by Pete Carroll
We wanted to observe our players in as many situations and scenarios as possible. We needed to see them in their comfort zones as well as outside their comfort zones. For instance, when we attended the Manhattan Beach Volleyball Open during each training camp, our staff was constantly evaluating our players throughout the afternoon, learning about them off the field.
It’s a challenge to understand the people you’re dealing with so that you can approach them in the most effective possible way—a way that allows them to operate and perform at their very best. But it’s a battle you need to wage if you are serious about helping people be the best that they can be.
That’s why I work so hard to instill in my coaching staff the importance of learning your learner. A teacher, coach, or manager who knows his learner is able to accurately communicate in a manner that best suits that learner, and the more effectively a leader can communicate his or her expectations, the better the results are going to be.
In terms of learning your learners, no one has had more of an effect on me over the years than Coach Bud Grant back in Minnesota. He was a master at this and would concoct all types of opportunities to observe his players and learn the extent to which they had really gotten the message. He had an extraordinary awareness of the signals people gave off and understood how to use that information to spur them to play at their best possible level.
In this way, Coach Grant was one of the people who most influenced me to broaden my perspective on what matters and what doesn’t. He taught me to use my peripheral vision, so to speak, to observe my players at every opportunity. He taught me that if you learn to become a good watcher and listener, you’ll be rewarded with a wealth of information that you can use to compete more successfully. I learned from him that the best teachers, coaches, and leaders are often the best observers. Watching and, in particular, listening intently is crucial. So much of my job is about communicating outwardly to others, but I am able to do that effectively because I have disciplined myself to be a focused listener. I take great pride in that because it is no easy task.
I remember one occasion in particular when I was the defensive backs coach at the Vikings and Bud was head coach. It was the very first day of fall training camp, and Bud had sent the players out on a long-distance run circling the field. For most coaches—including me at the time—that would have been a chance for some downtime, and that’s how we were treating it. I recall standing on the edge of the field jabbering with one of my fellow coaches, when I saw Coach Grant glaring at me. “Pete! What the hell is the matter with you?” he snapped. “You’re not watching!”
Watching what? I thought to myself. To me, that distance run was nothing more than a conditioning exercise, nothing to pay any particular attention to other than maybe noticing who came in first. But to Bud that simple exercise was an open book from start to finish. In the patterns of who was out ahead, who stayed in the cluster, who slowed down or sped up relative to their positions among the rest of the group, he saw as deeply into those players’ competitive natures as any psychologist could. And that knowledge gave him an edge when it came to figuring out how to deal with each of them. Coach knew better than anyone that we were training football players, not marathon runners, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to create a situation where he could watch and learn about his players’ competitive natures. The indelible lesson was that everything counts. I’ve never forgotten it.
Coach Grant also had a terrific sense of humor to go along with that intuition and would use it to make more observations about his players. At times he would put out signs in random places that said “Keep off the Grass,” just to see who would do what the sign said. He had a rule that everyone had to wear collared shirts at dinner when we were on the road for away games. Coach couldn’t have cared less whether or not people wore collared shirts at dinner—he just wanted to see who would and who wouldn’t. It was a way for him to learn just a little bit more.
Although at that point in my career I was still far from being able to put that sentiment into words, Coach Grant’s example radically broadened my understanding of what it meant to truly compete. His keen insight into human behavior taught me the importance of not drawing a line between the places where you compete and the places where you don’t. Because really, that line doesn’t exist: You’re either competing at everything or you’re not.
In the spring of 2009, I was on our practice field at USC watching the offense run through a variety of plays. It was not a perfect practice, and a couple of players were not giving great effort. Our offensive coordinator at the time, John Morton, could sense it, and he called up the entire offense. He expressed his disapproval of their effort and demanded that they work harder with a greater focus—and that’s a polite way of saying he ripped into them.
As they continued to practice, I pulled John aside and asked him to think about what he was really trying to achieve. While I didn’t disagree with his actions, I asked him if he realized that the vast majority of the offense was working hard and that he had just hollered at everyone because of two players’ actions. Right away, he understood. Sometimes, when confronted with a problem, simply taking the time to assess the situation will often determine the best response.
Every year, before the start of spring and fall practice, I would remind our staff that players will all make mistakes and that in the window of a few seconds after a particular mistake, we make the choice between yelling at the player or helping him learn from his missed assignment. It is in those few seconds that coaches can have the most impact. Resisting the impulse to respond in a negative way is one of the biggest challenges coaches face.
Early in my coaching career at UOP, I experienced how important communication could be. In a critical moment, in the middle of a hard-fought game, I was disappointed with a decision a freshman player had made on a particular play, and I decided to correct it on the spot. As he approached the sidelines, I blurted out a few of those emotional, obscenity-laden, lost-in-the-moment phrases: “Hey, Brian, what the heck were you thinking out there? What are you trying to do, lose the game?” It certainly was not very classy, even in the heat of the battle. Brian, however, was a very bright and thoughtful kid, who went on to play for a number of years in the NFL for, ironically, the Seattle Seahawks. Until that moment we’d had a very good relationship. But now all of that was set aside. Here was a young kid trying to decipher for himself what had happened on the field, and a coach he trusted had come unglued and was yelling obscenities at him. He looked at me and simply said: “Why are you asking me like that?”
His question hit me square between the eyes. What was I trying to do, undermine that young man’s self-confidence in the heat of battle? Later it dawned on me that I had misdirected the focus of the moment to a personal confrontation that did nothing to help us win the game, and it had happened because of my tone of voice and choice of language. I see it now as a colossal blunder on my part. It’s hard enough to perform at your best with everything fully functioning and in focus. My players didn’t need me making it harder. I had learned a valuable lesson about the power of effective communication in a heated, competitive setting. I will never forget what Brian taught me that day, and since then I have tried my best to make sure that all my communication is measured and calculated precisely to maximize the moment.
As the years passed, I would find myself asking coaches who worked for me, “If self-confidence is so important, why would we ever want to approach someone in a manner that might disrupt or shatter it?” I am absolutely certain that our awareness of communication, particularly in the heat of battle, has accounted for more than a few of our wins along the way.
The major coaching point here is the power of language and communication skills. It is important to only use language that facilitates the message and promotes the desired performance. Harsh language can be very effective if the situation and the audience can benefit from it. Sometimes raw emotion is the critical message to convey, and raw language can effecti
vely facilitate the exchange. There are plenty of examples in my football experience where the single most important message that needed to be conveyed was simply an intense, blood-and-guts plea for a relentless explosion of courage and effort. No time for questions, no time for plans, the time is now and “we have got to have it” type of language may be called for. The coach relays his message because duty calls, and the response must be automatic. But some coaches think that at times like this, anything goes. That is not only wrong but also shows a loss of focus on what is important. You have to remember that high-level performance is what you are trying to attain.
There are people who say that you can’t simultaneously maintain discipline and have open, accessible lines of communication between different levels of an organization. That’s just not true. It has always been important to me to have a solid line of communication with my players and coaches. I never want to be cut off from the flow of what’s going on and what everybody is thinking. I want to have the pulse of the group at all times. Therefore, open communication in all directions has always been important to me.
To maintain the flow of information, I need to be available at all times. So my door is always open and I’m watching and listening to stay in constant contact with my team. This is why we spend so much time together, going to a variety of events and sharing experiences in small groups and as a team. The art of creating an environment of open communication is of paramount importance to me. For instance, at USC, once in a while on Monday nights our quarterbacks would come up to the office and we would watch Monday Night Football together. We would hang out, have fun, and share stories about whatever came up in the game. In that time I would be getting to know our signal callers and they would be getting to know me in a casual setting. I was competing to learn my learners in hopes of becoming a better teacher.
There is extraordinary value in knowing your people, and it is worth the investment of your time. For me, this effort to know more about our players is never ending, as our teaching is never ending.
Because I spend a good deal of time hanging out with our players—especially the quarterbacks, who spend the most time in the film room—a sense of familiarity grows, which ends up helping us on the field. Sometimes, I have been called a “players’ coach,” which is a label that carries some negative connotations, such as being too nice or too close to the players. It doesn’t bother me at all. It is through the strength of my relationships with my players that I gain insight into how to guide and challenge them to be their best. If you really care about helping people maximize their potential, then you must try to uncover who they are and what they are all about.
One quarterback we were able to develop with great results at USC, in large part through the strength of that relationship, was Mark Sanchez.
Mark was a beacon in our program from the day he arrived on campus. He embodied everything a Trojan should be. Mark was humble as a backup during his first three seasons, playing behind John David Booty. He led our program as well as any signal caller we have had as a full-time starter, finishing with a 12-1 record, 3,207 passing yards, and thirty-four touchdowns. He guided us to a Rose Bowl victory over Penn State, when he threw for 413 yards and four touchdowns. His performance set him up to have a senior season similar to Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart, and he would have been a front-runner for the Heisman Trophy the following year.
But as other quarterbacks around the nation began to announce their plans to return for their senior seasons, it opened up the door for Mark to be one of the top rated quarterbacks in the 2009 NFL draft. As we did with all of our players, we gained all the necessary information from NFL sources to assist Mark with his decision. We were told that he would be a top-fifteen pick and would have to have a great work out and interview to move into the top ten. I knew Mark would work out extremely well and would be impressive in his interviews, but he was taking a risk in entering the draft early. Many NFL teams were not high on rookie quarterbacks, and signal callers who had entered the draft after their junior year had not done well in recent NFL history.
After days of discussion, finally, on the night before the announcement of his decision, we had a late-night chat over In-N-Out burgers and I gave Mark and his family my advice—return for his senior year and leave USC competing to possibly be the first pick in the NFL draft, just like Carson Palmer, Mark’s childhood idol.
Within twelve hours of our final discussion, Mark made his decision—and not the one I’d been hoping for. He was going to forgo his senior season and apply for the NFL draft. In his press conference, much was made of my opinion, as I stated that he was going against my advice by leaving early. Yet while we disagreed fundamentally, my opinion was based on the facts I had learned about the NFL during my time there and the information that was passed along to Mark and me by NFL scouts. I felt that as a starter for only sixteen games, he was taking a big chance by leaving early and would not get the return for all his hard work to get to this point.
While it was perceived in that press conference that Mark and I had a strained relationship, we have actually become closer as a result of the experience. He understood where I was coming from as an adviser, and I understood where he was coming from as a competitor. Mark wanted to fulfill his lifelong dream of playing quarterback in the NFL, and I just wanted him to have a better guarantee of future success. I would have advised my own son exactly the same way. But I love that he stayed with his belief in himself and proved his decision to be the right one for him.
Fortunately, the New York Jets made Mark the fifth player taken in the 2009 NFL draft, and he went on to find the success we had hoped for. He started as a rookie and set an all-time rookie record by winning his first three games. Though there were some bumps along the way, he eventually led his team to the AFC championship game. While he doesn’t regret leaving early and I don’t regret disagreeing with him, we both wish that the press conference had not come across as negatively as it did. We remain close, and while I was at USC, we talked periodically during the season to check in about his recent games and how our Trojans were playing. Now, getting to battle in the same league as Mark and so many of our former USC players, it will not only be exciting but will make for great fun.
Whether great competitors are born or made is an interesting question. I’ve found, though, that all aspiring champions—from young guys like Mark and Carson to legends like Jerry Rice—need coaching to help them reach their potential. I believe the greatest competitors of our time own a deep-down desire to be the best. They are driven to constantly prove and validate their greatness. Even though competitive levels vary from person to person, I believe that competition is something that can be taught and learned.
In our program, we believe that if you want to help someone be the best he can be, you have to learn as much as possible about what makes him tick. Our staff at USC, and now in Seattle, understands that we have to be open to the competitive idea that everything a player does is an opportunity for us to learn something about him. I’m reminded of Coach Grant’s belief that to be a successful coach you need to be a great observer and a great listener.
14
OUR APPROACH TO PRACTICE
“Practice is Everything” is one of the core tenets of the Win Forever philosophy. We want to create an environment that will permit each of our players to reach his maximum potential, and one of the ways we do that is by practicing with great focus. A player who is fully prepared on the practice field will feel ready to meet whatever comes his way on game day and thus, feel more confident and able to minimize distractions of fear or doubt.
As coaches, we want to run a practice regimen that continually covers all the fundamentals of sound football but varies enough to prepare the team for all contingencies and keep the players’ attention. This is not easy to accomplish, but it is a challenge that our staff embraces. We want to develop an environment that fosters learning and develops confidence.
Our goal is to consistently be the m
ost effective football team we can be. When game day comes along, we want to be fully prepared. We don’t want to be worried about anything. We just want to cut loose, let it rip, and be ourselves. Having a routine can be very powerful in this regard. If you compete day in and day out to excel at something in a systematic way, you can’t help but improve. While we are always making small adjustments according to what we need to work on at a particular time, the basic structure and routines of our practices are totally consistent. Beginning with the team meeting and ending with the final play of practice, the details of each day’s work are accounted for down to the minute.
At USC, we began each practice day with a team meeting. There, I always attempted to set the focus and tone for the day, always with enthusiasm. I was simply demonstrating the energy I wished to see from the coaches and players as we approached practice that day. We tried to keep these meetings short so that when the team broke up into position groups, the coaches had time to cover the assignments for the day in more detail. A primary job of the position coaches, however, was to reinforce the level of excitement and enthusiasm. The energy and the spirit of the day was paramount.
During the first few minutes of most team meetings we would talk about daily events going on around the world, both in sports and outside them. We would make general announcements and try to capture everyone’s attention as we began to focus on the day. My goal was to create a close-knit environment, with our coaches and players sharing responsibility for the day’s outcome.
We also showed highlights from the previous day’s practice. The players didn’t know which plays were going to go up on the big screen, but they did know that if they had been dogging it, that play would surely be shown, accompanied by hooting and hollering. The coaches had a blast with it, and there were always funny plays that we showed back and forth in slow motion. But the very serious belief remained: “Practice is Everything.” By beginning each meeting with highlights, we energized the atmosphere, got the juices flowing, and had some fun jump-starting the day.