Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World's Most Beautiful Game (23 page)

We accomplished two of those goals in 2009. We led the league in rushing offense with an average of 172.3 yards per game. That was 10.3 yards more than second-place Tennessee. Our NFL-high 607 rushing attempts was also well above the league average of 440.3. In 16 regular-season games, we had 2,756 rushing yards with 21 touchdowns—one less than Tennessee and Miami—and averaged 4.5 yards per attempt.

Our tailback, Thomas Jones, had 1,402 rushing yards to finish third in the NFL behind Tennessee’s Chris Johnson (2,006) and St. Louis’s Steven Jackson (1,416). Fifteen runners had 1,000-plus yards. Jones also averaged 20.7 carries per game to rank fourth. He was complemented in our backfield by Shonn Greene (540 yards) and Leon Washington (330 yards). Our ground-and-pound philosophy worked, and it was the same approach I carried into the 2010 season behind veteran LaDainian Tomlinson and Greene. Our passing game, however, wasn’t as efficient in 2009. We ranked 31 out
of 32 NFL teams in passing offense, throwing for 2,380 yards—304 yards more than last-place Cleveland and 2,274 less than first-place Houston. In fairness, winging it down the field every play wasn’t our approach. We attempted 393 passes—six less than Houston completed! Okay, we didn’t accomplish my goals to lead the league in rushing attempts and completions in 2009, but when you combine the two, it does work. Is it the only way to win in the NFL? No, but it’s the best formula to win. I am not the smartest guy in the NFL, but I am smart enough to at least look at the history of this league. It made sense. If you run the ball more, you’re generally ahead. I am just telling you mathematically that when you look at the factors involved in wins and losses, running the football wins games. When you study it and start formulating it, you think, “Holy shit!” It’s right there in front of you, in black and white. You try like crazy to build your team that way, and that’s what I did. I think it’s important because of the wind in New York and the bad weather, plus we’ve got a young quarterback in Sanchez and you can’t just let it fly every time. I also believed we’d be more balanced in 2010, but I planned to rely on that running game, no question.

I realize that a lot of people thought we ran the football as often as we did during my first season because we had a rookie quarterback in Sanchez. Honestly, I would have had the same approach if Brett Favre was still our quarterback. When I talked to our offense, I just told them passionately what I expected from them and they knew where I was coming from. I told them I wasn’t going to call plays, but I wanted to make sure they knew they were going to play with my mentality. My mentality is always that we are going to get after our opponent’s ass. That’s how we are going to play the game in every phase—offense, defense, and special teams.

Of course, there are so many variables in winning, too. Everybody also knows turnovers play a huge role in games. In the snap of a finger, turnovers can do so much to change the complexion of a game. It’s the old plus-minus game. If you look at rushing attempts plus completions, if you are ahead in that category, then you win
about 80 percent of your games. It’s a proven fact. Then tie in protecting the football and getting turnovers on defense with rushing attempts and completions, and presto, that’s all you’ve got to do. The facts back me up. For example, in our 19 games in 2009, we had a plus-turnover margin in 10 of them. We won all 10 games. It sounds easy, right? According to Randy Lange, who works for the Jets on our website
NewYorkJets.com
, if you count all games (playoffs and regular season) since 2003, NFL teams that get at least one more turnover than their opponent win nearly 80 percent of the time. Generally, if you go plus-one with turnovers, you win 70 percent of the time. If you go plus-two, it jumps to 80 percent, plus-three is 90 percent, and plus-four is almost 100 percent.

During the 2010 season I was asked by the media why the Baltimore Ravens were so tough to beat. I thought it was simple to explain: Their front seven is as good as any team in football in stopping the run and getting after the quarterback. Plus, they almost always win the turnover battle, having done so some ridiculous number, like 45 out of 47 times, since 2003. My point was that Baltimore protects the football, and when it does, it usually wins.

Actually, I wasn’t too far off with my math. Since 2003 and over a span of 51 games, Baltimore had won 48 of them (.941 winning percentage) in which it had at least a plus-one turnover differential. Incredible! That’s how close that mark is to being perfect over the past five years. My way is not the only way to win in this league, but I do think it’s the most effective. Still, 99.9 percent of coaches in the NFL will say you need to play good defense, stop the run, and be able to run the ball, and I think they’ll still probably tell you that. But I also know the game has changed. They will say you better have an explosive offense, because the game has gotten so physical, so multiple, and so complex that you need to have the ability to gain yardage in large chunks. If you are going to be good, if you are going to be a champion, you better be explosive. Naturally, the biggest chunks of yardage come in the passing game.

People will counter, “No, you have to look at the numbers and you have to look at what really does win championships.” There are other head coaches, however, who believe that you can’t use any form of criteria that encompasses the last 10 to 15 years, because of the way the rules have changed and the quality of quarterbacks we have now. Protecting quarterbacks had a huge impact on the success of the league. Taking away hits to the head and shots to the knees allowed more quarterbacks to play with comfort, and the stats were telling. There were 10 quarterbacks who threw for at least 4,000 yards and 12 had at least 25 touchdown passes. Think about it: Five years ago, there were two quarterbacks who threw for over 4,000 yards; in 2009, there were 10—Matt Schaub (4,770), Peyton Manning (4,500), and Tony Romo (4,483) were the top three. With quarterbacks passing for so many yards, it can change your approach.

Hey, I am a guy who helped win a Super Bowl with the Ravens in 2000 because of a great defense. A great defense is easier to build financially because it takes less money. If you want to be great offensively, you have to have the marquee quarterback, and that gets expensive. Defensively, you have to have that shut-down corner and you have to have the rush end, but financially it is easier and less expensive to build a topflight defense than it is put the resources into a topflight offense.

Take Indianapolis, for example. It’s an organization that says, “Hey, we’re going to put our assets on offense, and defense, well, you’ve got to hang on because we are going to wrap ourselves around our unique, talented quarterback Peyton Manning.” Manning had the highest salary-cap figure ($21,205,718) for the 2009 season, but he ranked sixth among all quarterbacks with a $14 million average.

Indianapolis owner Jim Irsay said before the Super Bowl that Manning would become the highest-paid player in the NFL. Manning’s contract expired after the 2010 season and he was named a “franchise player” by the Colts so that they could keep him from becoming a free agent. On top of that, Manning’s brother Eli, Philip Rivers, and Jay Cutler have raised the ante on what it costs for quarterbacks. Of
the top 10 highest-paid players in the NFL, according to the
Sports Illustrated
“Fortunate 50” list, the top four were quarterbacks and just three defensive players—linebacker Terrell Suggs of the Ravens, defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth of the Redskins, and defensive end Julius Peppers of the Bears—made the cut.

Honestly, football is like any business. Aside from salaries, all businesses are made up of the same three things: structure, personnel, and chemistry. Offense and big plays are the same thing. It takes a certain level of talent obviously, the ability to physically do the things that it takes to be explosive, whether it’s speed, leaping ability, accuracy, or throw power, whatever it may be. It does take a structure. Shoot, even fast-break basketball has a structure. Particularly in the game of football there has to be an integration of all 11 guys on the field for these things to happen—that’s your personnel. As far as the chemistry part of it, there has to be the proverbial 10,000 hours. You have to have repetition; there has to be a “you wink, I nod” sixth sense that we have about one another to make these things happen. Occasionally, you just have a phenomenal freak at a position, a player who just does something ungodly during the game. Yet for the most part, to consistently do it and win takes those three things: structure, personnel, and chemistry.

As a head coach, you also have to learn how to give up control of your team and delegate power and responsibility to your assistant coaches. It can be difficult, but it’s something you have to do. When I was with the Ravens, Brian Billick used an analogy that I always thought was interesting. He said, “Coaching is like observing a work of art. The assistant coach is so close, just like the person who stands right up against the masterpiece that you can see the brushstrokes, the texture; you can smell the canvas almost. You lose a little bit of the bigger picture, but you’re right there in it.” That’s what an assistant coach is. He’s right there in it with his players.

When you step back as a coordinator, you now have a little bit of a bigger picture—not the total picture, but a bigger picture. You have stepped away from the canvas a little bit. You lose just a little bit
of that interpersonal connection, but you still have it to some degree. When you become a head coach, now you’ve got the big picture. You see the total scope, but it’s hard to maintain that up-close-and-personal relationship, that standing close to the canvas, so to speak.

It’s hard, because it’s no different from the principal who longs to be back in the classroom at times, or the detective or desk sergeant who misses the beat. The thing that drew you into the profession is what you miss, but it’s offset by the fact that you’re moving up the chain of command and there are rewards there as well. I remember Brian Billick telling the story of how Denny Green had a big team meeting and Billick got up and did his thing as a coordinator for a little bit. He must have gone a half hour or so, and then he turned it over to the assistant coaches because they need individual time. After Billick walked out of the room and passed by Denny’s room, Denny said, “Now I know you are going to be a good coordinator.”

Billick asked, “What do you mean by that?”

Green answered, “Because you are finally getting the idea that less is better and that the more you can turn them over to your assistants, the better off you are going to be.” I always remembered that.

While the entire team is my responsibility as head coach, there are times I have to hold back and let my assistant coaches coach. Even so, I’ve always pushed my coaches toward the teaching process. That’s where I felt like I had the biggest impact. Hey, we are all good coaches and they know what they’re doing, but the one thing I did want to control was the way we taught. I want it to be specific. I want it to be energetic. I wanted the players to get exactly what they need instead of the mind-numbing dump of “You know what? I’m going to throw so much shit at the players that even if it doesn’t go right I can rest well at night at least to say I covered it, so it’s not my fault.” That’s not teaching. If you emphasize everything, you’ve emphasized nothing. So the teaching progression has always been the most important thing to me, and that’s where I felt I could impact the coaches the most. For example, when I was at Baltimore, I would teach my guys to watch the quarterback’s hand under the
center. When his hand twitched and flashed open, that gave us a little bit of a jump, because the ball was about to be snapped. It was a simple lesson, but it was specific.

My brother Rob and I both like to study the opponent and understand what they do; and when we do pressure, we make sure it’s something that will hit the quarterback. We always read protection and usually try to set up blitzes that will hit their quarterback with a wide-open blitzer. That’s when you are a good pressure team. It’s an art; it’s how to study it, however much time you put in. You get to those last situations, and the NFL is great. In college football, very few games are decided by a touchdown or less. In pro football, hell, they all are. So the last seconds of any game are absolutely critical.

You know the old saying that the NFL is an easy game complicated by coaches? That’s the truth. My dad told me that, and it is as true now as it was then. Football is an easy game made complicated by coaches. I try to carry that over with our guys. Some people have that KISS philosophy—Keep It Simple, Stupid. We have the KILL philosophy—Keep It Likable, Learnable.

We have a great scheme, a great system. It’s proven. You look at our defense and it’s proven, year in and year out. Our blitzing, gambling defense embarrassed a lot of players and teams in 2009. We had the best defense in the NFL; even so, you can always be better. Mike Tannenbaum and I agreed that the Colts exposed us after we led Indy by 10 at halftime of the AFC title game and lost. Mike told the story that part of the moves we made in the off-season go back to when he hired me and had called Ozzie Newsome in Baltimore to ask about me. Ozzie made the joke that I’m the sort of guy who’s always standing out on I-95 with a sign around his neck that says, I NEED CORNERBACKS. He wasn’t far off.

Well, guess what? We always talked about this. It’s not the position of the player, it’s his disposition, and we do have that kind of mentality. Cornerback Darrelle Revis has that kind of mentality. Linebacker Bart Scott has that kind of mentality. Mark Sanchez has that kind of mentality. I understand the philosophy of players. I know
when to give guys time off. I don’t want our assistant coaches meeting all day with players. I want to keep our guys fresh—not only their bodies, but their minds, too. I want it to be a stress-free environment.

There’s already enough pressure. Players all understand that they have a job to perform, and if they don’t perform they are not going to play for the New York Jets or me. I am not going to be uptight and be an asshole about it, but I’m still going to get my message across. Coaches and players are linked together. I might cut a player today, I might fire a coach tomorrow, but eventually it’s going to come to the head coach. I understand that the better players perform, the better the team performs and the longer I will be the head coach. When everyone has respect for the guy above and below them, and you have a respect for his place in an organization’s success—and you communicate it that way—that makes everyone want to elevate their game to protect each other, and that’s why it goes back to disposition.