Character, Intelligence, and Talent

I'd like to address what I believe to be the criteria that Josh McDaniels uses to evaluate players, and to extend that to the kind of team I believe he is trying to create.  In order of importance, these criteria are Character, Intelligence, and Talent.

I've been reading MHR for several months and am just now deciding to jump into the discussion.  I am not a football expert, I am not a coach, and I was cut from the high school JV team lo those many years ago.  But, I love my Broncos and I'm a fan.  I fancy myself a student of the game and I'm delighted that so many other fans just like me are here.

I've watched Mickey Dee's actions since he arrived and at first, I was confused.  I read everything I could find on him, and a picture emerged.  He has been a football man since he was in diapers, played several positions, and has risen meteorically through the coaching ranks.  He has had stunning successes and a few failures.  But frankly, I did not understand the Cutler situation.  I could not understand how McD did not covet a 'franchise' QB with such amazing natural talent.  It seemed out of character for a man with such obvious football coaching talents.

Thanks to Hoosier Teacher for opening my eyes.  In his brilliant post "A Profoundly Powerful Draft Strategy", HT illuminated the Bronco's draft strategy and suddenly, it all made sense.  Shanahan had built his teams by evaluating talent, intelligence, and character, generally in that order.  McD has taken the opposite tack and evaluates his players based first on character, then intelligence, and lastly, talent.  He does not limit this to draftees, of course, he has applied this to current players and to his coaching staff.  I'll define what I mean by each of these terms, but suffice it to say that McD decided that in spite of the undeniable raw talent, Cutler did not have the character or the intelligence or the right kind of talent to make it in the new Denver Broncos.  I don't think McD meant to drive Cutler away, but he wasn't sorry to see him go.  This post is not about Cutler per se, but that situation does give some insight into my assertion. 

Character, I now believe, is the most important attribute needed to play football.  Character trumps speed, arm strength, pass rush ability, every single special talent you can name.  Football is the ultimate team game and without having the character necessary to fit into a team structure, a player's special talents do not help a football team.   I'm going to artificially break this idea of character up into identifiable parts, but I do understand that they are all inter-related and overlapping. These parts are inherent character (humility, maturity,...), team-first mindset, and attitude.

Inherent Character is difficult to define.  I refer the reader here to Ted Bartlett's post "On Sanctimony and the Character of Young Men" and the comments resulting from that post for a more complete treatment of this topic.  TB has written a truly excellent post regarding the character of young men in general and well summarizes the difficulties of assessing the character of college football players.  It focuses on the idea that good character is inherent in all of us, but at a young age, character can be derailed for a time, and sometimes permanently.  I'm 53 now.  My story parallels TB's.  I have made every mistake I could think of, many that blindsided me, and several I made over and over.  Drugs, drifting, depression, degradation, and denial characterized me from 14 until I was 34, at which point I turned a corner.  However, my character was built before I was 14 and it has since reemerged.  Like many in TB's post comments, I have followed the trail laid out in Robert Bly's seminal work "Iron John".  Determining whether someone has the character to play in the NFL is an inexact science.  Shanny was right about Marcus Thomas, and no one is happier than me about that.  (OK, maybe Marcus Thomas is happier).  Although everyone has the opportunity to turn that corner, not everyone does.

That aspect of character, the idea that young men do make mistakes and redemption should always be considered, is absolutely true.  I think a point TB makes is that at some point, most men with character issues do turn a corner and take a new path.  They mature. The question McD must answer is "has this player turned the corner?"  That is never an easy assessment to make from the outside and only those that have a natural talent for reading people can do it.  However, there are signposts.  Some of these are humility, the desire to understand, honesty, tolerance, willingness, maturity, admitting mistakes, and there are many others.  In addition, one can see behavior modifications such as changing one's playgrounds, playmates, and playthings.  There is a huge risk involved when trying to evaluate whether a player has truly turned the corner or just playing the part.  The smart money doesn't take those risks in the first round.  McD signed Chris Baker.  I agree with many posters that Baker is one of those players that has the character traits that make a good football player, but he made some mistakes that young men sometimes do.  McD must think so, too, and time will tell.  As an UFA out of college, it might be worth it.  I see a lot of myself in Baker (I could actually fit inside of Baker, but that is yet another tangent).  I am pulling for him.  If you are a praying man, please add him to the list.

Another aspect of character is that of the willingness to put the team's goals ahead of one's own.  This is a key attribute that McD has focused on, and I reference the reader to the signing of Dawkins and the high percentage of team captains in the draft class.  Another way to assess this is to look at what a player has been willing to do: special teams, play different positions, block on those plays that don't require a skill player to handle the ball, and so on.  When Moss was with the Raiders, I could tell with one step after the snap whether it was a run or a pass.  He simply refused to participate in plays that did not feature him. All of the talent in the world in useless if the player will not become a participating member of the team.  Any player that would refuse to work out with his teamates because he was mad at the coach cannot, in my view, be considered a team player.  Anger and differences of opinion have to be set aside for the good of the team, and that is another sign of maturity. This aspect of character is key in the locker room.

Yet another component of character that is key in the locker room is attitude.  I define this as a combination of determination, persistence, comraderie, and positiveness.  In my view, the poster child for this is Peyton Hillis (he could be the poster child for a lot of the character points!)  Last year, I saw players giving up at the end of games.  I saw negativity contaminate even the positive players as seen in the interviews after the games.  I saw players calling out other players in public.  (Note that I draw a distinction between calling a player out and confronting a player to step up.  The former is done with an attitude of hostility, and the latter is done with an attitude of comraderie).  Attitude, to some extent, can be coached, but unless a player brings a proper attitude, coaching's ability to change that is limited.  Recently, I have heard several players (Dumervil, Orton, Champ, Hillis, others) comment on the undercurrent of excitement in the locker room and comment on their desire to do whatever is necessary to help the team.  The change in culture is visible.

The next trait on the table is intelligence.  I refer to football intelligence and is only slightly related to IQ.  (For addicts, the Combine drug test is a way to weed them out.  For casual users, it is an IQ test.)  Intelligence overlaps with character when considering coachability and intersects with talent when discussing instincts.  To play at a high level in the NFL, a player must be a student of the game.  A true student never stops learning.  The greatest component of intelligence is the ability and desire to learn.  McD is a proponent of situational football, which for this discussion a way of preparing for a game.  This requires extensive preparation regarding recurring situations in a football game so that the response of the player in any given situation becomes second nature.  McD also is known to prepare for every team differently.  This requires the intelligence to learn new situations (formations, tendencies, reactions, reads, ...) each and every week.  Also, McD has said he has some new wrinkles to unwrap.  I'm hoping that with the drafting of Moreno and Quinn and the signing of Orton, that we are going to see the emergence of the 3 TE set.  Check out MHR Football University for an excellent article describing the intracacies of this offensive play set that is yet to be applied effectively and routinely in the NFL.

Intelligence must also be applied.  For example, it does no good to create and run a pass play that has different receiver options as the play develops if the QB is fixated on his preferred receiver.  Applied intelligence, when it is tempered with experience, allows a QB to use the checkdowns imbedded in the play to find the best outcome for that play, be it the open man, a scramble, a dump, or throwing the ball away.  Applied intelligence, when the knowledge has become second nature, is called instinct.  Last year, many of our defenders were out of position.  At the speed of the NFL, it is simply a lack of knowledge of where to go, in the split second a player has to make that decision, that resulted in players out of position.  In that scheme, the players lacked the instinct to make the intelligent choice. This was especially problematic in our interior LB and safety play.  In some cases, it is the coaching and in others, it is the player.  In our case, it was both. 

Finally, we come to talent.  Special talent is the least important of the traits for a good football player.  I hear that "you can't coach speed".  This is true, but speed is useless if you are running in the wrong direction.  Given the choice between a player with nothing but 4.3 speed and a player with 4.6 speed as well as a team attitude, high character, coachability, and a hunger for football intelligence, and I think the choice is clear.  (As a tangent, note that 4.3 speed would be found in the first round for millions, and 4.6 speed is found in the lower rounds for cheap - a superb use of money).  Physical talents are measured at the combine in a dozen ways, and thrown in is a 15 minute interview.  For determining suitability for the pressures of the NFL as defined in my assertions for character and intelligence, this is lunacy.  McD saw this and brought in all of his draftees under consideration in for a visit.  Those visits are to assess the intangibles that I am discussing here.  I am making the case here that it is exactly these intangibles that make or break a player, and by extension, the team,  and not whether they have 4.3 or 4.6 speed.  (For a more in depth analysis of how talent should be spread throughout a team, read "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis).

The talent that McD is focused on is the talent of versatility.  This is a true strength.  If, for example, you have a QB that can only throw fire, in those situations that require a dump off, the team as a whole is less talented because the required talent - the ability to dump off - is missing.  For those few situations where throwing fire is applicable, you are in roses, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  One dimensional players are a detriment to a football team.  There is an old joke about specialization that fits here.  As you get educated, you know more and more about less until you know everything about nothing.  Football is a game of exploitation of weaknesses, and those weaknesses vary by opponent, by time of year, by injuries, by dozens of things.  To exploit the variety of weaknesses on a week to week basis requires a variety of strengths.  It hardly ever requires one player to be the absolute best at a given task.  It requires every single player to be above average at all the tasks (especially fundamentals, like tackling).  Secondly, when a team is heavily dependent on the talent of one player, the team can suffer unrecoverably should that player become injured.  Spreading the resources of the team (money and choice of talent) across the whole team is a much more useful strategy that putting all of the team's resources into just a few players.  Also, the ability to rotate players in and out of a game is crucial to maintain fresh legs and lungs.  As the year progresses, those teams that have many players sharing the load are better able to complete because they tend to limit injuries and tend to minimize the exhaustion faced at the end of a season.

Even though McD has a focus on versatility, there is indeed true football talent to be had.  For the in depth look at what each draft player brings to the table, in addition to character, intelligence, and versatility, I refer you again to HT's post "A Profoundly Powerful Draft Strategy".  Somehow, Mickey Dee was still able to draft players that were also the best at their position.

The most exciting thing to me about this observation of character, intelligence, and talent is the kind of team that results from this realignment of priorities.  A team built on character will not quit, will not fold under pressure, and each player will do whatever it takes to achieve the team goal: the win.  A team built on intelligence will play smart football, minimize mistakes and turnovers, and be so prepared each week that they will react correctly to each situation the players find themselves in as if it were second nature.  A team built on versatile talent will not suffer when key players are injured, will be able to use a variety of strategies against a variety of styles week in and week out, and will be able to stay fresh through the season because of the sharing of the playing load.  A team like this may not lead the league in any category whatsoever, but they will win week in and week out.  If you maintain young players and stick to this strategy regardless of the criticism, you can do it year in and year out.  I don't know if this strategy will result in a winning season this year, but I think we have turned a corner.

Dawkins, A. Davis, Moreno, Ayers, Quinn, A. Smith, Rulon Davis, every single signing is of high character players, intelligent players, and versatile players.  The knock on each and every one of them is that they are lacking in some special talent.  Dawkins has lost a step. A. Smith is undersized.  Ayers is weak as shown by his bench press numbers.  OK, Moreno has it all but he's the exception that proves the rule (OK, I think he goes down too easily on first contact, but I'm not the football expert that Jamie Dukes is ;>} ).  The MSM has given us a very poor grade on our draft because most of the football world is focused on special talent.  McD's genius is that he recognizes that special talent is not what makes a football player great.  It is character, intelligence, and versatility. 

This diatribe only scratches the surface of first addressing character, then intelligence and lastly talent when evaluating players, but I believe that this is the vision that was presented to Pat Bolen.  Mickey Dee has remained true to this vision not only with the players he has retained and the players he has traded for, but he has done this in our draft. 

That, my friends, is how to build a dynasty.  With a vision like this, it is not only possible, I think it is inevitable.