#549: Leadership Lessons from the Gridiron's Greatest Coaches
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Summary
Why do some NFL teams dominate year after year? Some would chalk it up to talent, but my guest today says it all comes down to the culture that the head coach intentionally develops for the entire organization. His name is Michael Lombardi, and he s the author of Gridiron Genius, a master class in building teams and winning at the highest level for over three decades. He s worked as a general manager or coach for various NFL teams, including Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, Al Davis, and Bill Belichick. Today, on the show, Michael walks us through what these coaches did to develop high-performing teams, and how those lessons can apply to leaders and other kinds of organizations as well.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast why do some nfl
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teams dominate year after year now some would chalk it up to talent but my guest today says
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it all comes down to the culture that the head coach intentionally develops for the entire
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organization his name is michael lombardi and he's the author of gridiron genius a master class in
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building teams and winning at the highest level for over three decades lombardi has worked as a
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general manager or coach for various nfl teams and he's worked along some of the greatest coaches
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of the game including bill walsh al davis and bill belichick today on the show michael walks us
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through what these coaches did to develop high-performing teams and how those lessons can
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apply to leaders and other kinds of organizations as well we begin our conversation discussing how
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legendary 49ers coach bill walsh created standards of performance and a culture of excellence that
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turned the worst team in the league into super bowl champions within two years michael then shares
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the qualities top coaches and players possess and how recruiters of every kind can really figure out
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whether or not someone will be successful at the next level michael then shares what leaders can
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learn from walsh's innovating west coast offense why belichick obsesses about special teams how
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belichick and nick saving came with the new approach to defense and how bill belichick prepares for games
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and fights complacency we also get into the importance of how a qb carries himself and why it's important
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to begin to drive down the field with an energizing play and we end our conversation with michael's
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predictions for the future of football including how we're starting to see a return to the game's
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rugby roots after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash gridiron
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all right michael lombardi welcome to the show thank you it's great to be here i appreciate you
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having me i'm excited to join you well tell us about your career you uh have been in the game
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of football as a coach and as a general manager for a while how did that happen well i mean it
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really started in in with a television set you know a lot of people were influenced by elvis on the
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ed sullivan show i was influenced by a guy that looked like he belonged at all my sunday dinners
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looked like he was my uncle he had a big nose olive skin and i thought jeez this guy should be and
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he has the same last name as me so maybe i should try to follow his career path and i did and and i
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fell in love with the game of football i fell in love with the idea of being in the nfl and i just
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really went through high school and college with the idea that i was going to be in the nfl and work
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i played this game stratomatic baseball when i was a kid even though it's a baseball game it was about
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team building and me and this kid danny reynolds and michael sonino we we played countless hours on
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this board in my mother's kitchen and we wore out our dining room set and i fell in love with team
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building and i fell in love with drafting and so that kind of with lombardi and then that and then
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listening to springsteen telling me to go chase my dreams those three things were the perfect storm
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so you did you have any ambitions to play football or did you know at a young age you weren't going to
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play that you were going to be somewhere doing something else with the game i mean i knew that
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i wasn't going to be able to play at the highest level i did play college football at hopstra
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i played high school football i played college football but i knew that you know just based on
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most people at that sunday dinner we were all short squatty and ate 20 carbs that i probably wasn't
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going to be involved in the nfl or my talent level so i i just tried to study the game when i was in
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college right i would go to coaching seminars my freshman sophomore junior and senior years all
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throughout the country in january and february i wanted to learn about football i wanted to study
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football from a from a coaching standpoint because i knew this is what i was going to do
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so and you ended up working with some of the greatest coaches in the game you know bill walsh
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belichick i mean was that sort of chance that happened or did you put yourself in a position to work
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with those guys because you saw that they were doing something different with the game i mean it
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was serendipitous by far i mean i got a job at the 49ers to basically be bill walsh's driver i mean
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and they hired me because i wanted to be in personnel i would work for real relatively little money
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and i worked in personnel and i got to befriend him and he needed something and the timing was
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right it was the perfect storm it's you know i had walsh you know he had a beautiful car he needed
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somebody to drive him there was no car phone it was so i was there and i just worked with him and
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then when i went to go to cleveland probably the biggest mistake in my career leaving walsh i stood
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a stay with bill for longer but then in 1991 i meet this guy named bill belichick and that changed my
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life and and really just had being around him he taught me more about football how to think about
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football and we developed the grading system in cleveland that's universal to what they use in
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new england today what they use at the university of alabama iowa many other places so a lot of it
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was serendipitous by far so in your book gridiron genius you talk about the insights you've got
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from working with these these coaches about leadership team formation strategy and i want to dig into
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this stuff because not only is this stuff applicable to football but it's applicable to other aspects of
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life let's talk about bill walsh first he was the guy you first started working with for those not who
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aren't familiar with bill walsh what's his story so coach walsh started out as a you know played at san
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jose state a really smart cerebral guy very divergent in thought you know he always saw coaching as teaching
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he didn't see coaching as yelling at players he wanted to teach and he wanted to be divergent
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and he worked his way up to the ranks he worked at the raiders he worked in a lot of different teams
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and he got a job with the expansion cincinnati bengals and he had a quarterback named craig
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virgil carter virgil cook who could throw the ball craig cook who could throw the ball but it got hurt
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and then he had another quarterback that didn't have a strong arm so he devised this thing called the west
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coast offense which we know today and it's really a basically long handoffs to get your receivers in space
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and not try to run the ball so he was divergent in thought and then he was all about building a culture
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organization that he could adhere to and he could that he believed organizations won not cultures and he used to
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tell me driving him in that car that you know you've got to read books about tom peters you've got to read
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in search of excellence you've got to read warren bennis you've got to read peter drucker because we are in the
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leadership business not just you know we're not gym teachers where we throw out the kickballs and
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say okay everybody let's play there's an intellectual side to this game and that really empowered me to
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learn that and i spent most of my career studying that so football is a business and business can be
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football and walsh was the first one to show me that and then when i met belichick that all came
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into fruition well we'll talk about the the west coast offense that innovation that bill walsh made here
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it more in a bit but i want to focus on this culture aspect that's what you start off talking
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in the book that the foundation of the 49ers success was the the creation of a culture that was done by
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bill walsh what did the culture of the 49ers look like before walsh became came in as head coach
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and what changes did he make it was completely a mess i mean joe thomas was the general manager and
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he controlled the game from the general manager's chair which walsh knew was wrong right like the coach
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has to really run the team he has to be in charge there has to be a player personnel philosophy
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of the players they're acquiring that wasn't the case so when walsh took over in 1979 he basically
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took over an expansion team the only problem was they traded all these draft picks for a guy named
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oj simpson who was washed up and done and so not only did he take over a team that was really bad the
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team had no assets so it was worse than expansion team and the first thing he did was put a culture in
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place he talked about what everybody in the organization needed to be able to do don't even
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pay attention to the scoreboard pay attention to your job pay attention to your role in this company
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always put the team first always behave in a manner of a 49er and he defined the manner for what he wanted
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you to behave in so it was very detailed and he focused on not the scoreboard but the organization
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and what it was going to take and everything else once he built that he felt like would take off
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and this was uh he called it his standard of performance the sort of checklist of things
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that he was focused on yeah that's that was something he would go over 17 principles and
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they were really small and minor but he reminded you of them every day and here's the beautiful thing
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he never really differentiated from the woman who answered the phone carrie parham
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to joe montana the starting quarterback they both jobs were expected to be meet the standard of
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performance that's what he expected and so in the book i talk about how he told me to remind him to
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fire the pa announcer because that guy had to had to adhere to the same philosophy and the same beliefs
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so you know he he held everyone accountable and accountability is the number one thing in creating
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culture where everybody's accountable culture can't be for one person and not for somebody else
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it has to be for all yeah so i mean a few of these standards of performance that he does 17
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principles i mean it's really like you would read this list be like well that's really banal but i
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mean i think that's the beauty of it right i mean it's things just like demonstrate character
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be fair be deeply committed to learning and teaching uh when i read those reminded me a little bit of john
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wooden and his uh and his sort of you know really like homespung principles that he passed on to his
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players no doubt i think wouldn't really influence coach walsh and i think that simple is always the
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best way but so often we get caught up into thinking we have to be complex and systems and
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organizations and and you know common sense oftentimes isn't common and common sense when
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you're putting together an organization does go a long way and people need to be reminded of it and
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people also need to be held to a a standard and they need to be coached on it i think you just you
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know people think culture is something like when you call the pest control company and they come over
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and spray to kill the bugs right they spray and they leave well culture when walsh walked in the
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building every morning his job is to maintain and drive the culture he didn't assume it was all going
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to be the same so that's the big difference is culture is something you have to work on
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every single day and that's why it has to be simplistic it can't be complex or else people
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won't comprehend it and what was the the effect of the standard of performance like how did it turn
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the team around it took two years but eventually he did you know and he really wasn't worried about
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he wasn't worried about finding a quarterback or finding a receiver he was more worried about finding
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the right players he was much like what belichick talks about we're not trying to collect talent we're
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building a team he felt like if he built the organization first he could get the players to
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play at the higher level that he could coach them to a higher level and that's the same in business
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you know the most talented team doesn't win it's the team that works together that wins the most
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so yeah the other coach you've worked with in your career and you spent a lot of time
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focused on the book is bill belichick were him and bill walsh sort of cut from the same cloth
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you know other than the way they dress completely completely never raised their voice highly
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intellectual could see problems and the next book i'm going to write is going to be
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the secret to all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious it's a quote attributed to marcus
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aurelius although even though he didn't say it it's really the genius of these two men they were able
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to see what the non-obvious is and they could organize that and they worked on those details and that's
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kept them so far ahead of the game that most people can't see it i think i like it too when
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you know sherlock holmes the the the the novel the character the fictional character when he walks
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into a crime scene and he sees seven things and everybody sees them but yet he can use deductive
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reasoning to explain what they mean further that's walsh and belichick they had this unique ability to
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see the non-obvious and they could prepare their teams and they also understood their number one job
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was to drive culture today belichick's job is not to devise new plays for tom brady to devise new
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defenses to maintain his culture every day and did so i mean bill belichick he's created this dynasty
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with the new england patriots he's got to start in cleveland did is has anything changed from when he
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was a coach at cleveland to when he's a coach now with the patriots everybody likes to think so
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especially the people in cleveland but having worked with him in both places i would say the
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only difference is robert craft allows him to build the culture and modell really didn't understand what
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he was trying to do modell was more interested in winning the fans over appeasing the fans giving
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them something he used to tell me all the time kid kid we got to give we got we sell hope here we got
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to sell hope that's not belichick belichick's about getting the team his messages to the 60 players in
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the room not the three million the the winning will get to the players we'll get to the court
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so the only difference and the only real difference was modell really didn't understand what bill was
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trying to do culture wise and craft wanted a culture so you spent a lot of your career helping
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teams hire coaches when you're out scouting for a coach what are you looking at like how do you know
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if a coach is a good coach well i mean it's no different than hiring talent i tell people all the
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time you know the fbi doesn't open up the phone book and look for serial killers you must define
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what you want in your coach and it really comes down to really and i wrote about the five areas
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of leadership in my book but essentially it's four areas of leadership that must be adhered to
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to have a great coach the first one's called management of attention and that means you have a
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plan you come in with a complaint when bill belichick walked in my office in 1991 he handed me a piece of
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paper which i will give to the hall of fame the day he goes in i own that paper and it said exactly who
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we were going to be as a football team this is what what he wanted and we developed a grading system to
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build that that's management of attention the second is called management of meaning which means you can
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explain your plan to people you can explain it to everybody who's involved and they get it they
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understand it using metaphors using comedy using video however you do it you can explain it the third is
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management of trust are you going to be consistent enough to where the players trust you or are you
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going to have double standards for different people in the organization again the standard of performance
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management of trust can i trust you to be consistent the fourth and final area is management of self
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are you going to look internally to yourself and grow admit your mistakes find ways to improve as
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you're on the job every single coach that i've researched in my career that won super bowls was good in
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three of the four the ones that are not are only good in two and you can see it pretty clearly you
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can see it at a press conference you can see that when they talk to the team you can see that they fail
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in two of the four the ones that are good in all four like belichick and walsh they win consistently
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you know i think it's interesting is that you kind of came to the inside eventually you're not looking
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for a coach you're looking for a leader so i think when people think i'm looking for a coach is a guy's
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got strategies coming with new plays but all those things you talked about are the same thing you'd
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look for in a you know chief executive no doubt it's the same position and this is what's happened
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to the nfl that's why there's such a i mean brett think about this now belichick has won 78 games
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the last five years his next closest competition are the chiefs at 60 he's lapped the field by 18 games
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so he's really lapped this field it's it's it's way way way he's increased his dominance over the league
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further and the reason is is because teams are hiring coaches who know schemes but they can't lead groups
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so they'll have a good year and then they'll have a down year as walsh told me you know we're only
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competing against eight teams here this is when the league had 28 teams and i wondered what he was
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thinking about and i thought it was more about you know which team had a quarterback or which team
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did this and really it was about eight cultures and today in the nfl there's really only eight
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cultures you know no team understands how to build a culture and half the problem is when you talk
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culture they have no idea what you're talking about so all these coaches walsh belichick there's
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sort of like they have a coaching tree right coaches that they've coached they've gone on
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and coached their own teams are there any other coaches in the nfl that have worked with these
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guys that really understood this this importance of culture i don't think so and i think they miss
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it i think they're not often some of these guys have had success in copying the offense i mean when
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you look at walsh's tree mike holmgren had success in green bay but he had ron wolf when when he went
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to seattle it wasn't quite as successful but it was so there's exceptions belichick hasn't had that
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because too often belichick disciples try to be belichick you know i always tell people look
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you know when frank sinatra in the 70s was losing his audience he put on a leisure suit and put beads
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around his neck and he wasn't sinatra anymore he wasn't authentic nobody believed him the people in
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the 70s didn't like him and his the people that loved him hated him again hated him so you have to
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be authentic in who you are you're a tuxedo cufflink guy wear a tuxedo and cufflink even if it's not
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popular and i think that's what the biggest issue has been with belichick's guys that have left
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walsh's guys have had some success holmgren but they had more success staying at san francisco where
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the culture was in place than when they went to steve mariucci went to detroit or george secret went
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to carolina or ray rhodes went to philadelphia or went to green bay they've had more success in san
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francisco than they have when they try to do it on their own well it seems like one coach in the at
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the collegiate level at least who kind of gets it or who gets it is nick saban he worked with belichick
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and he's different he's still nick saban but he gets the importance of culture from belichick
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no doubt and it was a great marriage of the two of them i mean they're both they're both different
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but they're both similar but nick used to complain i laugh all the time we would have a staff meeting at
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five o'clock after wednesdays and thursdays practice and nick would always say to me you know dog
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this is killing me i got too much work to do to be sitting in this staff meeting as bill's running
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the tape and at alabama after wednesdays and thursdays practice they have a staff meeting and
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nick runs the tape so sometimes what you don't think is right for you ends up being right for everyone
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so you mentioned earlier that belichick he's not interested in collecting talent he's interested in
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forming a team what does that look like how do these guys go about recruiting a successful team
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it really starts with this one premise if then it starts with mental toughness and they define
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mental toughness as doing what's right for the team when it might not be right for you
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and so when you value the name on the front of your jersey more than you value the name on the back of
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your jersey you're probably going to be able to play at the patriots you know and so he then figures out
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players that fit the system that he wants so he defines what he wants with this grading system
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and then he finds players that fit that system but they also fit the description of mental toughness
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he wants to be a physically mentally tough team that can play in any physical any environment weather
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wise and can focus and concentrate and win in the fourth quarter and is willing to do the things needed
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to be successful so he's no different than the navy seals he's trying to eliminate people not find
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people and through elimination he ends up having a core group of players that together bond now when
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his players leave and go other places they never look as successful as they did in new england
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partly because they're not playing within the role they're not playing within the name on the front
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they're more about the name on the back and things don't go as well well recruiting players is really
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hard because when you're especially when they're in college you see them you see their statistics they do
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well in college but then when they get to the pro level they don't do as well there's been a lot of
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you know recent examples of that but then also like how do you figure out those more soft attributes
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where there's not a real like number for it right whether they're a team player whether they're hard
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working whether they got mental toughness like as a recruit recruiter how do you figure that stuff out
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well you know past performance predicts future achievement so you know when you interview a kid you have to ask
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questions or you interview an employee you can't ask general questions you'll get general answers
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you know if i said to a young man do you work hard every answer that i've ever gotten back in my 35 year
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nfl career has been oh yeah man i work really hard but if i ask the question give me five examples of how you
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work hard all of a sudden humda humda humda comes into play you know if they said hey i just got back from
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lifting weights and you say to them well give me the five the five exercises you did weights and how many reps
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with each all of a sudden now they start stammering when you ask specifically what they do and you
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don't get the answer back you need you know and then you could say to them hey what was your greatest
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moment in high school and they talk about well i gained 200 yards against uh ocean city high well
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what about did you win any games yeah we won the state championship well that now that tells you who
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this guy is right you know right and so you can learn a lot as yo givera said you can see a lot from
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looking and if you look at the right places and ask the right questions you'll find what you want
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and another thing you all did was you actually checked the references right and besides just
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asking the the kid the questions about his performance like you'd go into the town where
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you grew up and like ask teachers girlfriends neighbors uh about the kid no doubt i mean look
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we're in a multi-billion dollar industry and kids are going to behave the way they want us to see them
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but when you go to their hometown and you start snooping around in their hometown or you go to
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the college instead of going to the football office which the football office is never going to talk bad
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about their players because that that hurts their recruiting they're going to lie to you we know that
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so if you go to the local tavern or you go to the sororities and ask about player x y or z
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they pretty much know what's going on they'll give you the real scoop and then you can paint an accurate
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picture of the guy all right so there's some advice there for hiring even if you're not you're not in
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football check the references and then get specific with your questions no doubt and you
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got to prepare yourself the the and then the questions that they ask you back really tell you
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more about who they are you know that's really you if you if they're asking dumb questions you may not
00:23:03.520
have you may not have somebody you want to hire really smart questions should intrigue you it's what
00:23:09.380
they ask you as much as what you ask them were there any instances in your career where you were
00:23:13.940
recruiting and a player on the numbers wise didn't look like he had a lot of talent there maybe
00:23:19.120
there's other talented players right he was he was good but not as great as some of these other guys
00:23:23.440
but you went ahead and went with him because he had some of those intangibles where you thought
00:23:27.280
this guy could be a part of the team and he ended up doing really well oh you know that's really
00:23:31.840
and if you fit him in the right role yeah i mean we've done that quite a bit i mean when you look at
00:23:37.600
like i think jimmy garoppolo you know when we drafted jimmy in new england
00:23:41.140
he really didn't you know he was in the second round there were four other quarterbacks picked in
00:23:45.900
front of him but we brought him in that day and he and he was we knew he could handle tom brady
00:23:51.960
and not be intimidated by him we knew he had the attributes to go in a room and be able to not be
00:23:58.500
in all of the greatest quarterback of all time so yeah you really need to understand what's exactly
00:24:04.560
you're looking for and if the player fits and sometimes you know look you're going to make mistakes but
00:24:09.720
here's the valuable thing you have to do when you make a mistake instead of sitting there and not
00:24:14.440
admitting your mistake you got to do an autopsy on why you made the mistake and you got to really
00:24:19.820
dig deep and be honest with yourself to figure out why you made that mistake we'll stick into uh
00:24:25.340
specific parts of the game you look at special teams and you talk about how bilichick is actually
00:24:30.820
really obsessed with special teams because that's that's a part of the game that gets overlooked by fans
00:24:35.200
it's like okay the punt team comes on they punt they're off the field why did belichick or why
00:24:40.660
does belichick obsess about special teams and what do you think that what do you think that shows what
00:24:44.620
insight about leadership can we get from that well first of all he he's trying to build a culture right
00:24:49.160
and if he says that the special teams coach i i don't really care about special teams i just care
00:24:54.140
about offensive defense his culture falls apart but if he makes everybody on the team play one special
00:24:59.300
teams then everybody's all in and if you have a special teams practice and you have guys engaged
00:25:05.380
in special teams they have to pay attention then they're building a team when you coach the players
00:25:10.640
on special teams being important you really are who you want to become and so that's what he does he
00:25:17.260
allows that to set the tempo for his team i think and i write about it in the book that's what bill
00:25:23.040
snyder he took over kansas state i'm sure you remember how bad kansas state was yeah and he built
00:25:29.120
it through the kicking game because he wanted an all-in as angela duckworth says becoming all-in
00:25:34.040
has a tornado effect and belichick knows if he can win the special teams then he gets an all-in
00:25:40.720
mentality and helps him build this culture yeah and as you said special teams is interesting because
00:25:45.120
you have players from both defense and offense working on it so it carries over to the other
00:25:50.280
aspects of the game as well no doubt and you need them because you know when you value it so now the
00:25:55.620
game's on the line and we need a return or we can't have penalties on special teams you know
00:26:01.420
they've been educated they've been taught this and if you're playing complementary football which means
00:26:06.480
you need your offense to affect your defense and your kicking game to affect all of it and you're
00:26:11.640
teaching that which bell tech does every wednesday thursday and friday then that's really important that
00:26:17.240
you engage your team in special teams well let's talk about offense so we mentioned earlier bill
00:26:21.900
walsh is the guy that developed west the west coast offense for those who aren't familiar with the
00:26:26.420
implications of it like how was such a revolutionary thing what was football like before walsh introduced
00:26:32.900
the west coast offense it was all about establishing the run it was about three yards in a cloud of dust
00:26:39.160
it was get you know run the ball quarterbacks didn't really want to throw it very much i mean
00:26:43.840
bob greasy i think threw 14 passes in the super bowl in 1972 that beat the redskins i mean
00:26:50.480
it was a game in between the hash marks it was a it was a trench warfare but then the rules changed
00:26:57.000
and like everything it opened up the game pass blocking became easier for offensive linemen so
00:27:03.380
then therefore you know you could throw the ball and the game moved it was always two backs in the
00:27:08.860
backfield and it was always you know two receivers and i like it to the movie industry and i read about
00:27:16.060
this in the book bob evans the robert evans the head of paramount decided you know he couldn't compete
00:27:21.360
with all the other studios so instead of trying and because all the other studios had money to hire
00:27:26.560
actors everything was about the actor you know hire john wayne hire this actor and you're going to have
00:27:32.540
a hit movie so he went the opposite direction he hired writers so he bought books he bought love story
00:27:38.820
the godfather he bought all these books and turned them into movies using obscure actors because he
00:27:45.300
could afford it and that propelled paramount back into business again and it's the same thing in the
00:27:50.140
nfl once the rules changed you had to stay ahead of the curve and now it became a passing league and
00:27:56.080
walsh was the cornerstone and was on the head of that and then he became very creative and divergent in
00:28:01.920
those thoughts yeah i like that evans example because that's an example of a an executive working with
00:28:07.540
what he has and actually it at first blush it looks like you're limited but can actually turn
00:28:13.440
into an advantage and the same thing happened with walsh like the way he came up with came up with the
00:28:16.580
west coast offense was he he had a quarterback that was okay and he could only could throw sort of short
00:28:22.400
passes but that was it but he built an offense around that guy and revolutionized the game in the
00:28:26.860
process no doubt and i think you know there's a great scene in apollo 13 where i think we all in and
00:28:32.900
whether you're in football you're a high school coach who's ever listened to this you know you're the
00:28:36.980
women's lacrosse coach whatever you know you're you're like the scene in apollo 13 where they have
00:28:43.620
that giant table and these scientists are sitting around the table and the guys are stuck up in space
00:28:48.420
and this guy walks in with a box and and throws stuff on the table and says we have to make this
00:28:54.460
into that using nothing but this and that's really the essence of what you are as a leader you've got to
00:29:01.740
figure out where you need to go figure out what you have and then get it done and not complain about
00:29:07.800
it don't spend time worrying about what you don't have you know sometimes when you're in companies
00:29:12.460
you're well we don't have any money we don't have that money doesn't solve any problem thinking solves
00:29:17.680
all problems right i mean you see that in baseball there's a lot of teams with a lot of baseball with
00:29:21.740
a lot of money and it's it's not solving the problem of losing that's right and we see it all the
00:29:26.600
time i mean you know look at the look at the washington nationals i mean that you know that
00:29:31.880
they let bryce harper go and they're in the playoffs and the phillies are watching right that well that's
00:29:38.300
that idea that again when that happens people think it's talent right we'll win games but when it's a
00:29:43.540
team like so it's a it's a build-up of a team that wins the game and understanding what what truly
00:29:49.420
helps when i used to get on the team plane and i worked for al davis he would always say to me
00:29:53.840
do you know why we won do you know why we lost and if you can't define in your business why you
00:29:59.120
win or why you lose most of the time most people don't understand what business they're really in
00:30:06.140
they defined it poorly and and that's why they're not having a success because they really don't
00:30:12.960
understand what they're in ray crock wasn't in the hamburger business he was in the real estate
00:30:16.980
business all of a sudden he became a billionaire you know and so you have to understand what truly is
00:30:22.700
your business and what and how you can benefit from that and most of the time teams and sports
00:30:29.020
don't really get that they think they're in one thing and they're not i mean people think amazon
00:30:33.220
is a is a you buy products on it they're a logistics company right you know and they and they do it
00:30:40.960
better than anybody so it's how you define who you are so in the west coast offense the quarterback
00:30:46.780
plays an important role in it because they have to make sometimes decisions the last minute it's not
00:30:52.700
you don't go into play knowing you're gonna throw this guy you west coast offense gives you options
00:30:57.420
to throw based on what's thrown at you so they have to be able to think on their feet think with
00:31:02.320
fluidity like how did these how did bill walsh go about finding a good quarterback that could do that
00:31:08.560
what was he looking for he wanted somebody with great foot quickness he wanted somebody who could
00:31:13.000
move he wanted a boxer like muhammad ali that could move around the ring he wanted somebody that could
00:31:18.640
could move quickly and throw quickly he wasn't concerned about arm strength he was concerned
00:31:24.200
about rhythm and timing and anticipation he was really wanted somebody that had a feel for the
00:31:30.300
position you know we called it a crib thing when your mama lifts you from your crib you either have it or
00:31:34.780
you don't right and so he wanted that crib thing he wanted that mentality and and you could see it and
00:31:41.860
he wanted guys that had past performance you know typically great quarterbacks are great quarterbacks in high
00:31:47.300
school they just don't show up i mean one of ryan tannahill's biggest problems the backup quarterback
00:31:52.180
at tennessee is you know he played wide receiver he's not instinctively a quarterback you know
00:31:57.880
quarterback's not a position that you just learn into you kind of have a feel for it and walsh was
00:32:03.540
always looking for those guys that could so yeah he spotted joe montana steve young and those guys
00:32:09.540
were dominant in the game yeah i mean he went and worked out james owens down in los angeles and
00:32:15.200
montana was there and you know and there it all happened he saw montana nobody loved montana's arm
00:32:22.100
strength they didn't think he they thought he was a backup and bill solomon like okay this is exactly
00:32:27.480
what i want and again it's the perfect way to do it because he was going against the variance of the
00:32:32.940
marketplace right he fixed montana in the third round meanwhile guys are getting picked in the first
00:32:37.520
round that aren't as good and what really made it really interesting is is there was a quarterback at
00:32:42.580
stanford that bill had coached when he was at stanford and bill didn't use his bias he used the
00:32:48.960
objectivity to pick the right guy for him so he saw what he really needed and montana was better
00:32:55.480
and so he picked montana yeah and in the book you highlight some of the factors that you all look for
00:33:00.700
in a quarterback because the quarterback is essentially he's like a command it's a battle
00:33:04.860
command leader like he's on the field leading the team and so you're looking for traits that help
00:33:09.860
in that like one one trait was carriage which is basically how he carries himself which i think
00:33:14.820
let me dig in more of that what does good carriage look like to you well i mean look you know you're
00:33:20.100
the leader of the team your team has to have your personality right teams that don't have a
00:33:24.300
quarterback's personality don't doesn't have a personality so you've got to carry yourself your job
00:33:30.020
if you're the highest paid player on the team is to make somebody else is to make everybody else better
00:33:33.880
and you've got to be able to motivate yell the man your your persona of who you are the prom king
00:33:41.160
you know that's the quarterback you got to have that and it sends and it inflicts confidence into
00:33:47.800
everybody else around them you know and you feel it there's a leadership that goes on the field hey
00:33:53.220
fellas we're in the huddle we got to get this guys come on we're going to get this don't you worry
00:33:56.900
and you'll get people to follow you but if you're in the huddle well all right we're going to run this
00:34:01.460
you know who's following you are there any quarterbacks in the game today that you think
00:34:05.020
have good carriage oh i think philip rivers has incredible i mean he's just so into it you you
00:34:09.920
know i i love when i want i love the i watch him play i think deshaun watson has got it i think he
00:34:16.260
understands it i think that you know patrick mahomes clearly has it you can tell you can feel it and
00:34:22.720
then there's guys like i mean jared goff just made a boatload of money but i don't feel it from him
00:34:27.240
is he a good player yeah but he relies on other people being good
00:34:30.560
but i think you can pretty much spot it and if your team doesn't get its personality from the
00:34:35.880
quarterback where are we going to get it from we got to get it from somewhere because the coach
00:34:41.140
and the quarterback is who drives the team let's talk about defense so we mentioned earlier that
00:34:47.320
belichick worked with saban when they were at cleveland and they came up with a new approach to
00:34:51.800
defense what did that approach look like well so they understood that the the best way to win games
00:34:57.940
in the nfl was real simple keep people from scoring not revolutionary right but where do people score
00:35:04.860
most of their points like there was a they did an analytical study about putts right they went
00:35:10.460
through and they studied a thousand ten thousand hundred thousand putts all over the the pga and the
00:35:17.080
conclusion that they found out about putts was the ones that are closer to the hole usually are the
00:35:22.100
easier to make not revolutionary right so it's the same thing belichick and saban did if we if we can
00:35:27.840
stop scoring we'll be a better defense but where do we stop scoring and that's the red zone and so
00:35:33.360
they focused their attention on the red zone defense the area in from the 20 yard line to the back end
00:35:39.420
line of the red zone that's called the red zone and they played a different style of football down there
00:35:44.140
so that became much more difficult for teams to score and they were able to turn the ball over down there
00:35:50.140
and they were able to create field goals instead of touchdowns those four point plays really helped
00:35:55.740
keep the game down so when you go down there in the red zone and you don't score a touchdown and you
00:36:00.380
have to kick a field goal you know that's four points come off the scoreboard that hurts you at the
00:36:04.780
end of the game that's where belichick and saban really we called it red two and that's where they
00:36:10.240
really had great success about being able to keep people from scoring real simple but oftentimes overlooked
00:36:17.800
yeah i mean it's deceptively simple because it basically it's a three four cover two defense
00:36:23.000
and it's the same thing all the time but once the play is called and run like there's different
00:36:27.660
permutations of it that can happen after the the ball snapped yeah and so it's like zone basketball
00:36:34.120
zones and basketball you know it's how do you move your zone and and at some point all zone defenses
00:36:40.880
become man based on the distribution of the receivers or the basketball players and so that's
00:36:46.460
well they did it and so because people were running certain routes down there they could play certain
00:36:51.520
routes and they took those routes away and people didn't for a while didn't have an answer it took a
00:36:56.280
long time for them to adjust to it i mean some other insights you you highlight in the book that
00:37:00.720
regular folks people who are just in business can take from how belichick and saban manage their
00:37:05.860
defensive teams you know things like about understanding timing in and off and like in disrupting your
00:37:11.560
opponent's timing that that that's key in in a successful defense yeah i mean it's all about
00:37:17.500
like you have to understand like the 12 most important plays in a football game or the 24 most
00:37:23.660
important plays in a football game are what we call drive starters if you start to drive with a big play
00:37:29.700
first and 10 you hit a 40 yard pass you're going to score probably 75 of the time but if you hand the
00:37:35.960
ball off and get three yards you're probably not going to score because there could be a one play that
00:37:40.580
makes you go so if you start your drive with a really good drive starter you can get places and
00:37:47.180
if you conversely if you start the opponent's drive with a negative play you're going to get off the
00:37:52.160
field so if you spend time on those 12 plays hey we're going to start to drive with this we're going
00:37:57.360
to start to drive with this defense or this offense you can create a variant you can create a variance
00:38:02.740
and you can help you set yourself up now you're not going to hit them all but that's the mentality that
00:38:07.600
you have to think about there's also this point that i liked it's if you're not talking you're not
00:38:11.840
winning what do you mean by that communication is the number one thing in all sports it's why
00:38:16.380
belichick doesn't want to put jersey numbers on young players he wants them to talk he wants them
00:38:21.500
to communicate to one another as human beings not 49 not 63 so we communication is vital in every
00:38:29.100
business you know we're in an age of communication yet i think sometimes we communicate less with one
00:38:33.980
another you know we have text we have email we have phone we have all these ways and sometimes
00:38:39.000
we lack communication like how can there be an interpretation problem when we have all these
00:38:43.820
ability to communicate and you've got to work at communication you know you've got to work at it so
00:38:48.440
that people are all on the same page because once again when you're working as a team you know it's
00:38:53.060
really important that we function as a team not just work as a team so at the end of the book you
00:38:58.480
walk us through a week before a game of how belichick prepares his team to play a game this
00:39:05.340
was this was a playoff game but i imagine it was the same thing for every game even if it was just a
00:39:09.600
regular season game like how i mean can you get so i mean you can't go into the detail exactly what
00:39:15.000
you talked about in the book but give us an idea of how much preparation how much thought belichick
00:39:19.540
goes into game preparation well i mean he's he really does a wonderful job of breaking down what the
00:39:25.980
team can do and what they can't do and then he communicates that to his team and then he tells
00:39:31.080
the team how we have to play the game to win here's what we need to do we call it the points of
00:39:36.120
emphasis offensively defensively and naturally in the kicking game and then we start practicing that
00:39:41.760
week on those points of emphasis and we're driving home the critical moments of the game hey it's third
00:39:47.340
and one we need to be able to make a play here hey we need to do this and so all week is really he's
00:39:53.840
giving a test because he truly believes practice execution becomes game reality and so we're
00:40:00.480
working constantly on the elements of the game wednesday is red zone it's it's first down it's
00:40:06.400
drive starters it's all the areas of the game thursday it's nickel it's sub runs base runs and
00:40:13.580
friday it's gotta have it but we gotta have a play what do we do and if they gotta have a play what do
00:40:19.060
they do and so it all comes together and on saturday he sits with the coaching staff and he
00:40:24.860
tells them look fellas here's how the game's gonna go here's how we prepare it could go this way we
00:40:30.780
need to adjust that way it could go that way then we'll adjust this way and after the first quarter if
00:40:36.160
we're not sure where it is we'll make adjustments and that's just and so everybody's constantly thinking
00:40:41.800
about how we have to play the game what their job is in the game and what they have to do to be
00:40:47.300
successful i mean what i was impressed by was how much preparation belichick put in himself
00:40:52.480
to prepare his team right like the the game prep for him began the as soon as he finished the game
00:40:58.840
like the game the previous game he would start going over film to get the team ready for the next game
00:41:04.100
yeah i mean nobody works harder uh i mean he he writes up all the defensive backs that so he can have
00:41:10.720
a relationship with the quarterback so he can call tom brady in his office on tuesday afternoon and say
00:41:15.680
tom here are all the defensive backs for the baltimore ravens here's their strengths here
00:41:21.620
their weaknesses here's the summary here's how we're going to attack them and he keeps himself
00:41:27.000
involved in the game here's the special teams he's the head coach he's the best coach on the staff
00:41:32.480
he makes the most money and guess what he does he coaches the most because he's that valuable and i
00:41:38.520
think you can really see his work ethic i mean he wastes no time if he's on the treadmill he's reading
00:41:43.960
you know he's constantly focused and he concentrates on what's the most important things that have to
00:41:51.060
happen on each and every day to get the team ready he knows it's his job to get the entire team ready
00:41:56.880
and it's the assistant job to manage the team remember this it's so important leaders do the
00:42:03.300
right thing managers do things right belichick's the leader got that and did walsh have a similar
00:42:09.340
approach to belichick no doubt always yeah always very well involved in everything that we did and
00:42:16.300
wanted to make sure that they understood it and what bill did because of his intellectual he created
00:42:21.220
a think tank you know he was so smart and creative it forced george seaford to become creative in his
00:42:27.700
thought and do different things and come up with his own way because look we're all competitive with
00:42:32.440
one another and as you mentioned earlier that i mean what another thing that impressed me about
00:42:36.420
these guys belichick and walsh is that they don't yell at their players they're in fact very
00:42:41.300
quiet and somehow they're able to convey that message to them during these meetings in a way
00:42:46.160
that's very impactful yeah they teach they don't yell i mean they don't tell players to play harder
00:42:51.260
they explain what they need everything's in detail they treat you as a professional this isn't good
00:42:56.660
enough they have no problem telling you if it's not good enough they're not scared to confront you
00:43:01.520
most leaders are too worried about what somebody else is going to think about it so they sugarcoat it
00:43:07.180
they lie well that's not bad we're okay there that's good no they people want clear and concise
00:43:13.500
instruction and if you give it to them in an honest manner they'll listen but if you try to just sugarcoat it
00:43:20.060
or hide behind it no one's going to pay attention to you so they've never raised their voice they rarely
00:43:26.080
get angry i mean i've seen them get upset but they instruct and teach they don't yell when you're
00:43:32.660
working with belichick you know he's become one of the most dominant coaches in the game of football
00:43:37.200
in that sort of situation it's easy to become complacent how do you how does he battle that how
00:43:43.000
does he prevent getting complacent i you know that's a great question i mean he's he's always about the
00:43:49.280
next thing vince lombardi has a great line the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more
00:43:54.540
and i think belichick does wants to do more all the time he's chasing something bigger than super
00:44:00.180
bowls he's chasing perfection and so therefore he's really not worried about the scoreboard
00:44:05.560
he's worried about just doing his he loves the process of his job that he loves and so he does
00:44:11.580
it really well and that's go back goes back to bill walsh's idea of you know let you know let the
00:44:15.700
scoreboard take care of itself don't pay attention to the scoreboard just focus on the process that's
00:44:20.340
right and most most organizations focus on the bottom line focus on the result they don't focus
00:44:26.140
just on doing the process i mean but that's that's a that can be a hard sell to an organization right
00:44:31.740
where a coach says look i don't care about the score i don't care about the wins i want to make
00:44:36.760
sure that this process this culture gets in place and then the score will take care of itself like how do
00:44:42.480
you make that sell as a leader to an organization it's hard miami's experiencing it now but i think
00:44:50.120
what you have to have is an owner who is is fearful winston churchill once said when the germans were in
00:44:57.900
the channel court and he became the prime minister they asked them they said how come they made you
00:45:03.680
prime minister now when all through the 30s no one would listen to you he said because fear does the
00:45:09.180
work of reason and i think that the only way you can get people to buy in that is if they're fearful
00:45:16.640
they'll never get it right it's hard to reason with somebody who thinks they have it the redskins
00:45:22.300
you can't reason with the redskins they think they're going to turn it around if they get duane
00:45:25.980
haskins to play better or some coach or whatever they don't understand they're not fearful when you
00:45:31.000
get somebody fearful eddie de bartolo was fearful he had just had joe thomas joe thomas traded a bunch
00:45:37.140
of picks he was at the he was at wits end he was the youngest owner in the nfl he was fearful of
00:45:43.000
losing something that he so deeply loved and he gave walsh the chance to do it so we've been talking
00:45:48.120
about bill belichick and this culture that he developed at the patriots that has helped them
00:45:51.880
become a dynasty now i'm sure there's some people who are listening to this and they're thinking about
00:45:56.220
all the accusations of cheating that have been thrown at the patriots over the years the sign
00:46:01.680
stealing and then recently deflategate uh what's your take on that well i think you know in the
00:46:07.440
first instance you know the signal stealing i think signal stealing was a common practice in the nfl
00:46:13.060
if i told you some of the people that were notorious signal stealers in the nfl that are in the hall of
00:46:19.320
fame we would all laugh about it today that doesn't excuse it it's just part of the nature of the
00:46:24.180
business that people were good at stealing signals it was a competitive thing however that transpired i
00:46:30.820
wasn't in new england at the time so i don't know exactly what was happening what was being filmed
00:46:35.860
but obviously they were stretching the envelope they've got fined for it the deflategate thing
00:46:40.620
brett was really ridiculous when we first heard that i was in the building it was the most ridiculous
00:46:45.100
story i've ever heard and it's still the most ridiculous story i've ever heard quarterbacks
00:46:49.080
relationship with the football is the most important thing and how they like the football is critical and
00:46:54.500
we talked about protecting the quarterback well there was nothing in that game that that they did to
00:46:59.680
the football and after it was proven over time that had anything to do with cheating so it's a story
00:47:04.900
that manifested itself out of what i don't know they even admitted the initial report was wrong
00:47:10.020
they said 12 footballs were illegally deflated when they found out that wasn't to be true so
00:47:16.180
i would say this about bill i think bill probably will do within the boundaries of the rules to make
00:47:22.780
sure that he exerts all of the options that he has at his disposal to handle that and you know i think
00:47:29.560
most all organizations do that i don't think it's unethical in what they did i think it was basically
00:47:36.000
a stretch of the rules and i think that ultimately that's how it is but it does not dismiss any of the
00:47:42.760
success they've had up there because truly they just beat you with their their teaching their
00:47:47.820
operation not with cheating so you've been at the game for a while let's end on this what do you what
00:47:52.860
do you see the future of football looking like i mean we're kind of this weird crossroads with the
00:47:57.480
game where people are talking about declining uh interest from young players even fans i mean is
00:48:02.960
football going to be around in 25 years oh i think it's it's going to even be it's going to grow
00:48:07.540
even further betting now has just taken over the sport at the interactiveness now of football
00:48:13.040
where we're and we're going to see kids play madden you know you're going to see kids at their
00:48:18.320
seats at the stadium with the ability to call plays with the ability to play madden as if the game was
00:48:24.120
going on so you're going to have this esport in element at games i think football is with betting and
00:48:31.160
with all the electronics that we have it's going to be it's going to be bigger and bigger as we go on
00:48:36.980
and i think it's it's going to always come back to talented leaders that understand the essence of
00:48:43.020
what it takes to win but i i think we're in we're in a we're in an age where it's only going to get
00:48:47.780
more popular what about the uh the safety issue concern that a lot of people have do you think
00:48:52.200
there's going to be strides in correcting that i hope so i hope so i i think we can i think we've
00:48:57.820
tried to i think that you know there's a time where you know we weren't as concerned but i think now
00:49:03.700
we're getting better and i think the longer we talk about team and having depth and not one player
00:49:10.120
being more important than anybody then you know that helps the injury factor because if the patriots
00:49:15.840
don't have player y and he can't play they go to player b and so you have to have that mindset and
00:49:21.640
i think when you force players to play if they're not healthy that hurts the game and i think the
00:49:26.200
more you can convince your depth and develop talent those are the teams that are going to come
00:49:30.500
out ahead on this injury front and one interesting interesting forecast or prediction you have is
00:49:35.640
that you're you see football kind of going back to its rugby roots uh what do you mean by that i think
00:49:41.220
we'll see more we're seeing it now the single wings coming back i mean lamar jackson's running the
00:49:45.840
single wing if baltimore had another quarterback on the field like lamar jackson how dangerous would
00:49:51.180
they be you know i think we're going to see you know walsh used to sit on the team bus and doodle
00:49:56.660
plays from the clark shaughnessy era football the single wing the the the tight wing and he was always
00:50:03.480
constantly looking back at history belichick does the same thing what old becomes new and i think
00:50:09.420
we're seeing a little bit more of that that direct snap to somebody who can then run unbalanced lines
00:50:14.740
tight formations i think football will metamorphose back to where we once were and it'll expand in the
00:50:21.120
way we're doing it and be very entertaining well michael this has been a great conversation where
00:50:24.820
can people go to learn more about the book and the work you do well you can follow me on twitter
00:50:28.960
m lombardi nfl uh at twitter i'm there i write for the athletic i i do a podcast called the gm shuffle
00:50:37.560
every every monday and thursday talking about the nfl i write every day and i'd urge people to to sign
00:50:44.800
up for the email it's called the daily coach it's really a little bit about the idea came coach
00:50:49.720
raveling and i were the greatest human beings in the world george raveling was a basketball coach at
00:50:55.880
iowa washington state and usc he actually owns the the i have a dream speech and we decided that
00:51:02.580
you know we feel like you everybody needs a coach if steve jobs had bill campbell to coach him
00:51:08.640
then everybody should have one so we started this website called the daily coach it's in your email
00:51:13.100
box every day uh five days a week and we hope we can inspire people to to understand that they need
00:51:18.760
to be as much they need to be coached just as much as players do michael lombardi thanks for your time
00:51:23.880
it's been a pleasure thank you brett my guest today was michael lombardi he is the author of
00:51:27.920
the book gridiron genius it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can check out our
00:51:32.260
show notes to find out more information about his work and also with links to other resources by going
00:51:36.700
to aom.is slash gridiron well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our
00:51:49.440
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