Coach Steve Brickey is one of my favorite people I’ve come across in my life. As the quarterback coach at Bryant University, I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with him throughout the recruiting process and during my years in the program. Within minutes of my first quarterback meeting, it was obvious that Coach Brickey had forgotten more about football than I had ever known.
That knowledge was built over decades of coaching at places like Missouri, Texas, Texas Tech, and TCU. By the time he wrapped up his career coaching the “fighting accountants” at a small 1 AA business school in Smithfield, Rhode Island, our program was the beneficiary of his lifetime of experience.
Among his many talents, Coach Brickey might be the best storyteller I’ve ever met. He could captivate a room with stories about recruiting LaDainian Tomlinson to TCU or an infamous helicopter coyote hunting trip in the Texas desert with wealthy boosters. If you know, you know.
Beyond the stories, there is one lesson he repeated that stands out and It usually came up while reviewing film after a practice or game. In this scenario a play would break down because a receiver ran the wrong route or a lineman blatantly missed a blocking assignment. The quarterback’s timing would be thrown off, and someone would take a sack or force a bad throw into coverage.
Coach Brickey would repeatedly rewind the clip, pause it, and say something along the lines of, “Look, s**t happens out there. I know this guy ran the wrong route, but…” Then he’d deliver the line:
“You’re the guy with the ball in your hands.”
As an 18 year old, this was an uncomfortable message to hear. It was much easier to focus on someone else’s mistake than examine your own decision. But circumstances didn’t matter; the quarterback was responsible for the outcome because the ball was in his hands. At its core, this is a lesson on accountability.
Accountability means resisting the urge to point fingers and instead looking inward. It means owning the result, learning from it, and making the next decision a better one. In my experience, the people I’ve learned from and respected the most take the most ownership, focusing on improving the quality of their own work thus raising the standard for everyone around them. In my opinion it doesn't matter if you're brand new to your corporate job, a seasoned titan of industry, or somewhere in the middle. We can all take a lesson from Coach Brick.
“You’re the guy with the ball in your hands.”
-Coach Steve Brickey
