The Exchanges

Q So you have this passion for football from early on. What was your big break in getting in?

A There's a saying that the world gets out of the way for people that know where they want to go. I knew where I wanted to go, so when I was at Hofstra, every January, February, I would get in my loyal Toyota Tercel, and I would drive to coaching clinics throughout the Northeast. And I would try to meet coaches. I would try to learn football. I would pay for the hotel room. I'd sleep in my car, whatever I had to do, I would do it. And one of these trips, I met a guy named Harvey Hyde, who was the head coach at Pasadena City College. And he took me to lunch. He kept in touch with me. And then one day I was on the campus of Hofstra. I was getting ready to graduate. And I read the New York Times and Harvey Hyde was named the head coach at UNLV. So immediately I called him up. And he said, yeah, I don't have anything, but if you want to volunteer, come on out. And so I did, but I would write letters constantly to people. How can I get a GA job? How could I come work for you? Cause I was obsessed with doing it.

AI assessment note: “I met a guy named Harvey Hyde, who was the head coach”

Q So you mentioned Davis being gifted at branding, which is something that can be very elusive. What was it that he did that was successful?

A Anybody in the organization, he wanted it to be the Oakland Raiders. He was very much about the word. He was very much about the colors. So he took the silver from the Detroit Lions. He took the black from the West Point Army Knights. And so he combined it silver and black. He wanted that brand in your name. So if you say silver and black to anybody who's a football fan, they know it's the Raiders. He was very much a part of that. That's, that's what he wanted. The Oakland Raiders. He pushed the brand up. He was greatly influenced by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He grew up in Brooklyn. He was greatly influenced by the Yankees. So he wanted to combine the speed of the Dodgers with the power of the Yankees. And that's how he built his organization. And then he branded those things because he constantly talked about it. He always talked about the greatness of the Raiders. And his message, which is part of marketing, is what helps sell the brand.

AI assessment note: “He took the silver from the Detroit Lions. He took the black from the West Point”

Q Can you walk through what a week looks like working with Belichick?

A Yeah, that's easy. So let's say, okay, we're recording this on Friday. They just played the Chiefs on Sunday night. So let's start Monday morning. Let's go back to Monday. Monday will be, everybody will get to the office. The game ended at 12:30 at night, let's say 1130. By the time you get home, it's one o'clock in the morning. Everybody's back in the office by six, 6:30 easily. You start out by breaking down the game that you just played. Offense, defense, and the kicking game. There'll be a 12 o'clock or 12 30 staff meeting at which Belichick will walk in the room, sit at the head of the table, and the offensive coordinator, the defensive coordinator, and the special teams coach will have filled out forms that go all the way back to 1991 in Cleveland. That breaks down the game. Things we did well. Things we did poorly. Things we need to improve on. Mistakes we made in scheme. Mistakes we made in coaching. The tactical points of the game. Player evaluations of where we misjudged their team. So he's doing an autopsy of the game, and he wants his offensive coordinator to do it. He wants his defensive coordinator to do it. So that meeting lasts for about two to three hours. It's not, hey, we won, guys. Everything's great. No, no. It's like, we're either doing this better, We're doing that better. Then he'll start on what he thinks we need to get ready for, to get ready for the C…

AI assessment note: “Let's start Monday morning. Let's go back to Monday. Monday will be, everybody will get to the office.”

Q Where do the tensions come up between, say, an owner, general manager, and a coach in terms of staying on a plan? Everyone wants to win the Super Bowl.

A Right. You're smart. You know the whole, the ointment here. There's a lot of them. So Walsh used to say to me all the time, the Civil War is the ugliest war to fight, and there's a lot of Civil Wars in the NFL. Because why? Credit. Who gets credit? Who deserves credit? Does the owner deserve the credit? Does the head coach? Is the personnel guy not getting enough attention? Who's in Peter King's Monday morning quarterback column? You know, who's in there? And so when ego plays into it, it becomes very toxic. For me, I understand my role. My role as a general manager is to work with the coach. There only can be one spokesman for the organization. There can only be one message, command of the message. If I talk, And say something about the team during the season, all I do is stir the fire up. John Mara talking about Odell Beckham the other day just rekindled the fire that the media just wants him to do. John Mara doesn't need to talk. Dave Gettleman doesn't need to talk. Pat Shermer should be the face of the franchise. Let him do handle it all. But now we don't have that. So you have dissension. So when things don't go well, you've got this. Everybody points to think, well, you know, they didn't do a good job on that. They didn't do a good job on that. When one voice is coming through and everybody agrees on the philosophy and the direction, you can powerfully win anything. But w…

AI assessment note: “Because why? Credit. Who gets credit? Who deserves credit?”

Q I guess let's just start with, how did you first get interested in football?

A Oh, that's easy. I grew up in a small beach town in South Jersey called Ocean City, and I turned on the television in the mid-sixties, seventies. I was maybe 10 years old, and I saw this guy who looked exactly like he belonged at my family dinners on Sunday. His name was Vince Lombardi, and I thought, that's kind of what I want to do, and so There's no relationship between me and Vince other than the last name, which is a common Italian name, and so I just really, at the age of 10, I plotted a course to try to get to the NFL, and then I played Stratomatic baseball with my two buddies, Michael Sunino and Danny Reynolds, and this whole idea of Stratomatic team building became so powerful for me that that's where I went from being, thinking I was going to be the next Vince Lombardi coach to where, no, no, no, I want to be a GM. I want to build something. I don't want to just coach something. And that's kind of how it started. And from that point, everything I did from that point, I went to Valley Forge Military Academy. It was because I wanted to get into football. I went to Hofstra University because I wanted to get into football, and it just started that way.

AI assessment note: “I turned on the television in the mid-sixties... saw this guy... Vince Lombardi”

Q And so as you go through the process of a draft, it takes a lot of time to get down to LSU and just sort of hang out in a couple bars and get to know whoever you need to know. How do you narrow the filter?

A So everything about scouting, just like I'm sure about stock investment, is about elimination, not finding. Everything's about elimination. We built a criteria for what we want from each player. A mental criteria, a physical criteria. So, for example, if we want an offensive lineman, we know we want offensive linemen that are six feet five or taller, who has 34 and a half inch arms or longer, whose hand size is nine and a half or bigger, who run the 45, three or less, and who start three years in college or more. And so we set up a criteria, and through that criteria, all the players get funneled into it, and then eventually less come out, and it's those less that you work on. The FBI doesn't open up the phone book and start looking for serial killers. They have a profile, right? It's the same thing in scouting. It's the same thing you do in your business. You have a profile of what you like in a company, and it matches your profile. You're going to go after it. Now, that's not saying you're going to invest in it, But you're going to deep dive into that and figure out maybe I'm here. That's what we do in scouting. So once you get that list down, the key isn't to have, again, it's the Fred Palermo, too many things on the menu. We don't need a thousand guys on our draft board. We need a hundred that fit what we do.

AI assessment note: “We built a criteria for what we want from each player.”

Q How does the general manager fit into that equation?

A Well, Most general managers in the league don't have the complete autonomy to do whatever they want to do. It's really a coach-based league, and it should be, because the coach is dealing with the players every single day. If the players think the coach doesn't have control over their job, they can't be successful. They have to control it, but the general manager has to work and support the head coach, and he has to do it in the background. One year, when I left the Browns after Modell moved the team to Baltimore, Belichick went to New England, and then I went to Philly, and then after that, And CBS just got football back here. So I was still under contract, and I started helping out CBS Sports, and Jim Nance and I were doing a segment on the NFL Today, and I was going to talk to him about Bill Polian and Carolina and a bunch of personnel things, front office stuff. And Nance looks at me and says, you know, Michael, this is really interesting for you. He said, but all of America really only cares about who owns the team, who's the coach of the team, and who's the quarterback of the team. And ever since that day, that's how I approached it. Nobody really wants to hear from the GM until the draft, so shut up and just do your job, and that's really the role of the GM should be.

AI assessment note: “the general manager has to work and support the head coach, and he has to”

Q How does that work in the scouting? So you can certainly digest a lot more on film. Right. How do you go about the softer, qualitative side of?

A Well, so you have to be unique now. So right now, because I can't go talk to a trainer because the laws in the country won't allow him to give out information on his medical. So that's back in the eighties, they would tell you anything you wanted to know, right? The coaches won't tell you anything you want to know because they don't want that player to hear a negative thought about them and hurts their recruiting. So, you know, right now, no one's honest. So how do you get around it? For us, Find different ways. How do you find someone's behavior when you're not watching is the best way to learn about somebody? We might go down to LSU, and we know there's two bars that the players go to, and if you sit in that bar and watch what happens or talk to the bartender, he's gonna tell you more information about the player than any of the coach over there. If you get immersed in the campus, talk to the sorority girls, you're gonna find out more about the players Than the traditional methods. And that's where, if you don't like change, you're gonna like irrelevance even less. If you stay doing it the traditional way, it's not gonna work.

AI assessment note: “if you sit in that bar and watch what happens or talk to the bartender”

Q What happens with the Jeremy Linz of basketball? So you have that criteria, certain size, certain weight, certain speed, but then there's the, he falls through the cracks, right?

A So there's always exceptions to every rule, and you're going to come across them. There's always a small school guy that dominates something, but my attitude is, let him come to me. I don't need to chase him. If Jeremy Lin's a really good player, he's going to come to me eventually. He's going to a camp. I'm going to hear his name from somewhere. I'm not going to miss him. As Al Davis used to tell me all the time, you know, kid, you don't work in the NFL. You live in the NFL. I live in the NFL. I'm going to hear his name. You live in your business. You know, through buzz, people are talking about this Lin guy. Now let me go do some work, but if I spend my time searching for Lynn, I lose too much time.

AI assessment note: “there's always exceptions to every rule... my attitude is, let him come to me.”

Q The back half of your book is this sort of magical football wonky kind of what's next generation of strategy. So let me ask you this question. What are the things in football that coaches generally don't do that they should?

A When first down in football, Everybody talks about establishing the run. It's the most ridiculous statement of all time, because all it does is establish your ability to kick field goals, because you're never going to score a touchdown running the ball. You have to make explosive plays. You have to get chunk yards of play. So when the NFL started years ago, Wednesday's practice was all about first down and stalling your first down. Today, downs really don't matter. It's really about establishing the lead that matters. So throwing the ball. So modify how you change your practice. Spend more time on third down in the red zone than you would on first and 10. Or if you're spending time on first and 10, practice throwing the ball, not running the ball. So you have to change and adapt to the game, and your teaching habits have to change and adapt as well. And I think that's part of the biggest issue is because coaches are programmed. We've always done it this way. We're going to keep doing it this way. And if you don't do it that way, and you're not successful, then people are saying, wow, what are you doing? Right? And you have to have enough boldness, enough curiosity, and enough confidence to do it the way you are. Because if you're watching the game and paying attention to it, you should do it that way.

AI assessment note: “Spend more time on third down in the red zone than you would on first and 10.”

Q Two of the other coaches, one you worked with and worked for, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick, have this mystique in their incredible ability to succeed. Why don't you pick one or the other and talk about what you learned working with or for them?

A You have to start with Belichick because I think Nick would be kind enough to admit that Nick's success Really was due to the education of Bill. Oftentimes we're a prisoner of who we work for, and we're a prisoner of who we learn from, and I truly believe that there are two kind of jobs. Jobs you can make a difference in, and jobs you can only grow from. And we screw them up. I screwed them up in my career. Sometimes I try to make a difference when I should have been only growing from. So we always make that mistake, and I think what Nick learned from Bill Impacted him far greater than what Nick brought to Bill. So let's start with Bill. Bill is an incredible leader. Bill's monotone. He's not concerned about what anybody thinks other than the people he's leading, and so he's very deliberate in what he wants done. It's meticulous. It's explained to precise fashion. He can evaluate the game from 35,000 feet. He's not obsessed with Tomorrow. He's obsessed with tomorrow and the next day and the day after. He's not a solution-based leader. So there's two kind of leaders, solution-based and sustainable-based. And we know this through the home finance crisis. Those people giving loans to guys who couldn't pay them back were solution-based. Sustainable-based are thinking about the future. That's Belichick. So every decision he makes is based on sustainability. And then his meticulous w…

AI assessment note: “You have to start with Belichick because I think Nick would be kind enough”

Q What'd you see different in Al's leadership style from Bill?

A It wasn't as precise. Al was very much about a philosophy. He wanted to build the Raiders as a size, speed football team, but he never shared what he really wanted. He never really was very meticulous in the details. It was always about, because he had a coach. There was a coach there. There was a buffer between him and the organization. So He allowed that to occur. Whereas Walsh was, we call it hands-on. But really, what does hands-on mean, Ted? Aren't you doing your job if you're hands-on? Like, it's like mission statements. It's one of the most ridiculous things you could ever have, right? Like, what does that mean? We're going to win the Super Bowl? Is that a mission statement? No. It doesn't tell anybody anything. It's the same thing. What's hands-on? Hands-on means you're engaged. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'm going to tell you what I want you to do. That's not being hands-on. That's being a good leader. And so, I think that was the difference between the two.

AI assessment note: “It wasn't as precise. Al was very much about a philosophy.”

Q So what'd you pick up from the Peters book?

A What does leadership mean to some young kid, right? Whoever yells the loudest. Is that what it is? Whoever demands the most. Nothing about leadership. What is the true essentials of leadership? What is the makeup of what makes a company really good? Like, is it just luck? Is it timing? So I started to learn about how to build an organization, how to be in search of excellence is truly what you learn. Like, how could you keep getting better? Shaninsky has this great quote that I hung in my office at the Oakland Raiders that said, if you don't like change, you're gonna like irrelevance even less. And I learned early on that be adaptive to change. And Walsh was always about that. Study the game. Walsh was a historian of football. But he wanted to apply it to current times and then adapt it. He was very divergent in his thinking.

AI assessment note: “I started to learn about how to build an organization, how to be in search of excellence”

Q So you've written this wonderful book. You're doing a podcast. You're on television. What's next for you?

A I wanted to have a second career. George Raveling is one of the greatest men I've ever met in my life. He's a, was a coach at USC, Washington state in Iowa. In fact, he is the curator of the Martin Luther King. I have a dream speech. He was on the stage that day. He was working security and he just happened to ask Dr. King for the copy of the speech and Dr. King gave it to him. So he's owned it. He lives in Los Angeles. He's been a mentor to me, and he told me the greatest years of my life was from 60 to I'm 81 now, and that's really what I want to have. I want to have the greatest years of my life from now on.

AI assessment note: “I wanted to have a second career.”