In the first of a two-episode series, Dean Pees sits down with Tori McElhaney in the Falcons podcast studio to discuss the reasons he got into coaching in the 70s, his start at the high school level, coaching with Nick Saban at the college level and how Dave Ragone changed his approach to recruiting. 00:00 - Intro 01:55- Rewards of High School Coaching 14:53 - Players learn differently 25:00 - Recruiting and College Football 30:17 - Coaching with Nick Saban 33:37 - Kent State Football 36:32 - Recruiting Dave Ragone
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special limited series
brought to you by the Falcons podcast Network. I am
Tory mcahaney and I am joined by a man who
needs no introduction, but I've written one. Nonetheless, this is
someone who has almost fifty years of coaching experience at
both the high school level, the college level the pro level.
(00:22):
He has a coaching tree of we recently found out
about twenty five coaches deep at the college in pro
level two Super Bowl championships. Retired in twenty nineteen, but
couldn't keep him away from the field, and he came
back as the defensive coordinator the Falcons in twenty twenty one.
I am joined by none other than Dean Peace. Thank
you for joining me on the podcast. Now, before we
(00:45):
actually get into the content that I have prepped for
the podcast, I wanted to tell you a story because
this is a very funny story. I don't know if
you remember or not, but this was a press conference. Gosh,
it was probably midway through the season and last year,
and you said that I was your favorite, which I appreciated. Nonetheless,
but one of our podcast listeners actually sent me in
(01:09):
the mail a very special gift and I'm gonna show
it to you. That's crazy. It's a mug that says
Dean's favorite. I'm gonna show the camera, hello everybody. And
this is something that it was funny because I got
a text from Austin Hittle, who's our director of video here,
and he was like, Tori, there's something in the office
(01:31):
that got sent to you. And I was like, who
is sending me anything? My parents definitely wouldn't. The only
people who send me things are my parents. I was like,
there's no way that anyone's gonna send me something. He
was like, I don't know what it is, but it's
here at the facility, and this is what it was.
It was a very I was like, this is very thoughtful.
So I had to show it to you. So now
I'm officially Dean's favorite. It's it's been in the mug form.
(01:54):
So my plan for this podcast is kind of just
to go through you're fifty years of coaching and kind
of look at it in a chronological way and look
back at the lessons learned and the moments that you
find meaningful and appreciate. Now, something that we actually talked
(02:16):
about recently is that you got your start as a
high school football coach and teacher. And that's something that's
very near and dear to my heart because my dad
is a high school football coach and teacher. So I
don't know if many people actually know that about you.
I think they see like, oh, he's a defensive coordinator
in the professional league, but he got his start as
(02:37):
a high school coach. That's very interesting. So for you,
I want to go back to it's probably what nineteen
seventy two, nineteen seventy three, nineteen seventy three, go take
me back to a young Dean piece. Why I just
graduated from college. Really in the middle of the year
I graduated in December, I was playing in a city
(03:00):
league basketball league and the guy that was on my
team was a principal of a high school, and obviously
I got to know him well playing on the team,
and one day he came to me because you know,
what are you planning on doing. I was actually working
at a men's clothing store in town, and I thought,
you know, I wanted teach and coach. I got an
education degree. I really want to coach, and so he goes, well,
(03:24):
I think we're gonna have an opening, would you be interested. Absolutely,
So I took the job site unseen, didn't know where
the high school was, anything else, didn't really care, just
so I wanted a job and took the job and
was the defensive coordinator of my first year. And then
the next year the head coach resigned and I became
(03:46):
the head coach. And really that's really Tori, That's that
was kind of what I wanted to be. I wanted
to be the guys I admired the most kind of
growing up besides my father was my high school coaches,
and so I kind of wanted to following their footsteps.
So I was happy and I stayed on there for
six years. Wow, I think that's I love that because
(04:09):
for me, the backbone I think of coaching is teaching.
And I know that's something that you've talked about before
when you were kind of at the high school level.
How did you see that incorporating not only in what
you were doing then, but who you are now as
a defensive coordinator in the league. Well, I think there's
a couple of things that came really from the very
(04:31):
early beginning there in high school. Is number one. You know,
you had to prepare a lesson plans. You had to
prepare ahead. Everybody didn't learn at the same rate. You know.
I think your object as a teacher was not to
see how many people you could fail. It's how many
can you benefit to really understand the stuff that you're
(04:53):
trying to teach and get the most out of them.
And so everybody is at a different level, and so
you got a learn how to deal with that, and
you got to have patience because every like I say,
everybody's not going to just come natural to them. And
really that's even true in the NFL. Every defensive back
doesn't play at the same level. Some catch on real quick,
(05:13):
some maybe not so much so. But it's your job
to get them to all be at the same level.
So how you're going to do that. I think the
other thing is that in high school, you inherit who
you have. You don't recruit. You know, it's not like college. Okay,
we can go out and recruit this guy, or we
can draft this guy. In the NFL, Hey I got
whoever I got, guy's got to go play my free safety.
(05:34):
You've got to go play linebacker for me. I got
to figure out how the parts fit. What can this
guy do best? How can we fit him into this?
And I think that's how you become a successful high
school coach. You deal with so many personalities, You deal
with parents, you deal with all that kind of stuff
that's kind of from the outside end, but I think
it really helps you to become a teacher. And you
(05:55):
also have to stand in front of a classroom all
the time and you're talking and teaching. It's not take
something off a computer. And you know, like nowadays a
little bit more than I think it should be is
too many guys spend too much time on the computer
and not enough time with people you had to teach.
(06:16):
And I think that that's I'm really really grateful for
the way that I did come up. It didn't take over,
it didn't happen overnight, but I really am thankful for
the way it did. And I really I'm just so
grateful that I was a high school teacher start out with.
What are kind of some of the stories that you
(06:38):
have from being a high school coach and teacher. I know,
I think back to what my dad did growing up.
Your mowing the field, you are trading film, you are
doing it's kind of you're doing everything you know now
it's like, oh, these coaching staffs at the pro level,
they have underlings who can do everything, but at the
high school level, it is you doing everything. So what
(07:00):
was what was kind of your week like as a
high school coach? Well, it was in the summer. I
mowed the fields, lined the fields. Uh, that's kind of
what you did. We put on a camp every summer,
but it was free. We got some of the mothers
of the players to you know, make snacks and drinks
and all that stuff, and and that's how you really
(07:21):
got going. You wouldn't it. It didn't have anything to
do with money because there wasn't there one minty. Uh.
So it's it's it was just it was very very
When you look back, I don't it it's just so rewarding.
I think sometimes it's it's it's sometimes when you know
when you're when you're a kid, you don't know how
good your childhood is until you become an adult totally. Well,
(07:42):
I think it was the same way in coaching. I
don't know how much fun and how much I actually
enjoyed being a high school coach until I became a
coach later on, and how much I appreciated what I
had to do and what other coaches have to do.
That's why I admire high school coach is we need
more of them. I really feel like in society we're
(08:04):
always trying to find all these psychological things to help
kids that you know, there's just way too many shootings
and things like that going on nowadays. How about if
all the kids in the high school or eighty percent
of them, were involved in an extracurricular activity after school,
and it doesn't have to be football, It could be
(08:25):
any sport, it could be music, it could be plays,
it could be any of that stuff. How much more
beneficial would that be to maybe put money into the
high schools in this country than it would into all
these other programs, you know, so they aren't going on
home and sitting around and being alone or playing you know,
(08:45):
some of these games that they play on video games.
How about if we could get kids more involved. Well,
you got people right there in the high school that
will do it, but they also you shouldn't have to
do it for free, right and so you know, maybe
out of some money in that way. I know I'm
talking politics there a little bit, but I just really
feel like sometimes that's all kind of gone by the wayside,
(09:08):
and there's programs being dropped because they said, well, we
don't have the money to support this program or that program.
I just think that's a tragedy. Yeah, I think too,
Like you talk about, you know, people being alone being
and I think growing up always being around a team
and being a part of a team, that was something
(09:28):
that really kind of shaped me into who I am.
And I know it's something that shapes even the players
at the professional level into who they are. Is being
a part of a team. What are kind of some
memories that you have of those early days and kind
of forming these teams. And you were talking about how
at the high school level you don't get to bring
(09:49):
in who you want to. You have these guys who
you just kind of have. What was kind of your
way of building these teams? Well, I think the biggest
thing was I took over a program that had not
one in a long time. So the number one thing
was kind of being positive and trying to convince them
that they can be good. There's so much more of
(10:11):
that than people really realize. At all levels. You know,
you become in a rut if if you just aren't
having a lot of success. People have a tendency to
kind of drop down to the level that everybody puts
them out instead of trying to go past that. But
you know, also being at the high school, I was
a head football coach. I was the JV basketball coach
(10:34):
and the head track coach. And so the other part
of that is not everybody that ran track played football, right,
not everybody that played football ran track or and then
there were certain guys in basketball that was their thing.
So you also find out that everybody didn't have the
same interest you do, you know, and that's okay, you know,
but they so you coach them all different. You know,
(10:54):
I can't go in, you knows, as a basketball coach
and treat it like I did as the football team,
you know, you know, giving them a raw row of
speech before, you know, to go out and hit somebody
was not going to work, not real good when they
fouled out. So then and then after a couple of
years as a basketball coach, they asked me if I
want to be the assistant wrestling coach. Well, I'd never
(11:15):
wrestled in my life. I didn't know anything about it,
but I thought, yeah, i'd be interesting, So I did it.
And basically they let me go as a basketball coach
because I got two meet technicals, so they moved me
over to wrestling, and so then I became the assistant
wrestling coach. Like I said, didn't know anything about it,
but then I get it a whole different appreciation for
what those guys go through. You're out there on the
(11:37):
map by yourself. You're not playing on a team. It's
you and against the other guy, and there's nobody you
can ask for help. You know, you're not calling for
the safety or the linebacker to help you out there.
It's you, And so different appreciation for that same thing
with the track guys. It's you against the clock and
against the other guys. So you learn a lot about
(11:59):
people and how I want to handle people. And to me,
that was the most rewarding thing about high school. And
then you know, everybody always talking to me about the
Super Bowls and stuff, But the truth of it is
is that the satisfaction of watching that high school team
have their first winning season in twenty years was very,
(12:20):
very rewarding. It took a lot of work, had nothing
to do with money. The assistant coaches that were on
my staff, I mean those guys got peanuts to help
be an assistant coach, maybe five hundred dollars for the year,
and you know, just the great satisfaction I've taken a
(12:41):
group like that that hadn't won and watching them when
was just really really satisfying. Yeah, I love that because
it is. I mean, I think a lot of people
get it. Don't get into coaching for the money. They
get into it because they love people and love their players.
And I think that shows most evident in the fact
(13:02):
that you got so many technicals as a basketball coach.
I have a story. So when I was thirteen years old,
I was at my sister's, my younger sister's basketball game.
It was just like a rat game. It wasn't anything significant,
and I got a technical in the stands, not because
I was technically yelling, but because I was sitting beside
(13:24):
my mom and we both yelling, and she yelled to
this this poor young referee that he sucked, and I
was like, yeah, he does, and then he turned around
and said, get out of here. So I can relate
to that. What is your favorite technic getting a technical
story that you ever had? Well, actually is the first
(13:46):
game I ever coached as a JV first one, and
the head coach, the varsity coach was our athletic director. Okay,
obviously you know it was my boss, right, not twice,
not only as the basketball coach, but as the AD.
And so we're at an away game and I don't
remember there's some call goes on, but I do remember.
Its Gibsonburg High School, and you know, it is different
(14:09):
than in football. I walked right out to mid court
and started getting the officials. I mean, you're not supposed
to be out here. It was the first thing you
told me. Then the second thing was he technical, gave
me a technical, and then I kind of looked around
and there's our athletic director shaking his head. What have
I done? And so that was I do remember my
(14:30):
very first technical as a yeah, you never you never forget.
I love that. It was funny too, because, yeah, the
coaching basketball and coaching football, it's it's a very different beast.
And I liked what you were talking about in terms
of like having to choose and understand how each not
only like each team works, but coaching and teaching each
(14:51):
individual person. You've had a almost fifty years of doing this.
Is there a player who learned in a different way
that you kind of had to go back and be like,
I need to figure out how this player learns because
it's very different than maybe somebody else. Well I don't
I don't know if I could say, and I probably
(15:13):
wouldn't say it was. But every player learns a little different.
And some can just look at the film and boom,
pick it up. Some of them you can actually draw
a diagram and they could pick it up. Some of
them you got to go out there and wrap it
two or three times before they truly understand. Doesn't matter.
The bottom line is how do I need to get
it taught? You know, everybody doesn't probably learn math quite
(15:36):
the same way, or you know, or anything else. And
even if some people can read a book and tell
you everything it's in the book, me I gotta go
back and back and back and back and write notes
and do all that kind of stuff. So everybody does
learn differently. But I think the other part of it
is that everybody comes from a different background too, And
(15:58):
the more you know about their background as a teacher
or as a coach. This is kind of fast forwarding
a little bit. But in college I wanted as a
head college coach. I wanted to visit every player that
played for me's home, which is hard to do, but
(16:20):
I did it every spring when most the coaches would
go junior recruiting, I went and visited the homes of
guys who are already on my team because it helped
me understand is it a tough background, is it a
very affluent background, is it a very poor background financially?
(16:41):
Who runs the family as it? Mom is a dad?
Is at grandma? Are there? Is there dad in the picture?
Is their parents in the picture. If you understand those dynamics,
you also maybe understand a little bit about the player
a little bit more. And to me, that was really
really important. It was easy to do when you're recruiting
(17:02):
a kid out of high school because you're going on
the home visits and you get to kind of see,
but you don't know about the guys that are already
were on your team. And then eventually you know them
all because you've recruited them all if you're there long enough,
and it transcends into the NFL. Because I'll give you
(17:22):
an example of a young man. One time that we're
playing in a playoff game, and every Wednesday as long
as I've been a coordinator in the NFL, I have
what I call a signal callers meeting, and I take
a guy from each position and we come in and
I talk to them about here's before I ever talked
(17:45):
to the defense, here's what our game plan is. What
do you guys think? So they have a little input
in into it because it's it's their team, and so
like like when I was at Bottomore, I mean it
was ray Lewis, ed Rey Terrell, Suggs, and a Helodi Nada.
I mean it was incredible. I should have taken a picture.
So I remember walking into them one time and telling him,
(18:06):
here's what you know we want to do against this
team that we're playing in the playoffs. So I mean,
this is big. Now, we can't be wrong, all right.
So then I tell him that, and I'll never forget
ed Reid's face is that I tell him that I'm
going to put this one corner in charge of making
(18:29):
the disguise call. Okay, We're going to try to disguise
the coverage on this quarterback, and I want everybody to
look the same. And the kid that I talked about
was a kid that always had had come from a
couple of different teams and had trouble adjusting and just
kind of was just had trouble. Yeah, And so Ed
(18:50):
looked at me, like, you're gonna do what I said.
I am, because here's the thing about it is, he's
never been in charge of anything. Nobody's ever given him
that responsibility. He's always been put in a follower role.
Somebody else is in charge, and you have to do
what they do. The truth of the matter is is
(19:12):
I don't really care what we disguise. It's just I
want them both corners to be exactly the same. So
I know this corner over here is going to do
exactly what I tell him to do. Him the guy
that I'm talking about sometimes does, sometimes it doesn't. But
if he's in charge, I know the other guy will
do exactly I said. And I'm going to point it
(19:34):
out in front of the whole defense. Who I'm going
to put in charge of the disguise I said, And
wait till you see his face. I will bet you
that he perks right up, sits up, and all of
a sudden, like somebody gave me some credibility and some
responsibility because I knew about this kid's background and it
wasn't good. And so when I did that that day,
(19:57):
ed comes back to me, good man, you are right.
I turned, I looked at him and it was like
somebody had just given him something special. Yeah, and you're
in charge. And he took that and ran with it
and had a heck of a year, had a heck
of a game and we want it and went on
to the super Bowl. So it was just something like that,
but that not if I hadn't known his background, if
(20:19):
I just would have said, well, hey, I'm not going
to put that guy in charge. I'm gonna put this
guy in charge. It benefited him, but it benefited us.
And the only reason I kind of did it was
because I knew that he needed that and that would
help all of us. And it did. Yeah, I mean
that was what I was going to ask, is like
why that moment, Like why did you want to give
(20:41):
him that responsibility? I mean, you talk about it's a
big game, it's a playoff game, like this is this
is it you win or you or you lose, and
that's it. And so why was it that moment that
you felt compelled to do because it fit? Because I,
like I said, It didn't matter what the disguise was.
I didn't care if they lined up and cover two
(21:01):
and played cover three or if they lined up and
cover three and played cover two. It didn't matter. What
mattered was that we just had a disguise. I didn't
want the quarterback to be able to before the ball
was ever snapped, to know exactly what the coverage was.
So it didn't matter how we disguised. It just mattered
that we did. So it was a perfect timing to
put him in charge of it because it didn't really
(21:25):
it wasn't There wasn't anything schematically, he couldn't screw it up.
He couldn't. Yeah, so whatever he chose to do was
going to be right. And it was just so the
timing of it was it. It happened. I just thought
about it at the time and I thought, Okay, I
gotta put somebody in charge of this, and I thought
it's a perfect time to put him in charge him.
(21:47):
I love that because I think that it's you go
going back to what you're talking about is like knowing
the background of a player and kind of knowing how
much they can handle versus what they can't handle. I
think you even talked about it even taking over this
Falcons defense last year, and and you made the comment like,
I'm not trying to fit the players to the scheme.
(22:10):
A good coach, a good coordinator fits the scheme to
the players. And how much like when you're looking at
like background and thinking about who you have available, how
much do you cognizantly think about that and how much you,
as a coordinator are changing to fit the person that
you have, oh, all the time. I would hope that
(22:31):
all coaches would do that. It's the easiest analogy. It was, Okay,
if you have an option quarterback that you recruited out
of high school to go win, are you going to
make him a drawback quarterback in college? No, there was
a reason why he has success in high school because
it was an option quarterback and can't run. Okay, so
you're going to adapt your offer. I would hope you
(22:54):
probably most times you're recruiting guys to what you want
to do. If you're a dropback college team, you're going
to to drop back guy. The thing that hit me
was in the in the NFL, especially, you know you
only have forty five guys dressed on game day. You know,
maybe twenty two guys on defense. So you know if
a guy goes down. Okay, let's say that we want
(23:15):
to play man coverage and we got a corner. We
got maybe two corners. Hey, if you're blessed, you have
two corners that can play man coverage, but one if
one of them gets hurt or rolls an ankle or
does something like that, and the next guy up isn't
a good man coverage team or guy. So are you
gonna say? Then, by guys, you're gonna play man coverage
no matter what, you're gonna get killed. So the year
(23:38):
we won the Super Bowl in Baltimore in twenty twelve,
if I'm not mistaken, we started seven different corners that
year because of injuries and things. Well, we changed the
game plan every week. Sometimes we played a lot of
Cover two. Sometimes we played a lot of Cover three.
Sometimes we played a lot of Cover man. And so
I mean we got we had We brought a kid
(23:59):
in one on a Tuesday and was playing on he
was gonna have to start on Sunday against the team
that just cut him. Oh goodness, Now do you think
they might know a little something about him? Well, there's
no way, am I going to put him in harm.
It's not fair to put him in harm's way and say,
by guys, this is what you're gonna have to do.
(24:20):
We're gonna what does this guy when we watched the
film on him from the other team, what does he
do best? Well, that's what we're gonna end up having
to do. I got to kind of configure it and
do some things, And to me, that's what you do
as a coach. It's just it's not fair to a player.
If he's not a good blitzer, why would you be
blitzing him, If he's not a good pass rusher, why
(24:43):
would you be putting him in a situation? And then
everybody's screaming at him. I'm like, why can't this guy
do it? Well, you know you're putting him in an
unfair advantage. There's some things they just got to do
because it's part of the defense. But for the most part,
you're trying your best to put guys in positions they
can have success, because that's how you're going to have success.
(25:04):
Kind of going going back to what you were saying
about going into players homes and getting to know them.
You after coaching at the high school level for six years,
you made the jump to college, and you made many
stops there, Miami, Ohio, Toledo, Michigan State. I could go on,
but for you, and then of course the head coaching
(25:27):
job at can't state. What were you like as a recruiter.
I know recruiting now is very different and it's almost
like its own machine now, but at the time is
probably eighties nineties, what was recruiting like at that time.
I liked it. I did enjoy it. I didn't like
to travel necessarily all the time, but I actually like
(25:47):
going in and visiting with parents because I was a
parent and I wanted to make them feel like I'm
going to treat their son like I would treat my son.
You know, I'm going to take care of them. I'm
gonna I'm gonna do everything I can sure he graduates
from college. That's gonna be the number one thing. I know.
He was going to play football, and football is going
to help pay the bill. But his chances are playing
(26:08):
in the NFL, you know, or slim and so I
know that and a lot of guys that I recruited,
they were the first person in their family to go
to college, and so mom's looking at him, going, I
want this guy to get an education. And so therefore,
as a father, I wanted to project that image that
(26:30):
you're I'm going to take care of your son. He's
not going to be just a football player. In my eyes,
He's going to be a young man and I'm going
to take care of him. And I wanted to portray that.
But I did enjoy it and I didn't. Now, you
have to be a negotiator, and so the difference then
was though that I sold the school, not me or
(26:56):
even the football program. Because coaches can change. Yeah, okay,
your son goes to Michigan State. If you're coming to
Michigan State, you're coming to Michigan State because it's got
a good academic program that you're interested in, it's got
a good football program, and good people that are going
to treat you right. Because two years from now, I'm
working for Nick Saban. He was mentioned for every head
(27:18):
coaching job. There wasn't a country, so everybody was always
using recruiting against us, saying, wow, you're going to go
play for Saban. He's not even going to be there
next year. I go, yeah, he might not be. I
didn't try to take the other approach like, oh, no,
he's gonna be I don't know him. He might not be.
Now they look like a liar. I said, yeah, he
might not be. But if you're choosing Michigan State because
of Nick Saban, you're choosing Michigan State for the wrong reason.
(27:41):
You should be choosing Michigan State because of the academics
that you can get, the school, the people, the overall
atmosphere of Michigan State. If you're not, then yeah, you
shouldn't come to us. I don't know if I'll be
there next year. Who knows. This was a coaching profession.
People move, don't pick a school because of a person,
pick up because of the school. I don't think that's
(28:02):
the case anymore. It's changed a lot that way. It's
pretty crazy. So recruiting was different, yeah, you know, and
I'll go back even to like in college, even at
Kent State. You know, my wife, every Thursday night we
had ten players over to our house off the team.
We spread it out over the course of you know,
ten games and so, but if we had you know,
(28:25):
eighty five to ninety guys on the team, every player
that was on our football team had a home cooked
meal in our house on Thursday night, and so they
got to see my house and what it was like
and where it was and all that stuff, and so
it took a little more of a personal look than
he's just the coach. And you know, I'm probably a
(28:47):
whole lot different at home than I was on the field,
and so it just I think just sharing that helps
guys understand. Guys are always gonna play harder for you
if they know you care about and so it's kind
of that's how recruiting was to me. It was get
to know people more than it was just recruit somebody. Yeah,
(29:08):
what y'all eat during those those visits to your house?
Anything and everything? Yeah, a little bit of everything. It
could be burgers, it could be hot dogs, it could
be barbecue, it could be a little bit of everything. Nice.
I didn't know if it was like we're going to
have this every single Thursday night. Are you a superstitious
type in terms of coaching? Not too much. So. My
dad was very superstitious. And there was one time we
(29:32):
had to eat I think it was subway. It was
like we had to have subway. And this is not
a podcast sponsored by Subway unless Subway you want to
sponsor the podcast. But we would eat Subway every single
like Sunday night because they kept winning, and it was
like that was the thing. I don't know why it
was that that we fixated on, but it was like,
we have to eat Subway or we have to eat
(29:52):
pizza Hut. So what if you lost? Did you never
eat Subway again? We didn't eat it for the rest
of the season, which is very unfortunate because I like
a good sandwich. I mean, that's just how it was. Um,
But no, I love that, and I think that's You're
right the players, and I think, um, the impact that
players like coaches have on players lives. They don't know
(30:13):
who you are, they don't there's no impact there, and
I think that's super super important. Um. You talked about
coaching with Nick Saban, and in this area, in the Atlanta,
Georgia area, he is someone who's very very well known
and his career is very very well known. What's your
favorite Nick Saban story from your time coaching with him? Oh,
(30:38):
I gotta be careful here, I know, so No, he
Nick treated me absolutely great. And I know people would
think this is probably hard to believe, but um, in
I was Nick Saban's defense coordinare twice right, Yes, you
you were with him, he got he got a lot
(31:00):
of people don't know. He was the head coach at
the University of Toledo, right, and he was only there
a year, and so I hired he hired me as
his defensive coordinator. We went nine and two, won the league,
and he leaves and goes and goes to the Browns
as the defensive coordinator. And here we are nine and two,
(31:20):
but we all got retained and stayed on and with
a guy named Gary Pinkle, who was also a great coach.
And so then when I left him later and went
to Notre Dame, and Nick went to Michigan State and
hired me back as his defensive coordinator. So Nick has
always been great to me and my family, and people
(31:41):
will find us hard to believe. But in all the
time that I coached for Nick, he never raised his
voice one time at me. Never, And I think he
knew that I always had was loyal, had mutual respect
for him, and would never do anything that he didn't want.
But I do recall one time we're out and we
(32:03):
had what we call pre practice, and I go out
and I kind of walk through and talk through the
stuff that's going to go through and practice. And so
I go out and I'm going through all this stuff
with the defense and he wasn't out there, and he
kind of walked out late, and then he started to
talk about something that I'd already covered, and I was
in a hurry because I wanted to get everything done
before the whistle blew to start practice. And I just
(32:25):
looked at it goes, hey, I've covered that kind of
that like that. As soon as I did it, I
was like, what the heck have I done? And all
players got like, oh good, dead silence. He didn't say
a word. We went on way of practice later that night,
though I got a telephone call. All was next time
(32:48):
I walk out late, I'd appreciate it very much if
you didn't use that tone with me, Yes, sir, Yes,
you're a good coach. I knew I was wrong two
seconds after my mouth so, but he treated me absolutely great.
I love it. It's it's so great when you know
you had you had all these experiences at the college
(33:10):
level and then you get you get to become your
own head coach at Kent State. UM. What was that
experience like and why did you want to make that jump.
And also something that we've talked about recently is that
was a very meaningful time for you in your career.
So can you kind of just take me through those years. Well,
(33:35):
first of all, I had three bosses in a row,
Nick Saban, Gary Pinkel, and Lou Holt and they're all
Kent State graduates. Wow, yeah, I do so. And I
grew up in the Mid American Conference, went to school
bowling Green, I coached. I was evens coordinator in Miami
(33:57):
of Ohio, the events coordinator at Toledo. So I knew
the league really well and loved the league. It's very competitive,
it's not high profile and all that, but it's very
good football. And I really loved the league. So the
Kent State job kind of opened up and they actually
contacted me, and I think probably because of Nick and
(34:18):
Lew and Gary, and I know there were some people
thought maybe I shouldn't take this job because they had
lost for a long time and it was not good losses.
It was not good. But part of the reason it
attracted me that job. I was attracted to that job
was the same thing as high school. One of them.
(34:41):
I told you early on. One of the most rewarding
things I ever did was having a first winning season
in years at that high school. And I thought, Okay,
whoever takes over for Nick Saban at Alabama, you get
about one way to go, and that's that. I mean,
how you're gonna You're gonna fill those shoes. And it's
kind of like when I went to New England. Yeah,
(35:03):
I won a Super Bowl my first year there, but
they won the Super Bowl the year before. Did I
feel a sense of accomplishment. Well, yeah, I didn't screw
them up, but I didn't build them. Bill Belichick built it.
So this was an opportunity. Can we take a program
that is really down and down and let's see if
(35:24):
we can change it. And that's such a gratifying, satisfying feeling.
It wasn't in high school. So I wanted to kind
of relive that a little bit at the college level,
and we did, and we turned the thing around with
guys like Josh Cribbs and James Harrison and some other guys.
Took some players, but what a gratifying feeling to finally
(35:44):
have the first winning season. Then in two thousand and
one and we beat Ben Roethlisberger on the last play
at the last game to go six and five and
people would have thought we'd won the Super Bowl. What
a gratifying feeling that was. And it was hard work.
There wasn't a lot of money at those schools. You
got to really work hard. You're fighting an uphill battle
(36:07):
and recruiting not only financially, but because you've been losing
for so long, you know, culture, everything, Hey, kids are
looking at you. Yeah. I recruited Dave were Gone. It's
on our staff and it came down to us in Louisville. Yeah,
and I know why you went to Louisville and Louisville
was having winning seasons and we weren't. And he was
high profile quarterback out of Cleveland, Ohio. And so it
(36:31):
was just those six years where it was very, very
very gratifying. Yeah, can you walk me through that recruiting
process of Dave We're gone. You know what, Dave were
Gone helped me more than any coach or player ever
in recruiting. Really, I'll tell you how. And he knows
it because I gave him credit for it. They were going.
(36:53):
It was a very high profile Saint Ignatious High School,
which is a great high school in Cleveland, Ohio state
champion stuff. So it comes down to us and Louisville.
And the thing about Dave was, you know, most recruits
are the high school coach is gonna tell you and go, hey,
he recruited. You know, he committed to Louisville. Dave didn't.
(37:13):
Dave came down and told me in person, coach, I'm
going to Louisville. I really loved it here. I loved
my visit here. You know, I like your staff, I
like all this stuff, what you're doing, But I'm going
to Louisville. Dave, why tell me why? Because this would
have been a coup for us to get this guy
out of Cleveland. Yeah, he goes. It's just I've grown
(37:36):
up all the time when reading the Cleveland Playing Dealer
and everything, and everything about Kent State football was negative,
you know, Louisville pretty positive. It's not. It's like everybody
would probably stop him in the hallway and say, you know, hey,
where are you going to school? Dave? And David go
wat it's between Kent and Louisville, and I Kent, you know,
so I don't think he could He couldn't overcome that yeah,
(38:01):
and he also wanted to be an NFL player until
he thought my chances are going to be better. I
was selling to him, come here and help us build
something special. You can be the guy. So he didn't,
but he told me in person, which tells you a
little bit about him as a man and as a
young boy eight seventeen, eighteen years old to have, you know,
(38:21):
usually they have the coach call you had to tell you.
So I looked at that and I go, okay. So
this guy loved it here. He's a high profile guy.
He liked his visit, he liked the school, he liked
the staff, and he still didn't choose us. What's that
tell me? So I changed my whole recruiting program and said,
(38:43):
I'm going east because we were in Ohio school and
we tried to recruit nothing but a lot of Ohio kids,
which we still did, but we're fighting Toledo, Miami of Ohio.
You got Ohio State, and then everybody else comes into
Ohio and recruits Syracuse, all Penn State. All of them.
Need to go somewhere where people don't know as much
about Kent State football. So I went to the East
(39:05):
Coast and I got a kid named Josh Cribbs and
a couple other guys, and all of a sudden, it
turned the whole thing around. Yeah. Then we went back
to recruiting Ohio hard once we started winning, So it
was like, Dave, we're gone by not coming actually helped
me turn the program around because I took a different
direction in recruiting. That is fantastic. This is the podcast
(39:30):
and material that I was looking for. I love this.
It's really great and it's interesting because we've kind of
gone through your high school experience, your college experience, and
the next time that you pop on the podcast, which
this is going to be a separate part, we're going
to get into you making the jump to the league
and all of the experiences that come along with it,
(39:51):
maybe hopefully get some Bill Belichick stories in there. But
thank you for joining me today and we're really looking
forward to having you on in a couple of days.
My pleasure, I spoke matter. Can any husband had fire
Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special limited series
brought to you by the Falcons podcast Network. I am
Tory mcahaney and I am joined by a man who
needs no introduction, but I've written one. Nonetheless, this is
someone who has almost fifty years of coaching experience at
both the high school level, the college level the pro level.
(00:22):
He has a coaching tree of we recently found out
about twenty five coaches deep at the college in pro
level two Super Bowl championships. Retired in twenty nineteen, but
couldn't keep him away from the field, and he came
back as the defensive coordinator the Falcons in twenty twenty one.
I am joined by none other than Dean Peace. Thank
you for joining me on the podcast. Now, before we
(00:45):
actually get into the content that I have prepped for
the podcast, I wanted to tell you a story because
this is a very funny story. I don't know if
you remember or not, but this was a press conference. Gosh,
it was probably midway through the season and last year,
and you said that I was your favorite, which I appreciated. Nonetheless,
but one of our podcast listeners actually sent me in
(01:09):
the mail a very special gift and I'm gonna show
it to you. That's crazy. It's a mug that says
Dean's favorite. I'm gonna show the camera, hello everybody. And
this is something that it was funny because I got
a text from Austin Hittle, who's our director of video here,
and he was like, Tori, there's something in the office
(01:31):
that got sent to you. And I was like, who
is sending me anything? My parents definitely wouldn't. The only
people who send me things are my parents. I was like,
there's no way that anyone's gonna send me something. He
was like, I don't know what it is, but it's
here at the facility, and this is what it was.
It was a very I was like, this is very thoughtful.
So I had to show it to you. So now
I'm officially Dean's favorite. It's it's been in the mug form.
(01:54):
So my plan for this podcast is kind of just
to go through you're fifty years of coaching and kind
of look at it in a chronological way and look
back at the lessons learned and the moments that you
find meaningful and appreciate. Now, something that we actually talked
(02:16):
about recently is that you got your start as a
high school football coach and teacher. And that's something that's
very near and dear to my heart because my dad
is a high school football coach and teacher. So I
don't know if many people actually know that about you.
I think they see like, oh, he's a defensive coordinator
in the professional league, but he got his start as
(02:37):
a high school coach. That's very interesting. So for you,
I want to go back to it's probably what nineteen
seventy two, nineteen seventy three, nineteen seventy three, go take
me back to a young Dean piece. Why I just
graduated from college. Really in the middle of the year
I graduated in December, I was playing in a city
(03:00):
league basketball league and the guy that was on my
team was a principal of a high school, and obviously
I got to know him well playing on the team,
and one day he came to me because you know,
what are you planning on doing. I was actually working
at a men's clothing store in town, and I thought,
you know, I wanted teach and coach. I got an
education degree. I really want to coach, and so he goes, well,
(03:24):
I think we're gonna have an opening, would you be interested. Absolutely,
So I took the job site unseen, didn't know where
the high school was, anything else, didn't really care, just
so I wanted a job and took the job and
was the defensive coordinator of my first year. And then
the next year the head coach resigned and I became
(03:46):
the head coach. And really that's really Tori, That's that
was kind of what I wanted to be. I wanted
to be the guys I admired the most kind of
growing up besides my father was my high school coaches,
and so I kind of wanted to following their footsteps.
So I was happy and I stayed on there for
six years. Wow, I think that's I love that because
(04:09):
for me, the backbone I think of coaching is teaching.
And I know that's something that you've talked about before
when you were kind of at the high school level.
How did you see that incorporating not only in what
you were doing then, but who you are now as
a defensive coordinator in the league. Well, I think there's
a couple of things that came really from the very
(04:31):
early beginning there in high school. Is number one. You know,
you had to prepare a lesson plans. You had to
prepare ahead. Everybody didn't learn at the same rate. You know.
I think your object as a teacher was not to
see how many people you could fail. It's how many
can you benefit to really understand the stuff that you're
(04:53):
trying to teach and get the most out of them.
And so everybody is at a different level, and so
you got a learn how to deal with that, and
you got to have patience because every like I say,
everybody's not going to just come natural to them. And
really that's even true in the NFL. Every defensive back
doesn't play at the same level. Some catch on real quick,
(05:13):
some maybe not so much so. But it's your job
to get them to all be at the same level.
So how you're going to do that. I think the
other thing is that in high school, you inherit who
you have. You don't recruit. You know, it's not like college. Okay,
we can go out and recruit this guy, or we
can draft this guy. In the NFL, Hey I got
whoever I got, guy's got to go play my free safety.
(05:34):
You've got to go play linebacker for me. I got
to figure out how the parts fit. What can this
guy do best? How can we fit him into this?
And I think that's how you become a successful high
school coach. You deal with so many personalities, You deal
with parents, you deal with all that kind of stuff
that's kind of from the outside end, but I think
it really helps you to become a teacher. And you
(05:55):
also have to stand in front of a classroom all
the time and you're talking and teaching. It's not take
something off a computer. And you know, like nowadays a
little bit more than I think it should be is
too many guys spend too much time on the computer
and not enough time with people you had to teach.
(06:16):
And I think that that's I'm really really grateful for
the way that I did come up. It didn't take over,
it didn't happen overnight, but I really am thankful for
the way it did. And I really I'm just so
grateful that I was a high school teacher start out with.
What are kind of some of the stories that you
(06:38):
have from being a high school coach and teacher. I know,
I think back to what my dad did growing up.
Your mowing the field, you are trading film, you are
doing it's kind of you're doing everything you know now
it's like, oh, these coaching staffs at the pro level,
they have underlings who can do everything, but at the
high school level, it is you doing everything. So what
(07:00):
was what was kind of your week like as a
high school coach? Well, it was in the summer. I
mowed the fields, lined the fields. Uh, that's kind of
what you did. We put on a camp every summer,
but it was free. We got some of the mothers
of the players to you know, make snacks and drinks
and all that stuff, and and that's how you really
(07:21):
got going. You wouldn't it. It didn't have anything to
do with money because there wasn't there one minty. Uh.
So it's it's it was just it was very very
When you look back, I don't it it's just so rewarding.
I think sometimes it's it's it's sometimes when you know
when you're when you're a kid, you don't know how
good your childhood is until you become an adult totally. Well,
(07:42):
I think it was the same way in coaching. I
don't know how much fun and how much I actually
enjoyed being a high school coach until I became a
coach later on, and how much I appreciated what I
had to do and what other coaches have to do.
That's why I admire high school coach is we need
more of them. I really feel like in society we're
(08:04):
always trying to find all these psychological things to help
kids that you know, there's just way too many shootings
and things like that going on nowadays. How about if
all the kids in the high school or eighty percent
of them, were involved in an extracurricular activity after school,
and it doesn't have to be football, It could be
(08:25):
any sport, it could be music, it could be plays,
it could be any of that stuff. How much more
beneficial would that be to maybe put money into the
high schools in this country than it would into all
these other programs, you know, so they aren't going on
home and sitting around and being alone or playing you know,
(08:45):
some of these games that they play on video games.
How about if we could get kids more involved. Well,
you got people right there in the high school that
will do it, but they also you shouldn't have to
do it for free, right and so you know, maybe
out of some money in that way. I know I'm
talking politics there a little bit, but I just really
feel like sometimes that's all kind of gone by the wayside,
(09:08):
and there's programs being dropped because they said, well, we
don't have the money to support this program or that program.
I just think that's a tragedy. Yeah, I think too,
Like you talk about, you know, people being alone being
and I think growing up always being around a team
and being a part of a team, that was something
(09:28):
that really kind of shaped me into who I am.
And I know it's something that shapes even the players
at the professional level into who they are. Is being
a part of a team. What are kind of some
memories that you have of those early days and kind
of forming these teams. And you were talking about how
at the high school level you don't get to bring
(09:49):
in who you want to. You have these guys who
you just kind of have. What was kind of your
way of building these teams? Well, I think the biggest
thing was I took over a program that had not
one in a long time. So the number one thing
was kind of being positive and trying to convince them
that they can be good. There's so much more of
(10:11):
that than people really realize. At all levels. You know,
you become in a rut if if you just aren't
having a lot of success. People have a tendency to
kind of drop down to the level that everybody puts
them out instead of trying to go past that. But
you know, also being at the high school, I was
a head football coach. I was the JV basketball coach
(10:34):
and the head track coach. And so the other part
of that is not everybody that ran track played football, right,
not everybody that played football ran track or and then
there were certain guys in basketball that was their thing.
So you also find out that everybody didn't have the
same interest you do, you know, and that's okay, you know,
but they so you coach them all different. You know,
(10:54):
I can't go in, you knows, as a basketball coach
and treat it like I did as the football team,
you know, you know, giving them a raw row of
speech before, you know, to go out and hit somebody
was not going to work, not real good when they
fouled out. So then and then after a couple of
years as a basketball coach, they asked me if I
want to be the assistant wrestling coach. Well, I'd never
(11:15):
wrestled in my life. I didn't know anything about it,
but I thought, yeah, i'd be interesting, So I did it.
And basically they let me go as a basketball coach
because I got two meet technicals, so they moved me
over to wrestling, and so then I became the assistant
wrestling coach. Like I said, didn't know anything about it,
but then I get it a whole different appreciation for
what those guys go through. You're out there on the
(11:37):
map by yourself. You're not playing on a team. It's
you and against the other guy, and there's nobody you
can ask for help. You know, you're not calling for
the safety or the linebacker to help you out there.
It's you, And so different appreciation for that same thing
with the track guys. It's you against the clock and
against the other guys. So you learn a lot about
(11:59):
people and how I want to handle people. And to me,
that was the most rewarding thing about high school. And
then you know, everybody always talking to me about the
Super Bowls and stuff, But the truth of it is
is that the satisfaction of watching that high school team
have their first winning season in twenty years was very,
(12:20):
very rewarding. It took a lot of work, had nothing
to do with money. The assistant coaches that were on
my staff, I mean those guys got peanuts to help
be an assistant coach, maybe five hundred dollars for the year,
and you know, just the great satisfaction I've taken a
(12:41):
group like that that hadn't won and watching them when
was just really really satisfying. Yeah, I love that because
it is. I mean, I think a lot of people
get it. Don't get into coaching for the money. They
get into it because they love people and love their players.
And I think that shows most evident in the fact
(13:02):
that you got so many technicals as a basketball coach.
I have a story. So when I was thirteen years old,
I was at my sister's, my younger sister's basketball game.
It was just like a rat game. It wasn't anything significant,
and I got a technical in the stands, not because
I was technically yelling, but because I was sitting beside
(13:24):
my mom and we both yelling, and she yelled to
this this poor young referee that he sucked, and I
was like, yeah, he does, and then he turned around
and said, get out of here. So I can relate
to that. What is your favorite technic getting a technical
story that you ever had? Well, actually is the first
(13:46):
game I ever coached as a JV first one, and
the head coach, the varsity coach was our athletic director. Okay,
obviously you know it was my boss, right, not twice,
not only as the basketball coach, but as the AD.
And so we're at an away game and I don't
remember there's some call goes on, but I do remember.
Its Gibsonburg High School, and you know, it is different
(14:09):
than in football. I walked right out to mid court
and started getting the officials. I mean, you're not supposed
to be out here. It was the first thing you
told me. Then the second thing was he technical, gave
me a technical, and then I kind of looked around
and there's our athletic director shaking his head. What have
I done? And so that was I do remember my
(14:30):
very first technical as a yeah, you never you never forget.
I love that. It was funny too, because, yeah, the
coaching basketball and coaching football, it's it's a very different beast.
And I liked what you were talking about in terms
of like having to choose and understand how each not
only like each team works, but coaching and teaching each
(14:51):
individual person. You've had a almost fifty years of doing this.
Is there a player who learned in a different way
that you kind of had to go back and be like,
I need to figure out how this player learns because
it's very different than maybe somebody else. Well I don't
I don't know if I could say, and I probably
(15:13):
wouldn't say it was. But every player learns a little different.
And some can just look at the film and boom,
pick it up. Some of them you can actually draw
a diagram and they could pick it up. Some of
them you got to go out there and wrap it
two or three times before they truly understand. Doesn't matter.
The bottom line is how do I need to get
it taught? You know, everybody doesn't probably learn math quite
(15:36):
the same way, or you know, or anything else. And
even if some people can read a book and tell
you everything it's in the book, me I gotta go
back and back and back and back and write notes
and do all that kind of stuff. So everybody does
learn differently. But I think the other part of it
is that everybody comes from a different background too, And
(15:58):
the more you know about their background as a teacher
or as a coach. This is kind of fast forwarding
a little bit. But in college I wanted as a
head college coach. I wanted to visit every player that
played for me's home, which is hard to do, but
(16:20):
I did it every spring when most the coaches would
go junior recruiting, I went and visited the homes of
guys who are already on my team because it helped
me understand is it a tough background, is it a
very affluent background, is it a very poor background financially?
(16:41):
Who runs the family as it? Mom is a dad?
Is at grandma? Are there? Is there dad in the picture?
Is their parents in the picture. If you understand those dynamics,
you also maybe understand a little bit about the player
a little bit more. And to me, that was really
really important. It was easy to do when you're recruiting
(17:02):
a kid out of high school because you're going on
the home visits and you get to kind of see,
but you don't know about the guys that are already
were on your team. And then eventually you know them
all because you've recruited them all if you're there long enough,
and it transcends into the NFL. Because I'll give you
(17:22):
an example of a young man. One time that we're
playing in a playoff game, and every Wednesday as long
as I've been a coordinator in the NFL, I have
what I call a signal callers meeting, and I take
a guy from each position and we come in and
I talk to them about here's before I ever talked
(17:45):
to the defense, here's what our game plan is. What
do you guys think? So they have a little input
in into it because it's it's their team, and so
like like when I was at Bottomore, I mean it
was ray Lewis, ed Rey Terrell, Suggs, and a Helodi Nada.
I mean it was incredible. I should have taken a picture.
So I remember walking into them one time and telling him,
(18:06):
here's what you know we want to do against this
team that we're playing in the playoffs. So I mean,
this is big. Now, we can't be wrong, all right.
So then I tell him that, and I'll never forget
ed Reid's face is that I tell him that I'm
going to put this one corner in charge of making
(18:29):
the disguise call. Okay, We're going to try to disguise
the coverage on this quarterback, and I want everybody to
look the same. And the kid that I talked about
was a kid that always had had come from a
couple of different teams and had trouble adjusting and just
kind of was just had trouble. Yeah, And so Ed
(18:50):
looked at me, like, you're gonna do what I said.
I am, because here's the thing about it is, he's
never been in charge of anything. Nobody's ever given him
that responsibility. He's always been put in a follower role.
Somebody else is in charge, and you have to do
what they do. The truth of the matter is is
(19:12):
I don't really care what we disguise. It's just I
want them both corners to be exactly the same. So
I know this corner over here is going to do
exactly what I tell him to do. Him the guy
that I'm talking about sometimes does, sometimes it doesn't. But
if he's in charge, I know the other guy will
do exactly I said. And I'm going to point it
(19:34):
out in front of the whole defense. Who I'm going
to put in charge of the disguise I said, And
wait till you see his face. I will bet you
that he perks right up, sits up, and all of
a sudden, like somebody gave me some credibility and some
responsibility because I knew about this kid's background and it
wasn't good. And so when I did that that day,
(19:57):
ed comes back to me, good man, you are right.
I turned, I looked at him and it was like
somebody had just given him something special. Yeah, and you're
in charge. And he took that and ran with it
and had a heck of a year, had a heck
of a game and we want it and went on
to the super Bowl. So it was just something like that,
but that not if I hadn't known his background, if
(20:19):
I just would have said, well, hey, I'm not going
to put that guy in charge. I'm gonna put this
guy in charge. It benefited him, but it benefited us.
And the only reason I kind of did it was
because I knew that he needed that and that would
help all of us. And it did. Yeah, I mean
that was what I was going to ask, is like
why that moment, Like why did you want to give
(20:41):
him that responsibility? I mean, you talk about it's a
big game, it's a playoff game, like this is this
is it you win or you or you lose, and
that's it. And so why was it that moment that
you felt compelled to do because it fit? Because I,
like I said, It didn't matter what the disguise was.
I didn't care if they lined up and cover two
(21:01):
and played cover three or if they lined up and
cover three and played cover two. It didn't matter. What
mattered was that we just had a disguise. I didn't
want the quarterback to be able to before the ball
was ever snapped, to know exactly what the coverage was.
So it didn't matter how we disguised. It just mattered
that we did. So it was a perfect timing to
put him in charge of it because it didn't really
(21:25):
it wasn't There wasn't anything schematically, he couldn't screw it up.
He couldn't. Yeah, so whatever he chose to do was
going to be right. And it was just so the
timing of it was it. It happened. I just thought
about it at the time and I thought, Okay, I
gotta put somebody in charge of this, and I thought
it's a perfect time to put him in charge him.
(21:47):
I love that because I think that it's you go
going back to what you're talking about is like knowing
the background of a player and kind of knowing how
much they can handle versus what they can't handle. I
think you even talked about it even taking over this
Falcons defense last year, and and you made the comment like,
I'm not trying to fit the players to the scheme.
(22:10):
A good coach, a good coordinator fits the scheme to
the players. And how much like when you're looking at
like background and thinking about who you have available, how
much do you cognizantly think about that and how much you,
as a coordinator are changing to fit the person that
you have, oh, all the time. I would hope that
(22:31):
all coaches would do that. It's the easiest analogy. It was, Okay,
if you have an option quarterback that you recruited out
of high school to go win, are you going to
make him a drawback quarterback in college? No, there was
a reason why he has success in high school because
it was an option quarterback and can't run. Okay, so
you're going to adapt your offer. I would hope you
(22:54):
probably most times you're recruiting guys to what you want
to do. If you're a dropback college team, you're going
to to drop back guy. The thing that hit me
was in the in the NFL, especially, you know you
only have forty five guys dressed on game day. You know,
maybe twenty two guys on defense. So you know if
a guy goes down. Okay, let's say that we want
(23:15):
to play man coverage and we got a corner. We
got maybe two corners. Hey, if you're blessed, you have
two corners that can play man coverage, but one if
one of them gets hurt or rolls an ankle or
does something like that, and the next guy up isn't
a good man coverage team or guy. So are you
gonna say? Then, by guys, you're gonna play man coverage
no matter what, you're gonna get killed. So the year
(23:38):
we won the Super Bowl in Baltimore in twenty twelve,
if I'm not mistaken, we started seven different corners that
year because of injuries and things. Well, we changed the
game plan every week. Sometimes we played a lot of
Cover two. Sometimes we played a lot of Cover three.
Sometimes we played a lot of Cover man. And so
I mean we got we had We brought a kid
(23:59):
in one on a Tuesday and was playing on he
was gonna have to start on Sunday against the team
that just cut him. Oh goodness, Now do you think
they might know a little something about him? Well, there's
no way, am I going to put him in harm.
It's not fair to put him in harm's way and say,
by guys, this is what you're gonna have to do.
(24:20):
We're gonna what does this guy when we watched the
film on him from the other team, what does he
do best? Well, that's what we're gonna end up having
to do. I got to kind of configure it and
do some things, And to me, that's what you do
as a coach. It's just it's not fair to a player.
If he's not a good blitzer, why would you be
blitzing him, If he's not a good pass rusher, why
(24:43):
would you be putting him in a situation? And then
everybody's screaming at him. I'm like, why can't this guy
do it? Well, you know you're putting him in an
unfair advantage. There's some things they just got to do
because it's part of the defense. But for the most part,
you're trying your best to put guys in positions they
can have success, because that's how you're going to have success.
(25:04):
Kind of going going back to what you were saying
about going into players homes and getting to know them.
You after coaching at the high school level for six years,
you made the jump to college, and you made many
stops there, Miami, Ohio, Toledo, Michigan State. I could go on,
but for you, and then of course the head coaching
(25:27):
job at can't state. What were you like as a recruiter.
I know recruiting now is very different and it's almost
like its own machine now, but at the time is
probably eighties nineties, what was recruiting like at that time.
I liked it. I did enjoy it. I didn't like
to travel necessarily all the time, but I actually like
(25:47):
going in and visiting with parents because I was a
parent and I wanted to make them feel like I'm
going to treat their son like I would treat my son.
You know, I'm going to take care of them. I'm
gonna I'm gonna do everything I can sure he graduates
from college. That's gonna be the number one thing. I know.
He was going to play football, and football is going
to help pay the bill. But his chances are playing
(26:08):
in the NFL, you know, or slim and so I
know that and a lot of guys that I recruited,
they were the first person in their family to go
to college, and so mom's looking at him, going, I
want this guy to get an education. And so therefore,
as a father, I wanted to project that image that
(26:30):
you're I'm going to take care of your son. He's
not going to be just a football player. In my eyes,
He's going to be a young man and I'm going
to take care of him. And I wanted to portray that.
But I did enjoy it and I didn't. Now, you
have to be a negotiator, and so the difference then
was though that I sold the school, not me or
(26:56):
even the football program. Because coaches can change. Yeah, okay,
your son goes to Michigan State. If you're coming to
Michigan State, you're coming to Michigan State because it's got
a good academic program that you're interested in, it's got
a good football program, and good people that are going
to treat you right. Because two years from now, I'm
working for Nick Saban. He was mentioned for every head
(27:18):
coaching job. There wasn't a country, so everybody was always
using recruiting against us, saying, wow, you're going to go
play for Saban. He's not even going to be there
next year. I go, yeah, he might not be. I
didn't try to take the other approach like, oh, no,
he's gonna be I don't know him. He might not be.
Now they look like a liar. I said, yeah, he
might not be. But if you're choosing Michigan State because
of Nick Saban, you're choosing Michigan State for the wrong reason.
(27:41):
You should be choosing Michigan State because of the academics
that you can get, the school, the people, the overall
atmosphere of Michigan State. If you're not, then yeah, you
shouldn't come to us. I don't know if I'll be
there next year. Who knows. This was a coaching profession.
People move, don't pick a school because of a person,
pick up because of the school. I don't think that's
(28:02):
the case anymore. It's changed a lot that way. It's
pretty crazy. So recruiting was different, yeah, you know, and
I'll go back even to like in college, even at
Kent State. You know, my wife, every Thursday night we
had ten players over to our house off the team.
We spread it out over the course of you know,
ten games and so, but if we had you know,
(28:25):
eighty five to ninety guys on the team, every player
that was on our football team had a home cooked
meal in our house on Thursday night, and so they
got to see my house and what it was like
and where it was and all that stuff, and so
it took a little more of a personal look than
he's just the coach. And you know, I'm probably a
(28:47):
whole lot different at home than I was on the field,
and so it just I think just sharing that helps
guys understand. Guys are always gonna play harder for you
if they know you care about and so it's kind
of that's how recruiting was to me. It was get
to know people more than it was just recruit somebody. Yeah,
(29:08):
what y'all eat during those those visits to your house?
Anything and everything? Yeah, a little bit of everything. It
could be burgers, it could be hot dogs, it could
be barbecue, it could be a little bit of everything. Nice.
I didn't know if it was like we're going to
have this every single Thursday night. Are you a superstitious
type in terms of coaching? Not too much. So. My
dad was very superstitious. And there was one time we
(29:32):
had to eat I think it was subway. It was
like we had to have subway. And this is not
a podcast sponsored by Subway unless Subway you want to
sponsor the podcast. But we would eat Subway every single
like Sunday night because they kept winning, and it was
like that was the thing. I don't know why it
was that that we fixated on, but it was like,
we have to eat Subway or we have to eat
(29:52):
pizza Hut. So what if you lost? Did you never
eat Subway again? We didn't eat it for the rest
of the season, which is very unfortunate because I like
a good sandwich. I mean, that's just how it was. Um,
But no, I love that, and I think that's You're
right the players, and I think, um, the impact that
players like coaches have on players lives. They don't know
(30:13):
who you are, they don't there's no impact there, and
I think that's super super important. Um. You talked about
coaching with Nick Saban, and in this area, in the Atlanta,
Georgia area, he is someone who's very very well known
and his career is very very well known. What's your
favorite Nick Saban story from your time coaching with him? Oh,
(30:38):
I gotta be careful here, I know, so No, he
Nick treated me absolutely great. And I know people would
think this is probably hard to believe, but um, in
I was Nick Saban's defense coordinare twice right, Yes, you
you were with him, he got he got a lot
(31:00):
of people don't know. He was the head coach at
the University of Toledo, right, and he was only there
a year, and so I hired he hired me as
his defensive coordinator. We went nine and two, won the league,
and he leaves and goes and goes to the Browns
as the defensive coordinator. And here we are nine and two,
(31:20):
but we all got retained and stayed on and with
a guy named Gary Pinkle, who was also a great coach.
And so then when I left him later and went
to Notre Dame, and Nick went to Michigan State and
hired me back as his defensive coordinator. So Nick has
always been great to me and my family, and people
(31:41):
will find us hard to believe. But in all the
time that I coached for Nick, he never raised his
voice one time at me. Never, And I think he
knew that I always had was loyal, had mutual respect
for him, and would never do anything that he didn't want.
But I do recall one time we're out and we
(32:03):
had what we call pre practice, and I go out
and I kind of walk through and talk through the
stuff that's going to go through and practice. And so
I go out and I'm going through all this stuff
with the defense and he wasn't out there, and he
kind of walked out late, and then he started to
talk about something that I'd already covered, and I was
in a hurry because I wanted to get everything done
before the whistle blew to start practice. And I just
(32:25):
looked at it goes, hey, I've covered that kind of
that like that. As soon as I did it, I
was like, what the heck have I done? And all
players got like, oh good, dead silence. He didn't say
a word. We went on way of practice later that night,
though I got a telephone call. All was next time
(32:48):
I walk out late, I'd appreciate it very much if
you didn't use that tone with me, Yes, sir, Yes,
you're a good coach. I knew I was wrong two
seconds after my mouth so, but he treated me absolutely great.
I love it. It's it's so great when you know
you had you had all these experiences at the college
(33:10):
level and then you get you get to become your
own head coach at Kent State. UM. What was that
experience like and why did you want to make that jump.
And also something that we've talked about recently is that
was a very meaningful time for you in your career.
So can you kind of just take me through those years. Well,
(33:35):
first of all, I had three bosses in a row,
Nick Saban, Gary Pinkel, and Lou Holt and they're all
Kent State graduates. Wow, yeah, I do so. And I
grew up in the Mid American Conference, went to school
bowling Green, I coached. I was evens coordinator in Miami
(33:57):
of Ohio, the events coordinator at Toledo. So I knew
the league really well and loved the league. It's very competitive,
it's not high profile and all that, but it's very
good football. And I really loved the league. So the
Kent State job kind of opened up and they actually
contacted me, and I think probably because of Nick and
(34:18):
Lew and Gary, and I know there were some people
thought maybe I shouldn't take this job because they had
lost for a long time and it was not good losses.
It was not good. But part of the reason it
attracted me that job. I was attracted to that job
was the same thing as high school. One of them.
(34:41):
I told you early on. One of the most rewarding
things I ever did was having a first winning season
in years at that high school. And I thought, Okay,
whoever takes over for Nick Saban at Alabama, you get
about one way to go, and that's that. I mean,
how you're gonna You're gonna fill those shoes. And it's
kind of like when I went to New England. Yeah,
(35:03):
I won a Super Bowl my first year there, but
they won the Super Bowl the year before. Did I
feel a sense of accomplishment. Well, yeah, I didn't screw
them up, but I didn't build them. Bill Belichick built it.
So this was an opportunity. Can we take a program
that is really down and down and let's see if
(35:24):
we can change it. And that's such a gratifying, satisfying feeling.
It wasn't in high school. So I wanted to kind
of relive that a little bit at the college level,
and we did, and we turned the thing around with
guys like Josh Cribbs and James Harrison and some other guys.
Took some players, but what a gratifying feeling to finally
(35:44):
have the first winning season. Then in two thousand and
one and we beat Ben Roethlisberger on the last play
at the last game to go six and five and
people would have thought we'd won the Super Bowl. What
a gratifying feeling that was. And it was hard work.
There wasn't a lot of money at those schools. You
got to really work hard. You're fighting an uphill battle
(36:07):
and recruiting not only financially, but because you've been losing
for so long, you know, culture, everything, Hey, kids are
looking at you. Yeah. I recruited Dave were Gone. It's
on our staff and it came down to us in Louisville. Yeah,
and I know why you went to Louisville and Louisville
was having winning seasons and we weren't. And he was
high profile quarterback out of Cleveland, Ohio. And so it
(36:31):
was just those six years where it was very, very
very gratifying. Yeah, can you walk me through that recruiting
process of Dave We're gone. You know what, Dave were
Gone helped me more than any coach or player ever
in recruiting. Really, I'll tell you how. And he knows
it because I gave him credit for it. They were going.
(36:53):
It was a very high profile Saint Ignatious High School,
which is a great high school in Cleveland, Ohio state
champion stuff. So it comes down to us and Louisville.
And the thing about Dave was, you know, most recruits
are the high school coach is gonna tell you and go, hey,
he recruited. You know, he committed to Louisville. Dave didn't.
(37:13):
Dave came down and told me in person, coach, I'm
going to Louisville. I really loved it here. I loved
my visit here. You know, I like your staff, I
like all this stuff, what you're doing, But I'm going
to Louisville. Dave, why tell me why? Because this would
have been a coup for us to get this guy
out of Cleveland. Yeah, he goes. It's just I've grown
(37:36):
up all the time when reading the Cleveland Playing Dealer
and everything, and everything about Kent State football was negative,
you know, Louisville pretty positive. It's not. It's like everybody
would probably stop him in the hallway and say, you know, hey,
where are you going to school? Dave? And David go
wat it's between Kent and Louisville, and I Kent, you know,
so I don't think he could He couldn't overcome that yeah,
(38:01):
and he also wanted to be an NFL player until
he thought my chances are going to be better. I
was selling to him, come here and help us build
something special. You can be the guy. So he didn't,
but he told me in person, which tells you a
little bit about him as a man and as a
young boy eight seventeen, eighteen years old to have, you know,
(38:21):
usually they have the coach call you had to tell you.
So I looked at that and I go, okay. So
this guy loved it here. He's a high profile guy.
He liked his visit, he liked the school, he liked
the staff, and he still didn't choose us. What's that
tell me? So I changed my whole recruiting program and said,
(38:43):
I'm going east because we were in Ohio school and
we tried to recruit nothing but a lot of Ohio kids,
which we still did, but we're fighting Toledo, Miami of Ohio.
You got Ohio State, and then everybody else comes into
Ohio and recruits Syracuse, all Penn State. All of them.
Need to go somewhere where people don't know as much
about Kent State football. So I went to the East
(39:05):
Coast and I got a kid named Josh Cribbs and
a couple other guys, and all of a sudden, it
turned the whole thing around. Yeah. Then we went back
to recruiting Ohio hard once we started winning, So it
was like, Dave, we're gone by not coming actually helped
me turn the program around because I took a different
direction in recruiting. That is fantastic. This is the podcast
(39:30):
and material that I was looking for. I love this.
It's really great and it's interesting because we've kind of
gone through your high school experience, your college experience, and
the next time that you pop on the podcast, which
this is going to be a separate part, we're going
to get into you making the jump to the league
and all of the experiences that come along with it,
(39:51):
maybe hopefully get some Bill Belichick stories in there. But
thank you for joining me today and we're really looking
forward to having you on in a couple of days.
My pleasure, I spoke matter. Can any husband had fire
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