If football played out in a classroom instead of on a field, the significance of the meeting today between the teacher, Bill Belichick, and student, Josh McDaniels, might match its intrigue.
Coaching matters in football, of course, and strategy is among the game’s most fascinating components. It explains why like minds matching wits at Invesco Field at Mile High has sparked so much analytical discussion elsewhere.
But Belichick, the mentor and New England Patriots coach, and McDaniels, the protege and Broncos coach, have tried to send a deflecting message throughout the week that the result of their contest will be less about how they think and more about how their players play.
Their lesson of the week can be supported by at least one example.
Go back to 1988, when Mike Shana-han was not yet the Mastermind. Having spent the previous three seasons as the offensive coordinator for Broncos coach Dan Reeves, Shanahan was coaching the Los Angeles Raiders against his mentor in an early-season game at Mile High Stadium.
This was before the days of radio communication between the coach and quarterback.
“He was using the same signals sending plays in that I was using,” Reeves said. “So I knew the plays he was calling. I was telling (defensive coordinator) Joe Collier what the play was. I’d see it was a bootleg, and I’d tell Joe, ‘It’s a bootleg.’ “
The teacher had outfoxed his careless student, right? Nope. Shanahan’s Raiders beat Reeves’ Broncos anyway, 30-27.
“They’d run the bootleg and make a big play anyway,” Reeves said. “Finally, Joe told me: ‘Just tell me whether it’s run or pass. I don’t want to know what the play is.’ “
The lesson here is obvious.
“It’s still about executing,” Reeves said.
There are students from overcrowded, inner-city schools who wind up with an Ivy League degree, and there are privileged kids who receive a private-school education and wind up dropping out of junior college.
Teachers can make a difference, sure, but ultimately, achievement is determined by the student.
Belichick has had assistants such as Romeo Crennel and Eric Mangini who so far haven’t turned out to be good NFL head coaches, and another in Charlie Weis, who has been so-so at Notre Dame.
Then there’s McDaniels, who reached the midterm of his first semester as head coach with straight A’s.
“He’s got a lot of poise. He’s cool under pressure,” Belichick said. “He did a great job for us here, and it doesn’t surprise me that he’s doing well out there.”
Watching the master at work
The Broncos are 4-0 and indirectly have Belichick to thank. When a 25-year-old McDaniels joined the Patriots in 2001, Belichick assigned him to defensive film study, scouting and personnel. By the time the Broncos nabbed McDaniels as a 32-year-old head coach, he had a well-balanced education of scouting, personnel, three years with New England’s defensive staff and five years as Tom Brady’s personal coach.
The same Belichick who developed so many unimpressive head coaches has also seemingly created a coaching Frankenstein.
“The biggest thing is being a great listener and paying attention to the little things that take place,” McDaniels said. “There are some people I know who they’re not going to work everyday trying to pay attention to everything the head coach does, either because they’ve got their hands full with their job, or that’s not what their sights are set on.
“But I was always into what Bill was doing, what he had to take care of, as much as I could see. There was plenty I couldn’t see. But the things I could watch him do — how he handled the staff meeting, how he planned practice, how he ran training camp, how he handled the players, what he did at halftime, what he did on a Monday after a loss, how he handled a win, all of those things, if you pay attention and note them in your head and take notes, they can teach you an extraordinary amount of what it’s about to be a head coach.”
Gruden: the voice of experience
Jon Gruden has been on both sides of this teacher-pupil story. He was the protege with the Raiders going up against Mike Holmgren, and he was the mentor with Tampa Bay when he destroyed close friend and former Raiders coach Bill Callahan in Super Bowl XXXVII.
Where Gruden benefitted was not what he knew of Callahan, but the tendencies of his former Raiders quarterback, Rich Gannon. The NFL’s most valuable player during the 2002 season, Gannon threw a Super Bowl-record five interceptions against Gruden’s Bucs.
“There are going to be some advantage for Josh McDaniels in terms of knowing Tom Brady,” Gruden said. “What he likes in the 2-minute drill. There are things Josh knows about Tom Brady that you and I don’t know.”
In turn, Brady said: “Hopefully I can provide a little insight for our defense. I think we’ve got to frustrate Josh.”
There it is again. Countering the counter. McDaniels was amused when told of the Shanahan-Reeves hand-signals story, but not surprised. In sports, intelligence leads to counterintelligence, which can lead to countering counterintelligence, and the next thing you know, players aren’t playing, but standing around thinking, “Huh?”
“It can be a detriment if you try to do too much and try to get too cute with trying to figure out everything they’re doing,” McDaniels said. “We put so much stuff in our game plans that if you then try to tell your defensive players, ‘Look, if you see the quarterback do this signal, this is probably what it is — although if they change it and the guy was supposed to do an out and instead he runs an out-and-up, you better make sure he doesn’t run by you.’
“I mean, how do you tell your players all that stuff? You can’t do that. It paralyzes them.”
Mike Klis: 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com
