Jimmy Johnson To Chip: Find One Person You Trust

For the past few weeks, The MMQB has been ranking the top 100 most influential people in the NFL. Sam Bradford and DeMarco Murray were listed earlier in the process, but Chip Kelly came in today at number three.

Emily Kaplan caught up with Jimmy Johnson, who provided extensive comments on Kelly:

“When you have one guy making the decisions—like I was in Dallas or Miami, like Bill Belichick is in New England, and now like Chip is—you don’t have a lot of devil’s advocates. You don’t have a lot of people who work for you second-guessing you. If you have a committee involved in the decision-making, 95% of the time, you’re going to be conservative. There’s always going to be one person saying, ‘Oh, I don’t know about this,’ or, ‘Wait, let’s think about that.’ When one guy makes the decision, you take chances. That’s what Chip has done this year.

One of Johnson’s more fascinating comments described the need for the head coach to have one person he can trust when things get overwhelming. For Kelly, that person would presumably be Ed Marynowitz.

“The job is overwhelming to do it 12 months of the year all by yourself. I found that out. My advice would be to have somebody—and not a group of people, just one person that you trust, that you like, that’s loyal, that’s like-minded—do those type of things. That will help because during the season itself, the job can be a little overwhelming. But in the offseason? The draft and free agency? Take advantage of your talents. You’re good at evaluating players because you did it in college just like I did in college, so that’s where you can shine. But during the season is when you’re going to need a little bit of help.”

The entire article is definitely worth a read.