REFLECTION
I was only involved in free agency once, at the tail-end of my career, when free agency means something very different than it does for a backup coming off a disappointing season or a young guy coming off the last year of his rookie deal.
For me, it was a creeping decision that lived passively in the back of mind for 2-3 years until March of 2020 when a whirlwind of a few days made me realize that a decision was coming sooner rather than later. The reality was, after twenty years together, a natural tension had developed between where Coach Belichick and I were headed in our careers, and where the Patriots were moving as a franchise. It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.
When Tampa Bay came into the picture as a serious option for me, all I did over those few days in March was assess and reassess my priorities. I asked myself, as someone headed into their forties with school-age kids and twenty years worth of battle scars, what truly mattered to me now? What I ended up with was a list of about twenty things that I then ranked and graded on a weighted scale from 1 to 3. The presence of skill players was a 3 in terms of importance, for example, and the Bucs graded out as a 3 because of guys like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin The same was true for the head coach. That was a 3 in importance, and Tampa scored a 3 with Bruce Arians. Game day weather was a 2, practice weather was a 3. Financial compensation was on the list, obviously, but it wasn’t first, it probably wasn’t even top 10, and it definitely didn’t rank as a 3 in importance.
In the end, I chose Tampa, almost exactly five years ago now, because, in the aggregate, it graded out higher than New England along those twenty or so dimensions. It’s not much more complicated than that.
LESSON
What can be complicated is figuring out exactly what your priorities are to begin with. I watched so many good guys over the years make mistakes in free agency because they didn’t have their priorities straight. Some of them chased the money to teams that weren’t good fits for them. Others made rash decisions and ended up in places that didn’t give them the best chance to succeed, sometimes not even the best chance to play.
Every guy’s story is different. Every player has their own priorities that are unique to them. The odds of finding the landing spot with the best fit, the right money, your favorite weather, and whatever else you’re looking for are low! So you have to choose what takes precedence for you. Of your priorities, which are the most important? There isn’t necessarily a right answer to that question, but there is a wrong answer and it’s “I don’t know.” Inevitably, all the bad free agency stories I witnessed involved guys who didn’t know what they truly valued until they were on the other side of their choice and facing the consequences of their decision.
Having a defined set of personal priorities protects you against impulsivity, emotionality, and short-sightedness. Priorities are the rudder on your ship as you navigate the uncertain waters of life-changing decisions. Without them, you’re just as likely to drift aimlessly out to sea as you are to be smashed against the rocks or driven into waters you had no intention of ever visiting.
APPLICATION
So how do you do that? How do you establish personal priorities? I would argue that you already have. Just take a step back and look at how you allocate your time, effort and emotional energy. Those choices reflect your priorities. That’s a pretty uncontroversial position until you realize how many people’s choices don’t line up with how they see themselves or what they want for themselves.
This is a hard truth to swallow for those with big dreams and lots of ambition, but not a lot of success (yet). It’s tough to acknowledge that, if your choices reflect what you’re willing to do to make your dreams real, for a lot of people, it’s not much. It’s easier to come up with excuses than to admit that maybe you’re scared or lazy or that what you really value is safety, security and comfort—and the only reason you never realized it was because you don’t spend enough time consciously evaluating how you allocate your time.
I wanted to be a great quarterback for most of my life, so I allocated my time and energy to doing the things I believed were essential to becoming great at my position.
Later, when I had kids, I wanted to be a great dad and a great quarterback, so I figured out how to allocate my time and energy most effectively to achieve both of those goals.
Now, I still want to be a great dad, but I also want to be a great broadcaster, a successful entrepreneur, and a worthy teammate for great brands. So I work every week at fine tuning my time and energy allocation to those priorities, shifting them up and down, when and where appropriate.
It’s a process. One you will never get perfect. It won’t help you be great right off the bat at whatever you choose to prioritize. Frankly, you shouldn’t expect to be good at anything right away, no matter how much you care about it. What you should expect is to work at it and to apply the lessons you learned toward getting better each and every week.
All it takes is a little time, effort and energy.
