REFLECTION
Of all the big games I was involved in, the one where you can say the outcome came down to a single play, was also one of the greatest games I ever played in: Super Bowl XLIX. Patriots - Seahawks. The Malcolm Butler interception game.
The fourth quarter alone made that an epic game. We took the lead on a touchdown pass to Julian Edelman with two minutes left. Then Seattle came right back and went 79 yards in about a minute. Now it’s 2nd down at the 1-yard line with 30 seconds left and the clock’s running. Seattle runs a little pick play to the weak side of the formation to free up Ricardo Lockette on a quick slant. Malcolm Butler crashes down, avoiding the pick Jermaine Kearse is trying to set, beats Lockette to the ball right at the goal line, and makes a great catch on a hard-thrown ball by Russell Wilson.
Interception. Game over. Patriots 28, Seahawks 24.
There’s a lot people don’t know about that moment. First, that was not the only game-saving play Malcolm made on that drive. Two plays earlier, he made an incredible play on a deep ball, hanging in the air and batting it away, only for Kearse to make an even better catch from his back. Often, defensive backs who are less locked in, would be looking for the camera before that ball even hit the ground. Malcolm was tracking the ball the entire way. When he saw that Kearse somehow caught it, he jumped up and shoved him out of bounds at the 5 yard line, saving a sure walk-in touchdown.
Second, we ran that exact play a half-dozen times in practice. Every time, Malcolm was getting beat and the offense scored. The coaching point was to attack the line of scrimmage on the snap instead of sitting back. Get downhill, over the pick. Don’t get swallowed up by it. Beat the receiver to his spot or it’s an easy score.
Most importantly, people forget that Malcolm was an undrafted free agent rookie who spent half the season on the practice squad. He wasn’t a seasoned vet. He didn’t have the blue chip pedigree of a first round pick. Be he was proof that you don’t need any of that to be locked in and focused on the details of your job. Malcolm knew his responsibility, he executed on the coaching point to a T, and his play all game, but especially on that final drive, helped secure us a Super Bowl.
LESSON
The intention of every great team is to get all the details right as often as possible. That doesn’t just happen. And you don’t find it on the field, in the game. You find it in practice, like Malcolm did, which is why it’s so important that you practice just like you’d play. All the attributes that make you a great player—intensity, focus, quickness, etc.---have to show up, first and foremost, in practice, because how you practice is inevitably how you will play.
People who call themselves gametime players love to quote (and misinterpret) Allen Iverson’s famous 2002 press conference rant: “We’re talking about practice?!?” But Michael Jordan was a maniacal practice player. So was Kobe. So was I. Who was right? Count the rings and let the math decide. What I can say from experience is that practice is where having a locked-in mindset has always made the biggest difference for me.
Of course, being locked in at practice doesn’t guarantee wins. There are no guarantees in life or in professional sports. Going into the playoffs that 2014 season, for example, we won 10 of our last 12 games, but our season didn’t start out so hot. We played very average football and were a shaky 2-2 going into our Week 5 matchup against the 3-0 Bengals. But then something clicked for us. We realized that while we’d been physically and mentally locked in on our jobs, we weren’t really emotionally locked in. I don’t know why. That produced poor play, which produced disappointment, which produced anger, which produced the motivation we needed to lock in on all three phases of the game–offense, defense, special teams–and all three phases of individual performance–physical, mental and emotional.
From the opening drive of that Bengals game, we brought the juice and we won 43-17. Then we never looked back. It didn’t matter if it was hot or cold; it could be any day of the week, any time of day; when the National Anthem was over and the coin was tossed, that Patriots team played with consistent urgency and confident energy. We knew our jobs and had great belief in each other to execute. When we weren’t taking teams behind the woodshed, we were making the right plays when it mattered in order to win. We became an exceptional team. The irony is that the way we played, at least in our minds, wasn’t exceptional at all. It was expected. Being fully locked-in was how we practiced and it was how we needed to play, because the margin of error for success in the NFL is razor thin.
There are roughly 150 plays in a typical NFL game. On every play, there are 22 players on the field. Each player has a specific job based on the nuances of the play call and the coverage. When someone messes up their job, there’s no one there to save the day because every other guy is accounted for with other responsibilities.
Let’s say you call a run play to the left. If you’re a left tackle, you’ve got to hold up your block and keep that defensive player from going left. If you’re a tight end lined up to that side, maybe your job is to chip that defender then do everything in your power to reach the linebacker and wall him off from getting to where the ball is going. If you’re the running back, your job is to secure the handoff, read your blocks, and hit the gap as hard as you can. My job as quarterback was to read the defense, adjust the blocking angles as needed, then make a clean exchange.
For that play to be successful, all 11 of us on offense need to do our jobs well. This requires understanding angles, leverage, timing, distance, and violence. Then we need to apply all that knowledge in 4-5 seconds, at full-speed. If we’re on the same page, it’s a 12-yard gain. If we’re not, it’s a car wreck. Either way, we have to do that 65 more times over the next three hours.
The team that does it right more often, is usually the team that wins.
APPLICATION
For a pro football player, everything you do during the week is building toward being locked in and at your best during those three hours. Sleep, nutrition and taking care of your body are a big part of that. But strictly from a football perspective, the key is knowing every detail of your job on every play that might be called. Because you don’t get to choose which details matter. At the end of the game, you’ll be able to count 3-10 plays where you say to yourself, “man, that one really was the difference…”, but you’ll never know in the moment. Which means they all matter. Every play. Every detail.
The way you nail those details is to be physically, mentally and emotionally locked-in. That starts in practice. What you practice consistently well becomes what you do consistently well in the game. And the converse is true. If you’ve been unfocused in practice, messing things up and missing assignments, there should be no confidence that once the game kicks off, things will all go right for you.
So how do you get on track with all that? And how do you practice being good at practice?
First, you have to bring awareness to problems and shortcomings. You need a team with the right values, where exposing failures creates opportunities for learning and growth, not resentment or division. Then you need guys who are willing to sit in the pain, like I talked about last week, and to feel what it’s like to let their teammates down. You need a culture of accountability. And finally, you need to have the daily competitive stamina to do the right thing as often as possible, day in and day out.
This is what separates a great team from a good team from a bad team. The great teams do things consistently well in meetings, walkthroughs, practice, with the media, in recovery, and on off-days. They are locked in everywhere, on everything, because it all matters.
This idea extends well beyond football. If your kid has to take the SAT, but they don’t study or take as many practice tests as they can, they’re probably not going to like the number they say when they get their scores back. If you’re giving a wedding toast and you’ve never given a speech before, if you don’t go through a few drafts and rehearse it a few times, the chances that you’ll nail it on the day is next to zero. If you suck in job interviews and you half-ass your preparation when you’re up for a new role, what do you think’s going to happen when you’re on the other side of the table from the person who holds your future in their hands?
And here’s the thing, locking in is really hard if it’s something you don’t care about. But you have a choice. If the grind of greatness is too much, you can do something else, something less competitive or stressful. But if you choose to stick around–whether it’s football or business or a relationship–understand that how you practice is how you will play. How you prepare is how you will perform. The devil is in the details, and so is success; which is why you need to have the urgency every day to get things right.
When you lock in your effort, you unlock your truest potential to maximize your own unique abilities.
