The Exchanges

Q How do you think the role of evaluating players has changed? I mean, everybody's familiar in baseball with the Moneyball story and Billy being in the Oakland A's and kind of coming at it from a different approach. Can you give us any insight without revealing too much about maybe how that's changed over the course of your career in the NFL?

A When I first got in the league, you know, we were all subjected to a 16 millimeter tape and you had to go to the college to really watch it. Nobody had it in their office. The college scouting was really hands-on. On campus job, and you took the projector into the school, you sat there, you hope they had 60 millimeter tape available for you, you got to watch it, you rolled it, if you, if the tape was broken, you spliced it back together again, and you put it back, and you wrote your notes, and you watched those three games, and you wrote your reports, and now, today, you can sit in your office and watch Ohio State play Maryland this year, and you can watch them play Illinois, and you can watch them play Alabama, and you can watch Ohio State play everybody without having to leave your office. And so you can view more tape, but now when you're not on campus and you're not about able to watch the players practicing around them as much, there's an element that you lose that perhaps you don't see how players, what his work habits are, what he does. So, as much as you gain more information via the tape, you perhaps lose more information from the ability to be on campus, get the coaches, talk to them, and have coaches available. You adapt to it, you study tape, but it's, again, it's just one piece of the puzzle, so you have to go and try to Evaluate the character. I would say today ch…

AI assessment note: “as much as you gain more information via the tape, you perhaps lose more information”

Q What would you say is the difference between a good coach and a bad coach?

A Okay, I think the key here, now we're going to fall into the lines of leadership. I think coaching is leadership, so it really comes down to the four elements of leadership. Most great coaches have at least three of the four, and they don't succeed if they don't, and so the elements of leadership is management of attention, which means you have a plan. Most coaches have to have a plan. The management of meaning, meaning you can explain your plan clearly and concisely and communicate it to the players or to the people you're leading. The management of trust, the players trust you to be consistent within yourself, And within the people you're leading so that you don't have double standards. I mean, it's one thing to be a really hard, tough coach, but you're going to have to be hard and tough on everybody. You just can't pick and choose. And then the management of self, which is probably the hardest areas to be self-critical of when you make a mistake or when you do something that's not effective, you have to be able and honest to say, you know what? I made a mistake here. I need to correct that. And so when you have those four areas, then you become a better coach. And I think that's really the fine line coaching and leadership. Coaching is teaching. It isn't just a separate issue. It isn't just a separate singular vocation. It's truly about being a good leader. It's about being …

AI assessment note: “it really comes down to the four elements of leadership.”

Q When you're drafting a player, for instance, Do you spend an equal amount of time on their pure physical talent? Like, how do you even determine if they'd fit into a system?

A It's what Coach Walsh used to talk about, scouting inside out, not outside in. So you know what you want as a football team. You know, the draft, it's a huge event, but it's really a very singular operation because if you focus on what you need and what you really want, and then you search for players that fit those needs and fit those wants, it becomes a lot easier. I often say the FBI doesn't start searching for serial killers by opening up. Phone book. They have a profile on everything that they're looking for that might lead them to their suspect. And it's the same in scouting. Scouting is not about finding players. Scouting is about eliminating players, and so when you have standards, and you have requirements, and you have beliefs in your system, and player, and things that you must have within your system, then you search for players that fit the criteria, and you eliminate ones that don't. And that doesn't mean they can't go on to be great players. It just means that they don't fit what you do, or how do you want to play. That's part of the scouting process, and that's why it's very important as a general manager, a director of player personnel, is to really understand the coaching What's being taught, the systems that are in place, because when you do that, then it becomes a lot easier to find players that fit within the system.

AI assessment note: “scouting inside out, not outside in. So you know what you want as a football team.”

Q Starting Monday, can you give me a brief overview of kind of what the weekly game prep is like from a coaching point of view?

A Well, you know, from coaching, Monday mornings are spent on reviewing the game of the week before in three different areas. I mean, football's game of players, coaching, scheme. It isn't just players' fault that something happened, or a coaching fault that something happened, or a scheme fault. There's an element that has to be Evaluate an offer. And so you spend most of the morning evaluating that, whether it's the personnel people, whether it's the coaches, the head coach. So you spend most of the morning. And then once you've done that, I can come up with a consensus on happened positively, negatively, or what needs to improve here. If you want, then you build the next week and start preparing and studying for the test. That's going to happen on Sunday. And that test preparation will start on Monday afternoon. It goes off through Tuesday and And then the coaches spend Monday and Tuesday working on that, and then they, they get ready for practice on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as they prepare the team to practice things that they believe the way the game is going to go and how it's going to have to be played. And then Saturday is more of a reflection, kind of review, study, and then Sunday we play the game. And it just keeps repeating itself. And you have to make sure you break the game down and understand how you want to play it, what you want to do, and move on from the…

AI assessment note: “Monday mornings are spent on reviewing... practice on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday”

Q Is that why a lot of the coaches seem to work for people who they've worked for in the past, like when you're hiring a coach, for instance, because you have that sort of relationship with them already?

A You know, you have a philosophical belief and understanding, and so you have a relationship that's predicated on how you view the game. Football's different in that there's a lot of different styles of how to play, whether it's the 40 Niners West Coast offense, or whether it's the Giants on your billboard sales in the power run game with You know, barely throwing the ball, and Phil Simms is the quarterback, 15 times a game, to the Miami Dolphins, and their run game, to the K-Gun in Buffalo, where they threw it all the time. So there's a lot of different ways to win. So what happens is, which the way you feel most comfortable with, usually those are your friends. Those are the people that you become friendly with, because you see the game the same way, and it's a lot of each other to have conversations. I think that's why you see a lot of that.

AI assessment note: “Those are the people that you become friendly with, because you see the game”

Q So there's three questions I usually ask at the end of these interviews, and we'll go from there. So what book has most influenced your thinking?

A You know, different parts of your life are always changed by what you read. I mean, you know, as you grow and you adapt your life, I think you learn more about yourself and about what you need to improve on about other people. And so I would say Life and Times of RFK by Evan Thomas is one of the books that I think, you know, when you learn about the struggles, the overcoming, you know, that kind of thing, I think those are great. When Pride Still Mattered by David Marinus, but really a good book about Vince Lombardi, I think those books are really influential. You know, early in my career, I think anything you can get your hands on, Frank the Ford story about Bob Knight in Sports Illustrator, which was a run-rathered run. It was an interesting Analysis of the man and who he was and what he was trying to accomplish. I think those are impactful in your life.

AI assessment note: “Life and Times of RFK by Evan Thomas is one of the books”

Q And that's a big adjustment for players, I would imagine. So you've had the opportunity to work with Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, some amazing, amazing coaches, Hall of Fame coaches. What would you say is the common themes between them?

A Coaches, and they both believed in a philosophy offensively, defensively, and in the kicking game, and they coached that way within the philosophy, and they led the coaches to adhere to those philosophies, and I think that's what really separates them from everyone else that, you know, you can possibly see, you know, so they just didn't, you know, Coach Walsh called plays, but he still had a hand in the defense. George Seifert was the defense coordinator, but it was Bill's intellectual Stimulation that challenged yours to become the kind of coach you became. So I think that that's the commonality between them. They're both head coaches. They both understand both sides, all three elements of the game, what it takes to win, and they both understand how to build an organization that adheres to that.

AI assessment note: “they both believed in a philosophy offensively, defensively, and in the kicking game”

Q How much do you think that the role of leadership is the individual versus the system they put in place?

A You know, the system is a byproduct of management of attention. So it falls right into leadership. So the leadership is The system gets their attention. Hey, Bill Walsh introduces the West Coast offense to the San Francisco 40 Niners in 1979. It's the system, but really that was the, that grabbed the attention and then his ability to explain his system to them captured and then propelled his leadership even further. So I think they go hand in hand. If you don't have a system where you don't have a belief, Of what you want to become as a team, as a leader, as a head coach, then it becomes very difficult for you to communicate that to the players, and then all of a sudden you become an independent contractor, and you have a bunch of independent contractors working for you. If the head coach doesn't come in with a philosophy and understanding, and he has to set the contract all that out, then it's going to be very difficult for him to sustain leadership over a long period of time.

AI assessment note: “So I think they go hand in hand.”

Q What's the learning curve like? Maybe you can take me behind the scenes a little bit in terms of what goes on.

A And that's a great question. I think that football is a unique sport. It's a sport that is similar to chess, that it requires studying of Prior games, prior moves, prior errors to really understand where you are. And if you don't have a sense of all the games that have been played and you don't have that, it's a sport that you just can't come fly into and feel like you have a really great grasp of it. And so you have to really study the game from the single wing and to the T formation until the passing game and the running game. And so that education became Really important to me and understanding the game, understanding how it works and the football element of it. And I think that's really what I did at those clinics. I learned the basics, you know, I could understand it, you know, and football is a game where I tell this to people all the time from doing television is you can play, you know, in the offensive line in football, but you only play offense in baseball. You play offense and defense in basketball. You play offense and defense in hockey. You play offense and defense. And so in football, you only play one side. So you do miss some elements of the entire game. Now the quarterbacks are fortunate because they seem to know the entire game and perhaps tight ends can because they block and catch and do all that. So you really have to force yourself to learn the entire game.…

AI assessment note: “it requires studying of Prior games, prior moves, prior errors to really understand”

Q So you determine, I would imagine through video and other evidence, you know, that you want to attack a certain weakness on another team. You identify a weakness and that's what you want to exploit. I'm coming from an outsider's point of view, but that's why you end up throwing the ball 50 times. Is that right?

A Yeah, I mean, I mean, look, you know, the way the rules are in the league, they also make throwing the ball more friendly. Back in the early sixties, when the offensive linemen couldn't use their hands, and they had to stick their elbows out to pass protect, I mean, that wasn't an easy thing to do. Bart Starr got sacked, I think, nine times in the ice ball. If you imagine talk radio, if Bart Starr would have been sacked, nine times in a playoff game, he had a Hall of Fame offensive lineman in front of him, Forrest Gregg, and Jerry Kramer's not in the Hall of Fame, but clearly, there was a lot of great fuzzy thirst in those guys that had renowned names, and In front of him, but yet he was sacked a bunch by the Cowboys. So as the rules change, and what makes something a lot easier to do, throwing the ball, then you have to adapt your team into that. And so you certainly look at a team's strengths and weaknesses, and you kind of accurately evaluate them, and then you have to have a team that can play right or left-handed. Meaning that they can adapt to the style that it's going to require you to play to beat them. And that's really what happens to most good teams, good teams that win in advance, whether it's in, in secondary basketball, it's in the NBA, is they can play different styles and still effectively win the game. But you can only play one style and you have to play that s…

AI assessment note: “you certainly look at a team's strengths and weaknesses, and you kind of accurately evaluate them”

Q What is the role of the head coach? Is it more to instill a philosophy and allow autonomy in terms of those coaches, or is it more to push back, or is it more authoritative, or the styles vary, but what tends to work better?

A I think there's a fine line. I think coaches want to be able to do their job and want to be able to adhere to, uh, have whether their expectations within the job. And there's the fine line, you know, it's the head coach's responsibility to make sure things are being done the way he wants them to be done. And so their gray area, it always is, is constantly, you go back and forth on because you get more comfortable as a head coach, you get more comfortable with people around you. They kind of know what you want and they know, and you know how they operate. And so that becomes A lot easier to deal with it. Tony Dungy and Tom Morris was on the support there for so many years, and it just becomes a comfort because people know what they want, and it's very challenging.

AI assessment note: “it's the head coach's responsibility to make sure things are being done”

Q How does that work with specialization from my point of view? I mean, I don't see inside of NFL organizations, you have position coaches, How much does the role of the entire game play into what you're trying to accomplish as a coach and leader, and then your specific job? I mean, how much speciality is there? And then how do you broaden that?

A Well, I think that's really the great question is, is the NFL is an on-the-job training site. You get the job, you have to continue your education while you're here, and you can't really spend a lot of time on the continuation because the season's so busy. And I remember reading this years ago, and In Henry Kissinger's memoirs, he said, you know, when you come to Washington, you borrow an intellectual power you bring, and you can't renew it once you're here. And I think a lot of that, that statement that Kissinger talked about in terms of Washington related to the NFL. You're in the league. You're learning the league. You really have to find avenues and time spent to study it and continually grow within it, because if you don't, it'll pass you by as you're in it. And the last thing you want to be is a little bit Old fashioned in the league. You don't want to be doing something that was done four years ago because it no longer works today. And so you have to constantly work at it and your time is your only real element that you can challenge and you have to make sure you use your time wisely. I mean, there's a, there's an element of kindergarten in this too, that you have to do it. So that's, that's kind of what we try to do is we try to spend as much time studying as we can and really try to grow from it.

AI assessment note: “NFL is an on-the-job training site. You get the job, you have to continue your education”