Bear with me. I know we've all been through it to some extent. Hell, it's not my 1st. But 4 days from a shot to repeat as league champs, suddenly my DC's gotten "hard headed." We always meet after a game & to discuss ideas for the next, he passes it to postion coaches & we work on it for a couple of days. I meet with position coaches then on Tuesday we sit down again to finish the plan. When we met after the semi-finals, I could sense he just didn’t seem interested in my input. We have a chance to avenge our 1 loss so a couple of things I want to try differently.

Well, yesterday I came out to him berating the defense, telling them "we've" decided to use the same strategy & it'll work perfectly if they just execute better & play harder. That, the only reason we lost was they didn't do either. Now, I rarely 2nd guess my coaches & I give them a lot of leeway. But he's been with me 4 years & knows I won't tolerate blaming players as well as the process for deciding on game plans. I asked the others & he hadn't told them anything. So I tried asking about it & he "informed" me that I wasn't gonna change "his plan," "this is what we're going to do" before he stormed out of the locker room.

I'm honestly still in shock. Up to now, he's the one guy I could rely on most to be a "team player" & have my back. I want the entire staff to feel they have voice about what happens on the field. I make very few of those decisions unilaterally. But this is just way over the line, clearly. It's certainly not the negativity we need this close to the championship, so I can't just let it go. Yet I'm kind of at loss on how to handle it. Any advice?