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CHAPTER 1

THE COACH’S POTENTIAL

I imagine a world where the greatest harvest of the 21st century will be the harvest of human potential.

THE NFL DRAFT

Once a year, usually around the end of April, millions of people gather around their televisions, tablets, and cell phones to devour the NFL draft. Months of research, millions of dollars, and countless hours of study and analysis go into evaluating and rating a few thousand college football players in their early 20s. What is being evaluated? Human potential. Specifically, the potential to play football at the professional level. Why is it so important? Why is so much time and money invested? Because the decision of which young man a front office picks to play for its football team is the difference between winning and losing. It may be the difference in a coach’s or general manager’s career.

Why is our culture so fascinated in watching a broadcast of television personalities discussing why or where a player should be drafted? Why are football fanatics so infatuated that they pore over draft grades on scouting and news websites? Because in our society we are constantly evaluating and putting grades on people’s value and potential. We watch the NFL draft and cheer or boo our team’s draft picks based on whether we believe the team got value in its pick. If Tom Brady had been drafted in the first round, the fans would have booed because no team believed he had that type of potential. In the late rounds, no one cared. The challenge with evaluating human potential is that none of us can predict the future. The person with the best idea of what a player may become is inside that player. The rest of us are reduced to trying to predict a player’s future based upon past performances. The challenge with trying to predict the potential of Tom Brady was that he wasn’t even a full-time starter at the University of Michigan. The majority of people thought Michigan’s other quarterback, Drew Henson, had more potential. Brady’s coach at Michigan didn’t seem to be fully confident in Brady’s ability. When analyzing Tom Brady through those circumstances, it would have been hard for anyone to believe he would ever win six Super Bowls, but two short years later, he quarterbacked the New England Patriots in his first Super Bowl win.