Oakland,
1969. Two men sit opposite one another in a West Coast burger joint not far from the ocean. The first is a small, well-tanned man whose shock of black hair is slicked back with oil. California sunlight flashes off his silver-rimmed sunglasses. When he takes them off there are wrinkles under his eyes.
The second
man has the look of an ex-football-player who still eats as if he was playing.
The tone of their well-worn jokes lets any observer know that they are old
friends.
The
smaller man, Al Davis, gets down to business. "I’m getting too old to handle
being coach and team owner. But the real thing is, the coaching game is
starting to get away from me. John, I asked you here because I want you to
coach the Raiders for me."
John
Madden shakes his head in disbelief. "I just don't get what you mean about
the game getting away from you. The Raiders are doing good. You’ve got tough
guys that play hard. You’ve got a winning record. Dunno what’s the matter with that, Al."
"The
way I coach the game is getting old fast. New ideas are taking over. My idea of
attracting renegades and rejects and playing tough football isn't enough
anymore. Have you seen what Miami is
doing with that new defense?"
"Okay,
yeah,” Madden agrees reluctantly. “They’re doing good with the new zone
defense."
"They’re
doing good now. They’re set up to do even better. I need to find a coach who
can come up with something new before we slump. A new formation would be
good." Davis tosses his sunglasses on the table and gives a little shrug. "That’s
why I needed to talk to you, John. Whatever the Raiders need to do, it’s beyond
me."
"Naw,
I don't have anything for you there. Besides, a new fad isn’t really what you
want. At the end of the day these new formations are just indirect ways to use
strengths and hide weaknesses. What you really want is to beat ‘em to the
punch. You want to figure a way to use your strengths and exploit opponent's
weaknesses."
Davis makes
his reply, trying not to let his disappointment show in his voice. He tries to
recall the next guy in line for the Raiders head coaching job.
Madden
does not hear it. He has warmed to his subject. "See, what nobody knows is
that football isn’t really about
these big schemes and the latest fad formation. Those are just tools to
indirectly get to the good stuff. I am going straight to the good stuff!"
"Um.”
"Sure!”
Madden, always enthusiastic, becomes boisterous. “I figured this out a few years
ago when I was playing defensive tackle. We were winning but the guy I was
playing against got the better of me on every play. Our team kept scoring but
that guy would win our personal battle. BOOM, he knocked me down. Next play, WHAP,
down I went.” The silverware on the table rattles as Madden’s meaty hands
strike the surface. “But you know what? None of those plays took advantage of
him being better than I was, so it didn't matter."
“So you weren't a good lineman. Terrific."
Madden
laughs the way he always does when his friend barks at him. "Maybe! But I
also realized that coaches don't know what they are doing. They are approaching
football like a philosophy class, as if their system is the end product. I
thought about it a lot. Here’s what I came up with. Football is a game of match-ups! One guy against another guy! A
coach who knows how to take advantage of that simple fact would win the game.
The trick is to isolate the players and focus the outcome of a game on a
favorable match-up. I’d like to bypass the gimmicks and concentrate on finding
and working the match-ups."
Madden’s
enthusiasm is infectious. Davis begins to smile. "I get it. You look for
mismatches and play them for all they’re worth."
"Yeah!
For an upcoming game I’d look for my guy who can BOOM the other guy, then I’d
design plays to make sure that the outcome of the game hinges on that match-up.
As long as I had even one guy on my team who could beat his opposing player, I
could win by using formations, concepts and schemes to focus the game on that
one weak spot. Theoretically, every game could be won."
By this
time Madden has won Davis over. Davis extends his well-tanned arm across the
table and shakes hands with his friend. "Just win, baby!"
"That's
it. Just win!"
******
Per our fictitious Madden's observation, there was a deeply
entrenched philosophical mindset prevalent in football at the time. It took a
long time for other coaches to catch on to his match-up strategy. Once they
knew what he was doing, the effect might be mitigated because a coach could
swap out a mismatched guy for someone who was good in a different way, or try
to switch their own strategy. If that coach knew the Madden-style team would go
for the mismatched guy and commit to that, that coach could use it to his
advantage.
E.g. you have a weak cornerback against a great receiver and
you know they other team will commit to that mismatched pass. Thus you’d go for
an all-out blitz. Make sure that the other team’s quarterback, who really wants
the time to set up a pass that is statistically a sure thing, gets knocked into
the ground before he can take advantage of the mismatch.
However, at the time no one else had begun to consider
this, so Madden’s strategy dominated the NFL.
Madden's drafting style also reflected his new strategy. He
looked at college players and rated them on weakness and strength. That was
what counted in the mismatch system. He went for the highest-rated guy,
figuring he could trade the guy later if he needed a position filled. He was
not looking for people who could 'fit' each other or 'fit' a system. They were
basically interchangeable parts.
That might sound mechanical but it is practical and not only
that, it won the Superbowl.
This also goes a long way toward explaining the "Madden
Football" games. John Madden could give players a numerical rating and so
it was relatively easy to translate that into zeros and ones for a video game.
Thus we begin our “The Way of It” series with the shift to
match-ups. Next in the series will be a similar “conversation” with Bill Walsh.
___
"The Way of It" is a collaborative effort between Ada Fetters and Michael Howard.
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