Do You Love Football?! (14 page)

Remember, the guy stands six-five.

Green Bay gave me my first real exposure to front-office people because I wasn't included in a lot of the personnel meetings in San Francisco. And front-office people don't get any better than Ron Wolf, our general manager and one of the best personnel guys this game has ever seen. The first thing I noticed about Ron was that he was very thorough. He was on top of everything-college personnel, pro personnel and personnel that we had on Green Bay. He watched the practice film, as well as the game film. He gave all the coaches accountability and responsibility at our respective positions. We had to know who was in the draft, who was available in Plan B free agency at that time. We had to answer his questions in terms of how the players at our respective positions were performing.

Ron, who has since retired, has a commanding presence about him. When he walks into a conference room, it isn't a case where he feels the need to break the ice with a joke: "Did you hear the one about the guy who's walking down the street and his pants fall down?" Ron is all business all the time. He is not the kind of guy you go out and have a beer with. He is not the kind of guy you shoot the breeze with. He is an iceman and people respect the hell out of him. He gives you a sense of confidence that we have a plan.

When Ron asks you a question about a player, he doesn't want to hear some long, drawn-out explanation. I remember one day he asked, "Why isn't Robert Brooks starting, Jon?" I went on and on with my answer, which was exactly what he didn't want to hear. He just wanted the basic answers to basic questions. Why isn't he playing? How can he not play? When is he going to play? Do you know that? His meetings also were short and to the point. One time he began by saying, "We're going to trade for John Stephens," the running back we picked up from New England in 1993. "I think we can get this guy for a fourth-round pick. We're going to watch these three films on him. Mike, what do you think? Andy, what do you think? Steve? Gil? Jon?"

Ron was one of the most impressive guys I've been around in this business.

In 1992 we had two first-round draft choices. I was thinking that we were going to get some good players to turn around a team that had gone 4-12 and 6-10 the previous two seasons under Lindy Infante, who was a very a good offensive coach himself. I figured Ron would make two great picks, add some other good players through the rest of the draft and we'd be in business.

Then one day in February Mike came up to me and said, "Hey, Gruber, we just traded a first-round pick today for a player. I'm going to need you to go to the airport and pick him up."

"Who did we trade it for?" I asked.

"Brett Favre."

"Brett Favre? The guy from Southern Miss who was in Atlanta?"

"That's the one."

My first thought, which I kept to myself, was Why would we give up a first-round pick for that guy? The Falcons had made him a second-round pick the year before, but it wasn't as if he was being touted as a future All-Pro. Besides, we already had a good quarterback in Don Majkowski.

I drove to the airport to pick up Brett. I couldn't believe how loose-and I do mean l-o-o-o-s-e-he was for a young guy who had just been traded for a first-round pick. He felt no pressure, no responsibility. None. Zero. I think the first question he asked was "Do they have any fried okra around here?" I think the second thing he wanted to know was where he could get a beer.

Brett kept looking out the window like he had just been dropped off in the middle of Siberia. I didn't even think he knew he was playing for Green Bay. I thought he just felt lost. And all I could think was What the hell were Wolf and Holmgren thinking? I just didn't see how he was going to fit into our offense.

He didn't seem detail-oriented or disciplined or meticulous or very eager to learn what we were doing. He wasn't the conformist that you'd maybe anticipate Mike Holmgren being interested in. He just didn't fit the mold. How in the hell is he going to call Red Left Switch Z Right Sprint Right GU Corner Halfback Flat? I got the impression that Brett wasn't all that concerned with such a challenge. Everything about his attitude said, "Just give me the ball and we're going to score."

The first time Brett walked in the office, he said, "How ya'll doin'?" You could almost hear everyone thinking, We're going to build our franchise around this guy? About four or five days later, Brett, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, did some throwing in the little dumpy bubble that served as the Packers' indoor practice facility before the beautiful Don Hutson Center was built.

As Brett threw, I caught. How hard did he throw? Put it this way, a couple of times I swore he was going to make some new holes in me.

The next day Mike came up to me and said, "Hey, Gruber, what do you think about Favre?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'll say one thing, though. He can throw the shit out of the ball. He almost killed me yesterday."

We opened the season against Minnesota and got beat. We lost to Tampa Bay to go 0-2. In the third game we played against Cincinnati, and Don Majkowski hurt his ankle. He was on the ground for a long time. He could hardly walk. As I watched him struggling to leave the field, I thought, Man, we're not going to win a game.

Brett Favre took over. He barely knew the plays. He could hardly say the ones he did know. I wasn't sure if we knew what he was doing. Then he proceeded to make two or three throws that no one alive could make. We beat the Bengals on the last play of the game when Brett threw a bullet and hit Kitrick Taylor on a thirty-five-yard seam route for a touchdown with thirteen seconds left. That was the beginning of what we now know as one of the greatest quarterback stories in the history of the game.

Brett didn't get it done in Atlanta for whatever reason, but Ron Wolf saw that he was a prizefighter who, with training from some of the best quarterback coaches in the NFL, could become the heavyweight champion of the world. That's how I still look at Favre to this day. Whenever I see him I say, "Hey, there's the champ, man."

He has exceptional charisma with people. He is fun as hell to be around. He has the greatest physical, raw quarterbacking ability. He can run. He's tough. And did I mention he can throw the shit out of the ball?

My all-time favorite Brett Favre memory came in my third year in Green Bay, 1994, when we played Atlanta in the second-to-last game of the season and the final one ever in Milwaukee County Stadium before Lambeau would become the Packers' only home field. We needed to beat the Falcons to stay in the playoff hunt. It was third-and-goal. We had no time-outs left.

We needed a touchdown to win the game. There were only about eighteen seconds left, time enough for two pass plays.

"Whatever happens, don't scramble," Mike said after calling a couple of post routes. "Because we don't have any time-outs and if you get tackled in-bounds, the game's over. Throw it someplace where we have a chance to score or throw it away.

DO NOT run around!"

Brett nodded like he understood. Then he started running around. He dived over the pylon to score a touchdown with fourteen seconds left to give us a 21-17 victory and set up our playoff-clinching win the following week over Tampa Bay. To me, in that Atlanta game, he just exploded onto the scene as one of the football's all-time competitors. I wish I had a dollar for every time Mike would say, "No! Noooo! Great throw! No! No! No! Yes! Good job, Brett! You're driving me crazy. I love ya, Brett, but you drive me crazy."

After my first year with the Packers, Paul Hackett became the offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs. He called Coach Holmgren to ask permission to interview me to become either the running backs coach or the receivers coach for the Chiefs.

Since I was only handling offensive quality control in Green Bay, I saw it as a promotion. But under NFL rules at the time, an assistant coach under contract with one team could not go to another for a lateral position. You only could make an upward move to coordinator, assistant head coach and head coach.

Mike didn't want me to leave. He refused to grant the Chiefs permission to interview me, then made me his receivers coach. I wasn't at all comfortable with the move, because Sherman Lewis, whom I had worked with in San Francisco, had coached receivers while also serving as Mike's offensive coordinator.

Sherm knew his stuff as a receivers coach. Although he insisted to me that he was okay with being strictly a coordinator, I was very reluctant about taking the new job because I just wasn't sure if it really did sit well with Sherm.

But coaching the Packer receivers did give me the chance to work with the man I believe, to this day, is the greatest football player I've ever seen-Sterling Sharpe. If he hadn't suffered the neck injury that ended his career after the 1994 season, his seventh in the league, he might have approached Jerry Rice in some ways. Sterling had two of his best seasons when I was in Green Bay, catching 108 passes in 1992 and 112 in 1993, the year I became the receivers coach. His production had nothing to do with my coaching. It had everything to do with the fact he was just an exceptionally talented receiver.

Pound for pound, Sterling was the strongest man I've ever met. He was a beast, a mean, nasty, six-foot-one, 205-pound bitch of a football player. He could play any position on the field. Here was a guy who started at quarterback at South Carolina. He could throw a football eighty yards. He could play linebacker and knock your ass off. He could play strong safety.

He probably could play tight end.

During period one of practice, when each position group was supposed to be doing its own individual drills, Sterling would actually run over with the linebackers and do a couple of minutes of work with them. He'd make contact with a blocker, then scrape, lock, lift and drive into another with a perfect form tackle. He'd run down to the defensive linemen, get in a stance, and hit the sled. He'd run over to the defensive backs and get in a couple of backpedals. He'd run over with the quarterbacks and throw a couple of balls. Then he'd come back to me and get the last thirty seconds of receiver drills.

Sterling played football the way Magic Johnson played basketball-always with a smile on his face. He had the loudest voice I've ever heard. It was like he had speakers in his shoulder pads. And he never stopped talking. Some of the coaches and other players might have found that irritating at times, but Sterling was such a good player that they were all happy to have him on their side. Besides, how else was he supposed to prepare for his future gig with ESPN?

One of the things that made Sterling such a great receiver was that he never left his feet. He wouldn't jump up and cradle a ball and protect himself. He was going to stay on his feet, reach for that ball, expose his body, snatch the ball, bring it back down and explode on you. He had outstanding run-after-the-catch skills. He was always in a position to catch a ball and move the pile for yards or make a guy miss. He could make you miss or he could knock you out.

Sterling was tough as hell and a punishing blocker. As we were getting ready to play the Denver Broncos on Sunday Night Football in 1993, I made film cut-ups to show our receivers, when they had to block for the run, what they could expect from Dennis Smith, one of the hardest-hitting safeties in the league.

"On all six- and eight-hole runs this week, we've got first force, as you know," I said. "Dennis Smith, number forty-nine, is going to fill the alley. As soon as he sees that tight end block, he sees the run action, he is filling the alley." I showed them what happened when J. J. Birden, a receiver for Kansas City, tried blocking for the run against the Broncos. Dennis Smith dropped a house on J. J. He went in there, filled the alley, knocked J. J. over, and held Marcus Allen to a one-yard gain.

"We've got to push that corner off," I said. "And when Dennis Smith forces, we've got to go get him. We've got to block the alley this week. He's filling it, man."

All of a sudden a very familiar booming voice filled the room.

"Nobody fills the alley against Sterling Sharpe!" Sterling said. "Nobody!"

"Dennis Smith's filling the alley, man," I said. "He fills the alley better than anybody in football."

The night of the game, we called 18 Bob, a running play. As Sterling broke from the huddle, he headed right toward our sideline. "Hey, Gru!" he yelled. "Watch this! Watch him fill the alley!"

After the snap, Smith came down toward the alley, but he kind of feathered a little bit. He didn't hit it the way he did against Birden. Sterling pushed off the corner, Ray Crockett, then he blocked Smith and we got about a four- or five-yard gain.

"Nobody fills the alley against Sterling Sharpe! Nobody!"

Sterling said, just in case I didn't happen to notice. "He don't want me! You should have known, Gru! And in your tip sheet next week, remember: Nobody fills the alley against Sterling Sharpe!"

Sterling had a great feel for football. He knew where the zones were. If it was man-to-man, he knew when to turn it on and separate with his excellent acceleration. For a big guy, he had unusual flexibility; he could get in and out of cuts easily.

And, man, was he physical against bump-and-run coverage His work ethic was unbelievable. On game day he had a ritual in which he had to catch something like eighty-four balls before every game. I know, because I was the one who had to throw them to him. High balls. Low balls. Side balls. Then I'd get about two feet away and shovel about seven or ten balls that he'd catch quickly. On a cold day-and we had a lot of those in Green Bay-I had to take my coat off to throw. I'd be freezing and there was Sterling, in a short-sleeved shirt with his socks rolled down to his ankles. His body would be covered in Vaseline to help keep him warm. He'd be catching and talking, catching and talking.

Coaching Sterling Sharpe was a real challenge. He'd let you coach him during the week, but on game day you couldn't coach him very much. As you might imagine, that could present some problems, such as when we played New England. Mike called 22 Z In, which Sterling caught for a nine-yard gain. That was three yards shorter than the route called for. Mike was pissed.