Plankton
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THE TRUCKS ARRIVED in waves, blood streaming from their beds. Inside, American soldiers were piled on one another, 25 or so in all. It was May 2004, at the Marine base in Ramadi, Iraq. An enemy mortar had landed, and word spread of a mass casualty. U.S. Army Special Forces team leader Brian Decker, then 32, hurried to the medical station where the trucks pulled up with the dead and wounded. All told, six Americans died. Later, Decker couldn't sleep, feeling the loss of those lives as if they were family. In another three nights came word that insurgents were crossing from Saudi Arabia into Iraq. Decker's Special Forces team hopped into a CH-46 with orders to "clear the target." Ramps descended from the helicopter, and the team opened fire on tents and trucks. To Decker, it felt like justice, revenge. Even now, Decker's eyes well up, his face reddens, his hands shake as he relives this memory and recalls the code soldiers live by: "You're fighting based on the obligation to the person next to you. You're depending on each other for survival." After Decker retired from the Army, that idea became more than a code. It became an obsession, something he wanted to dissect, quantify, predict and use to maximum effect elsewhere -- perhaps even in the world of professional football.
TWELVE YEARS LATER, this past February, retired Lt. Col. Brian Decker sat next to Bill Belichick in the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis watching the NFL combine. The NFL, of course, aligns itself with the military as if compelled by civic -- even moral -- cause. But that romanticized vision always falls short, stark in its superficiality. Yet there was Decker, pleading a case to the game's greatest coach that the connection wasn't superficial at all, that in fact the greatest soldiers and the greatest football players share innate qualities -- the clichéd intangibles. Beyond that, he could discern those elusive qualities.
Was he out of his mind? Or onto something? Decker was largely unknown around the NFL, but he had credentials to back up his claim. He'd successfully reinvented the process for picking Green Berets and spent two years with the Cleveland Browns applying the same basic principles to crack the NFL character code, which teams have long tried -- and failed -- to master. If he was right, his methodology could change the way teams considered prospects. All he needed was a second chance.
What looked from afar like casual conversation between Belichick and Decker was actually a job interview of sorts, arranged by Michael Lombardi, a longtime NFL personnel employee who at that moment was an assistant to the Patriots' coaching staff. The pitch lasted almost five hours, and when it was finished, Belichick invited Decker to Foxborough for two days of talks. Before they parted in Indy, Decker asked Belichick what player trait he struggled most to predict. Belichick's answer was as blunt as it was revealing about realities in the NFL. Here was a head coach with four Super Bowl rings, with a quarterback who plays for less than market value, who has created an entire methodology based on common sacrifice and submission of ego -- a coach with more leverage than any other in the NFL -- telling Decker he had trouble finding players willing to buy in.
THE TRUCKS ARRIVED in waves, blood streaming from their beds. Inside, American soldiers were piled on one another, 25 or so in all. It was May 2004, at the Marine base in Ramadi, Iraq. An enemy mortar had landed, and word spread of a mass casualty. U.S. Army Special Forces team leader Brian Decker, then 32, hurried to the medical station where the trucks pulled up with the dead and wounded. All told, six Americans died. Later, Decker couldn't sleep, feeling the loss of those lives as if they were family. In another three nights came word that insurgents were crossing from Saudi Arabia into Iraq. Decker's Special Forces team hopped into a CH-46 with orders to "clear the target." Ramps descended from the helicopter, and the team opened fire on tents and trucks. To Decker, it felt like justice, revenge. Even now, Decker's eyes well up, his face reddens, his hands shake as he relives this memory and recalls the code soldiers live by: "You're fighting based on the obligation to the person next to you. You're depending on each other for survival." After Decker retired from the Army, that idea became more than a code. It became an obsession, something he wanted to dissect, quantify, predict and use to maximum effect elsewhere -- perhaps even in the world of professional football.
TWELVE YEARS LATER, this past February, retired Lt. Col. Brian Decker sat next to Bill Belichick in the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis watching the NFL combine. The NFL, of course, aligns itself with the military as if compelled by civic -- even moral -- cause. But that romanticized vision always falls short, stark in its superficiality. Yet there was Decker, pleading a case to the game's greatest coach that the connection wasn't superficial at all, that in fact the greatest soldiers and the greatest football players share innate qualities -- the clichéd intangibles. Beyond that, he could discern those elusive qualities.
Was he out of his mind? Or onto something? Decker was largely unknown around the NFL, but he had credentials to back up his claim. He'd successfully reinvented the process for picking Green Berets and spent two years with the Cleveland Browns applying the same basic principles to crack the NFL character code, which teams have long tried -- and failed -- to master. If he was right, his methodology could change the way teams considered prospects. All he needed was a second chance.
What looked from afar like casual conversation between Belichick and Decker was actually a job interview of sorts, arranged by Michael Lombardi, a longtime NFL personnel employee who at that moment was an assistant to the Patriots' coaching staff. The pitch lasted almost five hours, and when it was finished, Belichick invited Decker to Foxborough for two days of talks. Before they parted in Indy, Decker asked Belichick what player trait he struggled most to predict. Belichick's answer was as blunt as it was revealing about realities in the NFL. Here was a head coach with four Super Bowl rings, with a quarterback who plays for less than market value, who has created an entire methodology based on common sacrifice and submission of ego -- a coach with more leverage than any other in the NFL -- telling Decker he had trouble finding players willing to buy in.
