Professional football teams have many different kinds of coaches on their staff.  Of course there is the head coach, but then there is also the offensive coach, defensive coach, quarterback coach, offensive line coach, special teams coach, and many others.  Just about every on-the-field player position has a coach.  However there is one coach I didn’t know NFL teams had on staff until just recently… the Quality Control coach.

At first I was like, “Why would an NFL team need a Quality Control coach?”, since I am most used to thinking about quality control when it comes to technology and manufacturing operations.  So I did some quick research to find out what a Quality Control Coach in the NFL does, and what I found surprised and inspired me.

First of all, a Quality Control Coach in the NFL doesn’t really do any coaching at all, and you most likely won’t see them on the field each Sunday during the NFL season.  Quality Control Coaches work behind the scenes, but their work is incredibly important.  These coaches spend their days doing a lot of multitasking, primarily focusing on looking ahead up to five weeks in the future.  They watch tons of film, thousands of formations and plays, of opposing teams that their team will be playing over the next couple of months.  Then they analyze all that film, create game scenarios, possible offensive and defensive strategies, lead scout team practices, and create scouting reports to share with the head coach and positional coaches.  These coaches are helping the team by focusing on the future, not today or even this week’s game.  They are building intelligence for future operations.

In much of the research I reviewed on Quality Control Coaches in the NFL, the role was kind of downplayed when NFL teams started hiring the position.  It was described as a grunt role, and a starting point for a coach who aspired to one day be on the field on game day.  With the rise of sports analytics, the role of a Quality Control Coach has taken on a greater importance in recent years, now having a more prominent seat at the coaching table.

So what does an NFL Quality Control Coach have to do with you and your business?

If we are honest with ourselves, we spend a lot of time focusing on the here and now, and a lot of the past.  We look at today’s sales figures, stock prices, sales leads, website traffic, etc.  We do some strategic planning, but we don’t do a good job of really analyzing “what if” scenarios.

This is why I am a big fan of having a business intelligence department and conducting war gaming exercises to practice what would happen if you launch a particular product or what you would do if the competition makes a move to steal market share - just like an NFL Quality Control Coach would do.

You should have someone on your team that looks only to the future, not too far out, maybe a quarter or two down the road.  They would put together projections, create strategies, and maybe even practice those “what if” scenarios.

If NFL team put resources against this type of quality control, should you as well?