Larry Gann

Soon after Charlie Strong was fired at Texas in November 2016, he went home and isolated himself in his office. He picked up a yellow legal pad and started writing. Day after day, page after page: What could I have done better? What really happened? What are you going to change? Sean McDermott is doing something similar right now. After nine seasons and a 98–50 record in Buffalo, he built a new routine from scratch, including six to eight hours of self-assigned film study daily. Dan Quinn, fired by Atlanta after a 0-5 start in 2020, put it plainly: "I wasn't going to be the blame person or a victim. I've got to gain something from this." The thread running through these men is the willingness to treat failure as a curriculum. Many people, when they get knocked down professionally, either rush to the next thing or retreat into bitterness. The coaches who come back stronger tend to do something harder: they sit in the discomfort long enough to learn from it, and they ask the questions that have no flattering answers. When was the last time you sat with a difficult question long enough to fully answer it? When things go wrong, do you reach for the next opportunity, or reach for the honest question first? As McDermott told The Athletic: "When you stop asking questions, that's when you get yourself into trouble."