That’s why the best coaches get lucky a lot. It’s also why when I watch the best coaches on Sunday, my house is blessedly quiet.
9
WWBD
WHAT WOULD BELICHICK DO?
The only sign we have in the locker room is a quote from The Art of War: “Every battle is won before it is fought.”
—BILL BELICHICK
“What would Belichick do?” is a popular question made famous by Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, Boston’s most obsessed fan. While observing and commentating on (and, okay, cheering for) the Patriots’ dynasty during the last two decades, Simmons formulated his WWBD framework and applied it across the sports landscape, especially as a lens through which to examine the NBA. Here’s an example: Are you wondering if the Celtics should show loyalty to a highly paid and beloved veteran once his production and skills diminish? Well, ask yourself: What would Belichick do? Answer: Send the guy packing like Drew Bledsoe, replace him with someone younger and cheaper, and deflect the public-relations fallout with a playoff run. See? “What would Belichick do?” is easy, insightful, and kind of fun, too.
Bill also happens to be my boss at the website The Ringer, so I hope he won’t mind that I’ve borrowed his premise for this chapter. Throughout this book I’ve shown you many examples of what Belichick does. Now I want to go deeper and explain how and why he does what he does. I’ve placed an examination of the following guiding principles into their own chapter because I strongly believe that not only are they the root of Belichick’s success but they also can foster success in other leaders, team builders, decision makers, and innovators.
Go to Amazon and search for books that talk about Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who is generally considered the most successful investor of our time. More than 1,000 titles await your purchase. Why? Because everyone wants to read about how he has amassed his unfathomable fortune. To investors, WWBD stands for something a little different: What would Buffett do? To my mind, Belichick is the Buffett of coaching; his rate of winning is far above the competition’s. People who want to know what Buffett’s secret formula is should want to know about Belichick’s, too. (And no, it’s not as simple as “draft Tom Brady.”)
Look, I get it; Belichick is not a fan favorite if you live in Buffalo or Pittsburgh or Manhattan or Cleveland or, really, just about anywhere that isn’t flying the Patriots flag. But if you can put aside your rooting interest long enough to see how the guy accomplishes his goals, it may do some good. You don’t have to root for the Patriots to take away some specific action points from the team’s two decades of accomplishment. A deeper understanding of the WWBD concept can guide us all.
The first time I met Belichick was in Mobile, Alabama, in 1989, the original home of Mardi Gras in the States. (Look it up.) In 1951, Mobile began hosting another weeklong celebration of a secular religion: the Senior Bowl. Long before the draft went high tech and the Combine was created and analytics became deciding factors in the NFL draft, the Senior Bowl was the pro game’s annual convention, as scouts and coaches from every team flocked to it to get their best look at all the top prospects. If you were a college kid and were invited to play in the game, that was what you did: You showed up, no questions asked. The same thing went for anyone in the business of football. For decades Mobile served as the NFL’s de facto annual industry convention, and the old Hilton on Government Avenue was its headquarters. This was long before and even after the Super Bowl became an industry event unto itself. The Super Bowl has never been the nuts-and-bolts working week that the Senior Bowl was.
It was in the Hilton’s coffee shop that I had my first encounter with Belichick. The Browns were looking for a coach, and their general manager, Ernie Accorsi, was handling the search. As Accorsi and Belichick chatted, I walked over to their table to say hello. Little did I know then that many of my best days in the game would be by the side of the guy sipping a Coke.
Belichick was just 37 at the time, and so that spring the Browns job went to veteran coach Bud Carson, who didn’t last even two seasons in Cleveland. The next time around, though, Art Modell hired the right guy, thanks in large part to a fervent endorsement from one lifelong Browns fan, the college basketball coaching icon Bobby Knight. Within minutes of Belichick getting the Cleveland job and arriving at the team’s offices in Berea, Ohio, I had my first assignment—and my first glimpse into his unique methodology. With barely a hello, he handed me a three-holed sheet of notebook paper on which he’d outlined in his meticulous handwriting an evaluation he wanted me to perform on every player on the roster: strong points, weak points, summary, injury history, playing time, special teams role, contract information, production in every phase the player participated in, and general prediction for his role the next year and the year after. No small talk accompanied the delegation of the task—not even a real explanation, to be honest—just “here’s what I need.” And I loved it.
Almost immediately everyone in the organization had a specific task like this and a new focus to move the franchise forward and make the team better. From the beginning, he was a genius at focusing everyone on the primary objective. No less of a control freak than Nick Saban once said of his former boss, “He expertly defines what everybody in the organization is supposed to do.” That description sounds simple and mundane, but it is not often the way things work when guys become head coaches for the first time. Thus, it was clear from the beginning of Belichick’s tenure in Cleveland that he wasn’t quite like anyone else who has coached the game.
Most first-time head coaches take a few days to acclimate, regroup, and, if we’re being honest, celebrate after getting their shot. But after his introductory press conference in Cleveland, Belichick took only about five minutes to let it soak in. Want to guess what he did next?
See, this is how Simmons’s WWBD premise works. If you’re ever wondering what to do after landing your dream job, ask yourself this question: What would Belichick do?
Answer: Take charge and get to work.
Because this technique provides such good insight into Belichick’s distinct way of thinking and problem solving, I’ve decided to apply the WWBD lens to several different scenarios, starting with the process of book writing. So I now ask myself, “WWBD next?”
My guess is cut the pleasantries and get to the meat of the chapter.
So that’s what I’ll do.
COMBATING COMPLACENCY: WWBD?
Most people focus on Belichick’s five Super Bowl rings as his ultimate achievement, but I think that in light of the parity in today’s NFL, guiding seven straight teams to the AFC championship game will go down beside Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak as one of the unbreakable records in sports. With that much success—whether in football or in the business world—sooner or later the challenge is how to maintain your drive and intensity.
By now, I think my admiration for Bruce Springsteen is abundantly clear. I love the songs, but I admire the singer more, because he works so hard at what he does. I’ve seen him play “Born to Run” in concert dozens of times, yet at each concert it is as if he is playing it for the first time. It’s what informs my Born to Run Theory, a corollary of the 10,000-hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell popularized. The idea is that to master anything you need at least 10,000 hours of practice. What Gladwell left out of the theory he documented so well in his book Outliers was that once mastery occurs, boredom can set in and undermine that mastery. It’s hard to do the same thing day after day; it’s human nature to fall prey to the grind. But Springsteen has played “Born to Run” almost every night—night after night after night—since 1975, and it’s always with real enthusiasm and passion. He never seems tired of playing the song and therefore never cheats anyone in the audience who might be hearing it live for the first time.
In the same way, Belichick never allows himself to get bored, which means he never cuts a corner or underestimates
an opponent. He never thinks he knows it all even if he’s played a team a dozen times. If he were a high school teacher, he wouldn’t just dust off the lessons from last year to teach the next class. (How many of you aced exams in high school after looking over your older sibling’s tests because the teacher didn’t change questions from one year to the next? Okay, don’t answer, but you get my point.) The fact that you’ve been right for a while doesn’t mean you will always be right. Buffett admits to spending several hours of his day just reading (mostly company annual reports). He’s pushing 90 years and $90 billion, yet he still strives to be better by trying to learn a bit more each and every day. Reading and research is the best remedy for boredom. But it also guarantees that your thinking will continue to evolve.
Self-motivation for a successful coach can be a challenge. We tend to worry that a huge new contract will cause a player to lose his edge, but no one ever considers that with a coach, even though, unlike players’ contracts, theirs are fully guaranteed. Worse, it’s those with the most experience who know which corners to cut and how to spend a little less time preparing. But none of that has ever been a problem for Belichick. He still treats every season, every game—heck, every possession—as if it were the only one that matters.
Whether the Patriots have just won the Super Bowl or not, the first thing Belichick does is wipe the slate clean. One of his favorite sayings is “To live in the past is to die in the present.” It’s why you see no Super Bowl trophies as you walk through the players’ entrance and why all the photos from the previous season are removed as soon as the season is over. That clean slate demands a trip back to basic principles and fundamentals after a detailed examination of the current process. Each spring feels almost as if it were Belichick’s first day on the job in Cleveland all over again. He explains to coaches and staff that the team cannot be the same as it was before charging them with figuring out how to improve its every aspect.
After the 2015 season, Belichick asked me to break down the successful teams in the NFL; after playing in six Super Bowls he still wanted to know what other teams did well, how their front offices and coaching staffs operated, and what lessons we could learn from them. My report was both a disappointment and a relief. It turned out that none of the teams I studied had much to tell us that we didn’t already know. Dig deeper into college free agents? Keep working the bottom of the roster? We did all that.
It is no surprise that a guy who is on an eternal quest to learn more is also a persistent teacher. Whenever there is a holiday—Martin Luther King Day or Labor Day or Arbor Day—Belichick uses it as an opportunity to educate his team. He might ask players to explain the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. (Do you know?) Guys who have been around for a long while know that these questions are coming and tell the newbies to prepare. That is exactly what Belichick wants. It’s his way of opening up the lines of communication off the field so that they will remain open on it. He wants to push the connection between curiosity and improvement.
Bill Walsh, too, was forever talking about world leaders and bringing in speakers to address the team. (I suppose I could have called this chapter “What Would Bill Do?” to cover all my bases.) Walsh forged a deep friendship with Harry Edwards, a sociologist from the University of California, who over the years assisted the coach in many endeavors that made the team better—from interviewing prospects to understanding the challenges facing players from disadvantaged backgrounds. Edwards might have had the title of consultant, but he was more than that. He was a team builder, a culture builder, a unifier.
What has impressed me the most about Belichick and Walsh is their self-awareness. With the same kind of success in the NFL many lesser men have become close-minded, authoritarian, and lazy. Instead of hiding or denying their shortcomings, the Bills embraced them and tried to correct them.
In Walsh’s case, he saw the locker room changing and understood that he didn’t have all the tools needed to relate to younger players. Edwards helped Walsh understand where modern players were coming from and how they were likely to react and behave because of their background. Walsh actually changed the way he addressed the team and the language he used to present his schemes on the basis of what he learned from Edwards.
He could have just said, “I’m the boss. Look at these Super Bowl rings; they’ll have to learn to relate to me.” But he knew that if his organization was to avoid complacency and continue to thrive, everyone needed to learn, develop, and grow, including the head coach.
MAKING DIFFICULT DECISIONS: WWBD?
When it comes to the art of making tough choices, something every great leader must master, I always come back to two anecdotes regarding the office of the president. In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoting J. Roscoe Miller, the president of Northwestern University, said: “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” It is said that he ran the country by organizing his workload with this “Eisenhower principle,” attacking the important issues, not what the press thought needed his attention at that moment. I also love the story of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy bringing a significant problem into the Oval Office and his brother, the president, asking why everyone walked in only with the hard stuff, to which Bobby replied that it was because they could handle the easy stuff themselves.
Now, obviously, running a team is nothing like running a country, but still, each day a head coach has to make tough, hard choices and has to do it under extremely tight deadlines and incredible pressure and sometimes with the whole world watching.
Just as Bobby Kennedy pointed out, the art of decision making begins with knowing what to concern yourself with. George Allen, the former Rams and Redskins coach, was legendary for his obsessive and sometimes destructive attention to what the Kennedys would have called the easy stuff. As the story goes, Allen wanted to save time during lunch by making the players’ cafeteria more efficient, so he devised a method that split the soup line into one for players who wanted crackers and one for those who didn’t. Yes, crackers. Urgent? Well, to the hungry guys at the end of the line, maybe. But important? Come on. I mean, it didn’t help the team win more football games, although it may well have made it heavy favorites in the Souper Bowl.
In all seriousness, though, one of the consistent themes throughout Belichick’s illustrious career and one of the things that differentiate him from nearly all his peers is his grasp of the art of tough decision making. It started in Cleveland, when Belichick made the wildly unpopular but absolutely correct decision to bench a hometown hero, quarterback Bernie Kosar. Similarly, in 2002 in New England, Belichick’s decision to trade another very popular, loyal player, Drew Bledsoe, to a divisional rival was met with serious blowback. Why give Bledsoe the chance to come back and haunt you? Al Davis never would have entertained such a move. (And it’s an incessant fear or superstition among most fans, too.) His steadfast mandate was that the Raiders not only would never trade a player—no matter his talent level—to any team in their division, they would never trade him to any team on the next season’s schedule. He just wouldn’t take the risk. Belichick, though, will do business with any team. He doesn’t worry about a traded player taking his revenge because he is confident that he knows the player well enough to neutralize him on the field. Bledsoe started six games against the Patriots after the trade and won one of them while throwing 11 interceptions. (For the answer to why fans and a lot of football professionals continue to believe it’s dumb to trade players to rivals, you can look to the field of behavioral economics, the study of human biases in judgment and decision making. People tend to view the world through the most “available” information, and in the case of trades between two rivals, the rare examples when they bite the trading team tend to stand out in most people’s minds.)
Th
ough Belichick has made other moves that have looked impetuous or counterproductive to the outside world, I can assure you they were not. He is nothing if not patient, reviewing all the relevant information first. He listens and reads and analyzes before collating it all to determine his own idea of a player’s worth. Take Danny Amendola, for instance. When he’s healthy, he’s a coach’s dream, but the wide receiver’s injury history makes him a player primed for release every season. Belichick weighs Amendola’s leadership value so highly that he always saved a spot on the roster for him even as some assistants argued strongly against it. Belichick’s patience—some might call it stubbornness—was rewarded time and again. Amendola was Mr. Clutch in his tenure with the Patriots, making important catches at the most crucial times.
Belichick is a master at measuring the risk/reward of any potential transaction. He also is the rare football mind who can lead players on the field with a deep personal connection as a coach and then, when acting as a general manager, instantly and ruthlessly set aside those feelings to calculate a player’s true economic worth. He never lets the emotions of one role interfere with his calculations in another.
A year after the Bledsoe trade, Belichick lost another team leader, Pro Bowl safety Lawyer Milloy, just days before opening weekend. When Milloy wouldn’t agree to a pay cut, Belichick released him, leaving him to sign with the Bills, New England’s opening-day opponent. After the Bills crushed the Patriots 31–0, longtime ESPN analyst Tom Jackson suggested that the Patriots must hate their coach. Talking directly into the camera, he unloaded on Belichick. You think maybe Jackson overreacted? Belichick was only doing what he had decided was best for the team. He made a call and didn’t turn back.
Gridiron Genius Page 24