I’m not looking to be consistent; I am looking to be correct.
—AL DAVIS
But you don’t have to sit with me long to realize that I get irritated quickly. Not with the game but with the way most commentators describe—or don’t describe—what’s happening on the field. That’s where the mute button comes in. I’m not blaming the men doing the talking—I know that’s a tough gig. It’s just that my training in the sport allows me to see things they don’t notice, and I can’t just turn it off. Ask Millie.
One of the big problems is that the analysts are almost all former players who are blinkered by the perspective of the position they played. They don’t see the whole field. It’s not their fault; it’s just their background and, to be fair, the nature of their sport. In baseball, players play offense and defense. In basketball, same thing. Football is way more specialized. You can go to positional meetings all week—heck, all year—and never have any idea of your team’s overall game plan. When Hall of Fame Cleveland Browns tight end Ozzie Newsome retired and became a personnel man, he told me, “I have no idea what actually happens upstairs.” Why would he? During his playing career, he was focused only on his position responsibilities. (Ozzie sure was a quick study, though; within a decade he was hoisting the Lombardi Trophy with the Ravens.)
Football strategy may not be rocket science, but there is more to it than meets the eye. Fans critique a particular play call or coverage breakdown without having any idea of the broader narrative. What seems obvious to them is almost never what’s really taking place. What all you armchair quarterbacks need to do is turn the sound down and instead take your cues from the guys who may have a broader understanding of the game.
That’s where I come in.
Here are some of my pet peeves, common strategy mistakes that continue to spoil my weekends, along with an explanation of what’s actually going on. Each is sick-making enough in its own right; the fact that they occur again and again with a stunning lack of on-air critique just compounds my dyspepsia. I’d like to think some of what follows, should it be read by those with influence, will cause changes in strategy—on the field or at least in the broadcast booth—but I have my doubts. I am, however, fairly confident that after you read it, I won’t be the only one screaming at the TV as I stab at the mute button every Sunday.
At crunch time in the NFL, Andy Reid is one guy who can make me scream in agony as if I’m watching Santino heading toward the toll plaza in The Godfather. When his Chiefs are in the two-minute drill, my pleas of “Sonny, no! It’s a trap!” become “Andy, no! It’s a trap!” But Santino never listens, and Reid never learns.
Funny thing is, the current Kansas City coach is one of the game’s best. In 19 seasons as an NFL head man, he has amassed 183 wins and has taken his teams to 24 playoff games, 5 conference championship games, and a Super Bowl, in 2004, when his Eagles lost to the Patriots. His résumé speaks for itself. But his playoff work comes up short. He’s 11–13 overall in the postseason and 1–4 with the Chiefs. There are plenty of reasons for that, but one of the major problems is surely his shortcomings in late-game management. As good a coach as Reid is, he often leaves me scratching my head (or yelling at the TV) after making the same mistake again and again.
Here’s what I’m talking about. The game is in the fourth quarter with two minutes and a few seconds on the clock, and Reid’s team needs the ball back. On second and 10, the opponent calls a running play. The defense holds for a short gain, and Reid uses his last time-out to stop the clock once more before the two-minute warning. At that point I promptly lose my shit. Worse, no one with a microphone and access to millions of viewers bothers to point out what a huge blunder this is or suggest that it might be time for Reid to outsource his clock management.
Calling a time-out in this situation is a gift to the opponent, providing more options for the offense. Thanks to Andy’s ill-timed time-out, the offense can throw on third down without worrying that an incompletion will help the Chiefs by stopping the clock. The two-minute warning is going to do that, anyway. If Reid lets the clock run to the two-minute warning, though, everyone in the stadium knows the offense will be running the ball on that crucial third down to keep the clock running.
Once it ticks past 2:06, the defense has to let it run down to the two-minute warning. Has to. When Reid calls that defensive time-out, he thinks he’s saving seconds for his offense. He’s not, but even if he is, he’s missing the point. For a trailing offense at that stage of the game, the entire focus needs to be on the potential number of plays it still can run. As football math has it, each play takes about six seconds. So, if you want to think like a coach, don’t look at the clock and think there are 54 seconds left in the game. Think: Best-case scenario, I have time to run nine more plays. When a team is down late and the game is on the line, offenses have to recalibrate to value plays more than time and yards more than first downs. The goal is to win. To win you need points. To get points you need yards. To get yards you need plays—but more than the three seconds Reid saved.
Defensive head coaches should be able to do the plays-to-time-left calculation in their heads, but the shrieks coming from my den every weekend are proof that they can’t. If Reid were Al Davis’s head coach, Davis might have watched him call that pre-two-minute-warning time-out—once. If he saw it again, Reid would be looking for a job. I’m not kidding. Davis understood game management theory. In fact, Bill Parcells, one of the best game managers ever, was schooled by Davis. Both Parcells and Belichick have been mocked for not celebrating after big late-game touchdowns, but it’s not because they’re joyless so much as because they’re already deep in thought about calculating time scenarios to decide the next thing the team needs to do. You can celebrate after the game.
When Reid faced Belichick in Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005, his Eagles were down 24–14 with 5:40 to go. I guess having two time-outs left robbed Reid of the proper urgency because to the amazement of the entire Patriots coaching staff and a worldwide audience, the Eagles started their next drive as if the game were still in the first half. They scored, but it took them an eternity—almost four minutes—which left them no time to see whether the defense could get them the ball back. The Eagles were forced to try an onside kick, which they didn’t recover. Almost 11 years later, Reid faced the Patriots again, this time with the Chiefs in the 2015 divisional round. Again his team was down by two touchdowns late, and again history—or should I say Reid?—repeated itself. With 6:29 to go and all three time-outs, the Chiefs took over with the same kind of non-urgency we saw in Philadelphia. They scored, but only after 16 plays that burned more than five minutes. Another desperation onside kick did not deliver.
Once again Andy Reid was left to suffer the same sad fate as Sonny.
When I was in Cleveland, I sat in on a film session with our scouts after a day spent working on our two-minute drill. Watching one useless checkdown throw—you know, those safe tosses to a receiver, usually a running back, in the flat—after another got me more and more annoyed until I finally had to say something. Most of the scouts in the room turned and looked at me as if I were speaking in tongues. To them it seemed obvious: We needed to get first downs.
To me it was just as obvious: No, we didn’t. (Unless it was fourth down, of course.) Last I checked, they don’t give points for first downs. What we really needed was the maximum yards we could get in the smallest amount of time. I tried to explain to those scouts that throwing a checkdown in that situation is actually a big-time favor to the defense because you voluntarily burn what you need most (time on the clock) in exchange for what you need the least (first downs).
When you measure the risk/reward as it relates to that situation, throwing the ball downfield seems like the only smart choice. Even if it’s down the middle of the field. Either you’re going to get a big chunk of yards or the pass is going to be incomplete and stop the clock. But to do that you have to have coaches and a quarterback who think like a professional golfer teeing off in front of a lake. That guy isn’t worried about hitting the ball into the water. He can’t even see the water. If he’s laying up with a short wedge to play it safe, he won’t be on the tour very long. He focuses only on what’s beyond the lake. Plunking one into the water never enters his mind.
That’s the way a quarterback and his coaches need to handle a two-minute drill. To be fair, it goes against almost all our normal training. We talk about completion percentages and accuracy and read progressions all day long, but in a two-minute drill that all has to go out the window as the quarterback looks downfield because—as crazy as it sounds—a long incompletion is much better than a five-yard checkdown.
Let’s check in on the Falcons-Eagles 2017 divisional playoff game. The Eagles are up 15–10 with just over six minutes to play, but the Falcons are starting a drive that will determine their entire season. Eventually, after running four-plus minutes off the clock, Atlanta finds itself first and goal at the Eagles’ 9-yard line, on the doorstep of a second-straight NFC championship game.
The situation looks so dire for the Eagles that with 1:19 to play they call a time-out in an attempt to stockpile precious seconds for a last-ditch drive after the Falcons inevitably score.
Okay, time for a pop quiz: What should the Falcons call?
At this point in the game, they have two goals. Obviously, first and foremost, they want to score, but second and almost as important, they want to force the Eagles to burn their final time-out. Not for nothing: The Eagles’ kicker made a 53-yarder at the end of the first half, so if the Eagles do get the ball back, having that time-out to stop the clock and set up a kick could be the difference in the game. Knowing this, the Falcons’ first-down call has to be a run or an easily completable pass, right? Something that runs the clock and forces the Eagles to use their final time-out. Because once that happens, even a high school coach understands that Atlanta will have full control of the game. But what do the Falcons do? They throw a 50/50 pass into the end zone that falls incomplete. I’m sure there are many “experts” who would argue that this was smart, trying to get the ball to their best player, Julio Jones. Sorry fellas; right idea, wrong time.
On second down, the Falcons call a quick screen. Incomplete. The clock is now at 1:11. Forget for a moment that those two plays didn’t move the ball an inch closer to the end zone. The real problem is that they used up only eight seconds and the Eagles still have their emergency time-out.
Talk about not understanding the whole situation. When a world-class pool player makes a shot, where she leaves the cue ball matters almost as much as pocketing the ball. An amateur at your local watering hole is thinking one shot at a time, but the pro is imagining the best way to run the entire table from the get-go. Falcons head coach Dan Quinn isn’t thinking like a pool shark. His goal needed to be centered on the big picture. He needs to see the entire field, not just the next shot or the next play.
Now it’s third down. A short completion. At least this causes the Eagles to burn their last time-out in order to set their defense and save clock. The clock now reads 1:05, but it almost doesn’t matter. Atlanta has completely botched this series. Even if the Falcons score on fourth down, the Eagles have more than enough time to get in field-goal range and win the game. The Falcons don’t score, of course. Quarterback Matt Ryan throws an end zone fade to Jones, who falls down and gets back up just in time for the ball to sail through his fingertips.
Before the ball even hit the ground, everyone was talking about how the Eagles’ defense heroically held and saved the season. Nobody even mentioned the real story: how the Falcons’ offense blew it. At least I don’t think anyone was. I was screaming my objections too loud to hear them if they were.
Few things demonstrate a nearly total lack of understanding of even the simplest aspects of clock management than late-game kickoff returns. Here’s the situation: Team B, down to its last time-out and trailing by four with less than a minute left, fields a kickoff three yards deep in the end zone and advances the ball to the 22-yard line as eight seconds tick off the clock. The announcers, of course, begin to talk about what the offense now has to do. They have nothing to say about what just happened.
Well, I do.
What the hell were they thinking?
The geniuses on Team B just gave up eight seconds—or one or two extra chances to win the game—in order to lose three yards on the kick return. Here’s the math: The chances of breaking that return for a game-winning touchdown are virtually nonexistent. In 2017 only 4 of the 966 kickoffs were taken to the house. That’s a success rate below one-half of 1 percent. Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota, who had five game-winning drives in 2017, beat those odds all by himself. Even more to the point, just four teams in 2017 had an average after-kickoff starting point beyond the 25-yard line. (The Ravens were best at 27.8.)
Trust me, this obvious miscalculation would never happen in New England or anywhere else where the head coach understands time management even a little. In fact, Bill Belichick figured out early on that it actually made sense to lure the not-so-smart teams into making this mistake. Instructing his kicker to leave the ball short of the goal line, he forced a return that burned precious seconds. Teams should be smarter than this, but you’d be surprised.
What’s the number one requirement of a ball carrier? To score? Nope. To gain yards? Nope. The first rule of ball carriers is to protect the rock. Yet more and more, it seems, runners near the goal line extend their ball-carrying arm to break the plane or touch the pylon to get a TD. Similarly, ball carriers have taken increasingly to cradling the ball as if it were a loaf of bread. The problem is that defenses have gotten better at playing the ball and knocking it loose. Most defenses, in fact, run daily drills in which they practice stripping the ball. It’s time well spent when you consider that teams that win the turnover battle win the game nearly 80 percent of the time. (That’s from a Harvard study, so you can trust it.) Think about that stat the next time you see a runner expose the ball to stretch for a measly extra yard. Even near the goal line, I’m telling you, the risk is not worth the reward.
In New England, players are reminded that carrying the ball is a privilege. If a player abuses that privilege with fumbles or by carrying the ball carelessly, he will lose that privilege until he earns it back. Belichick would never encourage extending the ball near the goal line; he means it when he says he never wants the ball to be unprotected. Of course, there will be times when an overzealous Patriot ignores the edict. But even if he scores, he can expect to get an earful from his coach. God help him if the ball comes loose.
Late in games, as soon as a team that’s down by at least two points gets anywhere near midfield, television producers slap that virtual line onto the screen to indicate where the field-goal kicker’s range begins. Now, you might think that it’s a cool innovation (graphics!) or a helpful visual guide, and I might even agree—if not for the fact that it actually highlights the wrong target. Remember, the line represents the outer reaches of the kicker’s range. Time constraints aside, why would that be any offense’s goal? The point isn’t to get into field-goal range. The point is to get into surefire field-goal range. This is no small difference. An offense that can move the ball just 11 more yards and decrease the length of the attempt from, say, 50 yards down to 39 has increased its odds of scoring points by more than 20 percent.
Too many teams grow significantly more conservative once they get the ball into field-goal range because they don’t want to give up the chance to get three points. But they shouldn’t just want a chance; they should want a real chance. Why pile more pressure on an already pressure-filled situation? Forcing a kicker to achieve at the edge of his capabilities in a must-make-it moment is not a winning formula. For a head coach, who needs to factor in weather changes, injuries, and his kicker’s fluctuating mental state, field-goal range has to be a moving target, not a static line.
What has always bothered me about missed field goals is that they’re filed away in the wrong statistical category. They’re not missed field goals; they’re turnovers. Think about it: After a miss, there’s a change of possession and a loss of yardage as the ball placement is seven yards behind the original line of scrimmage. In 2017, kickers converted 69 percent (107 of 154) of field goal attempts from beyond 50 yards. That means that in a game of inches, an offense handed the ball over to the defense near midfield 47 times.
Sure sounds like turnovers to me. Why do we continue to pretend otherwise?
There’s a moment in the fourth quarter of every close-ish game in which it transforms into an “onside kick game.” You know what I mean: A team is up two scores, and the only way an opponent can come back and win is if it manages to secure an extra possession with a successful onside kick. What’s funny, though, is how few of those games actually ever end that way. Teams are so focused on scoring a touchdown first that they fail to leave themselves enough time to kick a field goal even if they can get the ball back. I know the traditional thinking on this is that you want to hang on to the chance to win the game as long as possible (even if that chance is contingent on a miracle turnover or broken play), which means you don’t want to go for a field goal first because if you miss, the game’s over right then. But I’ve always thought such thinking is too rigid. You need two scores; it makes no difference to anyone but the gamblers what order you get them in. Doesn’t it actually make more sense to move the ball into makeable field-goal range as fast as possible to give yourself the most time to get that touchdown?
I learned this by watching Parcells when he was coaching the Patriots. Whenever he found himself in an onside kick game, he’d factor in intangibles such as time-outs left, weather, the kicker’s confidence and range, and the moment a drive feels like it has stalled. But he was never afraid to follow his gut and attempt a field goal first even if it meant facing the wrath of the media and all the other armchair quarterbacks out there. You know why? Because it was the right move.
On first down the offense doesn’t gain any yardage, which prompts the announcers to proclaim that it now needs to spend second down getting into a third and manageable situation, which then prompts me to proclaim that nobody knows anything. I’m sorry, but isn’t the goal to score? Who designs plays to gain three or four yards? Shouldn’t you call every play with the idea that it could break for a big gain? Look, I understand that sometimes you have to manage a situation and make keeping a drive alive your priority. But more often than not this is not the case. I might feel differently if third and manageable solved an offense’s scoring problems. It doesn’t.
The truth is, most NFL play callers don’t even understand what third down and manageable actually means. Most will define it as third and six. In the last few years, however, the average conversion rate for this down and distance has been about 26 percent. Getting in third and manageable might sound like a solid plan, but shouldn’t a solid plan have a success rate better than one in four? Third down in general is a tough position to be in. The game buckles down on third down. Defenses are designed for just such situations. Even the best teams convert third downs at only about a 45 percent rate. (The league average in 2017 was 38 percent.)
In the end, the best third-down strategy is to avoid third downs altogether.
Instead of teams trying to get into third and manageable situations, I propose that they’d be better off taking their cues from the Canadian Football League. I’m serious. The CFL gives offenses three downs, not four, so they never have to concern themselves with third and manageable because they have only two chances to make a first down. In the CFL, every play call needs to be aggressive.
A part of me thinks this CFL style is where offensive philosophy is headed. Why wait until third down to fight to keep the drive going? Sweetening the pot, most defenses are still in their basic schemes on second down, and so their best pass rushers aren’t even on the field. Why not take a shot when you have the advantage? Sooner or later defenses will adjust and begin using nickel (passing) packages on second downs. And that will be just fine, too, because then every down will be an equal fight for a first down, and third and manageable situations will be history, which they should be.
NFL football today is about one thing above all else: matchups. In basketball, analysts highlight changes in the lineup all the time, announcing stuff such as “Team A has gone small to cause problems for the much slower Team B.” Why don’t football analysts do this more often? Even well-informed fans can get lost in the different formations and personnel disguises, missing the significance of the constantly rotating matchups that are now the key to most NFL games.
It wouldn’t be that hard to communicate this before every snap. Every personnel group is described with two digits, the first indicating the number of running backs and the second the number of tight ends. If the Patriots come out in 11 personnel, they have one back and one tight end on the field and thus probably three wideouts. The defense would more than likely counter with its nickel package (three defensive backs). The play-by-play guy could just mention this quickly or the networks could just add “11p/nickel” to the “bug,” the on-screen graphic that displays score, time and down, and distance.
Some announcers do a good job of mentioning a two-tight-end set that suggests a running play or an empty backfield that foretells a pass. But it would be nice if they did this on every down. That way we’d know that if Belichick stays in 11 personnel, we should focus on the depth in the defensive backfield. And then if the Pats gain 150 yards rushing from that package, we can rightfully expect the media to ask about the nickel defense’s porous run support. Too often, though, fans watching at home have no idea what personnel group is in the game, and if they don’t know this, how can they understand the point-counterpoint drama going on at field level? Plus, imagine the second-guessing that would occur if fans actually had the information necessary to second-guess.
Another thing that drives me nuts: when a commentator offers a simple solution to a complex problem, such as when a team is running the ball well and he suggests that the defense needs to jump into an eight-man front. Yes, the vaunted eight-man front. They mention it as if it were the antidote to every potent ground game. But if the eight-man front always stopped the run, there wouldn’t be any 1,000-yard rushers, right?
In the same way that third and manageable is a misnomer, eight-man run-stuffing fronts aren’t actually made up of eight run-stuffers. Rather, they include a member of the secondary, usually a safety, who has to move up into the box. He’s not a typical run stopper, yet his responsibility is the same as that of those who are much bigger and much better at it. Furthermore, there are eight gaps that need to be defended on any run play, and if the defense isn’t properly aligned at all times to man all those ever-moving, ever-changing gaps, it won’t help if you have an 18-man front stacked in the box.
Al Davis never learned. He loved eight-man fronts. But all Denver had to do to beat the Raiders was stretch their offense with a series of simple bootleg plays, because as soon as the eight-man front lost gap control, it became more like a six-man front. Then the Broncos could run the ball up and down the field. The Raiders never budged: Davis was the only coach who believed in eight-man fronts more than TV’s talking heads do.
All a quarterback cares about is this: Is the middle of the field open or closed? That’s it. If the middle of the field is open, it means the safeties are playing a Cover 2 shell, and that in turn means that the front will be a seven-man defense. If the middle of the field is closed, however, it means that a safety is covering the middle third of the field and therefore the front will be an eight-man attack. When a quarterback comes to the line of scrimmage, one of his primary presnap reads is to determine where the safeties are. Yours should be, too. Because once you and he pin down that placement, the wheel of possible plays in everyone’s heads can begin to spin. If the read is “open,” that means the middle seam may be vulnerable, and you can think play-action pass to a tight end who releases straight down the field and sneaks behind a slower linebacker. If the read is “closed,” start looking for routes that head toward the sideline.
Once you make that middle-of-the-field read, you can continue to think like a quarterback by determining whether the defense is playing zone or man to man. This one’s even less complicated. Before the snap, take a look: If the wideout or tight end comes in motion, is anyone on the defense following him? If the answer is yes, that’s man. If it’s no, it’s zone. How simple is that?
On December 13, 2009, Broncos wideout Brandon Marshall set an NFL record by catching 21 passes in a game. I recently rewatched that performance to put that accomplishment in perspective. A couple of things stood out: First, Marshall was targeted a whopping 28 times, and second, his team had just 29 completions total. To say he was the go-to guy is an understatement.
Still, I wondered how many of his catches could be credited to Marshall’s talent and how many were the result of the play design. My conservative breakdown was that 17 catches could have been made by any professional receiver. This is no knock on Marshall; I respect his game, his hands, and his skill in getting in and out of cuts smoothly. But although great hands, speed, or leaping ability sometimes can overcome suffocating double teams or an inaccurate quarterback, more often than not it’s the scheme that gets a receiver open and makes the difference.
Some version of the following happens all the time in the college game: A receiver runs 10 yards down the field, breaks outside, and makes a catch. There’s little man-to-man press coverage in college, so more than likely he’ll have run the route against a soft zone, essentially with no one near him. It might as well be a practice drill. Yet the announcer goes all Dick Vitale, screaming about how talented the receiver is to have gotten so open. Stop. The design of the play got him open.
Or think of a well-designed catch this way: At the end of an NBA blowout, when a player snags an uncontested rebound off a missed free throw, it still counts on the stat sheet even though he didn’t have to work nearly as hard for it as he did for a similar board in the second quarter. The stats don’t make a distinction, but spectators know.
Likewise, when a receiver gets free access downfield and the quarterback hits him right in the hands (running against air is what we call it), credit the scheme, not the receiver.
Nothing conjures up gridiron nostalgia quite like a frozen field blanketed in white powder. I mean, that’s old-time football right there. Unfortunately, it also means that old-time, outdated football clichés can’t be far behind. Here’s the worst one: If it’s snowing, the running game will have to take over. Nope. For a number of reasons it’s actually just the opposite. On a snow-covered field the passing game has the advantage.
As long as pass catchers can handle the slick, hard balls, the slippery field conditions favor the player who knows where he’s going, not the one who is reacting and trying to keep up. Snow games are like target practice for a quarterback. Running the ball, in contrast, requires dependable footing first and foremost—not least for the blockers, who need a firm base to drive defenders off the ball.
Sure, the ball is harder to catch. But it’s also harder to keep hold of, especially in tight quarters with everyone tugging at it. In the open field it’s much easier to maintain a handle when you only have to worry about one or two tacklers who are preoccupied with maintaining their footing. It helps if the receiver has perfected the fundamentals of his position and has the key cuts for all his routes locked into his muscle memory so that he can run them in his sleep—or on a sheet of ice. That feel for a pass route lessens the chance of a fall. Of course, that’s the first thing the Patriots practice every spring, with Belichick or one of his coaches standing right in the middle of the defensive backfield ready to pounce and loudly correct a player if he cuts off the wrong foot.
Belichick, as I mentioned before, dabbles in meteorology maybe more than any other coach. He knows what the conditions will be wherever the next game is because he wants to make sure to prepare his team properly. He wants them to have the right shoes. He wants them to have a feel for frozen or wet footballs, so he introduces greased-down or frozen footballs into practice. Sometimes, when the forecast is for rain, he justs dunks the ball in a jug of water before every snap.
So, as with most variables, snow and rain, not to mention sleet and hail, favor the Patriots.
Do you know the game Battleship? Two people deploy their fleet behind a screen and then take turns calling out coordinates for “bomb” strikes in hopes of hitting the opponent’s ships. F-5? Miss. H-5? Miss. G-3? Hit! Followed by G-4, G-5, and G-6 until the ship is sunk. That’s how some football play callers work all the time. They randomly probe for a play that might work, and when they find one, they repeat it again and again, sometimes disguising it with a different formation or look. Needless to say, smart play callers avoid Battleship syndrome.
Probing or guessing from play to play doesn’t allow a team to gain control of the game. Of course, game plans inevitably require adjustments on Sunday. But those adjustments shouldn’t be haphazard attempts to fix what isn’t working or find an opponent’s weaknesses. Teams need to have backup plans long before kickoff. Successful in-game tweaks are born of a clear understanding of what the other side is doing to keep you from accomplishing your goals.
Teams that play the Patriots, for example, know that Brady likes to control the middle of the field with the passing game, so they crowd that area with defenders and challenge him to throw the ball outside the numbers. But the Patriots don’t counter by blindly probing for weak spots with any old out-breaking route. Whatever they do fits into a master plan—say, two throws to the sidelines to open the middle of the field, followed by a draw play.
That’s gamesmanship.
Anything else is Battleship.
In 1966, when Robert Evans was appointed the head of production at Paramount Pictures, most people in the industry shook their heads in disbelief. How could a man with so little experience run a major motion picture studio? At that time Paramount was a financial mess, headed toward bankruptcy, and the studio’s new owner, Charles Bluhdorn, believed that only a unique approach that countered the conventional wisdom of his competitors would save the day. That made Evans the right man for the job. Paramount had to evolve or it would perish.
Evans had a simple but revolutionary idea: to move away from the long-standing tradition of blowing most of a film’s budget on A-list actors and instead invest in the talent behind the camera. Evans put his money into directors, screenwriters, and great stories (mostly from books) that could be turned into screenplays so strong that they’d transform solid but less-expensive actors into Oscar winners. During his eight-year stint as studio head, Paramount reemerged as a dominant force in Hollywood behind critically acclaimed hits such as The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby, The Odd Couple, and Love Story.
Talent “behind the camera” is just as important in the NFL. Some fans assume the level of coaching on every staff is equal—and equally high—essentially canceling the other staff out and leaving the most talented team to win. But the truth is that when the salary cap brought parity to the NFL, it also created an Evans-like shift that put a premium on the talent behind the talent. Just like in Hollywood, it took a while for the paychecks to catch up with the philosophy. I still remember sitting with Belichick in Cleveland going over salaries for the upcoming season. When we came to a left tackle, Paul Farren, who was due to make nearly $500,000, Belichick looked at me and said, “I have a hard time with Farren making more than I make.” Of course he was right.
Ever since then I’ve thought that coaching salaries should at least be in line with the minimum salaries for players. Al Davis loved to hire young offensive coordinators or position coaches he could develop into head coaches, partly because it meant he could keep running the defense but also because it saved him a lot of money. He never thought twice about paying players. But coaches? That was another matter. Davis would not have approved of the way the Raiders are paying their new coach, Jon Gruden. But if $100 million, give or take, over 10 years would give Davis a stroke, it is a clear indication of how much top-level coaching is valued in today’s NFL.
The problem isn’t paying for coaches who can have a huge impact on the success of your team. The problem is paying lots of money for mediocre guys whose impact is negligible at best. Bill Walsh told me—and I told you in Chapter 2—that not all coaches have the same potential impact on the game. A great running back coach might be a player favorite, but he’s not going to have much effect on wins and losses. Some coaches are there to execute a plan, not create one. But there are six staff spots—call them rainmakers—that are in a position to make a significant difference one way or another and should be paid accordingly.
Obviously, head coach is one of them. All three coordinators, too. And the offensive and defensive line coaches. Offensive line coaches are often well paid, and deservedly so, because if they can mold one post-third-round draft choice into a capable NFL starter each year, they have more than earned that salary. The defensive line coach, by contrast, is much like a lion tamer—he might as well be wearing a top hat and coat—because his players come from a pool of what is traditionally the most high-strung and hardest-to-control players. Those giant divas on the d-line need a demanding taskmaster. At least that’s been my experience. The best teams I’ve been with featured that kind of lineman—and that kind of coach.
Despite their importance, many coaches remain undervalued simply because it’s so hard to quantify what they’re worth to a team’s success. To help remedy that, I’ve always wondered whether it would be possible to rank coaches and staffs, to determine what kind of difference they made on a team. I asked some statistics whizzes at the University of California to help me with this idea, and they suggested that I cluster coaches into groups ranked like golf scores (lowest is best). The system we came up with has the top four at each position worth 2.5 points, the next four worth 5 points, and so on. Adding the results gives you a staff total that allows head-to-head comparisons. Obviously, this is not a scientific research project. My coach values are at best only as accurate as my draft grades, but they still can offer some insight.
For instance, let’s say the Patriots, with a Hall of Fame head coach and at least three potential head-coaching candidates on the sideline, have a staff total of 37 points and are playing a staff that graded at 80. (Remember, the lower the score, the better.) That opponent would need to have a pretty significant talent advantage to cover its coaching deficit. Can a team’s roster be talented enough to overcome a 43-point coaching discrepancy? Probably not. That’s why coaching matters, and that’s why in a few years a $100 million NFL coach will be considered a bargain.
If you’re still not convinced, play the “Belichick game” with me. Think of a team, any team, and ask what its record would be if Belichick coached it. If he left New England tomorrow for Miami, would the Dolphins win the AFC East? It’s plausible, right? So don’t kid yourself; a top coach is worth as much as a top quarterback.
Now, I might be old, but I don’t want to be that geezer who rants and raves about how experience matters. It really does, though, especially on the sidelines. In fact, sometimes Super Bowls are determined by it. Walsh once said to me, “I am a much better coach at 52 than I was at 42; I’ve got a better grasp.” And experience helps the most when game preparation meets game management.
In Super Bowl LI, Belichick felt confident that his team would score a lot of points against the Falcons. It’s not that he didn’t respect Atlanta’s defense; it’s just that after careful review he saw how his team would be able to move the ball, especially late in the game. He was so convinced that it was going to be a high-scoring game, in fact, that he began to think about ways to extend a lead from, say, a 20-point advantage to 21. Being up by 20 is nice, but being up by 21 is way better, especially in a high-flying game, since it means your opponent will have to score three touchdowns to beat you. Belichick’s solution was to devote two five-minute periods in practice before the Super Bowl to work on the Patriots’ collection of two-point conversions.
As it turns out, those plays won the Super Bowl. Entering the fourth quarter, the Pats were down 28–9. After kicking a field goal, they cut the lead to 16 with less than 10 minutes to play. It was still a seemingly impossible deficit for most teams. But not the Patriots. Because they had so much confidence in their two-point conversions, it felt like only a two-score game to them. They ended up using all three of the two-point plays Belichick had them practice—the final one to score the touchdown that won the game in overtime.
Some might call it luck.
The best minds in sports would call it something else.
Branch Rickey, the legendary, visionary baseball man, had a saying that perfectly defines the often misunderstood value of NFL coaching. “Luck,” Rickey used to say, “is often the residue of design.”
That’s why the best coaches get lucky a lot. It’s also why when I watch the best coaches on Sunday, my house is blessedly quiet.