Do You Love Football?! (15 page)

Coach Holmgren believed that when a receiver ran a slant pattern his split had to be two yards outside the numbers to give him some extra field to work with. Normally if you line up on the outside edge of the numbers as they are located on an NFL field, you're usually in pretty good shape to run any kind of inside or outside route. But when we ran a slant, an inside-breaking route, Mike wanted the guys to be a little wider in their splits, so we always referred to that as "plus two."

The receivers insisted on lining up closer to the numbers and Mike would get on my ass. "Their splits are too tight," he would say. "I don't like their splits."

So I'd go into our meetings and say, "Will you guys please take bigger splits?"

Sterling was the first to speak up on the subject. Naturally.

"I line up on the outside edge of the numbers on every play," Sterling said. "Runs, passes, inside routes, outside routes, I'm on the outside edge of the numbers. Period! That's what I do, that's my deal. I'm on the outside edge of the numbers. That way I have no split identification for me. I'm like a thief in the middle of the night. I don't give away nothing. I'm always on the outside edge of the numbers. Period!"

Another of our receivers with definite opinions about splits was Mark Clayton. He came to the Packers in '93, well after his highly productive seasons in Miami with Mark Duper and Dan Marino. I called him "The Riddler," like the character from Batman, because he had that same sick laugh.

"Hey, man, when I line up two yards outside the numbers, why don't I just give the corner a Hallmark greeting card and say, 'Hey, I'm runnin' an inside route'?" Mark said. "I ain't runnin' an outside route. I'm runnin' an inside route and the corner lines up inside, knowing I'm going in there.

"Now Don Shula wasn't a bad coach, either, man. Don Shula let me line up on the inside edge of the numbers and widen on my departure and then run the slant. When I line up on the inside edge of the numbers, the corner thought I was running an outside route and he lined up in an outside technique, so the slant worked better."

I was thinking, That's a hell of a point. Mark and Sterling both made valid points, but here I was with one receiver who wanted to line up on the outside edge of the numbers because he wanted to be a thief in the middle of the night, another guy who wanted to line up on the inside edge because that was how he was trained by the winningest coach in NFL history, and a head coach who wanted all the receivers to line up two yards outside of the numbers.

Robert Brooks? He'd line up six yards outside the numbers if you wanted him to. He'd line up on the sidelines. All the young guys-Ron Lewis, Terry Mickens, Bill Schroeder-would line up wherever you told them to as well. Sharpe and Clayton were doing it their way. In fact, the first time a slant route was called in practice after they spoke up about their splits, Clayton lined up on the inside edge of the numbers. The cornerbacks saw this and started talking to the safety, "Watch the under! Watch the under!" They were looking for a shallow cross or some kind of inside route. Clayton ran his wide departure slant, and of course he was wide open.

Not that that mattered to Mike.

"These splits are killing me!" he yelled. "I don't want them on the inside edge! I asked for your guys to be at a plus two, and now we've got one on the inside edge! Who's coaching who here?"

Finally the receivers felt the wrath I was getting because of their refusal to take bigger splits. Did that make them come around immediately? Let's put it this way, in 1994, my last season in Green Bay, the receiver splits were a lot wider than they were my first year there.

In 1993 the Packers had targeted two blue-chip free agents to sign-Reggie White, the dominant defensive end for the Eagles, and Harry Galbreath, an offensive guard with the Dolphins.

Both guys had played at Tennessee, although only Harry and I were there at the same time. When we were talking about how much we wanted Galbreath during a meeting, I told Ron Wolf, "I know Harry Galbreath. I used to live right next door to him in the Stokley Athletic Center. He and Bruce Wilkerson were my next-door neighbors."

"Yeah, right," Ron said.

When Galbreath's name came up a second time I again said, "I know this guy."

The next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Clarksville, Tennessee. I was on a mission to recruit Harry. I spent a couple of nights at his house and told him all about the high quality situation he would be coming into with the Packers. It wasn't as easy a sell as I thought it would be.

"Hey, Gru, Green Bay's cold, man," Harry said. "It's really cold. I can't play in the cold."

One night we played pool and I issued Harry a challenge. "If I beat you at your house, on your table, you've got to come to Green Bay," I said. I won, in a stunning upset. We ended up signing Harry, as well as Reggie. Did my clutch pool playing have anything to do with us getting Harry? I'll always believe it did.

Getting Reggie was supposed to turn us into a Super Bowl team. Somewhere along the line, we forgot we actually had to earn that status on the field. The result was that we started the '93 season 1-3. We weren't playing well at all. Reggie called a team meeting. It was supposed to be players only, but I couldn't help but kind of eavesdrop on it, because I knew my man Sterling was going to have something to say.

"We've all got to step up individually," Reggie said to the rest of the players. "We've got to dig down deep now. We've got to make plays."

"Hey!" Sterling said, in that booming voice. "You've got to make plays. I've got to make plays. We're the highest-paid guys on this football team. How many sacks do you have in the first four games?"

Sterling called Reggie out. It got heated a little bit with stuff being said back and forth. The next game was that Sunday night game against Denver. Reggie put that legendary hump move on the Broncos a couple of times where he would get that low center of gravity and great leverage, maneuver his hand underneath the offensive tackle's armpit and use the guy's own weight to literally lift him off the ground and throw him upfield.

Sterling did his part and we ended up winning 30-27. We went on to win three in a row, finishing 9-7 and going to the playoffs.

I'll never forget that meeting. What I learned was that, although they might not always admit as much publicly, the highest-paid players-the guys who are making all the money, no matter how they got there or whether they're in their first year, third year or eighth year-have a feeling of accountability deep down inside. And they should. They have to play at a higher level than everyone else. That's exactly why they do get all that money.

A year later we were playing the Los Angeles Rams. Late in the game Jackie Slater, the Rams' veteran tackle and future Hall of-Famer, got hurt, and Wayne Gandy, a rookie from Auburn, took his place. Gandy lined up on the side Reggie wasn't. But right before the snap Reggie ran over to our other end, Matt Brock, and threw him on the other side, because Reggie wanted to rush Gandy. And just as you would expect from a matchup between the NFL's all-time sack leader and a rookie, Reggie just blew right past him and sacked Chris Miller to help us to a 24-17 win.

For the second year in a row, we opened the playoffs with a four-point win over the Detroit Lions in the wild-card round, only to turn around the following week and get bounced out in Dallas. Still, you just knew that you were on the ground floor of something special, that Mike Holmgren and Ron Wolf were putting together all the pieces for a Super Bowl run. To be around all that talent was amazing. Even more amazing was the talent that no one even knew we had at the time. In 1993 we used a fifth-round draft pick on a quarterback named Mark Brunell, who never took a snap for us and didn't make a name for himself until after Ron traded him to Jacksonville two years later for third- and fifth-round picks. In 1994 we signed an undrafted free agent named Kurt Warner, who also never took a snap in Green Bay and was cut before his rookie season even began. You probably know him better now as the two-time NFL MVP quarterback of the St. Louis Rams.

The only time I actually noticed Kurt in his only training camp with the Packers was when he threw to the receivers I coached during our individual period. I didn't exactly pay a whole lot of attention to his passing ability. He would just step and throw. You told him what to do, where to go, when to be there, and he just carried out every assignment. Otherwise, he was obscure. I don't believe a lot of guys ever met Kurt, ever even knew his name. He didn't say much at all. He was a really shy guy. He was maybe a little bit intimidated by being in the NFL.

Besides Brett, the other quarterbacks in camp were Brunell and Ty Detmer, leaving Kurt to get about three reps in practice.

I remember Steve Mariucci telling a story that one day when it was Kurt's turn to get under center he said, "That's all right.

Give my reps to Ty." Maybe at that point the whole experience was just overwhelming to him, which is just unbelievable when you think about all that he has accomplished since.

I still give Steve and Mike a hard time about not recognizing great talent that was right under their noses. I'll say, "You know, I saw him every day. He was throwing ball drills to my receivers. I could have told you he was a great player, but you didn't listen." Of course they could say the exact same thing to me. None of us saw the talent Kurt had.

Every once in a while just for fun I'll watch a VCR tape of the 1996 Arena League championship between the Tampa Bay Storm and the Iowa Barnstormers. Right there, for all the world to see, is Jay Gruden out-dueling Kurt Warner to lead the Storm to a 42-38 victory against the Barnstormers. Every time I see it I get goose bumps.

After 1994 season, the 49ers, with Steve Young leading the way, beat San Diego in the Super Bowl. They just ripped them. That win allowed Steve to finally climb out of Joe Montana's shadow and be recognized as the topflight quarterback he was. It also gave Mike Shanahan, who had been the 49ers' offensive coordinator, the chance to become head coach in Denver.

Not long after that, Coach Holmgren called me into his office. When you're built like the Abominable Snowman, you need a lot of space to work, which was exactly what Mike had a giant office with a giant desk and a giant wooden door. After I walked in, Mike, while sitting behind his giant desk, picked up one of those remote garage door openers, pressed the button, and that giant wooden door swung shut. I had never seen anything like that before. The door just closed on his command.

"Hey, I just wanted you to know that Carmen Policy [then 49ers' president] called," Mike said. "He wanted permission to talk to you about becoming the 49ers' quarterbacks coach."

"That's great," I said. "That is awesome."

I saw it as an incredible opportunity because at the time, Steve Young was at the very top of his game. He was the Michael Jordan of football. He was the man. But Mike ended that conversation fast.

"I'm not going to let you go," he said.

"But it's a chance to work with Steve Young."

"Why would I let you go to San Francisco? We're trying to beat them. They're in the NFC. We're in the NFC. I'm not letting you go."

Mike knew I loved him and that I would do whatever he said. I still would do whatever Mike said because of loyalty and because of what he did for me. I was torn because San Francisco still was the Mecca of football, but it meant a lot that Mike thought that much of me to tell me that he was keeping me there.

About an hour after I left Mike's office he called me back in.

He used that garage door opener again. Only this time he seemed a little upset. Ray Rhodes, who had been Mike's defensive coordinator for our first two years in Green Bay before returning to San Francisco in the same capacity, had just taken the head coaching job in Philadelphia. He also had just called Mike to ask to talk to me about being his offensive coordinator.

I was no different from any young player or young coach. I wanted to go, man. I wanted to do more than I was doing. I needed to find out if I was any good. I needed to find out if all those notes I had taken, if all that work I had done was worth it. I had to go and put my ass on the coals, man. I had to see if I could do this.

Mike understood my ambition. Plus this was an opportunity I knew I wasn't going to get any time soon with the Packers.

They had Sherman Lewis. They had a talented quarterbacks coach in Steve Mariucci. They had another up-and-coming guy in Andy Reid. They had an accomplished running backs coach in Gil Haskell, who would go on to become offensive coordinator in Carolina and Seattle. They had Tom Lovat, one of the top long-standing offensive line coaches in football history.

I had coached tight ends and wide receivers. I had listened to top line coaches in Tom and Bobb McKittrick. This was an opportunity for me to become a coordinator and get back to the quarterback. I needed to get back to the quarterback. It all went back to my dad, who said that I had to coach the quarterback, I had to learn how to talk to the quarterback, I had to be responsible for what the quarterback did.