prepare in a manner that will promote their skills. They have to be in great condition in all areas. They have to know the responsibilities of their positions. They have to know how they fit into the overall scheme of the team’s design. Basically, they should leave no stone unturned in terms of preparation and readiness. All of these factors contribute to an athlete’s feeling of supreme confidence and the ability to perform with a “quieted mind.”
It has been an ongoing pursuit of mine to weave the principles of the Inner Game into developing individual and team performance.
4
HARD LESSONS IN NEW YORK
In my early years coaching in the NFL I made a lot of stops. I coached defense for several teams, and loved it. After coaching the defensive backs in Buffalo, I went to Minnesota to do the same under Coach Bud Grant, whose example taught me more about the art of coaching, leadership, and the importance of observing human behavior than any graduate class ever could. I loved everything about the coaching life—the strategy, the tactics, the focus, and the pace. I loved the tight-knit intensity of coaching a position group, and in my close relationship with the guys I coached, I guess I developed—for better or worse—a reputation for being a “player’s coach.”
Not everyone saw that as a positive, but I always felt it was important to have a relationship with the players I coached.
In 1990, I left Minnesota to take the defensive coordinator position with the New York Jets. While that job brought a new level of responsibility and pressure, I approached it with the same spirit I had approached every other opportunity in my career. We worked as hard and competed as much as we possibly could, and felt grateful to have the chance to do it.
After my second season with the Jets, I had the chance to interview for the Vikings’ head coaching job. Though I didn’t get it, I came to realize that as much as I loved coaching defense, I ultimately wanted to be a head coach. I now had a new goal, and my chance to test how ready I was came sooner than I could have guessed. We went 8-8 during our fourth season in New York and our head coach, Bruce Coslet, was let go. I had assumed that the team would mount a national search, but to my surprise that’s not what happened. Instead, I was called in for a two-hour interview with the Jets general manager, Dick Steinberg. Soon after, the team offered me the head coaching position. It was exactly twenty years into my coaching career.
While being a head coach is certainly challenging and an unstable profession, it is also one that many people dream of. Twenty years into my coaching career I had my first opportunity to interview for a head coaching job, and while I knew it would be challenging, I was very excited to lead an organization. So when, at forty-three years old, I was offered the head coaching job with the New York Jets, I took it and wanted to have fun doing it. I felt I had a great advantage because I had already been with the team for four years. It was a team that I believed in, and while we were certainly going to have a tough fight ahead of us, I felt the team was ready, and I couldn’t wait to put my ideas into practice.
I was coming into the job knowing the team had a clear sense of my style. I had had a lot of success coordinating the Jets’ defense, and overall I felt accepted by the group.
I remember my first team meeting as the new head coach at the Jets. We were facing a difficult situation on a number of levels, and my first priority was adjusting the culture of the team. Officially, I was addressing the players, but essentially the entire organization was there: the coaching staff, the management, and even the team’s owner, eighty-year-old self-made oil billionaire Leon Hess. The meeting room itself was familiar, but when you’re a head coach everything changes, and I think everyone was wondering how different I would be from the Pete they had worked with in the past. I wanted to show them that they were going to get the same coach they had had the past four seasons—someone who was positive, focused, and extremely competitive. I believed that the only way we were going to succeed was as a single, united team.
As far as I was concerned, the success I’d had in the past with that approach was what had gotten me the head coaching job in the first place, and I didn’t see any reason to change something that was working. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was throw away the things I had learned over the course of my career and pretend to be someone I wasn’t. Walking into the meeting, I was determined that I was not going to transform into an unapproachable head coach. I was going to be me, no matter what.
The task of turning the Jets around was a serious undertaking, but I made every effort to keep the tone positive. The vision I wanted the team and staff to share wasn’t about “not failing” but about really searching within yourself and developing a positive approach to winning. I wanted every member of the team to think of himself as a piece of our success. As I described how I saw our new competitive philosophy, the players and coaches began to buy in and seemed willing to at least give it a try. I was very pleased to watch the players, coaches, and staff members light up. They got it. They were on board. Well, most of them.
Leon Hess, the owner of the team and the man who signed my check, said nothing. It was clear from his expression that he was not a fan of the somewhat unorthodox approach I took. I respected him and his outlook, but in retrospect, I guess I wasn’t his vision of an NFL head coach. While this bothered me to some degree, I told myself that I couldn’t control how he felt, and I knew that I surely was not going to be successful by altering my approach. The tension was unfortunate, but I really didn’t feel that I had a choice.
Unfortunately, after that first team meeting, Leon and I would not speak for the remainder of the season. In this initial meeting, I could have tempered my enthusiasm and considered my audience more closely, but I was too pumped. I wanted to get the message out—and my focus was on the players with whom I had spent the previous four seasons.
The players knew that I was passionate about the game of football. They had seen me use a variety of methods to get their attention and inspire them to work hard. I had already done a lot of crazy stuff to get my players jacked up, and one example was the legend of “the Beaver.”
The Beaver saga actually started back when I was at Minnesota, with the help of my friend and Viking colleague Paul Wiggin. Paul was a longtime NFL player, former head coach at Stanford University and the Kansas City Chiefs, and a great coach. We were like the Odd Couple, with Paul playing Felix and me in the role of Oscar; he was keeping everything clean and I was messing everything up. We spent a great deal of time together, and of course we shared stories about working for other teams.
Late one night at the office, Paul told me how, when he’d been in charge of the service teams as an assistant coach at the 49ers, he used to give out an award to the player who practiced the hardest. It was such a small thing t
hat it was almost silly. The player who worked the hardest earned the title of “eager Beaver.” We laughed about it, but I listened when Paul told me that he’d gotten some really positive results with his gimmick. He had brought it up as a funny story, but I saw it as another possible way to create a competitive environment. It was a lesson I was careful not to fo rget.
When I left Minnesota to go to the Jets as defensive coordinator, one of my highest priorities was coming up with a way to emphasize the importance of forcing turnovers, and after giving it some thought I decided to take a page from Paul’s book and institute my own award, Beaver of the Week. We started with the lesson that the beaver is the most diligent worker in the animal kingdom, and the player who was able to force the first fumble that was recovered by us would earn the Beaver of the Week award. We found a stuffed toy beaver that we put in the winner’s locker each week. Like Paul’s version of the contest, it was no big deal, but it stuck. And over time, the Beaver took on a life of its own. Somehow, part of the lore was that no one was allowed to talk about the Beaver outside of our meeting room. We would never talk to the media about it, never speak about what it was. We made it our little secret. The media suspected there was something about a beaver, but no one would ever tell them. I think that secrecy was actually part of what made it work so well. The Beaver gave our guys something to compete for, and it also gave us a common experience that no one outside our circle could share. It really was the best of both worlds.
Ultimately, the Beaver phenomenon outgrew the locker room, and it got so big that it followed us everywhere we went. Each game, after the first fumble recovery, it would get tossed onto the field—which was totally illegal, of course. And all of a sudden a second competition evolved, as we had to get the Beaver off the field before the referees spotted it. This wasn’t always as easy as it sounds.