Last Sunday there was the agony of six turnovers and yet another defeat, and the next day, the weariness of the New York Jets’ injury-riddled 2-7 season was evident in Herman Edwards’ voice.
However, as the minutes passed during his weekly postmortem, a transformation took place – his timbre rising with each answer, a mix of excitement and competitiveness bubbling to the surface. Soon Edwards was less a coach than preacher, converting the jaded Big Apple media to the point where they might have been tempted to run onto the turf at Invesco Field at Mile High today and turn things around against the Broncos.
While the Jets have been through four quarterbacks and are missing numerous starters on both sides of the ball – which helps account for their 13-point underdog status – don’t be surprised if the visitors are at least competitive. That would be a testament to Edwards, whose passion has shone through what has been the bleakest of years.
“Well, yeah, it’s always easy when you’re the coach and you’re winning; the team kind of runs itself,” Edwards said last week. “But the attitude is good. We’re not pointing fingers. We’re coming to work every day trying to get better.”
Should the Broncos fall into the trap of taking the downtrodden team for granted and suffer an upset as a result, it would be fitting if the Jets awarded the game ball to their coach, who is part of as diverse a group of leaders as the NFL may have ever seen.
Nowadays, on any given Sunday, the matchup between the opposing coaches, how they approach the game and how they shape and inspire their team’s performances can be as fascinating as most on-the-field performances.
Some, such as Dallas’ Bill Parcells, wield their power like Paul Bunyon clearing a forest. Stand too close to Mike Shanahan, and you run the risk of getting windburn from his icy intensity. Even a rookie NFL coach such as Nick Saban is sharp enough to reduce his players to tears.
Honest emotion OK
Others are closer to surrogate fathers than coaches, tears welling, voices choking with emotion whenever they discuss their teams. Dick Vermeil of the Kansas City Chiefs has ventured into the realm of caricature with his weepiness. However, his Alan Alda-ish sensitivity slant resonates with his players.
“He’s as open as you could be as a head coach,” tight end Tony Gonzalez said. “Some things are obviously hidden, that’s just how it goes, but out of all the coaches that I’ve been around, he’ll let you be who you are. He’s an extremely honest, open, loyal person. He opens his house up to you, he’ll have wine with you, break bread with you, all that good stuff.”
Former NFL quarterback Rich Gannon says for one of his seasons under Dennis Green in Minnesota, “I don’t know if he said a word to me all year.” Later, in Kansas City, coach Marty Schottenheimer “would talk my ear off.”
Chad Brown has played for four coaches during his 13 NFL seasons, giving him greater perspective to the different ways coaches operate.
According to Brown, his first coach, Pittsburgh’s Bill Cowher, “was very emotional, so when he spoke, it was the emotions behind the words more so than the words themselves. Coach (Mike) Holmgren (of Seattle) was a lot more cerebral; coach (Dennis) Erickson was a lot more laid-back.”
Of his current coach, the enigmatic Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, Brown said, “I don’t think he likes to waste words. He just tries to speak the truth.”
Indeed, asked what he considers the most important aspect of dealing with players, Belichick stressed the need for honesty: “Be direct with them. Don’t tell them what they want to hear, but rather the way that it is.”
Nice guys finish first?
When the playoffs begin in January, there probably will be any number of the NFL’s nonparticipants – players, coaches, even owners – rooting for the Indianapolis Colts to break through and win the championship. For them, there is a sense that the game owes one to Tony Dungy, a gentle man who was fired from Tampa Bay just before the fiery Jon Gruden took over and won Super Bowl XXXVII with many of the players Dungy had nurtured.
That almost lent credence to a longtime rap against Dungy, that he’s too decent to win the biggest game of all. Of course, that premise doesn’t take the rise of Belichick and the Patriots into account. But today, with Indianapolis entering play as the league’s only undefeated team, it appears the road to Detroit and Super Bowl XL will run over the artificial turf of Indy’s RCA Dome.
“The whole thing is communication,” Dungy said. “Everybody does it differently. … I’ve never thought they had to be scared into doing things the right way or intimidated into doing things well.”
Even so, players can’t help but take notice when a teammate gets cut for nodding off during a meeting, a tactic former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson used. That kind of power is practically unheard of in other sports.
It has been said of the NBA and NHL that a coach has only about two or three years before his players start tuning him out and pursuing their own agendas. Such situations are a rarity in the NFL.
“Jerome Bettis was in Pittsburgh when I was there, and I don’t think he tunes out Coach Cowher,” said Brown, a former Colorado star. “He may have heard it all before, but it still means something.”
“You can’t compare the two,” added Gonzalez, who was a college basketball star at Cal. “There’s the structure of football; guys can’t go off on their own like they do in basketball. They have to pay attention because on any given play, if you break down, that screws up the whole play. There’s the whole chemistry of what you’re trying to put together.”
That recipe works much better when the coach can get a core group of players on the team to buy into his particular formula. Even then, a Terrell Owens can blow apart a team anyway. As respectable a man and coach as Norv Turner of the Oakland Raiders is, what chance does he really have when his most visible player, wide receiver Randy Moss, can barely seem to acknowledge his existence in an interview with ESPN?
“I look at the teams that have won world championships,” Gannon said. “There are all sorts of different coaches who have had success. Mike Shanahan is completely different from Dick Vermeil. Everybody has their approach, but to me, the one thing that’s constant is all those teams have discipline and a structure that stands up and has proven itself over time.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
