Game Planning A Winner
Thursday, October 22, 2009 17:54
How do the perennial NFL play-off teams remain competitive? What ingredients make an NFL franchise successful? Why do bad teams have trouble becoming even “fair” teams?
In the next few weeks we will examine history to help us deconstruct the process of building a winning NFL franchise. We begin with…
WHO IS IN CHARGE?
George Halas was in charge. He owned, managed and coached the Decatur Staleys before they moved to Chicago and became Da Bears. Halas all but invented American professional football. “Papa Bear”, a nickname he earned when he changed the team’s name to the Bears, won 5 championships and 324 games, in the process setting the standard and methods for modern coaching, general management, and ownership. Halas thrived in an era when the money and the game were “small”, however, and he retired as coach in 1965. He was one of a rare kind.
Halas operated the league and his team with a mostly fair hand–well, more like a paw from a cute, cuddly, pissed-off, and eternally cantankerous bear. One legend has Halas interrupting an opposing coach’s pre-game speech to wish him good luck and to let him know, “We’re going to kick your ass.”
When his Bears were the best game in town, Halas shared revenue with much smaller teams; he was a visionary who built the bridge by which the game crossed into the modern era.
TODAY’S OWNERS
21st-century NFL owners are successful people before they ever own a team. They have inherited and/or made huge money in other business ventures; with egos just as large as their bank accounts, they seldom listen to anyone tell them how to run their shop.
Such individuals will always end up doing “it” their way, but the definition of “it” is a bigger issue than fans imagine. Just like any other endeavor, there are several ways to build a winning NFL franchise.
Taking into account individual proclivities about the corporate structure a successful business person prefers, there are common threads that must be pulled if an owner wants to earn a Lombardi trophy for his mantle.
As television and other media helped to popularize the game–and make it into a huge industry–the question of “Who is in charge?” became less important than “Who is in charge of what?”
After 1965, most NFL owners were legitimate businessmen. Even the most controlling, stubborn, focused and successful coaches like Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, and Don Shula knew who buttered their popcorn. These legendary coaches were all lucky to enter the coaching sweepstakes when their respective owners had come to the conclusion that God did not bless them with the expertise or experience to micro-manage an NFL football team. Those owners went out and found people who did.
Noll and Shula were defensive coordinators before accepting head coaching positions. Lombardi was the offensive coordinator for the Giants opposite Tom Landry’s defense. Landry also deserves inclusion in this pantheon of head coaching. However, Landry was the only coach in the foursome that had an executive with at least equal authority to his own in the club’s hierarchy. In fact, Tex Schramm voted in owners’ meetings for then Cowboys owner Clint Murchinson. Shula, Noll, and Lombardi were all given General Manager responsibilities as well as those of head coach. They handled everything related to football.
Their teams’ owners signed the checks–and built glass cases for the Super Bowl Trophies that were yet to come.
When Don Shula retired in 1995, he, Noll, Lombardi, and Landry had appeared in 16 of 28 Super Bowls, winning 11.
That’s one way to skin a franchise.
Jerry Jones found another way when, in 1988, he bamboozled the Vikings’ General Manager, Mike Lynn, into giving up several quality players, three first round and three second round draft picks, along with the Shroud of Turin and the Dalai Lama’s sister, for Herschel Walker in order to stock his already talented roster with the likes of Emmitt Smith and Darren Woodson. Interestingly, Jimmie Johnson managed the trade; he was the only coach Jones has ever given over complete control of football operations.
Since Dallas’s reign of excellence ended in 1996–and Jerry Jones anointed himself the de facto General Manager–the Cowboys have not won a play-off game.
Nobody in the league is stupid enough to fall for Jones’s manipulations again– except maybe Daniel Snyder.
With the advent of free agency and the salary cap in 1993, most owners–with the noted exception of Denver’s Pat Bowlen, who gave Mike Shanahan GM duties–figured out that the dual roles of General Manger/Head Coach were too much for one man, and teams hired coaches whose primary job was to relate to modern players, who are a much different breed than their predecessors of the last 30 years.
Denver, Pittsburgh, and Chicago represented franchises that made am immediate adjustment to the new NFL reality. New England, Philadelphia, and the Giants followed suit.
There is a formula starting with Lombardi and Landry’s hirings:
- Find a young coach from the defensive side of the ball, unless some offensive guy like Lombardi, Sean Payton or Josh McDaniels knocks you out with the force of their personality.
Don’t underestimate the importance of that item. The history of elite coaches shows us that their players speak about them with reverence. Landry and Noll were seen as cold, distant and unemotional. Their talent lay in tapping the emotions of their players to excel on the field. There are books filled with Lombardi quotes that have nothing to do with winning football games. Shula was known for his intense focus; two losing seasons out of thirty-three prove the point.
This NFL Mt. Rushmore of coaches shared other important talents. Each was the unquestioned boss who neither made nor took any excuses. Each was a superb evaluator of talent, and all were blessed with the ability to freeze a room with a deadly glare.
- Your guy must come from a winner or have already achieved great success as a coordinator (or, in rare instances, a position coach). It is also desirable that he have some connection to your city or be willing to forge one.
Before Bill Belichick became a three-time Super Bowl winner, he was a successful defensive coach under Bill Parcells in New England. Before the Steelers hired Bill Cowher, he had Kansas City’s defense hogging the highlight shows. Cowher also grew up in Pittsburgh.
We know the formula works as much from the teams who utilize it as those who ignore it.
Look at the Steelers under Mike Tomlin. The guy sounds like a Greek philosopher when he speaks. Josh McDaniels, just out of the gate in Denver–his energy is infectious. Mike Smith’s work ethic and discipline in Atlanta are on par with that of Mike Singletary in San Fran. The Raven’s John Harbaugh has some maturing to do, but he has the Black Birds flying high.
Conversely, the once proud, now laughable Raiders–who were successful under a very young John Madden and very shrewd Al Davis–have become a caricature of their logo because nobody has the balls to tell Davis 1983 was 27 years ago, not last week.
The Rams’ front office is eating itself alive. The Ford family turned the Lion’s den over to Matt Millen, who was in over his head and ended up dragging the franchise down with him. (Jim Schwarz, however, fits into the “successful coach paradigm”; the Lions just need to give him time.) The brainless trusts in San Diego and Buffalo decided to recycle Norv Turner and Dick Jauron.
Good luck with that route guys.
With any formula, sometimes “it” just doesn’t work. Marvin Lewis was a hell of a defensive coordinator, but as a head coach has yet to demand discipline. Eric Mangini has yet to show why two struggling teams gave him a shot.
- The owner must be prepared to give the new coach time commensurate to how bad the team he inherits currently is.
Chuck Noll told the Rooneys he needed at least 5 years. In his fourth, the Steelers won their first playoff game in 40 years and came within a perfectly timed fake punt by Shula’s Dolphins of going to the Super Bowl.
Without a smart owner having his back, Landry would have been fired after 4-5 years.
The worst examples of owners who think they should be in charge are the aforementioned Jerry Jones and Washington’s Daniel Snyder–a brilliant billionaire in business but a complete dolt when it comes to building a winner in the NFL.
Next week, we’ll talk about who those in charge hire to coordinate their offenses and defenses and the impact those critical decisions have on building a consistent winner.
Our final installment will focus on the people who can make double-digit IQ owners and coaches look like Einstein–and brilliant football visionaries look like Forrest Gump–the men who play the game.
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October 22nd, 2009 at 7:15 pm
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