Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches

As soon as
Tom Brady’s Hail Mary pass hit the ground in the end zone on the final play of Super Bowl XLVI, it was madness in Indianapolis for Tom Coughlin.

The New York Giants’ coach had just defeated Bill Belichick and the Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in five seasons. Now it was total chaos as confetti came flying down from the rafters and the field was flooded by media, television cameras, and whoever else managed to get onto the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium. Coughlin came off the sidelines to seek out Belichick.

He found him, and they shared a long embrace. Years earlier, under Bill Parcells with the Giants, Coughlin was the receivers coach and Belichick was the defensive coordinator and secondary coach, and they would script practices with their units going against each other, which helped them prepare for the upcoming opponent. They won the Super Bowl together in 1990.

The postgame celebration is what all coaches dream about as they are dragging their families from city to city as they go from job to job in their quest to become an NFL head coach and one day ascend to the podium at midfield after a Super Bowl and accept the Vince Lombardi Trophy. They work ridiculously long hours in a business with a high rate of divorce. Parcells, Belichick, Jimmy Johnson, Jim Fassel, Sean Payton, and Jeff Fisher are among those
who had their marriages end while they were coaching. Not only has Coughlin’s marriage endured, but football has brought his family closer together. His daughter became pregnant at Boston College, and the father was Chris Snee, an outstanding guard on the BC football team. The Giants drafted Snee in the second round of the 2004 draft, but it was not done as a favor to Coughlin. Giants management gave him veto power over the pick if he felt having Snee on the team would make things too uncomfortable. Coughlin gave his approval, and Snee married Coughlin’s daughter before training camp his rookie year and went on to become an All Pro player and a starter on two Super Bowl teams.

Coughlin’s first Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots, who were less than a minute away from completing their undefeated 2007 season, was one of the greatest upsets in pro football history. Winning another after the 2011 season elevated Coughlin into the elite status of coaches who have won multiple Super Bowls and put him in position to be considered for the Pro Football Hall of Fame after his coaching career was over.

After the trophy ceremony, Coughlin was led to the NFL Network set near one of the end zones. As he finished the interview with Marshall Faulk and Deion Sanders, he saw a man waiting for him. It looked like he wanted to give him a hug. Coughlin was in a huggable mood.

“I’m hugging signposts at that time,” he said, laughing.

He was caught up in the moment, and it was hard to blame him. He nearly had been fired after the 2006 season. He had one year left on his contract, and the Giants, who either extend their coaches or fire them with one season remaining, basically made him re-interview for his job and then tacked on just one year to his deal. That was a vote of little confidence. He responded by winning the Super Bowl. The Giants, however, were a big disappointment in 2008 and lost their only playoff game. They didn’t make the playoffs in either 2009 or 2010 and then, after a 6–2 start in 2011, lost four games in a row. Once again, Coughlin’s job
was in jeopardy. The players knew it, too. They had Coughlin’s back and won three of their last four games to win the NFC East, then beat the Falcons, Packers, and 49ers in the playoffs and the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Coughlin came off the NFL Network set and was able to get a closer look at the man who wanted to hug him. “This guy is waiting for me with these big glasses and a clock on his chest,” he said.

It wasn’t a piece of jewelry. It was a clock. What the hell: Coughlin gives him a hug after the man grabs him and wraps his arms around him. “As I walk away, one of my kids says to me, ‘Dad, do you know who that was?’ ” Coughlin said. “ ‘No, I don’t.’ ”

He was told it was Flava Flav, the hip-hop star. He didn’t think much about it, but it was out of character for this father and grandfather who rarely ventures out of his comfort zone to be standing on the field embracing a man with a big clock around his neck. “It’s pretty funny to think of Coach Coughlin and Flava Flav hugging it out,” Eli Manning said later.

As Manning was getting ready to leave the stadium, he realized he had not seen Coughlin since the game was over. He walked into the coaches’ dressing room and sat with the only head coach he’s had in the NFL. “I talked to him for a long time,” Manning said. “He definitely was very excited. He had a big old smile painted on his face.”

Coughlin arrived back at the Giants’ hotel at 12:30 a.m. and skipped the team party. His wife, Judy, had arranged for a private party for family and friends. By midday Monday, the Giants were on their team charter for the two-hour flight back to New Jersey.

“The next day we’re on the parade, and Brandon Jacobs reaches down and grabs a man by the hand and pulls him up,” Coughlin said. “He’s on the float.”

He was laughing hard as he finished the story. “It was Flava Flav,” Coughlin said.

He had given his team a history lesson before they boarded
the buses to take them to downtown Manhattan for the ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes. He told them about Dwight Eisenhower and Neil Armstrong taking the same route. He could have told them about the Giants and Yankees, too. “It’s the greatest feeling in the world,” he said.

Winning the Super Bowl, being the best in the business, makes all the work it takes to get there worthwhile. If the job was just Sunday afternoons, it wouldn’t be so demanding. But it involves so much more.
Coaching Confidential
takes a behind-the-scenes look at the compelling and frantic world of NFL head coaches. I interviewed some of the biggest names in football in a three-year journey to find out what their lives are all about. The list starts with Tom Coughlin, Sean Payton, Bill Parcells, Jimmy Johnson, Mike Holmgren, Rex Ryan, Tony Dungy, Joe Gibbs, Mike Shanahan, and Andy Reid but certainly does not end there.

I provide details about Payton’s meetings with the NFL that preceded his being suspended for the 2012 season. But just as important is a long sit-down I had with Payton two months before he won the Super Bowl as he was on the verge of becoming one of the stars of the coaching profession as an engaging, likable, and brilliant offensive strategist and risk taker. After he won it all, he got carried away with his self-importance, and his sense of entitlement and his arrogance went off the charts.

Gibbs was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame after he first retired from the Redskins after winning three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks. But his best coaching job might have been in the fourth year of Gibbs 2.0 in the last month of the 2007 season, when the Redskins played with a broken heart and went on a surprising playoff run after their teammate Sean Taylor was murdered during a home invasion late in the season. Gibbs’s compassion and personal frailties showed his strength as a leader.

Dungy and Reid unfortunately had one thing in common: heartache brought about by their children. Dungy’s son James committed suicide. Reid’s sons were jailed for incidents that involved
drugs. Dungy’s decision to counsel Michael Vick after he was released from prison and Reid’s understanding of how inmates transitioning back into society need a helping hand were the driving forces that brought them together. I spent a lot of time with Dungy and Reid peeling back the layers of the way their experiences with their own children helped lead Vick to Philadelphia.

Tragically, Reid’s oldest son, Garrett, twenty-nine, was found dead on the morning of August 5, 2012, in his dorm room at Eagles training camp at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He had been assisting the team’s strength and conditioning staff. Reid did not mention drugs three days after his son died, but he said, “It’s a sad situation, and one my son has been battling for a number of years. Our family has been battling. It doesn’t mean you stop loving your son, because that’s not what you do. You love him and a lot of families deal with this type of thing. It’s a sad situation.”

Dick Vermeil doesn’t run away from the label. He is the poster child for coaching burnout. But in
Coaching Confidential
, you’ll find out how his inner turmoil led to his being unable to get out of his car one day when he pulled up in the parking lot at Veterans Stadium and face the pressures of his job. You’ll also find out why, after fifteen years away from the NFL, he finally came back, leading to his greatest triumph and the biggest regret of his career.