Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches

by Myers, Gary

  Owners don’t require their coaches to work around the clock, but they want results. No coach wants to be outworked, so they live with that fear and paranoia. “It’s a sick life,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft said. “I’m not sure if I had a daughter I would want her to marry a head football coach. It’s a very demanding job.”

  Reid had two excellent reasons to cut back on his hours and spend more time at home: his health and his five kids. If he had a family in crisis, as the judge said, couldn’t that be attributed partly to his not being home enough? If his house was a drug emporium, wouldn’t a father who was around the house more have been more in tune with what was going on?

  “I looked into that quite a bit,” Reid said. “I’m not sure there was a correlation there. People can argue that back and forth.”

  He went through periods of guilt after his sons were arrested. He questioned himself. Was it his fault? Was he doing enough for his children? Was he around enough? “Then you talk to enough people, you receive enough letters, you go talk to counselors,” Reid said. “You find out that you’re not the only one; there have been plenty of dads that have spent every minute at home and work nine-to-five jobs with the same issues. Teachers that spend the whole summer at home and work nine to five during the year. It affects a lot of people,” he said. “I don’t mean to be cold. People can question it. Your house caused it. It’s more than that. There’s just more to it than that. That’s not the primary cause. The best thing my wife and I did is we never turned our back on it; we hit it head on and didn’t shy away from anything. We were real with the boys. We had a lot of support from people at the league, we all supported each other as a family, we had support from fans, people who had gone through things. It’s a pretty big epidemic out there that touches a lot of people. At that moment, you think you are the only one, but you find out very quickly that you are not.”

  Reid finds peace and solitude during the hours when most people are sleeping. There is rush hour traffic outside his office door starting at 7 a.m. during the season. There are problems, situations, he must deal with every day. The personnel department has an issue. One of his player’s kids is sick. One of his coaches has a question about a play in the game plan. There’s an unexpected injury. That’s why Reid says he starts work at 4:30 in the morning. “I am cranking,” he said. “It’s good, condensed, not interrupted work done at that period of time.” It gives him two and a half hours until “people start knocking on that door,” he said.

  By the time things quiet down, it’s 7 p.m. after twelve hours of mayhem. Reid has been through a day of practice and meetings and media obligations, just like every other coach. By 8 p.m., the players are home and the coaches are in their offices, and Reid works until 1 a.m. before he shuts his eyes and gets a little sleep on a bed he positions next to a window in his office. “I still delegate,” he said. “But at the same time, you are paid to know what is going on. This is the reality of it. I treat it like I did finals. I am going to exhaust myself for that test on Sunday. I want that same feeling I had when I was in grad school and I was cranking. When you go into a game, they can throw anything they want and I got it.”

  Tom Coughlin won Super Bowls XLII and XLVI for the Giants, and he sleeps in his office once a week. “My heart goes out to Andy,” Coughlin said after his sons were arrested. Reid is in the same division facing many of the same issues as Coughlin but has taken a different approach. Reid did not change his routine after his sons veered off the tracks.

  “There are coaches today who go home. This is what works best for me,” Reid said. “I don’t really care what works for the other person. This is what I do. I try to get my family to come down here, which they do. They come visit. We got a nice place here we can eat if we need to eat. The door is always open for my family to come down. I don’t golf or anything else. So when I go home, I am home. That’s what I am there for. I wear them out with text messages and phone calls.”

  He has a nice study in his house and does personnel work there in the off-season, but that’s about it. “If you are going to stay involved with offense, personnel, and the defense and have a grasp of what is going on, you need a condensed period of time when nobody is bugging on you,” he said. “I do. I need that. Other people don’t.”

  Tony Dungy was one of the coaches who didn’t let the stress of the job affect his quality time at home. “I don’t think it is harder for coaches than it is for anybody else,” Dungy says. “Most people that are good at what they do work a lot of hours. We can’t have a built-in excuse and say we are never going to have balance.”

  Dungy had balance in his coaching life, and Reid has struggled to find the right blend of coaching life and family life. Dungy’s son committed suicide, and Reid’s sons were arrested and jailed, and then his oldest son died at the age of twenty-nine. They took different approaches with results no father ever thinks can happen to him. “Anybody as a parent in America could feel for Andy,” Dungy said, even before Garrett’s death. “There is not a whole lot you can say or do other than just be there to support him and say, ‘You know, I know a little bit about what you are going through.’ ”

  Tony Dungy and Andy Reid forged a bond after the tragedy of James Dungy and the nightmare of Garrett and Britt Reid. That bond was strengthened by Michael Vick.

  Connecting the dots from Indianapolis, to Tampa, to Philadelphia, to the U.S. penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, it was Vick who brought Dungy and Reid together. They had competed against each other on the big stage when Reid’s Eagles twice beat Dungy’s Bucs in the playoffs. There wasn’t much else they had in common. Reid was hired as a head coach by the first team that interviewed him after seven years as an NFL assistant coach, all with one team. He did not play in the NFL. Dungy was an assistant in the league for fifteen years with three teams and had four head coaching interviews before the fifth time was the charm with the Bucs. He was a defensive back for three years with the Steelers and 49ers. San Francisco traded him in 1980 to the New York Giants for wide receiver turned cornerback Ray Rhodes, but he didn’t make it out of training camp and retired and went into coaching the next season. Ironically, Rhodes beat out Dungy for the Eagles’ head coaching job in 1995.

  “I didn’t get frustrated necessarily with the interviews,” Dungy said. “The worst year for me was ’93, when we had seven openings and the Vikings were the number one defense in the NFL and I didn’t get one phone call.”

  He initially thought it was a racial issue, but obviously that wasn’t the case with the Eagles in 1995: Rhodes is also African American. But the more he analyzed it, the more he thought it had to do with his personality, not his color. He didn’t curse. He didn’t yell at the players. He didn’t stay all night in the office. He didn’t show up for work at five in the morning.

  “Time spent in the office doesn’t always reflect how the game is going to turn out,” he said.

  When Dungy left the Colts after the 2008 season, it was apparent he didn’t plan to coach again. He was not going to catch his breath for a year and come back. He left the game as the most popular executive in the league. There weren’t many who didn’t like Dungy. Having his endorsement was considered just short of getting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

  Vick was the most dynamic player in the NFL as he prepared for his seventh season in 2007. He had a rocket arm and explosive legs. Around the time of the draft, word started to leak about a dog-fighting operation that Vick was running out of his fifteen-acre property on Moonlight Road in Surry County, Virginia, in the name of the Bad Newz Kennels. Vick was invited to the draft to honor those who died in the mass shooting that recently had taken place at Virginia Tech, his alma mater. Roger Goodell asked Vick at the draft about the dog-fighting reports, and he denied any involvement. He lied to the commissioner’s face.

  Three months later, Vick and three other men were indicted on federal and state charges of running a dog-fighting ring for six years. The story disgusted football fans and shoc
ked the Atlanta Falcons, Vick’s team. The stories of the brutal killing of dogs in the ring and the execution of those who didn’t perform well were stomach-turning. Goodell indefinitely suspended Vick before he could report to training camp. Unlike in the Saints bounty scandal, he did not hold the team accountable for not knowing Vick was into dog fighting. It was outside the confines of the team. It was not being talked about in team meetings with coaches present. The Falcons’ punishment was losing their franchise quarterback. Vick was thrown in jail around Thanksgiving 2007 in the prime of his career. Vick paid the price with eighteen months in federal prison, losing two years of his career and the bulk of his $130 million contract.

  The issue became which team was going to have the courage to sign him when he was released. It was going to take a coach who felt secure with his owner and in the community, because the owner was going to be criticized and portions of the community were going to be outraged. Atlanta suffered through a 4–12 season without Vick, but that set the team up to draft Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan with the third overall pick in 2008.

  Dungy visited Vick at Leavenworth in May 2009, a couple of weeks before he was released from prison and before the Falcons officially cut ties with him. Dungy’s visit came at the request of Vick’s attorney, Billy Martin, who was from the same hometown as Dungy’s wife. This was nothing new for Dungy. He had made prison visits to troubled young men convicted of crimes. “I asked him what I had asked most of those guys when I go in and visit prisons or I talk to youth offenders: Where do you want to go from here and why? What’s important to you?” Dungy said. “Those are the questions I asked Mike, and it really seemed to me that he wanted to make things right and he wanted to be there for his kids. That’s what I saw and what I sensed.”

  Vick needed a role model and mentor. Dungy was perfect. Goodell asked him to be both for Vick as the NFL considered reinstatement. As Vick tried to rehabilitate his image, he was convincing Dungy that he was a changed man. Dungy had met Vick when the Colts played the Falcons in a preseason game in Japan in the summer of 2005. They talked about getting together for a fishing trip when they had time after they returned home. Dungy always wondered what might have been if that trip had materialized. Maybe Vick would have opened up about the dog fighting. But who knows? He never told Dan Reeves, his first coach with the Falcons, and they had a good relationship. “I always kind of regretted not being able to spend the day with him,” Dungy said.

  Goodell reinstated Vick before NFL teams opened training camp in the summer of 2009.

  Dungy and Reid were brought together by their mutual interest in Vick. Dungy was there to help Vick transition back into society and help him find the right team and city to continue his career. Vick could never replace James Dungy, but Dungy had a chance to influence Vick’s life positively. Reid had seen with his sons the importance of giving young men a second chance. Of course, it helped that when Vick last played, he was the most dangerous offensive weapon in the league.

  The Eagles still seemed an unlikely destination. They had McNabb, who had taken the team to the NFC championship game the previous season, and they had the promising backup Kevin Kolb. Reid was creative with quarterbacks and at the very least could work Vick in as a Wildcat quarterback, a formation that had been made popular in 2008 by the Miami Dolphins. But was Philly the right spot? Was Vick going to be more of a negative as a distraction than any positive he could be on the field? And how would McNabb handle it?

  McNabb was Vick’s host on his recruiting trip to Syracuse University. Vick eventually chose Virginia Tech, but he and McNabb remained friends. McNabb, who considered himself a big brother to Vick, lobbied the Eagles to sign him. Dungy wanted Vick to find a coach who had compassion, who perhaps could relate to the trouble young men go through until they find themselves and can differentiate what is right from what is terribly wrong.

  If there was a coach in the NFL who would embrace taking a chance on Vick, it was Reid. He knew from the experience with his sons the importance of a helping hand. “They get out of prison, and it’s like a deer in the headlights,” Reid said. “Where do I turn? Nobody is going to trust me. The self-esteem level is down. They need a hand. So somebody has got to reach out and say, ‘Hey, let’s go. You can do it.’ Like a coach. My boys were lucky enough that they met a family that reached out and said, ‘Come on in, work for me.’ ”

  One of Reid’s sons worked at a restaurant. The other worked at an auto body shop. “They were sweating going in to interview for jobs. They thought nobody was going to hire them,” Reid said. “Some of them just don’t get that hand that reaches out … and boom”—Reid slaps his desk—“they fall right back into doing the drugs. Some of them latch on to that hand and don’t let go. They got to build that résumé. How long can you stay clean? Are you really willing to change? You get a little money, are you going to fall back? Only time tells that.”

  Dungy knew he had a compassionate soul in Reid. “I think he was intrigued by helping someone,” Dungy said. “It was going to help the Eagles, too. It’s not a charity. I think he had a strong sense that this is a guy that deserves a chance, and I’ve got a job and I can give him a job, and so many employers today are afraid to take that step with ex-offenders.”

  Unless he was not interested for football reasons, which was entirely possible, Reid would be a hypocrite if he didn’t at least consider Vick for his football team. Vick needed the same hand his sons reached out to grab.

  “I really didn’t steer Mike anywhere,” Dungy said. “I just said, as he would ask me questions, that the thing you got to remember is you can’t put your football career first. You can’t say this is the best place for me to play or this is who is going to pay me the most money because it’s going to be important for you to put your life back together. I really thought with the support system Philadelphia had in place, with Andy Reid being there, with Donovan McNabb being there, that it was really a good, good place for him.”

  Reid monitored any stories he could find out about Vick while he was in prison. It was about the same time his sons were locked up. He would go visit his boys every Thursday night, and the reception from the inmates could be a little rough if the Eagles had lost that Sunday. The Reid boys started prison life together at Montgomery County Correctional Facility, although they were not housed near each other. Andy Reid talked with different inmates and guards over a two-year period. He learned there were three phases the inmates could go through when they were locked up. Reaching stage three was the tough part. “The phase where it’s everybody else’s fault,” Reid said, explaining the progression. “Then they realize, I messed up, I goofed. Then some reach the third stage when they admit they goofed and they are going to get it right and ‘I ain’t ever coming back.’ Not all of them reach that phase. You look at certain guys, and you know he’s going to struggle.”

  The transition from the sanctuary of the Eagles’ practice field to the prisons was not easy. The surroundings were not pleasant. It was not like walking into the locker room. “They are human beings, and they goofed,” Reid said. “Some of them goof real big and might never get out.”

  He continued to keep an eye on Vick when he was released from prison. He spoke with Goodell. He consulted with Dungy. Then he met with Vick. He wanted to be certain Vick would not “fall off the edge” and could function in the NFL. He wanted to see if he had reached stage three.

  Reid, of course, doesn’t own the Eagles. He didn’t run into owner Jeffrey Lurie’s office immediately after Vick was released and present a case for why the Eagles should be the team that would subject itself to ridicule. They didn’t even need a quarterback. He waited to see how Vick behaved now that he was back home and out of prison. He wanted to see how he would build his résumé. Besides, the Bengals were the only other team that had shown interest, and they were on the periphery.

  Lurie called himself an “extreme dog lover” who was still mourning the death of his two dogs in the two years before sign
ing Vick. He brought in two new dogs, one rescued from abuse. He spoke at the news conference announcing Vick’s signing after Vick left the room. He didn’t look like a happy man. He used some pretty strong descriptive language to illustrate his feelings about what Vick had done to dogs: cruelty, torture, horrific, complete disregard for any definition of common decency, despicable. He called signing Vick an “impossibly difficult decision to approve.”

  Lurie believed in Reid. Reid believed in Dungy. Dungy believed in Vick. “He will never be able to recover from what he did criminally and murderously took part in, but he has an opportunity to create a legend where maybe he can be a force in stopping the horrendous cruelty to animals,” Lurie said.

  After Vick’s first season in Philadelphia, in which he played sparingly and ended with a disappointing wild-card loss to the Cowboys on the road, Reid traded McNabb to the Redskins. Reid had been determined to trade one of his three quarterbacks, and he admitted he would have traded Vick if the right offer came along. He believed Vick deserved the right to start and that was not the plan in Philadelphia for 2010. Kolb was named the starter after McNabb was sent to the Redskins, but he suffered a concussion in the season opener against the Packers, creating a path for Vick to take the job. Vick helped the Eagles win the NFC East and get to the playoffs, but they lost to the Packers in their opening game in the divisional round. Kolb was then traded to the Cardinals following the season.

  Reid and the Eagles had a lot invested in Vick. They had absorbed a tremendous amount of backlash after signing him, but if Reid could turn that investment into a trade that would benefit the Eagles, then he would have been traded instead of McNabb.

  “If the opportunity came up where we could have been compensated and Michael could have had a good team to go to and it was right for him, then we do the deal,” Reid said. “That didn’t happen, but I would have looked at that. I would have looked at that to help him out, too.”