Facing the Blitz: Three Strategies for Turning Trials Into Triumphs by Jeff Kemp

Author:Jeff Kemp
Language: deu
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: REL012060, REL012000, Conduct of life, Success
ISBN: 9781441228772
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-17T06:00:00+00:00

Great Teamwork Takes a Global Perspective

A call from Coach John Robinson in the spring of 1986 broke some interesting news to me. Knowing I’d been disappointed at getting moved from a starting role on the Rams in 1984 to the backup role in ’85, he told me they’d found a “great opportunity” for me and were trading me to the San Francisco 49ers. I had assumed I’d always be on one team, so was caught off guard by the news.

As I immediately relayed the news to Stacy in our kitchen, it dawned on me that the “great opportunity” would be on a team with a well-established quarterback: Pro Bowl and Super Bowl champion Joe Montana.

I’ll be stuck behind him forever, I thought as the news and situation started to sink in. Being a backup for another team, a team with the best quarterback in the league, was my great opportunity?

Looking back on it now, I can appreciate my dad’s mantra: “You’re in your right place.” It did in fact turn out to be a great opportunity and experience. I went to one of the very best franchises in pro sports. I would be there during a heyday of excellence under Head Coach Bill Walsh, who was the best teacher and team crafter I’ve ever encountered. His macro to micro approach to team building was positively genius. I was taught and tested and challenged, experiencing teamwork and quarterbacking at the highest level of my career, even though it was only for part of one season!

NFL teams are large operations, made up of players with very different personalities, skills, and styles of play. They spend most of their prep time in separate meetings divided by position. Coach Walsh, however, frequently gathered the whole team to be sure that the big vision, the clear goal, was communicated to all in the context of our need for one another, and pride in our unity as a team.

When I was in Philadelphia, team-wide meetings were less common and less emphasized. John Robinson with the Rams was a master of motivation, using military history and stories, a deft sense of timing, and a keen sense of which players to call on for additional humor (usually a universally loved character nicknamed “Herc,” Dennis Harrah). Walsh, however, was the coach who most inspired and elevated me through his teaching and vision-casting efforts.

One of his great keys was the knack and discipline of bringing the long-term goal and largest vision to bear upon the importance and specificity of the smallest details. Bill’s philosophy was integrated and comprehensive. He didn’t leave out the big picture or the detail; he would teach a play in a global manner, which has always stuck with me as a brilliant approach.

During training camp, we would be in the large team-meeting amphitheater. Most teams had position coaches install their plays in separate meetings rooms to each of the various position players. Not Bill. Before splitting up like that, Bill Walsh had all the offensive players together.

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