A Rare Breed

A look at how some coaches are taking a different approach in preparing their teams.
by: Steve Silverman
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For a head coach of a professional or college team the bottom line is always the same – it’s all about winning.

But it’s the road traveled that makes the man. A coach needs to put a game plan together, teach his players how to perform and find a way to inspire them. It is the motivational aspect of the job that often gives a coach his opportunity to show his individuality.

Take Mike Tice, the first-year head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings endured a miserable 2001 season, one that started coming apart at the seams at the conclusion of the previous season when they were blown out by the Giants in the NFC Championship game.

Tragedy visited the team at the start of training camp in 2001. Korey Stringer died after suffering a heat stroke and the team was never able to recover.

As the season progressed, the Vikings degenerated into an underachieving group who spent their season pointing fingers rather that playing football, finished the season with a 5-11 record. As a result, owner Red McCombs decided that Dennis Green was no longer the right man to lead the team. In an effort to reunite his players and build more unity, he hired OL coach Mike Tice to run the show.

Tice is expected to bring more unity, too, as he preaches an “us against them” attitude. Tice officially opened his coaching era when he joined the players in running 14 mandatory 40-yard wind sprints, sprints every player had to finish within a set time before they would be allowed to take part in full-pads practices.

There he was, the former tight end, running with his offensive linemen. Why not the tight ends? “I can’t run like a tight end any more, “he cracked. “When I was playing I couldn’t run like a tight end.”

He ran the last two sprints with a pulled hamstring, but nevertheless finished the exercise. Tice wanted to establish his own identity with his players and give them an image that will stick with them throughout the season. The idea is that they won’t quit or lessen their effort as they hit the wall in the fourth quarter.

A former NFL player, Tice wanted to let his players know he was in the battle with them.

“I feel I don’t want to ask them to do anything I wouldn’t do myself,” he said. “It’s just about being family and doing things together. I know they wanted me to make it and so I stuck it out for them. I thought about quitting, but if the head coach bails, that’s not a good sign.”

Tice, getting his first head coaching opportunity at any level, knows that tenure may be short if the team struggles out of the gate. So Tice ran ...and his players were impressed.

“Everyone always looked at Tice a little bit differently,” defensive end Lance Johnstone said. “Even before he was a head coach, he was always still like one of the guys. So him being the head coach, I think guys are going to respond to him well, just to the little stuff – like running sprints. That makes a statement. I don’t think there’s any other head coach running with his team – and making the times.”

Even recalcitrant WR Randy Moss is impressed by Tice’s opening act. “Tice has that enthusiasm that I always like to see in a coach. I think there’s just more respect you can gain from a guy who’s out there running with the team, to see that he’s still in some kind of shape.”

It’s just the tone Tice needed to set with a team that, filled with young players and new faces, is looking to come together after an off season of wholesale personnel movement.

Sometimes a coach will look beyond his own sport in order to inspire his players. Packer head coach Mike Sherman did just that when he had boxing legend Joe Frazier talk to his players about realizing the team’s championship aspirations.

The meeting happened in early August when “Smokin’ Joe” addressed players and coaches at the Packers’ hotel in downtown Philadelphia before a preseason game.

“Everyone in the room was in awe,” offensive coordinator Tom Rossley said. “The guy was legendary. He’s Smokin’ Joe.”

The idea came to Sherman, who never stops thinking about ways to expose his players to fresh motivational opportunities and fascinating personalities. Other than meeting Presidents Clinton and Bush, nobody connected with the team could remember anyone of Frazier’s stature having talked to the Packers in two decades.

“I didn’t do it for this game,” Sherman said before the Packers met the Eagles in a preseason contest. “I did it for this year. When I was growing up in Boston the one guy that I knew had the determination and will to do whatever it took to win a championship was Joe Frazier. I just always admired the guy.”

One of 13 children, Frazier moved from his birthplace of Beaufort, S.C., to Philadelphia at a young age. There, he took up boxing, becoming the embodiment of the stereotypical Philadelphia fighter – not gifted, not pretty, just a proud, tough, rugged warrior.

Frazier, 58, still lives in South Philly, and operates the weathered gym bearing his name where he whaled on sparring partners, sharpened his punches, and became both Olympic and heavyweight champion of the world.

Earlier this month, Sherman made arrangements with Frazier to pick him up at the gym after dinner with director of player development Edgar Bennett. Frazier showed them around, presented Sherman with a pair of autographed boxing gloves and then went with them to meet the team at the Westin Hotel.

At the 9 o’clock meeting, Sherman told Frazier’s story to the players, most of who weren’t born when he won the title over Buster Mathis in 1968. Sherman centered on Frazier’s first of three bouts with Muhammad Ali. The date was March 8, 1971, the site Madison Square Garden in New York. Many boxing experts consider that championship bout to be the greatest of the last 50 years.

The Packers’ video department prepared an eight-minute tape of the battle, which became known as the Fight of the Century. Ali entered 31-0, still rusty from a 3 1/2-year enforced layoff largely due to his objections to the Vietnam War. Frazier, unbeaten as well, had defended his title six times.

In the 15th round, Frazier landed a roundhouse left hook to the side of Ali’s head. For one of the few times in his glorious career, Ali was down. Frazier won a close decision. “We replayed that left hook,” Sherman said. “Man, it was beautiful. It just rocked him.”

Shortly after the room went dark for the video, security opened a door in the back of the room and Frazier stepped into the shadows wearing a Panama hat. When the video was finished, Sherman switched on the lights and said, “By the way, Joe Frazier, come on up here.”

People who were there said the stunned group gave him a standing ovation that lasted for at least three minutes. Frazier spoke for a while and then took questions on subjects ranging from Howard Cosell to the “Thrilla in Manila.”

“I told him on the way over, ‘We’re the Green Bay Packers and we’ve got a group of guys I want you to talk to about winning a championship,’” Sherman said. “The guys were just in awe of him – in awe – and he’s up there pumped. He was only going to stay for 25 minutes and he stayed until 11:30.”

Several players had cameras on the trip and Frazier graciously posed with whoever wanted a picture. Others wanted his signature.

Sherman wanted to provide some extra inspiration to his players by bringing an athlete who clearly knew how to dig way down deep and get the most out of himself. On a nasty, snowy afternoon in December or January, it just may pay dividends.

More often than not, a football coach will go out of his way to inspire his players with toughness and inner grit. But sometimes, showing some sensitivity will go a long way toward getting the most out of one’s players. That’s the route that Illinois head coach Ron Turner has followed during his six years as Illinois’ head coach.

Turner came to Illinois with a reputation as an offensive guru. Much of his skill in that area came from his four-year stint as offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears. Turner ran an offense that improved every season, breaking the club record for passing yards with 233 yards per game in 1995 and producing a 1,000-yard receiver and rusher in the same season. The diversity of the Turner offense in Chicago worked wonders for four different quarterbacks, namely Jim Harbaugh, Steve Walsh, Erik Kramer and Dave Krieg.

He had the credentials to become a head coach and he proved to the program’s outsiders that he was fit to handle the role of team counselor as well. It started at Chicago-area Schaumburg High School. Quarterback Kurt Kittner, one of Turner’s prime recruiting targets, was playing his senior year under a dark cloud. His mother was suffering from Multiple Sclerosis and Kittner was forced to play through uncertainty and emotional pain. In one game, he separated his thumb diving into the end zone and continued to play the rest of the half. At halftime, the team doctor told Kittner he couldn’t play quarterback for the rest of the season because of the injuries. Kittner had suffered torn ligaments and tendons and the finality of the doctor’s diagnosis put him over the edge and he broke down and started crying.

“He was bawling his eyes out. The pain was emotional, not physical,” said Schaumburg coach Tom Cerasani.

Turner understood what was happening. During the recruiting process, Kittner developed a bond with Turner, whose sister has multiple sclerosis. Soon, Kittner signed with Illinois. He said an unspoken understanding helped tighten the connection between coach and player. “We never really talked about it, but it helped,” Kittner said of his coach’s experience with MS.

“They just kind of knew. If you said you were having family stuff to take care of, they understood. It was unspoken.” Kittner, comfortable with Turner, became arguably the greatest offensive player in Illini history and was drafted last spring by the Atlanta Falcons.

Jon Gruden came to the Tampa Bay Bucs in a celebrated trade with the Oakland Raiders. The Bucs gave up first-and second-round draft picks in 2002 and 2003 in order to obtain Gruden’s emotional services.

That emotion – along with the ability to put forth a superior offensive game plan – is what separates Gruden from many of his colleagues. As a result of his preparation – that regularly begins before 4 a.m. on a daily basis – the Bucs offense promises to be much more productive under Gruden.

It will also be much more complicated. The Gruden playbook contains more than 800 different formations – and the coach threw the whole playbook at his new team. He did not work anything in gradually.

“There’s no down time here,” said Buccaneer QB Shaun King. “You have to learn an awful lot to be part of this offense – and you have to learn it NOW.”

Motion and emotion are the pre-snap keys to Gruden’s constantly shifting offense. Instead of the vanilla formations from years past, Gruden’s offense uses multiple formations that seemingly have as many different looks as a snowflake.

“It looks like organized confusion,” said Bucs defensive end Simeon Rice. “It’s a lot of looks that they run different plays off of. It throws you off. It’s hard to key certain things. A lot of things look the same, but they’re not. It’s definitely a head-spinner.”

Gruden applies pressure on defenses to make pre-snap adjustments in hopes of creating a breakdown, most likely in pass coverage. Because of the likelihood of mismatches, coordinators often resort to playing simple coverages that are as easy to read as a children’s book.

“What the offense does, it keeps working until it finds a breakdown,” Lynch said. “And I know playing against (Gruden), the good coordinators may let you get away with a play, but they’re going to come back to that later in the game. You show a weakness, they’ll find it. That’s what they do.”

According to Bucs cornerback Ronde Barber, the Bucs offense doesn’t vary much from what is used in San Francisco and Oakland.

“It’s two big wide receivers, guys that get it done on the outside and they’ve got a system that can get them open,” said Barber. “Oakland runs a lot of crossing routes. When we played them a few years ago, we played a lot of man coverage and they killed us.”

In fact, the last time the Bucs defense faced a Gruden offense is when they were throttled 45-0 in 1999, their only loss during the final nine games of the regular season.

And don’t think Gruden’s offense is pass-happy. His Oakland teams frequently ranked among the NFL’s best in rushing the football. Despite early misperceptions, the Bucs should be extremely balanced between the run and pass. Attempting to determine what to defend is the challenge.

“We’ll see things like Keenan (McCardell) and Keyshawn (Johnson) in the backfield, Mike (Alstott) and Michael Pittman split out wide,” said Lynch. “Not only will they do that, as soon as you get set, a motion goes where you’ve got to make an adjustment on that. That challenges you.”

It certainly won’t be the same old Buc offense. The innovative and inspiring Gruden starts his work day hours before dawn — and that extra time should get the Tampa Bay offense into the 21st century.

Don’t think for a second that coaches who go against the grain are a recent phenomenon. Jock Sutherland took over as coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1946 and led the team for two years. Sutherland believed that his team was not in shape and was determined to get them there by the time the season started.

Here’s how he ran his Hershey, Pa. training camp: Players awoke to reveille at 7:30 and were dressed and ready to practice by 8:45. A two-hour morning session got the players started and a three-hour practice followed in the afternoon. The team had full scrimmages starting with the second day of practice and kept hitting until the final cut.

Meetings were held every night at 8 pm and lights had to be turned out by 10 pm. Water? Fuhgettaboutit. Sutherland made water available to his players, but he spiked it with oatmeal so it would taste awful and his players wouldn’t drink much.

Reporters who covered the team couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“There will only be two kinds of players on the Steelers roster this fall,” wrote Bob Drum of the Pittsburgh Press. “Those who are in shape and those who are dead.”

Sutherland was a tyrant – but he got results. In his two seasons with the Steelers, he had a 13-10-1 record and the team was in postseason contention both seasons.

However, that’s where his NFL coaching career came to an end. His players breathed a sigh of relief at the news – knowing they would never have to taste oatmeal-spiked water ever again.

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