Gridiron Genius

by Michael Lombardi

  The weather along the Jersey Shore made famous by Bruce Springsteen was hot and humid and the beach was just a two-minute walk away, but the three of us pretty much stayed in my mother’s air conditioner–less kitchen from sunrise to sunset. The game—a precursor to fantasy that consisted of cards with outcomes informed by the actual stats of real Major League Baseball players and activated by dice throws—unleashed a passion in each of us. We made our own rules, insisting on a two-to-one vote for any changes. We gave each player card a grade that was based on our own statistical analyses. We held leaguewide drafts rather than accepting the teams as they were packaged. Each of us was fully committed to the dual roles of GM and coach for his team. (To paraphrase the Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells, we not only shopped for the groceries, we cooked, too.)

  In other words, we were obsessed, except that the obsession extended far beyond childhood for me. Strat-O-Matic, as I think back, gets most of the credit for my love of scouting and team building. Later that decade I transferred my obsession to the NFL draft. It wasn’t anything like it is today: a significant event in a carefully scripted year-round NFL calendar that attracts millions of fans from all over the world. There was no television coverage for any of the rounds—that started in 1980—let alone all of them, and so if you wanted to follow in real time (as I most certainly did), you had to make your way to the host hotel in New York City. Seats were limited, which meant, for me, taking an early Long Island Rail Road train from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, to make sure I got one. The palpable current of excitement and potential on draft day assured me that this was what I wanted to do for my life’s work.

  Strat-O-Matic aside, my first love was football since the moment in the late 1960s when I saw a man on our family’s little black-and-white television who had the same last name as mine (and who looked like one of my uncles). That man, Vince Lombardi, legendary Green Bay Packers coach, didn’t have to be related to me to become my role model.

  Like most boys, I dreamed of one day suiting up in the NFL. Man, I wanted to play. And so I did: on Pop Warner teams; in high school in Ocean City, New Jersey; and then in boarding school at Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, which I attended in part to learn discipline but also to stay on the field while I got my grades up so that I could attend a good college. By then I knew an NFL career was not in the cards—I was already a good enough scout to evaluate my own athletic gifts as lacking—but I decided to go to a school somewhere that would allow me to prolong my career a bit longer as I figured out how to get a job on an NFL sideline or in a front office. College let me stay in the game, but it also let me learn the game. I often spent weekends attending coaching clinics throughout the Northeast. Frat parties were not my thing; football was the dream, and I chased it hard.

  In some ways I’m still chasing. I often think about the legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey, who, after being fired at age 74 as general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, was asked to name his most significant accomplishment. Rickey—who, among other achievements, orchestrated Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the Major League Baseball color barrier and invented the game’s farm system—quietly replied, “It hasn’t happened yet.”

  Although this book is drawn from a lifetime spent in football front offices, it’s not a life story as most are written. I won’t bore you with tales of inspiring childhood coaches (though I certainly had them) or highlights from my own playing career (I had a few of those, too). I will leave the teaching of technique and fundamentals to better instructors; there will be no extended treatises about the hand placement of the nose tackle or the footwork of the tight end. Although such nuances are the bones and ligaments of the game, I’m more interested in the entire body, with an emphasis on the brain: not only strategy and tactics that make a difference on the field but philosophy and theory that matter off it. Football is ultimately a business, and as in any successful business the most important ingredients are a sound culture, a realistic plan, strong leadership, and a talented workforce.

  Rather than a detailed recounting of my life and career—I save that for my kids—this book is meant to be an accounting of the lessons I’ve learned along the way, lessons that I hope will be of interest to serious fans but also to anyone who wants to know about what makes a great organizational thinker in any field: football or the Fortune 500. I will focus on the lessons I’ve learned from the men who, collectively, are largely responsible for the modern game of professional football: Davis, the Hall of Fame Oakland Raiders owner/coach who was the beating heart of the pass-happy American Football League, which merged with and forever changed the stodgy NFL; Walsh, the Hall of Fame inventor of the West Coast offense, which continues to dominate the game today; and Belichick, who may understand more about what happens on a gridiron than anyone else in history.

  Each of these men has contributed to my Ph.D. in advanced football. It’s a degree that was 35 years in the making as I worked for, coached alongside, and managed men who have won 11 of those Lombardi Trophies, many of those wins the result of the kind of foresight, ingenuity, and sheer force of will displayed by Belichick during that goal-line stand in Arizona. The story behind that now-legendary play is just one of many that I have collected over my career, and if you have listened to my podcast work or read my pieces for The Ringer and elsewhere, you may recognize some of what I have to say here. But much more of it will be new. I could argue that no one has had as much direct access as I have to the men most responsible for transforming pro football into the game it is today. And I would argue that no one is better suited to highlight and explain the brilliant lessons and revelatory insights of these masters.

  If you want to learn lifetime lessons, there’s no better teacher than a lifetime student.

  Class begins now.

  1

  THE ORGANIZATION

  CULTURE BEATS EVERYTHING

  Champions behave like champions before they’re champions.

  —BILL WALSH

  Bill Walsh drove a Porsche. Well, he owned a Porsche, I should say, since I was the one who drove it. I was 25 in 1984 when I left a recruiting coordinator position at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas to join Walsh’s staff with the San Francisco 49ers. The best part of my new job as a scout was to drive Walsh wherever he needed to go. As with most things in Walsh’s world, there was no set pattern or agenda. Some days I just dropped him at home. Other days I took him to the airport or to a speaking engagement across the state. For me, the longer the ride, the better. I could hardly believe my incredible good fortune.

  The assignment, considered by most to be grunt work suitable for only the youngest members of a staff, was nothing less than the beginning of my formal education in the game of professional football. What could be better? Me behind the wheel of a slick sports car as I listened to the running commentary of Bill Walsh: commentary on world events or Villanova’s NCAA tournament upset of Georgetown or military history or—his favorite subject above all others—the blueprint he was building for an advanced, all-encompassing philosophy that would transform the 49ers into the envy of and model for every other organization in sports.

  By the time I arrived, Walsh was well on his way to genius status. As a longtime assistant coach in Cincinnati under the legendary Paul Brown, Walsh first changed the course of NFL history with his invention of the West Coast offense. His intricate evolution of the passing game was built around precise timing and movement. It attacked the defense by stretching the field horizontally with short passes that served almost like handoffs, getting the ball to playmakers just as they reached top speed in open spaces. After a falling-out with Brown, Walsh left the Bengals in 1975 and, after a brief stop in San Diego, spent two years as the head coach at Stanford, where he led the football team to back-to-back bowl game wins. Since he was comfortable in the school’s academic environment, the last place anyone ever expected Walsh to jump to next
was the 49ers.

  Most football fans today think of San Francisco as the NFL’s dynasty of the 1980s, but few remember that before Walsh showed up in 1979 the team was widely regarded as the worst in the league and quite possibly the most dysfunctional franchise in all of pro sports. The previous general manager, Joe Thomas, had gutted the organization from top to bottom. Thomas fired three head coaches in less than 12 months, including one, East Coast native Pete McCulley, who insisted that everything run on his time; that meant that the usual 7 A.M. team meetings began at 4 A.M. Thomas also cut talented players such as quarterback Jim Plunkett, who went on to win two Super Bowls with the Oakland Raiders. Worst of all, Thomas had traded away five of the 49ers’ top picks in upcoming drafts for a washed-up, wobbly-kneed O. J. Simpson. The game-day losses were so definitive and the weekday atmosphere so poisonous during a 2–14 season in 1978 that a disgusted 49ers assistant left the sideline on one embarrassing Sunday to sit with his wife in the stands.

  In short, Walsh took over a team with no high draft picks, no quarterback, and no hope. Three years later, that team won the Super Bowl.

  It got there by following Walsh’s formula, what he called his Standard of Performance: an exacting plan for constructing and maintaining the culture and organizational DNA behind the perfect football franchise. Let’s face it, the word perfect and the very idea of “building the perfect organization” are either clichés or fantasies to most coaches. Not to Walsh. Perfection drove him endlessly and, sometimes to those around him, maddeningly.

  His obsession with perfection meant he constantly pushed his people, regardless of experience or position in the organization, to learn more. He was naturally curious, always searching for ways to fix his team or just better accomplish the simplest task, and he demanded the same thing of his staff. He never wanted us to follow familiar paths to knowledge. He was trying to build a lasting, self-perpetuating culture to counter the groupthink that was then pervasive in the NFL and still is today.

  Walsh, in other words, was trying to “disrupt” football long before anyone thought to use that term in business, let alone sports.

  From his lectern in the passenger seat, Walsh told me, “If we are all thinking alike, no one is thinking.” He was a master communicator, deftly asking questions he already knew the answer to as a lead-in to another lesson. “Have you heard of Tom Peters?” he once asked me. My first thought was, Is he that punter in the draft? When it quickly became clear that I had no clue who Peters was, Walsh began an impromptu dissertation on the merits of In Search of Excellence, the book that Peters, a famed management consultant, wrote with Bob Waterman. Walsh loved the book and urged me to head to the store immediately to buy a copy. (There was no Amazon back then.) Which, of course, I did. And reading Peters spurred in me a lifelong love of his management philosophy, as Walsh knew it would.

  In the book, Peters and Waterman offer a list of eight attributes that drive organizations to become excellent. The similarities to Walsh’s Standard of Performance were no coincidence. Walsh himself said, “Running a football franchise is not unlike running any other business: You start first with a structural format and underlying philosophy, then find people who can implement it.” But if football was his business, building the finest organization was his goal.

  The best way I can describe Walsh’s philosophy is that he thought of a football team as being like a brand-new automobile, believing that the finished product could be only as good as the assembly line that created it, all the way down to the tiniest bolt and the smallest detail performed by the seemingly most insignificant worker. Everything needed to mesh on and off the field. No part could survive without the others. It was a process Walsh was constantly thinking and rethinking as he built his culture of success.

  His meticulousness was evident everywhere, from his spotless sneakers to his impeccable office. Once, as I was walking down the hall in the team facility, I heard him yell to me, “Are you just going to ignore that photo?” Unable to discern the offending picture, I asked him which one he meant. “The one that’s tilted sideways” was his straightforward reply. To this day, if there is a picture hanging out of line, I am compelled to straighten it. Walsh was extremely demanding in a quiet way. You never wanted to be the source of that disappointed look on his face. He was a boxer in his younger days and a military buff as a grown-up. At the same time, he could have stepped into an economics class at Stanford and held forth quite proficiently. His was, in short, a unique and powerful presence wherever he went, particularly inside that Porsche, and his voice remains loud and clear in my ear today.

  Walsh’s dedication to his Standard of Performance was a way of life for him; his intention was always to use it to influence more than the game on the field. I truly believe that’s why he left the comfort of Stanford for the challenge of the downtrodden 49ers. He wanted to test his theories in the worst possible circumstances, at the highest level of the game. The fact that those theories passed that test with honors is a surprise to no one who knew the man in almost any capacity or context.

  Walsh left his legacy of greatness in players, coaches, and support staff alike. He was as concerned with how the receptionists answered the phones at team headquarters as he was with Joe Montana’s throwing motion. Once, during a preseason game at the 49ers’ home field, Candlestick Park, I was in the coaches’ box, waiting for the team to return to the sideline after halftime. Suddenly, Walsh was screaming into my headset. When I asked what he needed, he said bluntly, “Remind me to fire the PA announcer. He is horrible.” That was classic Walsh, tuned in to all things 49ers, not just the action on the field.

  No detail was too small, not even the location of his parking spot at the team’s facility inside the sprawling Red Morton Park recreational complex in Redwood City. He reserved the first space, closest to and aligned perfectly with the entrance, for his Porsche. That was fine with me. Each time the call came to my desk from his assistant declaring that “Coach needs a ride” I’d get excited. My understanding of the 49ers’ unique culture was about to be expanded again.

  Ever seen The Late Late Show’s signature segment, “Carpool Karaoke”? Host James Corden chauffeurs around a music star, a pop culture icon, or even a first lady as they sing along with the radio. But he also takes it as an opportunity to get them chatting about life. There’s something about a car’s interior, private yet informal—not to mention the dueting—that allows Corden to get an intimate glimpse into the thoughts of even the most guarded stars. Driving Walsh around in his Porsche was my version of Carpool Karaoke (without the warbling; neither of us wanted to hear the other sing).

  I’ve worked with some of the greatest minds in football, and believe it or not, one common thread that bound them was a rather odd “game show” way they had of interacting with their staff. Starting in 1997, I spent almost a decade in Oakland working alongside the iconic owner of the Raiders, Al Davis, and he treated most of our interactions as if we were on Jeopardy! Davis, in the Alex Trebek role, required that I instantly furnish fully formed questions that were based on answers he threw my way. And Davis was nowhere as patient as Trebek. As soon as his secretary got me on the phone, he’d break in with some version of this greeting: “I have three things for you.” (The number varied, but nothing else did.) I never replied, instead just waited for answer number one. “You know that guy from Utah who missed a season with a knee injury?” Davis might say. My answer: You mean offensive lineman Barry Sims? (Technically, I guess I should have said, Who is offensive lineman Barry Sims?) “Yes, Sims,” Davis would reply. “How big are his hands?” If I wasn’t able to provide the exact measurement off the top of my head, I would be banned from Final Raider Jeopardy. The one thing you could never say to Al(ex) was “I’m not sure; let me look it up.” That drove him nuts. “Aw, fuck, Lombardi, I could look it up myself,” he’d snap. That was my daily interaction with Davis for most of a decade.

  Boo
kended around my time with Davis, I worked with Bill Belichick in Cleveland and then again in New England. His game was closer to 20 Questions. Detroit Lions general manager Bob Quinn worked on Belichick’s staff for 16 years, and he recently described Bill’s quiz show interrogation better than anyone: It’s 6:45 A.M., and you’re still half asleep. As you wait in line at the omelet station inside the Patriots’ practice facility, Belichick shuffles up and asks you a dozen questions about the seventh player on the practice squad. Those who weren’t ready to engage in a half-hour in-depth conversation on the spot found themselves in the worst place in the NFL: Bill’s doghouse.

  Walsh’s concert was Carpool Karaoke. He liked to doodle, and in the same way that President Kennedy drew sailboats he daydreamed about building someday, Walsh drew up football plays from every era. If he caught me glancing over as he sketched, he would delight in giving me the play’s background and origin. Walsh’s mind never turned off, and writing things down seemed to be the best method he had to catalog his thoughts. He used 3-by-5 index cards and short sharp pencils like the ones golfers keep score with, and when he wasn’t doodling, he made lists of things that needed to get done in an elegant left-handed handwriting that was part cursive, part print.

  Honestly, I think Walsh cherished those pencils more than the Porsche. In 1981 he signed veteran linebacker Jack “Hacksaw” Reynolds—who became the heart and soul of a 49ers defense that won two Super Bowls—in part, I’m sure, because Reynolds brought a full box of sharpened pencils to every team meeting, as if he were the world’s toughest CPA about to meet with a client. Walsh, by the way, liked to say that whereas Hall of Fame defensive back Ronnie Lott had character, Hacksaw was a character. And he was right. Hacksaw got his nickname as a senior at the University of Tennessee when, after a frustrating loss to Mississippi, he went to a Kmart, purchased 13 hacksaw blades, and proceeded to cut through his 1953 Chevy.