Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches

by Myers, Gary

  That doesn’t mean it was easy for Fox to say good-bye to Tebow. As the Broncos were deciding between offers from the Jets and the Jaguars, Tebow’s hometown team, Fox was in constant communication with Tebow, who was working out in Los Angeles. The Broncos, as a thank-you to Tebow for helping to revive the franchise, allowed him to choose between the two teams. The Jets presented Tebow with a better opportunity to get onto the field running a Wildcat package. His value to the Jaguars would have been his immense popularity and his ability to sell tickets. Tebow chose the Jets.

  The Broncos drafted Tebow in the first round in 2010 when Josh McDaniels was the head coach and before Elway returned to run the team he had led to five Super Bowl appearances. Fox and Elway inherited Tebow and had no obligation to make it work. He was not their draft choice. McDaniels was fired late in Tebow’s rookie season. Bowlen hired Elway to run the team, and Elway then hired Fox, who had been fired after nine seasons as head coach of the Carolina Panthers. If things had worked according to plan in 2011, Tebow wouldn’t have been on the field much. Kyle Orton easily won the starting job coming out of training camp once a trade sending him to the Miami Dolphins fell through, and it was only after Denver started 1–4 that Fox and Elway realized that they had nothing to lose by playing Tebow. The fans basically demanded the move. Tebow responded by winning his first start in an overtime game in Miami and seven of his first eight with a variety of improbable last-minute victories. The Broncos lost their final three games but still won the AFC West with an 8–8 record and then beat the Steelers in the wild-card round on Tebow’s 80-yard touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas on the first play of overtime before they were crushed by the Patriots in the divisional round in New England.

  “I thanked Tim for all the memories,” Fox said. “He sparked our football team. I’ll be forever grateful for that. I really will. We shared some great moments together.”

  Fox first met Tebow the night before his pro day at Florida as Tebow was preparing for the draft. The Panthers had traded their 2010 first-round draft pick, but felt they had a chance to get Tebow in the second round. Tebow might have been one of the best college players of all time, but most scouts didn’t believe he projected well as an NFL quarterback. He ran the ball better than he threw it. His accuracy was a major concern. Nobody questioned his character or leadership ability, but it takes more than that to be a successful professional quarterback.

  Fox made a reservation at Mark’s Prime Steakhouse in downtown Gainesville and arranged to meet Tebow for dinner along with Panthers offensive coordinator Jeff Davidson and quarterback coach Rip Scherer.

  “He was definitely unique. You could see the intangibles,” Fox said. “They just oozed out of him. It was easy to see what kind of leadership skills he had. He had a notepad and took notes. He was real respectful, willing to learn; he had passion for the game.”

  They enjoyed a nice dinner. Fox came away impressed, and although he wasn’t sure the Panthers would take him when their pick came up in the sixteenth spot in the second round, he thought there was a good chance he would be available. “Early in the process, it would be fair to say some people weren’t expecting him to go in the first round,” Fox said.

  As dinner ended, Fox asked the waiter for the check. Tebow said he already had taken care of it.

  “It wasn’t one of those last minute things, ‘Oh here, I got it,’ ” Fox said. “He had it paid for. Obviously, he had a little juice in Gainesville and the guy that waited on us; Tim already gave him his card.”

  Of course, Fox didn’t let Tebow pay. But if Tebow was looking to make an impression, he got the job done. “I never had a prospective player do that,” Fox said.

  He estimated that in all his years as a college coach and in the NFL, he’s taken way more than two hundred players out for a meal and Tebow was the first who tried to pick up the check. “There weren’t any holes in him as far as the intangible part,” Fox said. “We spent more time on his football knowledge, how he would fit in, his delivery. It was more football stuff.”

  The scouting reports on Tebow raised a lot of questions about his ability to make it in the NFL as an every-down quarterback. The scouting report by the general manager of one team raised a lot of issues:

  STRONG POINTS: size, rare intangibles, production, running strength, toughness, level of comp., game day history.

  CONCERNS: mechanics, intermediate accuracy, style of offense he’s played in.

  A big strong overachieving athlete at position. He has a strong arm, but mechanically flawed with marginal intermediate accuracy, particularly hitting moving targets. Where QBs make their living in our league. They run mostly from the shotgun in their spread offense, that employs many future pros at all the skill positions, along with a NFL looking line. Everything is built around him and he delivers. There is no player in college sport who can impose his will to win and have such an emotional impact on his peers and get the results he has over a career. He’s a rare competitor and what he brings can’t be measured statistically. That said many of his throws are errant of his receivers and his best plays aren’t necessarily drawn up in any playbook. The best thing he does as a passer is get it down field with surprisingly good accuracy, not much air under it, but finds the mark. You love the kid, but there is no pro offense featuring his strengths and if you adopt what he does best in all probability he’ll have a short career given the pounding he’s going to take. You have to be careful not to let his character bleed into the tape. He has a better downside as a good serviceable back up, than he does upside as a starter. He would be enticing in the third round, because he wouldn’t get the unfair scrutiny a top pick incurs at position.

  SUMMARY: Again see him more like a Joe Kapp type of starter, one you win with not because of, or at worst a serviceable backup. There is one last point that needs to be considered. Alex Smith the #1 overall pick played in the same system with similar results under the same head coach. There is a lot of buyer beware with Tebow.

  Fox never had the chance to make a decision on Tebow in the draft. The Broncos selected him in the first round, the twenty-fifth pick overall. That shocked draft rooms around the league. The Panthers were in the market for a quarterback and selected Notre Dame’s Jimmy Clausen with their second-round pick. The next year, after Fox left the Panthers following a 2–14 season, they drafted Auburn’s Cam Newton with the first overall pick.

  When Fox was hired in Denver, it didn’t take long for Tebow to seek him out. “He was one of the first guys in my office,” Fox said. “It didn’t surprise me because that’s the kind of guy he is.”

  Fox and Tebow had a connection from the previous year when they’d had dinner. The lockout prevented Fox from having an opportunity to work with Tebow until training camp in 2011. The off-season conditioning program, minicamps, and OTAs were canceled. That put Tebow at a disadvantage. He needed the work. Once Orton failed and Tebow had a chance to get on the field, he began winning games in the most unusual ways. His following, not only in Denver but around the league, was unprecedented. He was a little too open with his religious beliefs for some people, but nobody questioned his heart and desire. He became a polarizing figure: fans either loved or hated him. Judging by the sales of Tebow merchandise, more fans loved him.

  “I’m not a sociology major. I’m a football coach. I evaluate him as a quarterback,” Fox said. “Can he lead the team? I respect him tremendously. It upset me at times, when here’s a guy doing everything you want a guy to be, I don’t care what his religious beliefs are or what neighborhood he came from—we ought to be celebrating this guy. He’s doing things the way you are supposed to do them. I’m not saying it’s always pretty as a football player. You’re playing against the best in the world.”

  Fox was convinced Tebow would be the Broncos’ starting quarterback when they opened training camp in 2012, but with each event in the NFL, there is a domino effect. Peyton Manning had spinal fusion surgery on his neck a few days before the 2011 season, and alt
hough the Colts didn’t place him on injured reserve, his chances of returning during the season were minimal. The Colts cut Manning in March 2012 before he was due a $28 million option bonus, having made up their mind to gut the franchise and start over by drafting Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck with the first overall pick. Luck was considered the best quarterback prospect since Manning in 1998.

  Manning might have been the most valuable player in the NFL in 2011 despite not playing one down. The Colts won only two games without him after making the playoffs nine years in a row with him. Shortly after the Colts released him, Elway and Fox acted immediately. They sent a private plane to Miami, where Manning has an off-season home in South Beach, to bring him to Denver. The plane stopped off in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to pick up Fox and Elway, who were attending workouts at Oklahoma State. It was Manning’s first free agent visit, and he was going to be thorough. He went from Denver to Arizona to meet with the Cardinals. He didn’t seem anxious to meet with the Dolphins but did so in Indianapolis after a personal request from Marino, the former Dolphins quarterback and one of Manning’s heroes. Manning had made his NFL debut in the first game of the ’98 season at home against Marino and the Dolphins. He then visited the Titans in Nashville. Manning had gone to school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and was still an icon in the state.

  Manning held private workouts at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, for the Broncos, 49ers, and Titans. He was working out with Duke coach David Cutcliffe, who had been an assistant coach when Manning was at Tennessee and later was his brother Eli’s head coach at Ole Miss. Manning eliminated the Cardinals and Dolphins before the workouts and never gave the Chiefs or Jets a chance to get into the race. The 49ers were the secret team pursuing Manning, and he was intrigued. San Francisco was coached by Jim Harbaugh, who had been the last quarterback to start a game for the Colts before Manning arrived in Indianapolis. Fox and Elway traveled from Denver to Durham to watch Manning throw and came away convinced that he would make it all the way back from his neck injury.

  A few days later, as Elway and Fox were nervously anticipating Manning’s decision on an otherwise quiet Monday morning, the phone rang in Elway’s office. It was Manning. Fox and Elway froze.

  “How are you doing?” Elway said.

  “It has kind of been a rough morning because I have had to call these other teams and say I’m not going to go to work for them,” Manning said.

  Elway wondered where the Broncos stood. Were they on the list of teams being rejected? Or had they won the Manning Derby?

  “I just wanted to tell you that I want to come play for the Denver Broncos,” Manning said.

  Elway made a thumbs-up motion to Fox. Elway continued the conversation as Fox started jumping around the office. Manning soon signed a five-year $96 million contract.

  It’s easier for a coach to establish a relationship with his quarterback if he gets him right out of college than if he gets him in the middle of his career or, in Fox’s situation with Manning, the end of his career. That was why Walsh and Montana were so successful and why Belichick and Brady have always been on the same page. The young quarterbacks were slighted in the draft—Montana went in the third round, Brady in the sixth—and came in looking to soak up all the football knowledge they could from their head coaches. It was Walsh’s first year with the 49ers, but he already had developed a reputation as one of the best quarterback coaches in football. It was Belichick’s first draft with the Patriots, although he previously had been the head coach in Cleveland for five years. Brady came in with a chip on his shoulder, looking to prove he was much better than the 199th player in the draft and certainly better than the seventh quarterback selected.

  Manning’s first coach with the Colts was Jim Mora, who had been the Saints’ coach in Manning’s hometown of New Orleans for many years. It was up to Fox to develop a good working relationship with Manning, who had played for Mora, Tony Dungy, and Jim Caldwell, in Indianapolis. Manning was set in his ways, and Fox knew that the best way to make it work was to defer to Manning and let him have major input into the way the offensive playbook was written. “Welcomed input,” Fox said.

  Fox is a smart, experienced coach. In his nine seasons with the Panthers, they reached two NFC championship games and one Super Bowl. Carolina owner Jerry Richardson let his contract run out after the 2010 season and then fired him. It’s unusual when owners let a coach enter the final year of his contract without either extending him or firing him. When Richardson didn’t offer Fox a new deal after the Panthers were 12–4 in 2008, Fox knew his time was just about up in Carolina. “It’s their team. I was hired to do a job,” Fox said. “I had a contract through the 2010 season, and I honored that contract. It’s the business. There are two parts of football. There is football, and then there’s the business. They are both part of the game.”

  By the time Manning joined the Broncos, Fox had ten years of head coaching experience in the NFL. He knew he just needed to let Manning do what he’d always done and pretty much just get out of the way. “He raises all boats,” Fox said.

  Fox made his name in the NFL as a defensive coach. He was the defensive coordinator with the Giants when they went to the Super Bowl in 2000. The offensive coordinator was Sean Payton. Jim Fassel, the head coach, was an offensive coach. Fox had the run of the defense, and the success of the Giants helped him get his first head coaching job with the Panthers. Carolina had elite offensive players in wide receiver Steve Smith and running backs DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, and Fox squeezed some excellent seasons out of the journeyman quarterback Jake Delhomme. But those Panthers teams were not known for their creativity on offense. Fox didn’t want his offense to put his defense in a vulnerable position.

  When Tony Dungy was hired by the Colts in 2002, Manning already had played four years in the NFL. In Dungy’s six seasons in Tampa, the Bucs were known as a defensive team with an anemic and antiquated offense. Their scheme was more suited for the leather helmet days. Dungy made the playoffs four times and had a 1–4 record. In the five games, the Bucs scored a total of 39 points on six field goals and three touchdowns. They didn’t score a touchdown in any of the last three losses. Scoring 39 points was considered a good single game for Manning.

  “He was kind of apprehensive because of how we played in Tampa and my reputation as a defensive coach,” Dungy said.

  “Probably similar to my reputation,” Fox said.

  Dungy took the job with the Colts knowing he was going to have to sell himself to Manning to win his confidence. Although Manning had yet to win a playoff game, he was one of the most prolific quarterbacks in the NFL. He didn’t want to play conservative, which was the mandate for Dungy’s quarterbacks in Tampa. Dungy had Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks, and John Lynch, and so the goal was for his offense not to put his defense in bad spots by turning the ball over and creating a short field. He wasn’t looking for his quarterback to win the game, just not to lose it. That was not the way Manning played. It was not the way he wanted to play. Dungy had no intention of putting handcuffs on Manning. After going through too many years of Trent Dilfer and Shaun King with the Bucs, he finally had a quarterback who could win games.

  “I think he felt early on that we might pull back and change the way we were going to do things,” Dungy said. “So I had to make that clear to him that I ran this offense in college. I understand how it works. We’ve got a lot of money spent on offense. This is an offensive team. We’re not going to change what we do. We just want to change how we do it a little bit. We’re still going to attack, but we want to get to the point where we got enough confidence we don’t have to take unnecessary chances, we can still be explosive, but some things that I believe in, protecting the football and winning the turnover battle, that is how we are going to win.”

  Dungy retained Tom Moore as the offensive coordinator. When Dungy was a quarterback at the University of Minnesota, Moore was on the staff. “It was really convincing Peyton that our off
ense has enough weapons if we get eighty plays in a game, we’re going to score forty points,” Dungy said. “But if we only get sixty plays or forty plays because we are turning the ball over or taking chances or our defense is not playing well enough to get us the ball back, that’s going to be difficult. So that’s how we are going to try to improve the team and not change what we do. I think having that conversation with him was good and that was the beginning of it. Then he had to kind of grow to trust me that we’d put the team together that way, and as we went on, I think he really started believing it.”

  Dungy and Manning had no history together. They had met only once before Dungy was hired by the Colts. It was after the 1997 season at the Maxwell Club Awards in Philadelphia. Manning, who had just finished his career at Tennessee, was being honored as the college player of the year. Dungy had just guided the Bucs to the playoffs in his second year as head coach. It was Tampa’s first trip to the postseason since 1982, the strike year when the season was reduced to nine games and eight teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs.

  “We rode in a limo together from the hotel to the affair: he and his mom and dad and my wife and I,” Dungy said. “So we’re riding in the limo and talking about the draft upcoming, his career, and everything. I said, ‘I’d love to have you, but you’re going to be the first or second pick in the draft.’ So, four years later, it’s January of ’02 and I get the job, and he comes to the press conference and he approaches me. He comes into my office and we’re talking, and I say you may not remember this conversation, and he repeated everything to me verbatim: the hotel we stayed at, the limo ride over, my wife’s name, different guys who got awards, and what a nice evening it was.”