classroom-type environment.
I understand the value of using visual aids and creative ways to convey your message to stimulate the viewer. I won't just use the standard coaching videotape with sideline and end-zone views. I'll use little highlight clips with music in the background. Sometimes it's old footage. Sometimes it's footage of next week's opponent.
Sometimes it's individual, private, off-the-field stuff. But it's always short, always quick, and then we're on to the next thing, which might be looking at an acetate image on the overhead projector or drawings on a grease board or a chalkboard. That's how I run our meetings, kind of like The NFL Today on CBS.
I can't begin to tell you how fortunate I am to have a father who is also my mentor and role model and someone who is always there to give me advice that most guys in this business would kill for. Not only that, but he's also my best friend. You're talking about a guy who has helped me through some difficult situations, personally and professionally-a guy who has enjoyed some of the good times and great times with me. He has been there for every aspect of my football career-as a player and as a coach. We've also sat together at numerous Arena League games, cheering like hell for my brother Jay. One of the reasons my dad wanted to get out of coaching and into the personnel side, first with Tampa Bay and later with San Francisco, was so he could travel and scout college players all over the country and end up wherever Jay was playing for the University of Louisville on Saturdays. He got to see Jay play every game of his college career, which was pretty taxing and quite a sacrifice.
Not much has changed since. Between watching me coach in the fall and winter and Jay play in the spring and summer, I think my dad's been to a football game every weekend the whole year. He told me, "I'm sixty-five years old. I can't take much more of this."
While my dad might have steered me toward a different field of study in college, he did give me plenty of direction on how to become the best coach I could possibly be. He told me that the most direct path I could follow to the top of the business was to become a quarterbacks coach. Even though my dad had spent his career coaching running backs, he knew that a quarterbacks coach usually had the best opportunity to become an offensive coordinator and ultimately be the one calling the plays.
I'm sure that wasn't easy for him to admit, because what he was really telling me was that he wanted me to go further in the business than he had gone. He gave me the road map, the compass and whatever else he could give me to get there.
"If you're going to advance in coaching, you have to learn more about the game than just the running backs," my dad told me. "You want to become a guy that understands protections, understands route distributions, understands the audibles. You were a quarterback. You want to be a guy that has the command of the offense that can develop people that touch the ball on every play.
"You want to be a quarterbacks coach. And if you want to be a major-college coordinator/head coach kind of guy, you must learn to communicate with the quarterback. And to become the best quarterbacks coach you can be, you need to learn from the best damn quarterbacks coaches in the world.
"Listen to them. Watch them. Study them. Before you're married, while you're young, do whatever you've got to do to get around these kind of coaches."
In 1986, when I was twenty-three years old, that became my mission in life. I was going to go to the football equivalent of Harvard. I was going to grab hold of a branch on the Bill Walsh tree of coaching knowledge that had grown within the San Francisco 49ers. I was going to practically stalk Mike Holmgren, who at the time was the 49ers' quarterbacks coach and one of the best in the business. I was going to find a way to become a great quarterbacks coach myself.
I'm still on that quest.
FIVE
Whether
I understand the value of using visual aids and creative ways to convey your message to stimulate the viewer. I won't just use the standard coaching videotape with sideline and end-zone views. I'll use little highlight clips with music in the background. Sometimes it's old footage. Sometimes it's footage of next week's opponent.
Sometimes it's individual, private, off-the-field stuff. But it's always short, always quick, and then we're on to the next thing, which might be looking at an acetate image on the overhead projector or drawings on a grease board or a chalkboard. That's how I run our meetings, kind of like The NFL Today on CBS.
I can't begin to tell you how fortunate I am to have a father who is also my mentor and role model and someone who is always there to give me advice that most guys in this business would kill for. Not only that, but he's also my best friend. You're talking about a guy who has helped me through some difficult situations, personally and professionally-a guy who has enjoyed some of the good times and great times with me. He has been there for every aspect of my football career-as a player and as a coach. We've also sat together at numerous Arena League games, cheering like hell for my brother Jay. One of the reasons my dad wanted to get out of coaching and into the personnel side, first with Tampa Bay and later with San Francisco, was so he could travel and scout college players all over the country and end up wherever Jay was playing for the University of Louisville on Saturdays. He got to see Jay play every game of his college career, which was pretty taxing and quite a sacrifice.
Not much has changed since. Between watching me coach in the fall and winter and Jay play in the spring and summer, I think my dad's been to a football game every weekend the whole year. He told me, "I'm sixty-five years old. I can't take much more of this."
While my dad might have steered me toward a different field of study in college, he did give me plenty of direction on how to become the best coach I could possibly be. He told me that the most direct path I could follow to the top of the business was to become a quarterbacks coach. Even though my dad had spent his career coaching running backs, he knew that a quarterbacks coach usually had the best opportunity to become an offensive coordinator and ultimately be the one calling the plays.
I'm sure that wasn't easy for him to admit, because what he was really telling me was that he wanted me to go further in the business than he had gone. He gave me the road map, the compass and whatever else he could give me to get there.
"If you're going to advance in coaching, you have to learn more about the game than just the running backs," my dad told me. "You want to become a guy that understands protections, understands route distributions, understands the audibles. You were a quarterback. You want to be a guy that has the command of the offense that can develop people that touch the ball on every play.
"You want to be a quarterbacks coach. And if you want to be a major-college coordinator/head coach kind of guy, you must learn to communicate with the quarterback. And to become the best quarterbacks coach you can be, you need to learn from the best damn quarterbacks coaches in the world.
"Listen to them. Watch them. Study them. Before you're married, while you're young, do whatever you've got to do to get around these kind of coaches."
In 1986, when I was twenty-three years old, that became my mission in life. I was going to go to the football equivalent of Harvard. I was going to grab hold of a branch on the Bill Walsh tree of coaching knowledge that had grown within the San Francisco 49ers. I was going to practically stalk Mike Holmgren, who at the time was the 49ers' quarterbacks coach and one of the best in the business. I was going to find a way to become a great quarterbacks coach myself.
I'm still on that quest.
FIVE
Whether
Similar Books
