How did we land on him? Well, I had just been fired unexpectedly from the Browns, a team in desperate need of a quarterback, and so I had done a tremendous amount of work on all the prospects. I knew this about Garoppolo: He was confident but not cocky; his teammates loved him; he had the work ethic and leadership qualities required for the position; his technique and fundamentals were excellent; and had a superior command of the offense. (Davis might not have liked him because he played at a lower level of competition, but that was the only thing not to like about Jimmy.)
After we brought Garoppolo to Foxborough, we knew he could handle it all. Again, it comes down to an individual assessment of each prospect’s character. He wasn’t going to be disrespectful toward one of the greatest players of all time, but he wasn’t about to back down from the challenge of replacing him, either. We also brought in Johnny Manziel, the Heisman Trophy winner from Texas A&M. Both Manziel and Garoppolo did very well with the predraft routine the Patriots give all their prospects. But Garoppolo was clean off the field, a model player with the right demeanor, whereas Manziel had a few pretty blatant red flags. The choice was obvious.
Every team has a need list. What makes Belichick’s different is that it is a living, changeable document. He revisits it constantly throughout the year, alone and with staff. There is a saying about college recruiting: “It’s like shaving; if you don’t do it every day, you look like a bum.” Walsh believed that a team needed to make at least 10 postdraft moves. (No one knows how he came up with 10 as his magic number, but it would be easy to surmise that he wanted to add one upgrade to each position group except quarterback.) Belichick thinks of NFL team building the same way: as a never-ending process. Needs change as injuries arise and skill levels evolve. To ignore that is to fall behind.
Talk to any team’s representatives over the summer and you’d think their moves had put the Super Bowl in reach. Talk to the Patriots and you might think they were an expansion team—not because they don’t like their talent but because they are never satisfied.
Contentment is the enemy.
* * *
—
Okay, I think you’re ready to appreciate the Niners epic 1986 draft.
When I arrived at our offices in those wee hours, 711 Nevada Street was a ghost town, empty besides the caterers. Coffee and my excitement were brewing in equal measure. As soon as Walsh entered the draft room, I handed him Will McDonough’s mock draft from that morning’s Boston Globe. In the days before the Internet, publicly posted mock drafts were a rarity and guys who had the inside scoops to inform them were rarer still. McDonough was one of those guys. Lucky for me, my college roommate, Massachusetts native Paul Brady, had turned me on to McDonough. Luckier still, Paul was an early riser and Globe subscriber who was eager to report how McDonough thought the first round would unfold. Walsh valued McDonough’s opinion; he knew he was wired around the NFL. The tough South Boston scribe never backed down from a confrontation, just the kind of guy we figured no team would have the guts to flat-out lie to. (Keep their options open? Of course. But lie? No.) A year earlier, in fact, it was McDonough’s intel that gave Walsh a sense of how high we had to move up to get Brown, Toon, or Rice. This is how crazy team building and the NFL draft can be: Even a genius like Walsh depended heavily on a crumpled roll of fax paper from Boston to help him make his selections. To this day I wonder if my buddy Paul realizes what a critical role he and his fax modem played in helping construct the 49ers dynasty.
Walsh had his eye on three players this time around. As the draft wound around to us, he directed me to the blackboard (yes, the blackboard; this was 1986: lots of fax machines, few greaseboards) to write the following names:
Gerald Robinson, DE Auburn
John L. Williams, RB Florida
Ronnie Harmon, RB Iowa
Sitting behind a large desk, Walsh appeared confident that at least one of them would be available when our turn arrived at 18. But drafts are like an open-sea cruise: It’s smooth sailing until—whap!—a huge wave rocks the boat, and just like that you’re navigating the squalls of a storm and taking on water. The first rogue wave landed when we heard the Vikings had selected Robinson with the fourteenth pick. We were prepared for that thanks to the Boston Globe. But it still stung: Our coveted pass rusher was off the board.
We rebounded quickly, knowing that with three picks to go we still had two of our guys available…until Seattle grabbed Williams at 15. Now the oxygen seemed to be sucked out of the room. Walsh pushed back from his desk and instructed our general manager, John McVay, to get on the phone to assess the market for trading down, just in case. McVay had barely begun to dial when—poof!—Buffalo snagged Harmon at 16.
Few moments epitomize the volatile art and science of team building quite like this: After three months of nonstop, backbreaking draft preparation, we were about to be on the clock and our blackboard was empty.
Now Walsh was up and pacing. It was like being in the middle of a busy ER. He barked to McVay that we needed to trade down, if only to buy some time—say, a half hour or at least two or three picks (each team has 15 minutes to make a choice)—to collect our thoughts and come up with a new plan. Right away, Dallas made us an offer to move to 20, but it only got us a fifth rounder. That went against McVay’s own theories about value, but we were reeling a bit and it gave Walsh the cushion of time he needed, which was far more important than the compensation itself. Draft rule corollary: Know the objective of every trade. In this case, time trumped value.
McVay made the deal.
Unfortunately, time alone was not going to solve our problem; truth be told, we had no idea whom to pick. Our highest-rated player was Larry Roberts, a defensive end from Alabama, but McDonough had reported that he’d still be available in the second round. So Walsh asked McVay to move down again, this time as a value play. He told McVay he didn’t even care if we slipped out of the first round altogether. A moment later our prayers were answered: The phone rang; we had an eager partner on the line. The Bills, picking twenty-ninth, were offering their second, third, and tenth rounders. Added bonus: The third-round pick was just in front of the Raiders, so Walsh could beat Davis in their annual draft-day oneupsmanship. We were desperate, but the Bills didn’t know that. We tried to squeeze them for a ninth rounder instead of a tenth, but we were on the clock with zero leverage and were forced to agree to their offer. Everyone exhaled.
We had survived a nightmare scenario in the first round, and now we had extra picks and plenty of time to figure out what to do with them. One of the things that shows how Walsh and Belichick operate on a different level than the rest of the NFL is the way both coaches understand the value of trading down. If everyone in the NFL is missing on nearly half their draft picks, the only way to increase your odds is to make more picks, especially in the second to fourth rounds, where you generally find the best values (cost versus talent). It’s simple math, but it’s amazing how few NFL minds understand it.
After racing through most of the first round, now the clock seemed to stop in our draft room. The wait until our new spot at 29 seemed endless, but we were excited about the prospects we had to consider. Then the Lions called. They absolutely, positively had to have our pick and were willing to give us their own second rounder, number 39, and their third, 66, for it. McVay tried to maintain his game face but pounced on the deal and then, maintaining his momentum, traded our backup quarterback Matt Cavanaugh to the Eagles for another third and a second in the next year’s draft. I don’t know how he kept track of everything, but for good measure McVay then traded our own second rounder to Washington for a first rounder in the next draft and an extra tenth before finally shipping the third-round pick we’d just acquired from the Lions for both of the Rams’ fourth rounders and the rights to backup quarterback Jeff Kemp.
We had been at it for five full hours and had yet to make a single selection, but it was al
ready one of the most successful drafts in 49ers history. Walsh and McVay had secured a new backup quarterback; a first-, second-, and third-round pick in the next year’s draft; and a second, three thirds, three fourths, and a tenth in this year’s draft.
Now all we had to do was make those picks count.
And did we ever.
In the second round, just as the intel from McDonough predicted, we were able to get Roberts, the highest-rated player left on our board. Next up: that third-round “beat Al Davis” choice. Walsh loved fullback Tom Rathman from Nebraska, thinking he would fit perfectly in the Niners’ offense. From predraft conversations with Davis, Walsh knew he was looking at a fullback too, but the Raiders guru never mentioned his favorite by name. We snagged Rathman right before Davis inexplicably broke with his self-imposed level-of-competition standard to select Vance Mueller from tiny Division III Occidental College. A few months later we played the Raiders in the first preseason game, and Mueller ripped a nine-yard run right in front of our bench. Walsh vented wildly into his headset, letting us all know how much he hated the thought of Al getting the better player. But in the end it wasn’t even close. Rathman had a much better career.
Still in the third round, we picked Tim McKyer, a fast and athletic corner from Texas at Arlington with iffy tackling skills. But that didn’t bother Walsh at all. The speed was there, and his deep background check was positive. Plus, Walsh knew our Pro Bowl safety Ronnie Lott would demand physicality from the rookie. (He was right, as usual. McKyer’s toughness earned him a spot on John Madden’s All-Madden Team of gritty players a couple years later.) With our last pick in the third we grabbed John Taylor, a wide receiver from Delaware State. In the fourth, we selected offensive lineman Steve Wallace, injured defensive tackle Kevin Fagan, and Charles Haley. Haley was another “beat Al Davis” pick. Davis loved pass rushers, and Walsh had been teasing him all spring about finding the next great QB killer. We were told Davis had everyone in his personnel department scrambling to uncover the mystery rusher, to no avail.
Each of the players we chose that day would be a longtime contributor to the dynasty Walsh was building. The 1986 Niners draft was a haul most football executives only dream about. We didn’t know that at the time, of course, although we sensed we had done some excellent work. In fact, by the time we took Haley, everyone in the room was ecstatic. Everyone except our college scouting director and my immediate boss, Tony Razzano. Tony hated our draft to that point. For him, the only way to salvage the miserable day was for us to get Patrick Miller, a Florida linebacker, in the fifth round. Miller, though, had tested positive for marijuana at the Combine and had landed on Walsh’s don’t-draft list. Razzano was relentless in his support, however, and eventually Walsh acquiesced. This was the one time all day that we didn’t use all of our tools to minimize risk and improve our odds. As soon as we turned in the card to make the pick official, Walsh pushed his chair back violently and headed for the board that held the names of the defensive back prospects. Fearing Walsh’s rage, everyone scattered but me. (Not because I was brave but because it was my job to stick by his side at all times.)
As I stood there, Walsh stared at the list of free safeties. Head slightly tilted, he read the names in the “make-it-plus” category— that is, players we thought had more than an 80 percent chance to make the team. After a few moments of, I guess, channeling the football gods, Walsh’s left index finger floated across the names like a giant Ouija board until—thwap!—it landed on the card of Don Griffin from Middle Tennessee State.
“What about this kid?” he asked.
I dutifully reported back that he was the Ohio Valley Conference player of the year and that both our scouts who visited the school liked him. But when Walsh actually suggested that we take him in the sixth, a pit formed in my stomach because, truth was, it had been eight months since anyone had seen or spoken to Griffin. (In our defense, this was pre–information age scouting.) I did the only thing I could think of: I raced to the side room, punched in the number we had on file for Griffin, and prayed. After three rings, someone picked up. I informed the person on the other end of the line who I was and what team I worked for as best I could over the party noises in the background. When Griffin came to the phone a moment later and assured me that he was healthy and ready to go, I let out the biggest sigh of relief in my life. Griffin, too, would become a Niner stalwart. Miller, not so much.
What a day. By the time our tenth-round pick came around, we had fully reloaded with more eventual starters than most teams get in two drafts, sometimes three. (And don’t forget, we also had stockpiled three top picks for the following draft.) A relaxed and satisfied Walsh turned his attention to actor and draft obsessive Bradford Dillman, who was in the room with us. Dillman, a Yale grad who starred in the original Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Way We Were, and a handful of Dirty Harry movies, had a deep love for the 49ers and over time had worked his way into the inner sanctum of the team. In each of the previous few drafts, Dillman had gone so far as to provide us with his own sleeper pick backed up by a funny but highly detailed analysis of why his player would make 49ers history.
His insight and presence were usually worth a good laugh or two. But at the start of the tenth round, he snapped open his briefcase and pulled out a typed dossier extolling the virtues of Harold Hallman, a defensive tackle from Auburn, who, the report stated, “could get more penetration than Warren Beatty at a sorority party.” After a long, exhausting, and historic day, Walsh just kind of shrugged his shoulders. Hallman would be our final pick of the draft.
He never made the 49ers, but Hallman did go on to become rookie of the year and a four-time all star playing for Calgary and Toronto in the Canadian Football League. That made him just the right final selection in one of the greatest drafts in NFL history. Everything the 49ers touched that year, even our gag pick, turned to gold.
A day that began on a desolate stretch of El Camino Real ended with a clear path back to the Super Bowl.
4
SPECIAL TEAMS
THE MEANING OF ALL-IN
It’s not the strength of the individual players; it’s the strength of how they function together.
—BILL BELICHICK
As the ball explodes off the right foot of Pittsburgh Steelers punter Mark Royals, the sold-out crowd inside Cleveland Municipal Stadium rises to its feet in a deafening roar, waiting to see what Eric Metcalf will do next.
With just over two minutes to play and the Browns trailing their rivals 23–21, darkness has begun to fall on the rickety old stadium and perhaps the team’s 1993 season. Our defense has given up 26 first downs and more than 400 yards to the Steelers, and our offense has stalled after fading hometown hero Bernie Kosar replaced an injured Vinny Testaverde at quarterback. Most coaches would be out of options at this point. But not Bill Belichick. Everyone else in the NFL tends to dismiss special teams as an afterthought, but Belichick has an unparalleled respect for and commitment to special teams. To Belichick, special teams are the heart and soul of a team, the ideal way to establish culture, chemistry, and toughness and develop the talent of the entire roster. Oh, and just maybe to steal a game from a rival.
So as the punt soars past midfield and Metcalf, the Pro Bowl returner, rocks back and forth in anticipation on his own 25-yard line, I stand expectantly in the tiny coaches’ booth near the roof of the stadium. Wiping the sooty condensation off the windows, I have a bird’s-eye view of the play about to unfold and of Belichick’s special teams’ genius.
Before making his name as a defensive coordinator with the two-time Super Bowl champion New York Giants, Belichick spent several years in the league as a special teams coach. For Belichick, working on special teams was never a dues-paying grind. In fact, his affinity for that part of the game was instilled by the greatest influence of his life: his father, Steve, a renowned scout and coach and an associate professor at the Nava
l Academy. From the time he was nine, growing up in Annapolis, Bill would spend entire days watching his father conduct practice, scout opponents, and break down film. (Once in a while he even got to play catch with Navy quarterback Roger Staubach, his childhood hero.) Steve Belichick was never well-known to fans, but his football intellect, attention to detail, and ability to teach the game were highly respected by his peers. I really believe that Bill’s deep respect for his father’s career in the shadows and the tone set at the academy—a total, tireless, and selfless commitment to team and something greater than individual accolades and attention—are to this day what power his unique focus and appreciation of special teams.
Special teams led to Belichick’s first job in the NFL. When he was 24 and still answering to “Billy,” he was hired to be the assistant special teams coach of the Detroit Lions under Rick Forzano, a former Navy head coach. Among other things, Forzano and the Belichicks knew full well that the most important job that our military academies do is develop strong-minded soldiers. A study done by Angela Duckworth for her book Grit found that the factor most predictive of whether a pledge will endure at West Point is mental toughness. No surprise, then, that when Belichick finally became a head coach in Cleveland, he was on the lookout for players with that characteristic, particularly to man his special teams.
From the beginning Belichick has been a master at developing toughness. One of his first acts as head coach was to have a hill built beside the indoor facility in Ohio to hone the players’ bodies and minds alike. Much like the hard-core training for Navy SEAL candidates, the hill was a test of determination. If players can fight past exhaustion, if they can focus when they’re completely drained, well, that’s mental toughness. It’s easier to commit penalties when you’re exhausted and easier to take a play off, too. There was no fooling the hill. (Today in New England, in fact, there are two hills.) The point was always to be able to disqualify players who could not handle the mental challenge before they saw real action and fell short when it mattered. If you can’t make it through the training, you can’t be a SEAL, and if Belichick’s players couldn’t handle the hill, they couldn’t play on Sunday.
Gridiron Genius Page 10