August 17, 2025 ⢠16 mins
đď¸ Episode 182: Gridiron Gang & Leadership
What does Gridiron Gang teach us about leadership, emotional intelligence, and second chances? In this powerful episode of The Shadows Podcast, Miguel Estrella steps up for his first solo breakdown, using the story of Coach Sean Porter (played by Dwayne âThe Rockâ Johnson) and his juvenile football team as a blueprint for leadership under pressure.
Through the lens of four âdowns,â Miguel unpacks the movieâs deepest lessons:
đ Vision â Why leaders need a clear finish line and commander's intent.
đ Turbulence â Managing conflict, rivalries, and the storming stage of teams.
đ Tackling Major Problems â How asking for help builds trust and breaks cycles of violence.
đ Control vs. Influence â The moment true leadership is proven when you create leaders who can act without you.
This isnât just a sports story. Itâs a leadership playbook for anyone navigating challengesâwhether youâre a coach, parent, business leader, or teammate. Miguel connects the filmâs gritty reality to themes of resilience, trust, influence, emotional intelligence (EQ), teamwork, and personal growth.
If youâve ever asked yourself how to lead through chaos, earn trust, or build a vision that outlives the scoreboard, this episode will hit home.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to the Shadows podcast.
Last week, our founder Bodie talked about the movie Any Given
Sunday. He had three main insights from
the movie, and he tied them all back to emotional intelligence.
One thing that stuck with me themost was when he mentioned
winning too fast can make you ultimately lose in life.
It's such a profound statement to me because most people don't
(00:22):
know that the shelf life of an athlete is relatively short.
An average NFL player would spend roughly around seven years
in the league, and after that they'll have to move on like
everybody else. Most of us viewers at home don't
see that reality, and I think itdoesn't get talked about enough.
(00:45):
The thoughts that are racing in my head when I heard about the
shelf life of an athlete is thatwhat happens after you win?
What happens when you don't win like what happens to your life
after sports? All those thoughts was captured
in the movie Gridiron Gang that was starred by Dwayne The Rock
(01:08):
Johnson. So to set the stage, this was
shot in Southern California in the Los Angeles area where gangs
dominate neighborhoods. Dwayne Johnson works as a
juvenile detention officer for majority of the kids that are
involved in gang. Gang activities usually end up
when they break the law. One of the first scenes was him
(01:31):
trying to help Rodger to get some sense of direction in this
life where he gave him the honest truth.
And he told Rodger, Rodger, you're not going back to jail.
One day you're going to be dead if we don't get it together.
So Fast forward, Rodger was backin the streets with his cousin
Willie. His old life came knocking again
(01:52):
over a stolen bite. His homie was asking for some
help to confront a rival gang, and you can tell that Roger had
some reservations. But everything happened so quick
As they're planning this, the rival gang did a drive by
shooting, killing one of their homies and then turning back to
(02:13):
Roger with their car, killing him instantly.
And Willie was devastated. You try to get back at the other
gang, but they failed. And after all of that, Willie
goes home and finds that his mom's boyfriend laid his hands
on her again. This started a confrontation.
And in in that confrontation, Willie ended up shooting his
(02:39):
mom's boyfriend. So he ends up in juvie.
And on the other side of the story, we have Dwayne Johnson.
Dwayne Johnson, he has a dying mother, no relationship with his
father and he's really struggling with his personality
because he used to be a footballstar.
Again, like I said in the beginning, playing sports is
(03:03):
only a short amount of time in someone's life and they have to
move on. So Dwayne Willie finally meets
and jewelry and the way that will tackle the leadership
insights in Great Iron Gang is through downs.
For non football fans, American football at least the way that
(03:23):
the game is played is you start your offense on 1st down, you
have 10 yards till you reach thenext first down marker and you
only have 4 downs or four tries to do it.
So if you don't score a touchdown or hit that first down
and four tries, you have to kickthe ball till you own it and
then they'll start their offense.
(03:45):
So we'll have a leadership insight from the movie for each
down South for our first down. The first leadership insight in
the movie was when Dwayne Johnson decided that the system
isn't working. When I say system, this is the
penitentiary system for juveniles, over 75% of the kids
(04:06):
and back up in jail or they windup dead.
He decides to create a football team in their detention center.
So our first leadership insight is vision.
As a leader, you need to have a vision.
A vision makes you understand what the finish line looks like.
(04:28):
A vision gives you something to strive for and for your people,
something to hope for. So Dwayne tells his football
team that they're going to be called Mustangs.
And he says this compelling vision through the speech, which
I call his winner's speech. He says in the gridiron, we do
(04:52):
it my way, not your way, my way,your way.
Got you here. And you're here because you're
lost right now. You are losers.
Mustangs are winners. And if you accept this challenge
at the end of the season, you'regoing to be winners.
(05:14):
Something that I want to highlight here is that he wasn't
specific on what he meant by winners.
He just left it ambiguous. And the military often referred
to this as the commander's intent.
So that's our first down. Now here comes the challenge
because in hindsight, after the first down, here down starts
(05:36):
running out. So for our second down
Leadership Insight, we go to oneof the early test in leadership
which is fixing the turbulence in the team.
In the movie you can see these young teenagers have never had a
structure in their life. You have rival gangs in the
team, people who are in fit for sports.
(05:58):
And in the movie Excuse Me, a fight breaks off against William
Calvin from his rival gang. After the fight breaks off,
Dwayne demanded not ask, demanded them to call peace.
They said we'll just be like little gangsters that won't even
(06:20):
mean anything. So peace did not happen that
day. This is an important part of
leadership. You cannot fix emotional
intelligence with management type actions.
As a leader or a person in a position of leadership, nothing
(06:42):
will make you look more incompetent than your lack of
personal skills. You can clearly see that during
the storming stage. They're now winning games and
Dwayne takes a special interest in Willie. *** says Tough as
Willie looks and acts, you can see his vulnerabilities.
(07:04):
After one of the games they lost, Dwayne decides to pad up
during practice and tells Willie, Willie, you need to
knock my ass over this line. Willie says.
What if I don't want to? Then Dwayne?
Dwayne says, well if you don't, everyone's going to think you're
a chicken shit. Dwayne uses this opportunity to
(07:30):
give them their first sense of structure.
Calling Willie a chicken shit fired him up.
Hey put his helmet on, ready to knock him over.
So he riled his team. They're cheering for each other,
and they're cheering for Willie.After several attempts, Dwayne
finally let's Willie knock him over.
(07:50):
And you can tell that he staged it.
But it worked because immediately after that, Willie
gained a sense of confidence. And to add Cherry to that cake,
Calvin from his rival gang blocked for him the next game.
Which is what Which was the winning play for that game.
(08:11):
As a leader, when your team has turbulence, one of the main
things you can do is give them their first win.
A win gives people morale. It makes them feel good because
they start to see what they're doing amounts to something.
The team finally is finally moving forward and for 1/3 down
(08:32):
the next insight, it's tackling the first major problem.
When I say major problem, it's not petty drama in the team,
minor gossiping, etcetera. I'm talking about when people
get hurt, fired, or the system is just on the verge of collapse
(08:55):
for third down. In one of the major games of the
season, Calvin was confronted bythe leader of Willie's gang.
Again, like I said in the beginning, they are from rival
gangs. So Calvin ends up getting shot
and when the shooter was about to attempt the kill shot, Willie
(09:15):
jumps out there to save him. He grabs the leader of his gang
and pushes him and after he doesthis, he can tell that he was
confused because one, that was his homie, 2.
That was his leader and three, that's not what gangsters do.
(09:37):
This incident create a major problem for Dwayne.
They're asking them to forfeit the rest of the season and that
what they agreed upon when they let him in the league was
broken. Often when leaders tackled their
first major problem, one of the biggest mistakes they made is
(09:57):
that they try to tackle it alone.
So in a moment of clarity while talking to his assistant coach,
they use their progress as theirammunition.
They said though Calvin was shot, this is a major
breakthrough because they saw that Willie helping a rival gang
(10:18):
is finally breaking the cycle ofviolence.
Even a Co worker whom Duane butted heads with helped him
convince the board that they canmake sure the shooting will
never happen again. Help comes in many forms.
When we start to pick and choosewhat help we want to accept, we
(10:42):
end up losing trust and opportunity.
If a Co worker who you don't getalong with helps you accept the
help because you're still working towards the same goal.
So now we get to 4th down. 4th down is clutch sign.
It's a test of now or another the 4th down.
(11:05):
Leadership insight is not reverting back to your old ways.
This is where the significance of trusting the process really
shows its magic. In the earlier part of the movie
when the team was losing, The Rock's reaction was to be blunt
and force and dictate. He used that method because
(11:29):
that's what he learned from his dad.
That's also the reason why he doesn't have a relationship with
his dad. But he finally let finally let
that part of him go because for a long time, the rock has been
playing hurt. Now, Bodhi mentioned it last
week that at first glance, playing hurt looks heroic, but
(11:52):
sometimes it's not the smartest thing to do.
They always say you can't pour from an empty glass and we must
remember that no amount of building something good can
remove something bad. We must let it go.
We must forgive and forget or that thing we're holding on to
will have too much power over us.
(12:15):
This time around, the rock used a different strategy, which is
to trust, believe and motivate. And 4th down situations, there's
only two outcomes. You either turn the ball over to
the other side or you either geta first down or a touchdown.
In the movie, the ultimate touchdown was during their half
time huddle in the semi final game.
(12:38):
The Rock decided not to join theplayers in the locker room and
in this touchdown play, the leadership insight is control
versus influence. So he decides not to join them.
They're losing. Exhibit goes up to him and goes,
man, we have to get them ready for the second-half.
(12:59):
The rock tells them they're ready, just wait.
The focus goes to Willy. Willy starts talking about the
opponents to his teammates, and he said they're not that good.
We're better than them. When we first started, I hated
(13:19):
all of you, but now we're A-Team.
This means so much more to us. And after that speech, they
started doing a battle cry, stomping their feet.
And to exhibit surprise, The Rock was right.
They come out guns blazing. They end up winning the game,
(13:42):
but they lost the championship game.
But that's not the important thing because as the movie ends,
The Rock is narrating. He says.
We ended up losing the championship game but no one
called us losers because he never defined winning as just a
(14:02):
game. The winning he referred to in
his speech has always been aboutwinning in life.
Majority of his players never went back to jail.
I also like that they showed real data because some of them
fell victim to the violence again.
So to wrap things up for our first down leadership insight, I
(14:24):
talked about vision. A vision is important because it
creates direction and motivation, but you must
remember that kindness needs to be involved because that's how
you build trust through vision. For a second down, we talked
about turbulence, the storming stage, the key takeaways.
You can't force and rush leadership.
(14:47):
You have to make it relatable and you have to make sure it
sticks. Our third down was tackling a
major problem. Here I talked about asking and
accepting help. There's a note saying that what
got you here won't get you there.
And for anyone listening who says that oh, I've always solved
my problems on my own, I think I'm doing pretty good.
(15:08):
Asking and accepting help is a form of caring.
I told my subordinates. You not asking me for help
doesn't allow me to lead becausehelping you is my job.
And to be honest, it doesn't matter how good you are, people
(15:30):
need to know that you care and accepting and asking for help
shows that you care. And lastly, for our 4th down and
our last play that gave us a touchdown.
Control versus influence. One of the fundamental rules in
leading is that you create more leaders.
(15:50):
In the absence of your control, your influence would dictate
action. When you make people act towards
leading despite your absence, itmeans you've succeeded in
creating more leaders. Again, I'd like to thank our
listeners, but I also want to give a special thank you to
(16:12):
Bodhi. He does all the behind the
scenes. People who work the behind the
scenes don't get enough credit, but Bodhi does that for the
shadows. So thank you, Bodhi.
For our listeners, if you haven't listened to our previous
episode, go ahead and do that. Next week we have our final
(16:32):
audible episode, More Than a game, The emotional triggers of
sports fans. I really love this topic because
the heated debates, the irrational anger that we have
for sworn enemies from the rivalteams will tackle it all next
week. So make sure you stay tuned.
Again, thank you for listening and don't fear the shadows.
Welcome back to the Shadows podcast.
Last week, our founder Bodie talked about the movie Any Given
Sunday. He had three main insights from
the movie, and he tied them all back to emotional intelligence.
One thing that stuck with me themost was when he mentioned
winning too fast can make you ultimately lose in life.
It's such a profound statement to me because most people don't
(00:22):
know that the shelf life of an athlete is relatively short.
An average NFL player would spend roughly around seven years
in the league, and after that they'll have to move on like
everybody else. Most of us viewers at home don't
see that reality, and I think itdoesn't get talked about enough.
(00:45):
The thoughts that are racing in my head when I heard about the
shelf life of an athlete is thatwhat happens after you win?
What happens when you don't win like what happens to your life
after sports? All those thoughts was captured
in the movie Gridiron Gang that was starred by Dwayne The Rock
(01:08):
Johnson. So to set the stage, this was
shot in Southern California in the Los Angeles area where gangs
dominate neighborhoods. Dwayne Johnson works as a
juvenile detention officer for majority of the kids that are
involved in gang. Gang activities usually end up
when they break the law. One of the first scenes was him
(01:31):
trying to help Rodger to get some sense of direction in this
life where he gave him the honest truth.
And he told Rodger, Rodger, you're not going back to jail.
One day you're going to be dead if we don't get it together.
So Fast forward, Rodger was backin the streets with his cousin
Willie. His old life came knocking again
(01:52):
over a stolen bite. His homie was asking for some
help to confront a rival gang, and you can tell that Roger had
some reservations. But everything happened so quick
As they're planning this, the rival gang did a drive by
shooting, killing one of their homies and then turning back to
(02:13):
Roger with their car, killing him instantly.
And Willie was devastated. You try to get back at the other
gang, but they failed. And after all of that, Willie
goes home and finds that his mom's boyfriend laid his hands
on her again. This started a confrontation.
And in in that confrontation, Willie ended up shooting his
(02:39):
mom's boyfriend. So he ends up in juvie.
And on the other side of the story, we have Dwayne Johnson.
Dwayne Johnson, he has a dying mother, no relationship with his
father and he's really struggling with his personality
because he used to be a footballstar.
Again, like I said in the beginning, playing sports is
(03:03):
only a short amount of time in someone's life and they have to
move on. So Dwayne Willie finally meets
and jewelry and the way that will tackle the leadership
insights in Great Iron Gang is through downs.
For non football fans, American football at least the way that
(03:23):
the game is played is you start your offense on 1st down, you
have 10 yards till you reach thenext first down marker and you
only have 4 downs or four tries to do it.
So if you don't score a touchdown or hit that first down
and four tries, you have to kickthe ball till you own it and
then they'll start their offense.
(03:45):
So we'll have a leadership insight from the movie for each
down South for our first down. The first leadership insight in
the movie was when Dwayne Johnson decided that the system
isn't working. When I say system, this is the
penitentiary system for juveniles, over 75% of the kids
(04:06):
and back up in jail or they windup dead.
He decides to create a football team in their detention center.
So our first leadership insight is vision.
As a leader, you need to have a vision.
A vision makes you understand what the finish line looks like.
(04:28):
A vision gives you something to strive for and for your people,
something to hope for. So Dwayne tells his football
team that they're going to be called Mustangs.
And he says this compelling vision through the speech, which
I call his winner's speech. He says in the gridiron, we do
(04:52):
it my way, not your way, my way,your way.
Got you here. And you're here because you're
lost right now. You are losers.
Mustangs are winners. And if you accept this challenge
at the end of the season, you'regoing to be winners.
(05:14):
Something that I want to highlight here is that he wasn't
specific on what he meant by winners.
He just left it ambiguous. And the military often referred
to this as the commander's intent.
So that's our first down. Now here comes the challenge
because in hindsight, after the first down, here down starts
(05:36):
running out. So for our second down
Leadership Insight, we go to oneof the early test in leadership
which is fixing the turbulence in the team.
In the movie you can see these young teenagers have never had a
structure in their life. You have rival gangs in the
team, people who are in fit for sports.
(05:58):
And in the movie Excuse Me, a fight breaks off against William
Calvin from his rival gang. After the fight breaks off,
Dwayne demanded not ask, demanded them to call peace.
They said we'll just be like little gangsters that won't even
(06:20):
mean anything. So peace did not happen that
day. This is an important part of
leadership. You cannot fix emotional
intelligence with management type actions.
As a leader or a person in a position of leadership, nothing
(06:42):
will make you look more incompetent than your lack of
personal skills. You can clearly see that during
the storming stage. They're now winning games and
Dwayne takes a special interest in Willie. *** says Tough as
Willie looks and acts, you can see his vulnerabilities.
(07:04):
After one of the games they lost, Dwayne decides to pad up
during practice and tells Willie, Willie, you need to
knock my ass over this line. Willie says.
What if I don't want to? Then Dwayne?
Dwayne says, well if you don't, everyone's going to think you're
a chicken shit. Dwayne uses this opportunity to
(07:30):
give them their first sense of structure.
Calling Willie a chicken shit fired him up.
Hey put his helmet on, ready to knock him over.
So he riled his team. They're cheering for each other,
and they're cheering for Willie.After several attempts, Dwayne
finally let's Willie knock him over.
(07:50):
And you can tell that he staged it.
But it worked because immediately after that, Willie
gained a sense of confidence. And to add Cherry to that cake,
Calvin from his rival gang blocked for him the next game.
Which is what Which was the winning play for that game.
(08:11):
As a leader, when your team has turbulence, one of the main
things you can do is give them their first win.
A win gives people morale. It makes them feel good because
they start to see what they're doing amounts to something.
The team finally is finally moving forward and for 1/3 down
(08:32):
the next insight, it's tackling the first major problem.
When I say major problem, it's not petty drama in the team,
minor gossiping, etcetera. I'm talking about when people
get hurt, fired, or the system is just on the verge of collapse
(08:55):
for third down. In one of the major games of the
season, Calvin was confronted bythe leader of Willie's gang.
Again, like I said in the beginning, they are from rival
gangs. So Calvin ends up getting shot
and when the shooter was about to attempt the kill shot, Willie
(09:15):
jumps out there to save him. He grabs the leader of his gang
and pushes him and after he doesthis, he can tell that he was
confused because one, that was his homie, 2.
That was his leader and three, that's not what gangsters do.
(09:37):
This incident create a major problem for Dwayne.
They're asking them to forfeit the rest of the season and that
what they agreed upon when they let him in the league was
broken. Often when leaders tackled their
first major problem, one of the biggest mistakes they made is
(09:57):
that they try to tackle it alone.
So in a moment of clarity while talking to his assistant coach,
they use their progress as theirammunition.
They said though Calvin was shot, this is a major
breakthrough because they saw that Willie helping a rival gang
(10:18):
is finally breaking the cycle ofviolence.
Even a Co worker whom Duane butted heads with helped him
convince the board that they canmake sure the shooting will
never happen again. Help comes in many forms.
When we start to pick and choosewhat help we want to accept, we
(10:42):
end up losing trust and opportunity.
If a Co worker who you don't getalong with helps you accept the
help because you're still working towards the same goal.
So now we get to 4th down. 4th down is clutch sign.
It's a test of now or another the 4th down.
(11:05):
Leadership insight is not reverting back to your old ways.
This is where the significance of trusting the process really
shows its magic. In the earlier part of the movie
when the team was losing, The Rock's reaction was to be blunt
and force and dictate. He used that method because
(11:29):
that's what he learned from his dad.
That's also the reason why he doesn't have a relationship with
his dad. But he finally let finally let
that part of him go because for a long time, the rock has been
playing hurt. Now, Bodhi mentioned it last
week that at first glance, playing hurt looks heroic, but
(11:52):
sometimes it's not the smartest thing to do.
They always say you can't pour from an empty glass and we must
remember that no amount of building something good can
remove something bad. We must let it go.
We must forgive and forget or that thing we're holding on to
will have too much power over us.
(12:15):
This time around, the rock used a different strategy, which is
to trust, believe and motivate. And 4th down situations, there's
only two outcomes. You either turn the ball over to
the other side or you either geta first down or a touchdown.
In the movie, the ultimate touchdown was during their half
time huddle in the semi final game.
(12:38):
The Rock decided not to join theplayers in the locker room and
in this touchdown play, the leadership insight is control
versus influence. So he decides not to join them.
They're losing. Exhibit goes up to him and goes,
man, we have to get them ready for the second-half.
(12:59):
The rock tells them they're ready, just wait.
The focus goes to Willy. Willy starts talking about the
opponents to his teammates, and he said they're not that good.
We're better than them. When we first started, I hated
(13:19):
all of you, but now we're A-Team.
This means so much more to us. And after that speech, they
started doing a battle cry, stomping their feet.
And to exhibit surprise, The Rock was right.
They come out guns blazing. They end up winning the game,
(13:42):
but they lost the championship game.
But that's not the important thing because as the movie ends,
The Rock is narrating. He says.
We ended up losing the championship game but no one
called us losers because he never defined winning as just a
(14:02):
game. The winning he referred to in
his speech has always been aboutwinning in life.
Majority of his players never went back to jail.
I also like that they showed real data because some of them
fell victim to the violence again.
So to wrap things up for our first down leadership insight, I
(14:24):
talked about vision. A vision is important because it
creates direction and motivation, but you must
remember that kindness needs to be involved because that's how
you build trust through vision. For a second down, we talked
about turbulence, the storming stage, the key takeaways.
You can't force and rush leadership.
(14:47):
You have to make it relatable and you have to make sure it
sticks. Our third down was tackling a
major problem. Here I talked about asking and
accepting help. There's a note saying that what
got you here won't get you there.
And for anyone listening who says that oh, I've always solved
my problems on my own, I think I'm doing pretty good.
(15:08):
Asking and accepting help is a form of caring.
I told my subordinates. You not asking me for help
doesn't allow me to lead becausehelping you is my job.
And to be honest, it doesn't matter how good you are, people
(15:30):
need to know that you care and accepting and asking for help
shows that you care. And lastly, for our 4th down and
our last play that gave us a touchdown.
Control versus influence. One of the fundamental rules in
leading is that you create more leaders.
(15:50):
In the absence of your control, your influence would dictate
action. When you make people act towards
leading despite your absence, itmeans you've succeeded in
creating more leaders. Again, I'd like to thank our
listeners, but I also want to give a special thank you to
(16:12):
Bodhi. He does all the behind the
scenes. People who work the behind the
scenes don't get enough credit, but Bodhi does that for the
shadows. So thank you, Bodhi.
For our listeners, if you haven't listened to our previous
episode, go ahead and do that. Next week we have our final
(16:32):
audible episode, More Than a game, The emotional triggers of
sports fans. I really love this topic because
the heated debates, the irrational anger that we have
for sworn enemies from the rivalteams will tackle it all next
week. So make sure you stay tuned.
Again, thank you for listening and don't fear the shadows.
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