War Room

by Michael Holley

  When he became a Chief, Nagy realized that he was going to have to work even harder than he did in New England. Sustaining a championship roster is hard work, but building a roster from the bottom up is even harder. There were things the scouts in New England took for granted that scouts in Kansas City couldn’t. The Patriots’ scouts already knew the system, so they didn’t need the two-week scouting seminar that Emery conducted when he arrived in Kansas City. He talked out the grading scale and then put on film so he could specifically point out acceptable examples of athletic ability, change of direction, explosive strength, etc., until he was convinced everyone got it.

  As for who “everyone” was, Pioli had predictably chased all the slackers out of the department. Sometimes he intentionally put his employees in situations that might frustrate them, just so he could see how they’d respond to it. It was his go-to move, and even his friends weren’t exempt. He had known Jay Muraco for nearly a decade when Muraco, then working for the Eagles, called him in 2000 and asked if Pioli had anything with the Patriots. Pioli told him that he did, but the move would be lateral, and the best he could offer Muraco was a 30 to 40 percent pay cut from what he was already making. Pioli wanted to see if Muraco truly could accept a job doing the same work, for less pay, and not have a bad attitude while doing it. Muraco called him back the next morning and accepted the deal. After a while, after proving himself, Muraco was given a raise.

  “He purposely grinds guys,” Nagy says, “to test their mettle.”

  Pioli even did that when Dimitroff was the Patriots’ director of college scouting. He gave him a modest salary for the position, and when his friend proved himself, his salary doubled. It was going to be the same story for anyone working for him with the Chiefs.

  If they stepped back and thought about it, Kansas City employees would see that turning the Chiefs into champs, in terms of degree of difficulty, would be the most ambitious challenge of Pioli’s career. In New England, he had an advantage that no one could match: On draft day, he had one of the top draft evaluators and strategists on his side in Bill Belichick; on Sundays, he had one of the most accomplished head coaches in pro football history on his side in Bill Belichick; and while Belichick got credit for the team’s success, he also was mentioned first when things didn’t work, therefore getting blame for his own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others working for him. No other team in football had anyone with that combination of power and pedigree, and Pioli was smart enough to know that it couldn’t be re-created. He couldn’t exactly re-create the how of his Patriots days, but he was constantly in search of players, coaches, and scouts capable of getting to the same finish.

  On a pleasant January night, many of the NFL’s coaches and general managers have left Dauphin Street and ventured a couple miles away to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. On one side of the restaurant, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is entertaining a group at his table. Across the room is Saints head coach Sean Payton. At a table not far from the front door is Chiefs defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel, who is having dinner with his son and a couple friends. Not far away, but out of the crowd’s view, old friends Pioli and Dimitroff take their seats in a booth and order a bottle of red wine.

  When the two have dinner, the conversation never follows a predictable pattern, but it does reinforce why their friendship works. They balance verbal jabs with thoughtful conversations about their families and jobs. They reminisce. They challenge each other, each refusing to say anything that he doesn’t believe, even if it’s what the other one wants to hear.

  As Pioli raises his glass for a toast, he mentions how blessed they are. They have four executive-of-the-year awards between them. They both can remember take-home pay that was far lower than what the area scouts make now, even if you factor in inflation. There were no expensive bottles of wine back then, just bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon. A reference to the 1990s reminds them of the days when Dimitroff was working on the Browns grounds crew and doing some part-time scouting, ironically, for the Chiefs.

  “You’d lime the field and you’d have grass chips in your hair. And I swore you didn’t know what deodorant was,” Pioli says. “You’d come and funk up my office. You’d smell like tree bark.”

  “Nah. I think it was tea tree,” Dimitroff says. “Or those crystal deodorant rocks.”

  They both laugh.

  “Just so you know,” Dimitroff says, “and this is the honest truth: I think the Chiefs still owe me per diem from way back then. They told me they were going to pay me, and sometimes they did. It was so haphazard.”

  Getting more precise financial records and slashing unnecessary spending is something Pioli has been working on in Kansas City for two years. He’s even more diligent about the budget because he wants to make sure no one is taking advantage of the fact that team owner Clark Hunt is five hundred miles away in Dallas. He shoots back to Dimitroff’s claim, “I’m surprised they didn’t pay you. They paid everyone else money.”

  As close as they are, Pioli and Dimitroff don’t get many moments like this. They talk all the time, but there are few moments to sit down, face-to-face, and talk shop while teasing each other along the way.

  “I love Senior Bowl week,” Pioli says. “It’s the first time that these kids are out of their element. And you see how they behave in a noncontrolled environment, or at least a foreign environment. You get to see their personalities relatively early because by a month from now, you know these kids are going to be dialed in and trained. Some of them are already.”

  Dimitroff nods in agreement. Mobile is the first look for evaluators and agents. Once the agents get a sense of what the decision-makers are saying about their clients, they have a little more than a month to correct, or hide, the holes in their clients’ games. That could be off the field, as Pioli referred to, or on it.

  “For me, as you know, I’m enthralled with movement and athleticism,” Dimitroff says. “I mean, you have to like power and such, but I do, I really love to see movement. I love to see recovery. And I love urgent athleticism. And I get a chance to see it all on the field here. It’s an equal playing surface. Not just one guy playing against a down-the-line guy from another team. But talent meeting equal talent.”

  They both remember being in Mobile as young scouts and the first-time excitement of seeing the legends of the game, like Bill Walsh, here. Years later, they both worked for and won championships with a legend in New England, so the fact that the restaurant is filled with influential NFL people doesn’t affect them the way it did when they were in their twenties. But the awe of their twenties has been replaced by appreciation in their forties.

  They point out some of the arguments they’ve had over the years. In New England, Dimitroff would often tell Pioli to back off the scouts a bit. Pioli would tell him that one day he would run a department and he’d see that certain tough-love management styles are necessary.

  “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to my office the past three years, wheeled back in my chair, and said, ‘Holy Pioli. That was the most Pioli-esque moment I’ve had so far,’” Dimitroff says.

  There is laughter and more wine. A waiter comes by and says, “Can I get you anything else, Mr. Pioli?”

  Pioli is surprised. He spent years in Boston, walking through Logan Airport and Fenway Park, and was scarcely recognized. A waiter in Alabama knows who he is? What gives?

  “I watch ESPN, sir,” the waiter says. “And I know you, too. How are you, Mr. Dimitroff?”

  Even if the kid, a student at the University of South Alabama, is working for a tip, he’s charismatic enough where it doesn’t matter. He even pronounces “Dimitroff” flawlessly, not making the common mistake of putting “meat” where “mitt” should be. You can imagine him going to Jerry Jones’s table and applauding him on the brilliance of his previous draft picks and the new Cowboys Stadium. He makes sure they have everything they need and then leaves.

  Pioli and Dimitroff mention how much their lives have changed in K
ansas City and Atlanta. They do things now in their jobs that they never would have dreamed of doing with the Patriots.

  “And honestly,” Dimitroff says, “the differences are not as related to scouting and team-building as much as they are to football business relationships that we have. Some of the marketing relationships and decisions we make. Whether it’s training camp or accessibility…”

  “Or being in a commercial on a bus,” Pioli interrupts.

  Dimitroff, head coach Mike Smith, owner Arthur Blank, and many other Falcons were in an NFL commercial in which they were head-bopping on a bus as music played. Except Dimitroff never bopped. Once. He’s been ragged on about it since the commercial first aired. Dimitroff smiles and continues.

  “I think it’s a by-product of this league changing a little bit, too. And you and I understanding as we’re evolving, as much as we’re football traditionalists and historians and very mindful and appreciative of it, we also understand that this is entertainment and there are things that we have to do…”

  “I will never say that it’s entertainment,” Pioli says.

  “I know you won’t. I will.”

  The word itself in a football context seems to be heretical to him.

  “As soon as I succumb to that word, I’m out,” he says. “It’s a part of it, but it’s not what it is. Is it a part of it? Yeah. It’s always been a part of entertainment, that’s why I watch, you know, it entertained me in the truest definition of the word, but…”

  “And this is probably the fundamental difference between my personality and yours,” Dimitroff says. He adds, laughing, “You’re the guy who has called me Eurotrash. The idea of the pomp and circumstance and the shining lights…”

  “Drives me crazy,” Pioli says. “You see it all with the fireworks in some of these stadiums.”

  “That would be us,” Dimitroff replies, knowing that’s exactly what the Falcons did, and more, before their play-off loss to the Packers. “And again, I’m a realist because I know that’s where it’s going.”

  “I can understand that’s where it’s going, but I’m not buying.”

  Dimitroff, who has zinged Pioli in the past by calling him a blue-collar guy with blue blood, tweaks him again.

  “You can make your multimillions and not buy until you get out, or whatever.”

  “Oh,” Pioli says. “You’re gonna put that out there?”

  The flattering waiter returns and wants to know if he can get them anything. Pioli asks if it’s okay if they hang out awhile, and he says it’s fine. They continue the discussion. They would likely have it anyway, but it’s even more topical now. The NFL is just over a month away from a work stoppage, and there are lots of strong opinions about what that will mean for the league. And who’s at fault. And if the essence of what made the league what it is will be choked away in legalese.

  “We have all… I’m not going to say compromised, because it’s not compromising,” Pioli says. “We understand it and we’re evolving. But I know deep down inside, you don’t love all of it, either. You understand, but you would love it to be more of football in its purest sense. However, that’s not what it is anymore.”

  “Well, I mostly agree with you. I’ll differ only on this: My energy store is, like everyone’s, it’s limited. And I can’t use my energy fighting the inevitable. So it’s like, all right, if this is the way it’s going, what’s the best way to manage and accept this and not waste my energy and angst on something that you know isn’t going to change? This is the way it’s going. It’s not going backward.”

  Pioli’s positions very much echo the sentiments that he and Belichick had while both were in New England. Dimitroff, even while working with them, frequently disagreed. He knew he would do things differently if he ever got a chance to run an organization, and they would be things that Pioli and Belichick wouldn’t endorse. For example, Dimitroff never understood why the Patriots did not allow all of their scouts in the room during the entire draft, and he was always puzzled why the scouts weren’t given all-access passes so they could celebrate with everyone else on the field when the team was winning Super Bowls. He’s teased about the corporate perks he has in Atlanta: access to Blank’s G4 jet, golfing trips to Hilton Head and Augusta National, and an ownership group—and a draft room—that is open to celebrity advisers and limited partners such as Hank Aaron, who grew up playing football and baseball just two miles away from the restaurant.

  “There’s something we did in New England and I do now and it’s limit the number of people in the draft room,” Pioli says. “I need to be able to focus. I need silence. I need, even if it’s just not people talking, I need limited activity.”

  “You’d be interested to see the difference in our place,” Dimitroff says with a smile. “And that goes back to the conversation we had way back. Remember what I always used to say to you, at least early on?”

  Pioli nods. “You’d say, ‘You should let the scouts in.’”

  “And then finally I let it go and it was a nonissue. So now I have a place in our draft where our scouts sit. They’re very mindful and they all know if it gets unruly they won’t be in there. But we also have things that you would never allow in your draft room.”

  “Like what?”

  Dimitroff explains the layout of the enormous Atlanta draft room, with several tables for scouts and rows of seats for some of the advisers and partners, if they’re interested. In theory, the Falcons could have Aaron in the draft room, sitting next to Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former Atlanta mayor. Pioli shakes his head.

  “This is how I see it differently,” he says. “This goes back to the entertainment conversation. Draft day is not entertainment in that room, okay? I understand that it’s going to be on ESPN and the NFL Network. I get all that. But again, there’s degrees of compromise here. So we’ve got to have that. Last year I spent thirty million dollars guaranteed on one pick. I’ve gotta have a clear head to make that decision. This is not entertainment. Do Fortune 500 companies have people coming into their boardrooms? I don’t know, maybe I’m taking myself too seriously.”

  “Respectfully, Scott, if my mistakes are because we have seven limited partners and a couple business associates in there, then my personal opinion is I’m not the right person for the job. I’m not being flip or derogatory toward your comment. We all operate in a different way.”

  Pioli agrees. “My way’s not the right way. Your way’s not the right way. It’s finding out what’s the right way for the leader or the leadership group. What’s the right way for the people? I’m very passionate about this, but not in the sense of where I’m saying, ‘I can’t believe you, Thomas.’ I say it because I can’t concentrate and be as effective and/or thoughtful with distractions. You can.”

  The statement makes Dimitroff pause. The April draft will represent a turning point for both of them, for different reasons. The Falcons have the more mature roster, so the GM believes he can be more aggressive with his draft picks. The Chiefs are still in rebuilding mode, despite their division title, and this will be Pioli’s second draft with the system in place and Phil Emery alongside as college scouting director. It’s a chance to come up with another strong class like they did in 2010, when first-round pick Eric Berry made the Pro Bowl. Pioli had just three months to prepare for his first Kansas City draft.

  “To your point,” Dimitroff says, “I might be spending more time trying to manage the room than focusing on the next pick. Because in the three years that we’ve had drafts, there have been some unruly occurrences that have been pretty agitating to me. You’re right. It’s our game day.”

  “With millions upon millions of dollars at stake. And the franchise’s future.”

  They’re heading toward a place they’ve been many times. Last men standing. There are fewer and fewer sounds of knives and forks lightly tapping against plates. The conversations in other parts of the restaurant aren’t as anonymous as they were forty minutes earlier. They could have t
his conversation for a while and continue to make strong arguments. Pioli gets the final word before they settle and give the kid waiter the tip of his life: “You know, we’ve got to be careful about how much of football loses its soul. Because we got to where we are because we kept the football soul.”

  It’s a topic that they will certainly reprise many times in their careers. They are virtually brothers, but some things they just don’t see the same way. There are many times in Atlanta when Dimitroff will listen to the requests of the marketing side, weigh how much time they will take and measure what their impact on the team will be, and then decide to do them. It was one of the things that stood out to Blank during his interview: He had a football mind for building teams, yet he was also able to see all the things that make an organization successful. Pioli can see it, too, even if he sometimes sees it and grimaces.

  As they go to leave the restaurant, it turns out they’re not shutting the place down after all. Jones spots Pioli and goes over to give him a hug. “I’m proud of you,” the Cowboys’ owner says. Crennel still is there, too, and they chat with him.

  When they step outside, the mission is clear again. They will always have dinner conversations that will go unexpected places. But this is late January, just a few weeks away from draft meetings and the Combine, and they are two GMs whose teams were bounced from the play-offs. They didn’t win anything in Kansas City and Atlanta that they’d be willing to brag about. There’s plenty of work to do.

  13

  Chief Assembly

  The agreement they always have is that they will share the music, right down the middle. As they drive the streets of Kansas City on a Sunday afternoon, the day before Valentine’s Day, they listen to a naturally eclectic playlist. One song is Scott Pioli’s, the very next one belongs to his seven-year-old daughter, Mia. It’s Springsteen to Swift, the Stones to Usher, and then one that they can both claim, Michael Jackson.