Many head coaches in the NFL and major college football are in first year assignments. They have had years of experience as assistants but now they have to lead their teams. Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant was asked to recall important experiences or lessons from his first season as boss of the Vikings in 1967. His responses may surprise you.
Grant said many people think so much of coaching is X’s and O’s. “That’s not it at all,” he explained. “Coaching is evaluations and observations. (It’s) getting the right players in the right places and the right positions and providing the right defenses and offenses for those people to be productive.
“You can’t start with the system and then get the players for the system. You start with the players and get the system for the players. I think one of the most important things young coaches forget is that it is not what you provide but it’s what the players provide. I will guarantee you that if you don’t have the better players you are not going to win. I don’t care how good of a coach you are.
“Coaching is really over rated. Maybe a better term is that you are a manager. You manage the people you have. You don’t try to coach something that is not there.”
Grant’s son Mike has coached powerhouse teams at Eden Prairie High School for years and has won four state championships. As a youngster he watched his father coach including in training camp. “What I learned from him was more how to deal with people and handle people,” Mike said.
The younger Grant said players want to be individuals and it’s a “battle” making them into a team. He said his father had a way of “defusing problems.”