PRAISE FOR
GRIDIRON GENIUS
“Simply put, Michael Lombardi’s first-person, all-access, total-insider account of working with three dynastic legends is as good a behind-the-scenes sports book as I’ve ever read.”
—Jerry Thornton, Barstool Sports
“As someone who loves the game of football but is also interested in business strategy and leadership, this book was entertaining and useful.”
—Inc.
“Michael Lombardi got his master’s in football from the Masters of Football—Bill Walsh, Al Davis, Bill Belichick. Now he passes those memorable lessons on to his fortunate readers so that they can receive an advanced education in coaching, personnel, management, and strategy.”
—Adam Schefter, ESPN NFL Insider and author of The Man I Never Met
“This is a solid insider look at how NFL teams are made, and is also a useful guide for sports coaches—or office managers—creating their own teams.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fans will immerse themselves in this revealing insider’s glimpse into pro football….His comments on the skills required of NFL head coaches are particularly revealing: x’s and o’s, sure, but also practical concerns like setting clear guidelines for discipline, making room arrangements on the road, even planning meals and diets. Those who read this informative, eye-opening account will learn much about what makes a great NFL team.”
—Booklist
“Every coach, leader, strategist, and recruiter of talent should read this book.”
—Ryan Holiday, bestselling author of The Obstacle Is the Way
“My only criticism of Michael Lombardi’s book is that I enjoyed it too much. The characters and stories were irresistible. But make no mistake; this is a very serious book. Lombardi extracts a meticulous and full-fledged blueprint for organizational excellence from a raft of hard evidence. This is a guidebook for excellence—and it applies way beyond the gridiron. Any thoughtful business leader, for example, could assemble a bundle of useful, integrated ideas that could transform organizational performance. Bravo!”
—Tom Peters, coauthor of In Search of Excellence
“Michael Lombardi has been a student of leadership and teamwork his whole life. This book is a masterful look inside some of the greatest minds in football and has applications for leaders pursuing excellence in any industry.”
—Patrick Lencioni, CEO of the Table Group and bestselling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
“In Gridiron Genius, Michael Lombardi provides unparalleled insight into three of the greatest minds in the game of football. His analysis of how they each led their organizations and kept them high functioning in an ever-changing environment makes this book a fascinating read.”
—Chris Ballard, general manager of the Indianapolis Colts
“Michael Lombardi has a brilliant football mind. He also possesses an amazing ability to see the game from every angle. His ability to take you inside the sport is pure genius.”
—Jim Nantz, CBS Sports anchor
Copyright © 2018 by RFK LLC
Foreword copyright © 2018 by Bill Belichick
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
crownpublishing.com
BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, B D W Y, are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2018.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lombardi, Michael, 1959– author.
Title: Gridiron genius : a master class in winning championships and building dynasties in the NFL / Michael Lombardi.
Description: First edition. | New York : Crown Archetype, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018012339| ISBN 9780525573821 (paperback) | ISBN 9780525573838 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: National Football League—Management. | BISAC: SPORTS & RECREATION / Football. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Sports. | SPORTS & RECREATION / Coaching / Football.
Classification: LCC GV955.5.N35 L66 2018 | DDC 796.332/64—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012339
Ebook ISBN 9780525573838
Book design by Andrea Lau, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Milan Bozic
Cover image: Tom Schierlitz/Trunk Archive
v5.4
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword by Bill Belichick
Introduction: Jumping the Route
Chapter 1: The Organization: Culture Beats Everything
Chapter 2: The Coach: A Study in Leadership
What to Ask an NFL Head Coach Candidate
Chapter 3: Team Building: In Search of Program Guys
Chapter 4: Special Teams: The Meaning of All-In
Chapter 5: Offense: Finding the Seams
Chapter 6: Defense: Where Simplicity Is Complex
Chapter 7: Game Planning: Preparing to Improvise
Chapter 8: While I Have You: My Biggest Pet Peeves
Chapter 9: WWBD: What Would Belichick Do?
Chapter 10: Fearless Forecast: The Future of Football
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
FOREWORD BY
BILL BELICHICK
A lot of people write books about football. But only a few of them have Mike Lombardi’s credentials.
In 1991, when I became the head coach of the Cleveland Browns, one of the first things that I addressed was our scouting system, and for that I turned to Mike Lombardi. Mike and I worked together on building a grading scale and value system for college scouting that would be consistent with our pro scale. Mike directed Dom Anile, our director of college scouting, and Jim Schwartz, a college scouting assistant, to refine, cross-check, and re-cross-check that system until they had created something that still works today.
Mike was brilliant. The value system and scouting manual he developed were unique, because each player’s skill evaluation incorporated the priorities of our coaches (including Nick Saban, defense; Ozzie Newsome, offense; Scott O’Brien, special teams; Pat Hill and Kirk Ferentz, offensive line; and Jim Bates, defensive line). In each of the next three years, Mike and I read through literally every player in the NFL, as well as every player on our draft board, to make sure he was valued properly and might fit into our schemes. Our grades, which were closely monitored by Jim Schwartz, deviated from other systems, which graded players as starters and backups. Mike and Jim categorized nonstarters into roles, and three-down players were valued more highly than first- and second-down “starters.” Also, special teams players had real value in this system. It was and is no coincidence that our special teams units in Cleveland and New England have consistently ranked near the top of the league.
A decade later, when I became the head coach of the Patriots, I replaced the existing personnel system with the one Mike developed. Ernie Adams and Scott Pioli made some adjustments to it that reflected the changes in the NFL, in personnel and schemes, over the previous 10 years. But Mike’s system never lost its usefulness. I have had the great fortune to have an outstanding staff of coaches and personnel people throughout my
coaching career. Many have moved to other programs, in the NCAA as well as the NFL, and took the fundamentals of Mike’s system with them. The roots of that system have been replanted so many times that it is all over the game today.
Another of Mike’s many strengths is his ability to dig up undervalued players. He was relentless in the pursuit of talent. In Cleveland, we had an outstanding offensive line made up of players that Mike had identified in college—Tony Jones, Wally Williams, Orlando Brown—long before they became some of the highest-paid players at their position. Mike also signed defensive tackle Bob Dahl, with the idea of converting him to the offense. He was soon starting at guard.
In 2014, I hired Mike to assist me in New England. His knowledge and experience proved again to be invaluable, as he helped me, Nick Caserio, and our staff assemble our Super Bowl XLIX championship team. His recommendation to sign running back Dion Lewis and his successful pursuit of free agent center David Andrews are just two examples of his many contributions to that team.
Mike is one of the smartest people I have worked with. He has a thorough understanding not only of personnel but of coaching, team building, and the salary cap, too. His work ethic, attention to detail, and near-photographic memory made him both valuable and versatile to me at the two organizations at which we worked together. This is my chance to thank him for his contributions.
—BILL BELICHICK
INTRODUCTION
JUMPING THE ROUTE
Something just did not look right.
—BILL BELICHICK
With 26 seconds left in Super Bowl XLIX, the Seattle Seahawks had the ball at the 1-yard line with three chances to advance the 36 inches Pete Carroll’s team needed to defeat Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots. Although the rest of the world believed the game was all but over, I knew the truth.
Belichick had the Seahawks right where he wanted them.
I had rejoined Belichick’s staff about a year earlier, in February 2014. It was the culmination of three decades of my bearing witness to a handful of brilliant, driven men as they revolutionized America’s real national pastime. My education began in 1984, when I was lucky enough to join Bill Walsh’s staff as a scouting assistant at the beginning of the San Francisco 49ers dynasty, and I have been taking notes ever since.
After four years with Walsh, for whom I worked my way up to an area scout position, I moved on to Cleveland. By the time I left nine years later, I was the Browns’ director of pro personnel. But more important, along the way I swapped one legendary mentor for another as Belichick arrived in 1991 to begin honing his head coaching skills. Then it was on to Oakland, where I spent a decade with the National Football League’s last true maverick, Al Davis, as a senior assistant, the kind of vague title Davis handed out when he didn’t want anyone to know what exactly was going on behind the curtain in Raiderland. After a return to Cleveland, this time to be general manager, I found myself back with Belichick, this time in New England. My title with the Patriots—coaching assistant—did not begin to define my role. I was there to prepare the team for the college draft and free agency and to contribute to game planning. It was a mix of scouting and coaching, with a little organizational health maintenance thrown in.
By then, Belichick had been ensconced in New England for 14 years and was gaining traction as the greatest coach ever—of any sport, in any era. I was thrilled to be back in the fold.
And then I showed up for my first day of work.
It was a miserable winter day in Foxborough and an equally miserable setting. The predawn staff meeting convened in a tiny, windowless subterranean bunker that was serving as Belichick’s office while the stadium was being remodeled. Each time the famous coach brought up his team’s horrendous goal-line defense—the one that gave up 13 touchdowns and 2 field goals in 15 “goal-to-go” situations the previous season—his mood increasingly matched his surroundings: dark, cold, and ominous. All the men in the room were terrified, myself included, but to be completely honest, I was also curious to watch the master at work again. The problem that had his full attention was one of modern football’s most challenging: how to evolve the goal-line defense in an era of spread passing attacks.
Here’s the dilemma in a nutshell: The traditional goal-line defense is known as a 6-2 for the six defensive linemen and the two linebackers who back them up in a large-body attempt to clog an inside run game. The other three defenders are defensive backs, typically two fleet-footed corners and one hard-hitting safety, tasked with pass coverage. This scheme worked for decades because around the goal line NFL offenses generally relied on a dense power formation that replaced some receivers with blocking tight ends to bolster the short-yardage run game and typically left some defensive backs with no one to cover. In the endless chess game that is NFL strategy, however, teams had begun to take more and more chances through the air in goal-line situations, employing a spread formation that featured at least three receivers and forced the defense to cover the entire width of the field. Most significantly, a three-wide-receiver formation resulted in a very exploitable mismatch against a secondary with only one safety.
“We need a traditional goal-line defense that can also cover three receivers,” Belichick told us, his mind churning through a thousand different possibilities like a gridiron computer.
The only way to do that was to replace the safety in the 6-2 with a third corner who would be a better matchup for a speedy wide receiver. Doing that, however, would take one of New England’s best players, safety Devin McCourty, off the field. Belichick weighed the risks and decided he was willing to take the chance. It wouldn’t be easy. Often, taking away one element of the offense makes the defense vulnerable in other ways. I call it the “Curly in the Boat Problem.” You know the one: The Three Stooges are in a rowboat that springs a leak, and Curly has the bright idea to punch another hole in the hull to let the water out, creating, of course, a much bigger problem. That wasn’t going to happen in New England. Belichick is a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a stooge.
Nor is he reckless. Indeed, as much of an iconoclast as Belichick can be—as much of a rule breaker and gambler—he is also a traditionalist, the son of a football coach who believes that although practice doesn’t make perfect, it gets you closer to perfection each time you do it. He is a five-tool leader, adept at strategy, tactics, preparation, execution, and what you might call situational intuition, the rare ability to know which among the first four is required and when.
We worked over the next months, throughout the entire off-season and preseason, implementing and perfecting Bill’s ingeniously simple goal-line solution. Once the season started, though, we never encountered a situation that called for the three-corner goal-line formation—a 62 Nickel, you might call it. Not one time. The same thing held true in the postseason against the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts: no cause to debut our goal-line gamble. Seven months, hundreds of practices, thousands of man-hours, and almost two dozen preseason and regular-season games had gone by. All the time and energy invested in perfecting Belichick’s goal-line wrinkle was looking very much like an utter waste.
Until the Seahawks had the ball on our doorstep with 26 seconds left in Super Bowl XLIX.
On that warm Arizona night, everybody could practically feel the time, the game, and some small part of Belichick’s legacy slipping away. Well, everybody except Belichick, who wasn’t worried about any of it. He wasn’t about to drill a second hole in his rowboat. Instead, Bill was focused intently on the Seattle sideline. From his vantage point across the field at the University of Phoenix Stadium, he sensed confusion and indecision in his opponent. “Something just did not look right,” he told me later. Instead of calling a time-out, an eerily calm Belichick just stared straight ahead, a predator stalking his prey.
Suddenly, he burst into action, becoming the aggressor. Shouting into his headset, Belichick commanded: “Just p
lay goal line.” Except he didn’t mean our traditional 6-2 goal line. Instead, our safeties coach, Brian Flores, yelled, “Malcolm, go!” and undrafted rookie Malcolm Butler entered the game as the third corner.
Everyone had expected Belichick to take a time-out to preserve precious seconds for his team if they got the ball back after the Seahawks inevitably took the lead—everyone including Seattle’s coach, Pete Carroll. When no time-out came, I suspect it might have thrown him just a little. Whatever the case, Carroll looked to the field, saw the six Patriots defensive linemen there, and yelled into his own headset, “They’re in goal line!” His countercall, sending in three receivers, was intended to spread the field. Instead, it played right into Belichick’s trap.
I’ve studied the NFL’s smartest men my whole career, and it’s never anything less than breathtaking when you realize they are operating on a different level than their peers. Believing they had speed and horizontal space on their side, Seattle stacked two receivers on the right. At the snap, though, Butler, a cornerback skilled in man coverage—as opposed to the safety who ordinarily would have been in that spot—expertly read the play. He exploded toward wideout Ricardo Lockette, beating him to the ball and securing the most critical interception in Super Bowl history, not to mention yet another Lombardi Trophy for Belichick and the Patriots.
* * *
—
Someone wise once said: “The world gets out of the way for people who know where they are going.” He might as well have been describing my 13-year-old self in the summer of 1972, when I discovered Strat-O-Matic baseball with my two best friends, Michael Sannino and Danny Reynolds. From the moment I opened the box of that early sports-simulation game, I knew my calling.
Gridiron Genius Page 1