But what was I missing? Why couldn’t I connect the dots?
Then, one day, sitting in a makeshift home office with my five-year-old son, Matthew, and SportsCenter playing on a loop in the background, it clicked. As I studied former Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills head coach Marv Levy, I had my Jerry Maguire epiphany: Coaches are first and foremost great leaders. Good coaches may be clever play callers or demanding drill sergeants or organized middle managers. But in the ultimate team sport, real success doesn’t depend on tactics or discipline or order. It always comes down to how well a coach leads. I substituted the word leader for coach, and my research was transformed. I needed to define what made a great leader.
I immediately turned to the works of Tom Peters and Warren Bennis, the management gurus we studied during my days with the 49ers. They had established a handful of standard leadership qualities that I could apply, supplemented by my own hard-learned insight, to just about any coaching candidate throughout history and into the future. Those qualities were as follows.
COMMAND OF THE ROOM
Followers need something to commit to. Great leaders know how to grab a team’s attention and then show them what they’re all fighting for. As Belichick says, “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes but no plans.” You can’t buy into a plan unless one is laid out clearly and plainly for the entire franchise. On the first day of preparation for Super Bowl XLIX, Belichick stood in front of his Patriots in the team meeting room and told them, “We have to understand how to play this game in order to win.” Then, once he had their attention, he carefully explained how he intended to win the game. He never raised his voice, never made dramatic gestures. His voice barely wavered from his usual monotone. But when I looked around the room as he spoke, everyone was taking notes. He wasn’t interested in what happened the week before. He spent no time reminiscing about what got them to that moment or what the outside world was saying about the burgeoning “Deflategate.” He cared only about what was ahead and how to move forward with a collective blueprint that gave them the best chance of victory.
But this kind of alpha-dog magnetism goes only so far. No one can command a room better than Jon Gruden. Gruden, back now for his second shift with the Raiders after going 95–81 with Oakland and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers between 1998 and 2008, has incredible communication skills, but his words sometimes work against him. To hear him tell it, Gruden never has enough offensive talent for the schemes he has devised. Without fail, the last team he coached was more talented than his current one. How do I know this? I was with him in Philadelphia when he was the offensive coordinator and I was the pro personnel director. He would walk around the office complaining, “Can you believe I have to play these guys?” before rattling off names such as Ricky Watters, Charlie Garner, and Irving Fryar. By all accounts, those guys were at the very least competent pros or, I could argue, far better than that. But to Gruden’s eyes, there was always something wrong with each of them.
When I moved on to Oakland, he was there, too—and, believe it or not, giving the exact same speech, though with a twist. This time he let it be known that the talent he coached in Philadelphia was far superior to what he was currently saddled with. I heard Gruden being interviewed once by a TV production crew as background for a Raiders’ nationally televised game, and as usual he was complaining about his lack of offensive talent. Finally, a member of the announcing team called him out: “Jon, you do realize that your quarterback [Rich Gannon] is having an MVP season?”
That was when I realized that Gruden told this no-talent story as motivation—for himself. None of it was about his team; he was pushing himself to work harder and smarter. Problem is, it’s not exactly the best way to develop trust and respect in your players, and eventually it will backfire. If he were better at this part of the job—better at coping than complaining—he could still be one of the greats. But if he hasn’t learned from his first tour, he’ll end up flaming out again, just as he did after winning a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay.
COMMAND OF THE MESSAGE
What good is a plan if you can’t articulate it? Part of what made Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells an exceptional leader was his brilliant communication skills. Watch clips of him as he addresses his team and listen to the simple metaphors he uses to help players understand. If he wanted better teamwork, he might say: “We’re not playing solitaire out here.” Short and sweet, it drives home the point and isn’t going to be misunderstood. Parcells was a master at using humor and metaphor. Belichick, in contrast, is better at using video to detail exactly what might happen if players don’t follow the plan. His bluntness is a beacon. “Look at this idiot, operating on his own, not doing what he should do,” he might say, pointing to the screen, with the object of his ridicule as likely to be a Pro Bowler as a third-string fill-in.
Whether you use metaphors or game film, delivery isn’t as important as meaning. Players can’t accomplish anything unless they can visualize the path.
COMMAND OF SELF
Personal accountability is the ultimate sign of strength. When a leader admits mistakes, it shows the team that he expects as much from himself as he does from his players. When a coach cuts a high draft pick or an expensive free agent, it may look bad in the media, but it has a big impact in the locker room. No one ever complains about the long hours in New England because Belichick’s car is always the last to leave the team parking lot. He never asks players or staff to do more than he’s willing to do.
In his play Antigone, Sophocles sums it up best: “All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.” Ego is the leading cause of unemployment in the coaching world. Those who thrive in this profession don’t place their needs ahead of the team’s. Of course, some ego is essential. It becomes a problem when it gets in the way of your decision making. The right kind of ego demands perfection, not praise.
Walsh most definitely had an ego; he did not deny the “genius” label that others gave him. He loved attention, but it never clouded his vision for the franchise. Likewise, few in football have ever managed their egos the way Belichick has. He is not worried about where an idea comes from; he cares only about whether it makes the team better. He knows that as the man running the organization he’s going to get the credit by default, so he makes sure to spread it around. That’s a rare thing in the NFL.
Rarer still are coaches who can admit when they’re wrong. The NFL is full of insecure coaches who won’t admit a mistake or share credit; in fact, they may even steal an idea or two. By contrast, you will constantly hear Belichick proclaim to his staff and players, “I screwed that up” or “That’s on me.” Command of self means sharing the blame and the credit alike, and this offers the advantage of allowing Belichick to step in at crunch time and say, “We did it your way, and it didn’t work—now we’re going to do it my way.”
Being honest with oneself is the first step and one that coaches often are reluctant to try, especially someone new to the profession. Take Jim Harbaugh as an example. When I was in Philadelphia in 1997, Ray Rhodes, the head coach, asked me to find a special teams coach. I went through my research and recommended two guys: Rich Bisaccia from Clemson University and John Harbaugh from Indiana. We offered the job to Bisaccia, but when he chose to stay where he was, we happily hired Harbaugh. Four years later, when I was working in Oakland, Al Davis asked me to find a former NFL quarterback who might make a good coach. Because of the friendship I had built through John with the Harbaugh family, I brought up his brother Jim, who had just ended his playing career. We made him an assistant.
Jim was amazing from the start. He was one ex-player who really did have a great understanding of the game. What he needed work in was the other facets that define a great head coach. Computers and analytics were just coming online, and Jim, like a lot of us back then, had no idea how to use th
em. More troubling, though, was that he couldn’t quite organize his thoughts into a coherent plan or message. It’s one thing to know the game, quite another to be able to teach it. Jim worked hard to become the kind of clearheaded communicator the position demanded. The competitiveness and work ethic he had as a player may have even increased when he became a coach. That’s unusual; more often than not, it’s the other way around.
One late night, working alone at his makeshift desk in a room he shared with another Raiders assistant, John Morton, Harbaugh fell asleep on top of his keyboard. His nose landed on the M key, and when he woke up after several hours, there were pages upon pages of Ms on the screen.
I guess even back then he knew he would end up back in Ann Arbor.
COMMAND OF OPPORTUNITY
As I formulated the pillars of leadership that would inform my coaching evaluations, I began to pick out the current men who fit them. It didn’t take long to confirm that Belichick was one. After helping Parcells and the Giants win a pair of Super Bowls, he was considered one of the best defensive coordinators in the game, but his 36–44 record as a head coach in Cleveland included only a single playoff win. Few football people considered Belichick worthy of one of the most precious gifts in life: a second chance.
If my recommendation to Shaw was going to be Belichick, I needed more support to prove my case. So I went back to digging, this time for instances in which a second-chance hire proved to be the best choice. More often than not, looking for a coach in the NFL is a long walk down the statistical path of least resistance—that is, straight down Win-Loss Avenue. Just looking at records, though, without considering how they were amassed is a pretty shallow and lazy way to find your most important employee. Belichick, for example, took over an aging team in Cleveland that needed to be rebuilt. Making matters worse, he had to overcome a declining quarterback (Bernie Kosar) with a huge new contract and the power that comes from the owner calling him “the most important man in the organization.” On top of that, it was the first year of the salary cap, a confusing and game-changing paradigm shift in the economics of the NFL. Within that context, the staff and culture Belichick was able to build in five seasons was a monumental achievement, not the failure implied by an overall record that was eight games under .500.
To this day, people ask me what the difference is between the Cleveland Belichick and the New England Belichick. My answer is always the same: very little. Okay, so he inherited a better team in New England and picked a Hall of Fame quarterback in the sixth round of the draft. (Some might say Tom Brady fell into his lap; nonetheless, he made the pick that everyone else had the chance to make, too.) But Belichick as a leader and the core beliefs he instilled were the same in both places. The difference people perceive is not with Belichick but with the owner. In New England, Robert Kraft approved of, even demanded, a culture change and gave Belichick nearly total control of football operations to achieve it. In Cleveland, Modell was both a meddler and a steadfast proponent of the status quo. If Belichick seemed bellicose with the Browns, well, you would be, too. It’s one thing to lose because you failed as a leader, quite another to watch your lifelong dream go up in smoke because of restrictions assigned by outside forces. The biggest lesson Belichick learned in Cleveland was that he would take another head coaching job only if the right owner offered it.
The more I thought about Belichick’s circumstances, the more I found myself circling back to Marv Levy, another example of a coach who overcame failure to grow and improve as a leader. A Harvard graduate, Levy had a quiet, professorial way about him, but his background in special teams had honed his ability to command and motivate. He was clearly a leader first; in fact, he may never have called a single play. But he was a successful head coach in the Canadian Football League and was on his way to becoming a successful NFL coach with the Kansas City Chiefs until the 1982 players’ strike got in the way. Levy had been on an impressive upward curve in Kansas City—4–12, 7–9, 8–8, and 9–7 in his first four seasons—but the Chiefs’ locker room was full of hard-core advocates for players’ rights, and that adversely affected the team’s chemistry once the strike ended. They went 3–6 during the strike year, and he was let go. No one expected to hear from Levy again. He had had his shot at the big time, and it didn’t work out. End of story. But four years later, when Bill Polian became the Buffalo Bills’ general manager, he looked past Levy’s one bad year and hired his old friend (from their days in the USFL with the Chicago Blitz) at midseason. Four Super Bowl appearances and 112 regular-season wins later, Levy is firmly ensconced in Canton and serves as a patron saint for second acts in the coaching profession.
I was sure Belichick—who was back with Parcells, assisting him in New England—would thrive the way Levy had if he was given the opportunity. You see, becoming an NFL head coach is a process. You learn on the fly. It’s a lot like the advice the late, great Glenn Frey, front man for the Eagles, once got about songwriting from Bob Seger. The veteran Detroit rocker told Frey that to make it in the music business he would have to write his own songs.
“What if they’re bad?” Frey asked.
“Oh, of course they’re bad; just keep writing until they’re good,” Seger told him.
That’s what being a first-time NFL head coach is like. It is more than likely you’re going to be bad at it. You just have to keep working at it until you get good and pray that you don’t end up a one-hit wonder.
Essentially, Modell already had paid for Belichick’s head coaching apprenticeship, and in my mind at least that should have been enough to vault him to the top of Shaw’s list. But coaches are a bit like cars: Once they’ve been used, their value goes down because buyers (GMs and owners) are looking for that new coach smell. A team that needs a coach usually needs to win back its fan base. Though my research showed that there’s a ton of hidden value in second-chance coaches, most owners and fans see them only as retreads.
COMMAND OF THE PROCESS
None of the other pillars matter if a leader is not fair and consistent. When Jim Mora was the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, his best player, DeAngelo Hall, bought a Bentley that was delivered to training camp on the night of a team bowling event. Mora had told the Falcons to ride to the event together on the bus, but Hall balked. He wanted to take his new wheels for a spin. Instead of sending a message that no one is above the team, not even when it comes to an off-season social event, Mora chose to appease his star. Making matters worse, he chose to ride shotgun. Wrong call. Playing favorites poisoned the Falcons’ locker room, and bending the rules eroded Mora’s authority. Six months later he was out of a job.
That situation might not seem like a big deal, but every move a leader makes is analyzed by the team, and any one of them can have far-reaching consequences. If the team bus rule can be broken, what about curfew? Or red zone assignments? That’s why Brady never gets a pass on Belichick’s rules. When the Patriots play at home, the quarterback stays in the same hotel, in the same kind of bed, as the rookie free agent who just made the team even though the superstar’s big house and supermodel wife are less than 15 miles away.
When rules don’t apply to everyone, the ensuing chaos collapses whatever foundation a leader has tried so hard to build.
* * *
—
I’ve always loved the movie Patton, with George C. Scott in the title role as the hard-charging, ivory-handled-pistol-carrying commander of the Third Army in World War II. In the opening scene, as the general addresses the troops before the D-Day invasion, he quickly demonstrates all five areas of leadership. He commands his troop’s attention and communicates his message. His perfectly balanced humility and pride show a clear command of self, he has bounced back from numerous setbacks, and he has an unwavering commitment to the process, in this case the battle plan. “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country,” Patton shouts on the screen. “You win it by making the other poor d
umb bastard die for his country.”
Having settled on my pillars of coaching leadership, I was on to phase two of my search for the Rams’ next general: finding potential candidates. Each of the winning coaches I examined usually had three or four of the five leadership traits I was looking for. Losing coaches or those who couldn’t sustain excellence over time rarely had more than two. Most NFL coaches have a plan and the communication skills to teach and implement it. What separates good coaches from great ones is often trust and accountability, and so that was what I focused on over the next few months as I prepared my report for Shaw.
On a Friday in December 1996 before the 4–9 Rams were to face the Bears, I flew to yet another clandestine meeting with Shaw and Zygmunt. I didn’t have to be worried about being discovered, because our rendezvous was purposely scheduled for the day before the team and the press descended on the city. Nevertheless, inside the thick three-ring notebook that contained my massive report I used numbers (1 through 7) instead of section titles so that if people caught a glimpse of it, they wouldn’t be able to connect it back to the Rams or know what was contained within it.
Section 1 featured the background and a summary page for every successful coach currently working in the NFL: Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren, Jimmy Johnson, Marv Levy, Bobby Ross, Marty Schottenheimer, and George Seifert. At the end of the section was an introduction to my tenets of coaching leadership.
Section 2 dealt with out-of-the-game coaches who might be available for hire. This featured a breakdown of their skill sets as well as a section called “If You Hire This Guy…” that described what things would be like working with that coach: how he operated, how he treated his staff and players, how driven he was. To go deeper into this topic, which I think is a key to hiring the right guy, I included a section with specific questions to ask during any potential interviews (see this page). This chapter had Bill Parcells, Jim Mora Sr., Denny Green, Dan Reeves, and Mike Ditka, with the prospects ranked in order of who I would recommend, starting with Parcells.
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