When the head coach speaks, it’s powerful

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/07/2011 (5243 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I have always wondered whether head coaches know or realize how drastically their kindness or criticisms can affect the players they coach. Depending on the coach and the makeup of the player, one word or sentence can elevate an athlete to euphoric levels and inspire him to run through a wall for you, or conversely, can transport a player into a funk and a dark place from which there is seemingly no escape.

Whether you are a head coach in the NFL or CFL, you make impressions on people when you speak. Few vocations in life are as respected or revered as the head coach of a professional football team, and as a result, when these special and rare individuals communicate with their players and even their coaches, their words make an impact and in some cases are remembered beyond any extent they could ever imagine.

In the course of 15 years, I have noticed the higher standing a player has on his football team, the more interaction he will have with his head coach, which is perfectly natural. Players who can affect or influence the outcome of games and understand the laws and ambience of the locker-room are obviously useful tools for head coaches who want to be successful, which is why, as a lower-echelon player during my years in the NFL, I can count on my hands the number of times one of my head coaches spoke directly to me.

With Marv Levy, the first time we spoke was on the phone when he voiced his standard greeting of welcome to his football team after I had signed a free-agent deal. We next talked at the end of training camp, when he offered me a spot on his practice roster and he told me he wanted me to take repetitions at both nose tackle and offensive tackle — which I conveniently ignored — and that was about the extent of our interaction for the entire year I was in Buffalo.

When I moved up the ladder the subsequent year in Washington and actually made the active roster for the next few years, my one-on-one conversations increased accordingly with then-head coach Norv Turner. I still remember every time he mentioned my name in a team meeting after a game. I remember the first compliment I ever got from him and the first criticism.

The criticism came during a game against Tampa Bay when I guessed play action and stayed with the quarterback when he had already handed the ball off. From all the way over on the sideline, I heard him yell, “See the exchange and make the play, Doug!” as he was frustrated that I had made it into the backfield but not diagnosed the play correctly.

The kind words, and one of the rare compliments I ever received from him, came one day in training camp at Frostburg University when I crossed paths with Norv as he was speaking with Marvcus Patton, the starting middle linebacker at the time. I guess it was after a good practice, because he told Marvcus right in front of me that “Doug, here, may be our starting nose tackle one day.” It actually happened, not for as long as I would have liked, but the point is the impression his words made on me, good and bad.

It was 13 years ago that he spoke these words to me, but not only have I not forgotten them, I remember exactly the scenario and circumstances of both sets of conversations. It is a good example of how impressionable young players can be and how much weight the words of a head professional football coach can carry, especially when you are new on the job.

In the CFL, where I have had a longer and more successful career, the conversations I have had with head coaches occur almost on a daily basis and are too numerous to recount, just like the long-tenured starters and veterans in the NFL had while I watched from afar. Yet when I walked into my hotel room in Hamilton this past Thursday, I experienced something I had never seen before from any of my eight professional head football coaches. Lying there in the corridor of my room the day before our first regular-season game was a Blue Bomber card with a personalized handwritten note inside from our head coach. It was delivered to each and every player on the road-trip roster.

I’m not saying it was the reason why we won our first game on the road in more than a year, but if any of the young players on this team hang on every interaction and word with their head coach, as I did 13 years ago, it definitely made an impression they will never forget and let them know where they stood as an individual and what was expected from them as they began the 2011 season.

Doug Brown, a hard-hitting defensive tackle with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and even harder-hitting columnist, appears in the Winnipeg Free Press on Tuesdays.