Gridiron Genius

by Michael Lombardi

  11. IF YOU’RE NOT TALKING, YOU’RE NOT WINNING

  Once in New England, Belichick ripped all the numbers off the preseason practice jerseys. Everyone thought it was intended to confuse the media and other onlookers, but really it was to force the Patriots defenders to learn one another’s names and get used to talking during the play. Belichick always said that if you want to know how well a defense is working, just listen. Defenses succeed only if the players know the scheme. But they really thrive when the players are talking to one another on the field. When it comes to adjustments, reads, and coverages, everybody needs to be on the same page in the lead-up and in the moment.

  Belichick’s jersey trick didn’t always work, though. You’d be surprised how many players, even great ones, would rather just do their thing and not worry about anything or anyone else. Darrelle Revis was one of the best corners I’ve ever seen close up. He had fantastic awareness and instincts, and he could jam at the line to disrupt the timing of a pass as well as anyone. Quick feet, balance, the ability to play the ball—he had it all. Each week Revis would study his assignment and then go out and shut down the best receiver on the other side. For most of his career, his focus was on one man and one man only. He didn’t worry about what the rest of his teammates on defense were trying to do.

  When he came to New England in 2014, though, he had to learn to communicate with our other new corner, Brandon Browner. Big and physical, Browner wasn’t as gifted as Revis, but he was a force on and off the field. One day in practice before a game against Peyton Manning and the Broncos, Revis went radio silent again in the defensive backfield, and the scout team hit them for a big play. That’s not supposed to happen, and you could sense the tension from across the field. Revis was worried only about his own assignments, not about helping the rest of the unit, and as practice wore on, the tension between Revis and Browner escalated.

  When it finally boiled over, Browner flattened Revis with a massive roundhouse right to the temple. Revis got up, and the two continued to fight. I mean, really fight. This wasn’t like linemen pawing at each other in training camp; this was a bar brawl, one of the most brutal I’ve ever seen on a practice field. It went on until the coaches and players separated them.

  Both guys were sent off the field; Belichick does not tolerate fighting. But sometimes he appreciates it. Revis might have been the better player, but Browner was the team leader and the leader had spoken, albeit with his fists.

  And the message was heard. For the rest of the season, Revis was one of the chattiest defenders in the entire NFL.

  Some lessons about playing defense are more painful than others.

  7

  GAME PLANNING

  PREPARING TO IMPROVISE

  Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

  —MIKE TYSON

  “They will be confident, riding high after a win.” That’s what Belichick told the Patriots players and staff who gathered in the team meeting room in Foxborough two days before the new year. In 2014 we earned the top seed in the AFC and a bye in the wild card playoffs, which left us in the strange position of preparing for a game without knowing who our opponent would be. But that didn’t stop Belichick, the most experienced and successful playoff coach in NFL history (26–10 lifetime), from putting his game plan into action. First things first: He wanted us to make sure we understood exactly what lay ahead, whoever our opponent would be. “They’ll have the momentum, so we have to be ready to play,” he continued. “We need to bring a great attitude and great energy. We need to be communicating and functioning as a complete team.”

  There is a delicate balance to a bye week. You need to give the players a chance to rest and recharge while making sure they are properly focused for the next game. No one is better at this part of the game than Belichick. It’s just a fact: When he gets in the postseason, he wins. Only twice during his long career has he failed to win at least one game in the playoffs. That was in the back-to-back seasons of 2009 and 2010, a rare downturn that Belichick responded to by leading the Patriots to the Super Bowl (where they lost to the Giants, but still) the next year.

  Believe me, the ghosts of squandered postseasons will forever haunt this coach’s dreams, spurring his unparalleled postseason preparation until the day he retires. Losses take a toll on any coach. But for Belichick, who is constantly asking what more he could have done, the toll is extreme. He never blames the players, instead pointing a finger at himself for not preparing them to win. There are members of that 2011 team, in fact, who still become emotional when recalling a broken and teary-eyed Belichick apologizing to everyone in the locker room after losing to the Giants.

  Those rare playoff losses haunt Belichick and push him to another level of intensity when the postseason begins. You can sense the change in his demeanor and delivery when the calendar flips to January. So despite the impending time off, he had a captive audience in that meeting room. Everyone listened intently, afraid of being caught flat-footed by one of the signature gotcha questions with which Belichick peppers his meetings. When he calls on you and you don’t know the answer, he doesn’t get loud or berate you; he does something way more humiliating: He simply ghosts you and moves on to someone else. Most of the time, anyway. When veteran linebacker Rob Ninkovich was quoted in the paper saying that the defense needed to handle screen plays better, Belichick asked him in one of the next meetings how we should go about doing that. Rob had no answer and sank into his seat. After that, every time the subject came up, Belichick would turn to the linebacker and quip, “So, Rob, you have strong opinions on screens; what do you think?” The team would laugh—to themselves, of course. Point made. And made. And made again.

  As he addressed the team during the 2014 bye week, Belichick warned about becoming complacent. He didn’t want his team falling for the common postseason wisdom that playing at home is as good as a victory. “Playing well with precise execution and avoiding mistakes will determine the winner,” he reminded the players, “not where the game is played.” He then made it clear that the holidays could not be a priority. He wanted his team focused on nothing but being the best they could be when next they hit the turf. “We can celebrate the new year some other time,” he said while staring right at Rob Gronkowski, a tight end known for his enthusiasm for partying. “Put everything in a back drawer for now. Focus on preparation. Nothing. Else. Matters.”

  Playoff football is a completely different animal from regular-season football. In the single-elimination playoffs, games are lost far more often than they are won. Mental mistakes, turnovers, an abandonment of fundamentals—these problems are hard to overcome in the regular season and nearly impossible to survive in the no-wiggle-room scenario of the playoffs. There’s a huge responsibility on players to have their best week of preparation and even more pressure on coaching staffs to create and implement the perfect game plan.

  Even though he’s got more playoff experience than anyone in NFL history, Belichick will be the first to tell you that experience is not preparation. Having previously participated in a playoff game means nothing. Conversely, he told the team, having no prior postseason reps does not necessarily preclude immediate success. Belichick then recounted the story of Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor’s first playoff game in 1981. Taylor dominated the Philadelphia Eagles for 60 minutes, playing like he’d been there before because Belichick noted he had spent the week practicing as if he wanted to be there. That’s what he expected us to do.

  We were the number one seed, and so we would play the lowest remaining seed. Of the three possibilities—the Baltimore Ravens, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Indianapolis Colts—we were most concerned about the Ravens. Going by wins and losses, they were the weakest team in the playoffs, but they always gave us a hard time. In fact, in one of the years New England failed to advance beyond the first weekend of the playoffs, it was the Ravens who sent them
home with a 33–14 thumping. Until we knew for sure, we would train our attention on the Ravens.

  In the meeting, Belichick gave the players their practice schedule for the week. Later in the day he gave his staff their marching orders. But long before that, he had given me my postseason assignment: a complete analysis of the Patriots’ previous playoff performances, due the day after Christmas.

  During the NFL season, there are no breaks. Luckily, my wife, Millie, always understood the time requirements of my job. As long as we had the opportunity to spend a little time with Santa as a family, she never objected when I inevitably had to head back to work. With home field advantage locked up, I had started my research a few weeks earlier, and despite the time away from home, I was having a lot of fun with this project.

  The first thing I learned was that Belichick’s playoff game planning is informed by three things: (1) what his team does well (these things will require time to hone but not in-depth work), (2) what it doesn’t do well (these things will be the focus of practice), and (3) what he thinks it will take to win the playoffs in a particular year. The thick document I presented to him addressed each of these categories as they related to the 2014 team. The dossier was many pages long, so I won’t burden you with all of it. But here are the word-for-word summary and recommendations—unedited to this day, I hasten to add—that I delivered into Belichick’s hands at the start of our Super Bowl run.

  SUMMARY

  In New England’s playoff teams, the winners and losers, there are commonalities among each team that wins and others among each one that falls short. All were good teams, but the winning teams were “complete teams” that could win a game with the offense or defense and made an impact on special teams. The 2003-2004-2006 teams had the best defenses overall and the 03 and 04 teams won Super Bowls. The 06 team lost the conference championship game in Indy after a few defensive players were injured. Offense might have carried us into the playoffs, but winning the Conference Championship or the Super Bowl has been a result of great defense—simply put, keeping people from scoring: covering, rushing and tackling.

  We have scored over 500 points during the season 4 times since 1999, 07-10-11-12, and two of those teams lost the Super Bowl. Obviously we need to score points, but we struggled to finish in the playoffs when we could not get control of the game with our offense and our defense was not strong enough to play well for 60 minutes. We have only held the ball over 30 minutes 1 time in the last four playoff games, which has caused the weaker part of the team—the defense—to play more and have more chances to make a mistake. In the 2011 postseason, we scrapped for 60 minutes against Baltimore and won, but when we played them again the next year, we controlled the game until the midway point of the third, then could not score again and lost. That time, we played great in the red zone to keep us in the game but fell way short on offense.

  That game was a classic example of our offense not converting opportunities, not finishing drives, not executing at key parts of the game and allowing the Ravens to play within their comfort zone. We had chances to put the game away early, but we failed to execute big plays and failed to convert pressure third downs, which would have allowed us to end up in scoring position.

  RECOMMENDATIONS

  Our defense needs to make 3rd and 4 or less as competitive as we can.

  MAKE PRACTICE AS COMPETITIVE AS WE CAN THIS WEEK. Playoffs are a different level of competition; our practices have to simulate the change.

  We know we won’t make many throws over 10 yards

  We need to use tennis rackets at practice to simulate linemen’s arms so we can prevent tipped passes in the game.

  We must stay fresh, healthy and vibrant. We need our key players to play well—Gronk, Revis, [Jamie] Collins, Edelman and Brady. Second half of the games we have been poor on both sides of the ball. We NEED to be better in the second half.

  WE NEED TO KEEP FINDING WAYS TO CREATE NEGATIVE PLAYS.

  WHEN WE MAKE TEAMS PLAY LEFT HANDED, WE CAN WIN. In all three of our losses this year we never made the opponent play outside their comfort zone. When we do, we are hard to play. In Miami we never stopped the run. In KC we never forced Alex Smith to make a play. In GB we allowed them to have balance early in the game.

  TACKLING DRILLS EVERY DAY. We will need to be the best tackling team in the playoffs and that means pad level work. Seattle is the best tackling team in the NFL; we are 14th.

  EMPHASIS FOR PLAYOFF BYE

  RED ZONE WINS—Teams that play well in the RZ during the playoffs win. We allowed Baltimore to be 4 for 4 the last time we played them in a Championship game.

  CONVERT 3RD AND 2 OR LESS—We have to be able to convert third and short. Overall we might appear to be doing well, but in the first quarter of the last two Conference Championship Games, we were 3 for 10 on 3rd and short, which does not allow us to gain control of the game or confidence.

  SIMPLE GAME PLANS WIN—Players knowing what to do and doing it at a high tempo win. We must simplify and play without hesitation.

  PRACTICE CRISP, FAST AND SHORTER—Need to be fresh in the game. In 2013, we allowed 56 points in the entire playoffs, and 29 came in the 4th quarter. And we have not started fast either, because of poor third down execution. In four games we have scored 24 points in the first, and allowed 13. In games we lose, we don’t start fast, nor do we finish strong.

  SPECIAL TEAMS MUST WORK ON KICK-OFF RETURN—Had 10 KO returns in 4 games and didn’t average over 20 yards. Meanwhile we allowed a 94-yard return to Danieal Manning. WE HAVE NOT DOMINATED IN THE KICKING GAME COME PLAYOFF TIME. We have had no depth and it shows. WE MUST MAKE A PLAY HERE.

  One of the many things I loved about working for Belichick is that I never had to hold back. All he wanted was the truth—whatever it was. With Belichick, every interaction is about trying to win and get better. Bring him a way to do either, and you get his full attention. In fact, until I handed him my self-scouting memo, he had no preconceived ideas about how to approach this particular postseason. After reading it, he began to set a course over the next two weeks. The data I had uncovered meant that regardless of the opponent, the Patriots would need to focus their effort on three areas: red zone, third and short, and the kicking game.

  Before we sent the players away for a few precious days off prior to our first playoff game, we conducted one practice at our stadium on Thursday. It was a scrimmage to go over all the areas in my memo. Belichick usually reserves competitive intrasquad scrimmages for the summer as a way to get a feel for the lesser-known players trying to make the team. But in this case Belichick thought a postseason blue-white affair would be a good way to refocus everyone on the things that now mattered most, in particular those third-and-short situations. Third and short is a unique problem for the defense, in part because both the run and the pass are viable options. Belichick’s theme all week was that at this time of year an entire season can be lost on one play, and so players have to be prepared at every moment for every possibility. On days like this, the field is an extension of Belichick’s classroom, with each scenario analyzed and made actionable. Our goal was clear: Don’t squander any opportunity.

  We also worked on ways to create such opportunities by inserting a few trick plays into the game plan. The first was a wide receiver pass from Julian Edelman, a college quarterback, to Danny Amendola. In week 4 we had actually called it against Kansas City, but the Chiefs seemed to sense what was coming, so Brady threw the ball to Brandon LaFell on a slant instead. That was great because it meant there was no film of that flea-flicker anywhere. If we ran it in the playoffs, it would be a total surprise.

  The other trick play Belichick wanted to install came to him one Saturday as he was getting his fix of the college game. On that night he got home just in time to see the Crimson Tide head int
o overtime. During their first possession in the extra session, Nick Saban, Belichick’s friend and fellow football savant, called for a pass to what appeared to be the left tackle, who was actually a legally eligible tight end in an unbalanced formation. Alabama flexed its right tackle to the left of the defense, lining him up inside two receivers, while putting the tight end where the left tackle normally stands. On the snap, the tackle (lined up way outside like a receiver) just stepped back away from the line and the tight end (lined up inside like a blocker) ran down the seam and caught the ball for a huge gain. It was devilishly clever and all perfectly legit because, if you looked closely, Alabama had the requisite seven men on the line—just not in their normal spots. The next day Belichick breathlessly recounted the play to his offensive coaches and told them he wanted to start working on it right away.

  After the quick-paced scrimmage, Belichick and the team headed over to the movie complex by the stadium to watch the soon-to-be-released American Sniper. The movie is loosely based on the life of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who was awarded a Silver Star and four Bronze Stars, among other medals. The movie was a classic Belichick choice because it highlights teamwork, sacrifice, and overcoming obstacles. Kyle is the star of his unit, an expert marksman who can hit a target almost a mile away. But he doesn’t act like a hotshot. He’s just one member of a team in which everyone has to do his job for the whole unit to succeed. The movie affected us all. It would have been easy to focus on Kyle’s impressive record as a sniper or the horrific and sad fact that after returning to Texas he was murdered by a former Marine he was trying to help. But as we strolled back to the facility afterward in the dark, all I heard was players talking about how Kyle’s unit kept working together even through chaos and life-threatening danger.