Why Real Progress in the NFL Is Made in the Offseason

Cardinals defensive coordinator Vance Joseph writes that from players and coaches to the league office itself, work done over the summer is what drives the game forward.

With Albert Breer on vacation, we bring back our annual tradition of having guest writers fill in for his Monday Morning Quarterback column. This column comes from Cardinals defensive coordinator Vance Joseph. Check out last week’s from Navy graduate and Patriots long snapper Joe Cardona.

You might believe that the 18-week season—and postseason, if you’re lucky—is the most important time in the NFL. And you’d be wrong. If there’s one thing my time in the league has revealed, it’s that the offseason is, and always will be, just as important as the season.

The NFL offseason is a key time of the year for everyone involved. Players, coaches and staff alike can reconnect with family and friends that the monthslong season has kept them from.

Aside from this vital reconnection, we grow the most as a league and as members of this NFL fraternity on and off the field.

David Wallace/The Republic/USA TODAY Network

The one and only goal during the season is to win. Each team’s collective physical and mental energy is 100% geared toward the upcoming Monday, Thursday or Sunday, leaving no room for anything else.

Every resource of the day goes to that one task to win one game. Even then, victory is anything but guaranteed. The NFL is a league of true parity. Every team can beat every team, meaning the work week is where games are truly won and lost. The urgency of winning one game is overwhelming, but also exciting and challenging. A staggering 70 to 80 hours—per week—go into preparing for one matchup. Here’s my point: Certain things have to be in order during the season to be successful as a team, and those things are done in the offseason, and no one in the league is immune to the work it takes.

Franchise owners have their meetings to address a number of topics pertaining to making the NFL juggernaut the best product in the world. The fan, the driving force behind the league, is discussed at length to sculpt the NFL experience into the best in sports, beyond just game day. Owners are perpetually enhancing the consumers’ experience, from the combine to free agency to the draft and beyond. Expanding the game worldwide, allowing fans in other countries to experience this league, is always on the table. Committees decide on new rule changes—improving the game, yes, but also increasing player safety in the process.

Personnel departments face the challenge of bettering their respective teams through free agency and the annual draft. If you want any chance of competing in this league, success at this time is a must. The players, above all, are the NFL’s greatest resource, and having the right combination of players is your only chance of winning. In a league that’s built for parity, teams have to get this part right.

Coaches, those responsible for honing raw talent players possess, must continue to evolve as professionals in the offseason. You can’t stay the same year-to-year and expect success to tumble your way. We tell the players the exact same thing. The challenges of the job change along with the teams every single year, and, as coaches, we have to commit to endlessly learning from others. As defensive coordinator of the Cardinals, my goal every offseason is obviously to improve what we did well and fix what we didn’t, but also to add things that will allow my players to perform at a higher level the next season.

The players’ bodies are their business, so physical betterment takes priority in the offseason. Players these days do a great job of staying conditioned year-round, so most of the offseason is about recovery and preparing to endure a physically tough, hopefully long, NFL season. The other mission most players have is to perfect the details of their job within the scheme. It’s no secret in NFL circles that being healthy and being an expert at your position equal a lengthy career with quality pay. The offseason is where coaches and players have the time to dive deep into every aspect of a player’s job. In fact, players make the biggest jumps in their careers by having a great offseason in the classroom.

The game will continue to be the best professional sport in the world only if our greatest resource, the players, improves yearly along with every other element. As a league, we have to continue to explore new ways to make the offseason meaningful for everyone involved. To do so, we have to reach a compromise on both sides to fulfill the needs of the team without being at odds. Again, we have to remember we are directly responsible for preserving this great game that has given so much to all of us.

The league has always introduced programs and seminars during the offseason to help improve the overall hiring practices and elevate employees’ roles. I had the pleasure of attending two of the programs this offseason: the Coach and Front Office Accelerator Program held in Atlanta May 23 to 24 and the Quarterback Coaching Summit in Los Angeles June 22 to 23.

The accelerator program (as Albert wrote about in May) was started to allow 60 minority and diverse head coach and general manager prospects from every NFL team a chance to develop the necessary skills it takes to conquer one of the 32 best jobs in the sports world. I must applaud the owners who attended the programs. Each owner was fully engaged and truly interested in networking with people they were unfamiliar with beforehand. I often ask myself whether the league is committed to diversity and inclusion in every aspect. While I believe that the league has recognized the lack of diverse candidates in the decision-making positions in the NFL, I used to think it was just checking boxes with these kinds of events.

During a spring press conference, I was asked about attending the accelerator program and why change is taking so long to happen. My answer to the question was honest, and I admitted those same old feelings about participating in the programs. However, after experiencing the two-day event, I found that it was well worth it. I quickly recognized that not only were attendees meeting NFL owners and executives, but they were also being exposed to the sharpest, highest-performing individuals in the league. The program also gave me the unique chance to meet other minority candidates in coaching and personnel. Other than the combine or pre- and postgame pleasantries, we don’t get to interact with, let alone build relationships with, other personnel departments and coaches we haven’t already coached or played with in the past. So yes, attending the accelerator program, despite my initial expectations, was well worth it.

But why was change taking so long to happen? I gave my usual answer to this part of the question. Again, my answer was honest but started out understandably guarded. “I’m not really sure, but maybe it’s a business model the league has adopted with hiring offensive coordinators over defensive coordinators to coach the most important player on the team, the QB.” With that being the model, it’s been mostly white candidates hired for the head coaching positions because most of the guys calling plays or coaching the QBs are white. Currently, there are only four Black offensive coordinators in the NFL. In 2018 there was only one. The lack of diversity on the offensive side of the ball was the sole reason the quarterback summit was formed.

The four men directly responsible for this program, Jimmy Raye II, James “Shack” Harris, Doug Williams and Jim Caldwell, were also in attendance, tasked with identifying and mentoring the next generation of offensive coaches and play-callers. Raye was a minority NFL offensive coordinator for a number of teams from 1983 to 2010. Harris was the first Black QB to start a season for an NFL team. Williams was the first Black QB to start and win a Super Bowl, and he also earned MVP honors. Last but not least, Caldwell won two Super Bowls, coaching the QB in one and calling plays in the other, in addition to holding the head coach position for the Colts and the Lions.

That QB summit was eye-opening as a defensive guy who hasn’t had the chance to meet all the young minority offensive coaches from college and professional football. It was great to witness some of the brightest offensive minds in the country talk about football, from tutoring the QB on and off the field and encouraging their growth as a leader, to growing the QB as a team leader, to daily QB drill work. Every coach who had a chance to present put their best foot forward; they’re ready to preserve the legacy of the game. As one of the lone defensive coaches in attendance, I can guarantee that the league is in an optimal place to enhance diversity on the offensive side of the ball.

I wrapped up my answer in the press conference by vowing to do my part in making a change. Afterward, I walked to my office and just sat, reminiscing about the opportunity I had as Broncos head coach in 2017 and ’18, and what I would do differently if a similar opportunity came back around. I carried heavy regret thinking about how I lost a job that, these days, is incredibly difficult to earn. That sense of failure burrowed into my heart, and the possibility of regaining that role seemed distant. There’s a common postgame saying in this league: When you win that week, you feel like you can’t lose again, but when you lose, you feel like you can’t win again. The weekly investment is so heavy that when you don’t have success after a week, a two-day depression can swallow you whole. Only the really good ones know how to navigate it. So imagine how much a coach has to invest to climb the NFL ladder, to become one of 32. Suddenly it was all so clear. You have to commit to whatever it takes, within the rules of course, to winning in this league. Nothing else matters. I can’t fathom an NFL owner not hiring the very best person to help their team while this holds true.

Joseph coaching the Broncos in 2018 :: Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY Sports

In my native city of New Orleans, we call the locker room a gumbo. I watched my mom make the real deal for special days growing up. After the roux, the foundation of flavor, was nice and brown, she would add stock and the contents of our fridge into the pot, along with every one of our spices. Even though that process looked bizarre, she, thankfully, remained very intentional about how it tasted. She would monitor the pot and consistently reseason, adding other elements, like seafood, for taste. Similarly, the cyclical firing and hiring process will continue to happen after Week 18 of every season moving forward. To overcome the dearth of diversity in the hiring process, the decision-makers have to be just as intentional about eliminating this problem. The bizarre process of trying to find the very best person to lead your team among so many qualified people from all colors and backgrounds is just as peculiar as my mother’s gumbo-making. Speaking from experience, there’s no blueprint for these jobs. You learn and adjust with the support of your staff with no choice but to grow together. When I received my first full-time job, I asked my then mentor, coach Tom McMahon, if I was ready. “You’re ready when they give you the job,” he said.

The diversity problem is not just an NFL issue, but a national issue. One of the speakers who attended the accelerator program, Marvin Ellison, the CEO of Lowe’s, talked about the lack of diversity among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. Currently, only six Black CEOs are in that group, accounting for just over 1% of all businesses. Their numbers are worse than the NFL’s over a 50-year span. Hope can’t be our only game plan as a league when we are trying to provoke real change and growth. The NFL has taken the lead on a lot of issues that we have overcome in this country, and it’s time to be intentional in how we lead that change.

Albert always finishes his articles with something interesting from the internet or a book that he read, anything that moved him. That being said, I would like to wrap this column up with a bleak trend in the NFL from this offseason I would like to see changed. Unfortunately, we have lost three players under the age of 25 within a three-month span. The first, Steelers QB Dwayne Haskins died April 9. One of my own players in Arizona, CB Jeff Gladney died May 30, along with his girlfriend. The third, Ravens OL Jaylon Ferguson, died June 21.

Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill, some members from the defensive backs room and I attended Gladney’s funeral in New Boston, Texas, where Jeff grew up. We witnessed every person that invested into Jeff’s life lose a piece of themselves that morning. We saw two parents searching for how they could have prevented this tragedy. Here’s my concern for the league. We can’t get accustomed to losing three or more players every off season. As a league, we can’t stand by and allow players to lose their lives in tragic accidents as soon as they step off the field. We can’t let ourselves grow numb to death, to mass loss of life in the league or a grocery store or an elementary school. It takes an entire village to help our greatest assets, the players, navigate this once-in-a-lifetime experience in the NFL, so it’s up to us to keep them from slipping away.