Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World's Most Beautiful Game (14 page)

McCrary got there in 1997 and became a Pro Bowler before I’d even met him in 1998, so I didn’t change anything when I got there in 1999. I just let him be him, knowing he was going to fly around and make plays. He made the Pro Bowl again, getting 11½ sacks. He was going to hustle no matter what, and never quit. McCrary was important from another perspective, too. He had started his career in Seattle in 1993, when the Seahawks drafted him out of Wake Forest. The next year is when Seattle took Sam Adams with the No. 8 overall pick in the draft. I’ll get back to Adams in a minute, but I think having McCrary helped us a lot when Adams was a free agent in 2000. I’m sure Adams thought he was a lot better player than McCrary, but he also saw McCrary come to our place and have a lot of success, and that always makes an impression on a player.

Finally, we had Goose. Tony “Goose” Siragusa was something really special. I still see Goose all the time because he lives in New Jersey, which is where he grew up. He lives right around the corner from our complex. Really, this is a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy—salty, too, no doubt. I think he’s one of the few guys who swear more than me, and he ain’t much for political correctness, I’ll just put it that way. Goose is going to tell you exactly what he thinks. Like Burnett and McCrary, Goose wasn’t supposed to do anything in the NFL. He wasn’t even drafted coming out of Pittsburgh in 1990. He made it with Indianapolis that year and stuck it out with the Colts for seven years. Goose isn’t a guy with a whole lot of moves. In football-speak, he’s an all-out bull rusher, one of those guys who just pounds away at his opponent until the opponent quits. There’s no finesse to
Goose. In fact, Goose couldn’t spell finesse if you spotted him the last six letters.

I mentioned Sam Adams. In 2000, we got Adams as a free agent. Now, Adams is one of the more talented men I’ve ever had the opportunity to coach. I don’t say that lightly. Sam Adams was different. He was just as talented as any of those other guys, if not more so, but Adams was also spoiled and selfish. He was the son of a great player in his own right, former New England guard Sam Adams, Sr. His dad had obviously given his son both the raw physical gifts that come with great DNA, and the knowledge of how to play. Adams was 6-foot-3 and anywhere between 320 and 350 pounds, depending on the season or just the time of year. He had a first step so quick that it was like he was a 260-pound guy playing defensive end. Between his quickness and his strength, he was scary-good.

On the other hand, Adams was also a total pain in the butt to coach, and my job was finding a way to harness his huge potential. Frankly, I can say with confidence I did. Let me jump to Newsome again:

I’ve always felt that was a key to coaching in the NFL. You have to understand the guys you’re coaching—to be able and willing to work with them in different ways because they’re all so different. The most important thing is to earn their trust and get that guy performing at the top of this game. Adams was both physically gifted and smart. In fact, he was probably too smart for his own good, and that’s what made him a pain in the ass. He didn’t think he knew the game better than you, he
knew
he knew the game better than
you. Coaching Adams was a challenge because he didn’t believe in coaches. He didn’t think you were smart enough to help him.

Well, maybe I didn’t teach Adams anything new, but let me put it to you this way: In his two seasons with Baltimore, he was named a Pro Bowl starter twice, which were the only times that ever happened in the 14 years he played. He was a Pro Bowler two other times, but both times as a backup. He was a vital part of one of the greatest defenses in the history of the NFL. He won the only Super Bowl ring of his career.

Now, you don’t want to have too many guys like Adams, because if you do, all of a sudden they have a quorum and they start to work together against you. That’s an interesting thing about coaching in the NFL. But every team has one or two guys who are so good that you probably have to put up with some crap from them at some point in time. It’s just the way it works. If you had nothing but guys like Lewis, it’s easy. But I mean, go out and try to find 53 guys who are not only great football players but also choirboys and good students who never miss a day of class. Good luck with that.

As a coach, you have to find a way to motivate that guy who sits in the back of the class, waiting to fire a spit wad at you or somebody else, that guy who’s always joking or being a cutup. Hey, that was my brother and me half the time we were in school. So trust me, I know you have to find a way to appeal to their pride to get the most out of them. With guys like that, you have to have the right environment. That’s why most of the guys on your team have to be guys who work within the team structure. They can be fun-loving and a little wild out there, but they believe, in their hearts, that football is important and they’re going to do whatever it takes to be good.

I like to put it this way: You have roaches and you have ants. With roaches, when you turn on the lights, they all scatter every which way. That’s because they’re no good and they can’t work in a structure. On the other side, you have ants. You can have a bunch of ants in a jar, shake up the jar, and toss them out of the jar onto the ground—and what happens? The ants all get right back in line. In
fact, the ants will work so well together that they can carry a roach. Now, they can’t carry two roaches, but they can carry one.

That’s what we had with Adams, a roach who was carried by a bunch of ants—red, attacking, powerful ants.

Now back to Tony Siragusa. Goose had heart and desire. He set the tone that way. I told Goose my story about roaches and ants and he picked up on it right away. He started saying Adams is “a fuckin’ roach, this guy’s a roach.” After a while, they started calling me Coach Roach. Goose was funny, but he was totally dedicated, all in every time. If I ever needed it, I could just go to Goose and say, “Hey, Goose, let’s go, pick it up, get these guys going.” He’d jump right in, no matter how sore he was or anything else; he’d get the tempo going for practice, for games, whenever I needed it. He was awesome. I tried to take care of him, but, really, he took care of me.

My first year there, Goose had a great year and decided to hold out the following season. Linebackers coach Jack Del Rio and I joked that we were going to drive to Goose’s house and go get him, just to end the holdout ourselves and drag his ass to training camp. See, you have to know the drill. Veteran players know how to get ready, and with vets like that, you’re not pushing them in training camp anyway. I remember one year in Philadelphia, my dad had an offensive lineman named Ron Heller, a big tough guy who played right tackle. My dad told Heller not to even show up for the first three weeks of training camp. They kept saying it was a contract thing, but it was just an excuse to give the guy a rest without telling the rest of the team.

So Goose finally showed up late in preseason, and we were already getting set for the opener in Pittsburgh. Remember, this was 2000, our title year—and we knew we had a kick-ass defense. Marvin Lewis was the defensive coordinator; then we had Del Rio, me, and a bunch of other great coaches. We could just feel it was going to be great. As we’re getting ready to play the Steelers, I said to Goose, “Look, dude, I need you for like 15 plays. Give me that and we’ll be okay.” I figured we’d spot him in on first down, stuff the run, get a lead with our offense, and then rest him a lot.

That day in Pittsburgh was brutal. It was the last year they were playing in Three Rivers Stadium, the old multipurpose place where the Pirates also played. The place had Astroturf, or whatever synthetic surface they were using, and it was literally 90-something degrees outside that day—which meant it was even hotter on the field, because the surface retains so much of the heat. You stood there and your feet were physically burning because of the heat.

Anyway, we got to the end of the first quarter and Goose had gotten 15 plays in, so he was on the sidelines. He said to me, “What do you think, Rex? I’m about done, right?”

I shot back, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Shit, I already got 15 plays—I’m done, right?”

I just went off on him: “That’s what I said, about 15 fucking plays a quarter.”

“You son of a bitch, you told me 15 plays and that was it.”

We were laughing our asses off at this point.

“I said 15 plays a quarter. Now, shut up and get your ass in there.” And you know, he was awesome. He played the whole game. He was all over me, too, giving it right back. To this day, he brings it up. We shut Pittsburgh out 16-0 that game. Goose was phenomenal. He’s one of the most unselfish guys I’ve ever met.

He was that way off the field, too. In 1999, we had a defensive end named Fernando Smith. On Christmas Eve, Smith was at his apartment with his family, trying to make a turkey, but it caught on fire because of the grease. Smith and his family got out, but the fire burned up their apartment and a couple of other ones around it. Smith has three kids and all they’ve got to wear are the house slippers, shorts, and T-shirts they were wearing when the place caught fire. Word got around by the next day, Christmas, when the players had the morning off, and we were supposed to get to the hotel because we had to play Cincinnati the next day.

Goose didn’t even like Smith that much, but Goose told me that day, “Rex, I ain’t gonna be at bed check tonight.”

I said, “I gotcha, no problem.” I knew exactly what he was going
to do—he was going to get Smith some clothes. Sure enough, he brought Smith $10,000 of unopened Nike stuff for his family. Plus, Goose took presents from underneath his tree that were supposed to be for his own kids and gave them to Smith’s kids. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

On a football team, you have to have guys like that. Sure, you have to have the premium players, the guys like Lewis and Adams, safety Rod Woodson, the great left tackle Jonathan Ogden, and the great running back Jamal Lewis. We had tight end Shannon Sharpe, who made like every big play we needed in the playoffs. The stars stir the drink. But if you don’t have the right ingredients, it doesn’t matter how much those guys stir the drink, it’s not going to taste good. They’re just going to be stirring up crap.

In our defensive line meeting room, it was crucial to have that mix of people. I remember Adams used to come into every meeting and go for the thermostat on the wall—turn the temperature way up, as hot as it could go. He loved it hot, but it was uncomfortable as hell for everyone else. We’d all be miserable, and Adams didn’t care. He just didn’t give a damn. We started making it a joke. I put a lock on the thermostat one day, but Adams just broke it. Guys would try all sorts of things to get him to stop, but he never did. It became kind of funny and it brought everyone together. Finally, one day Goose went over, turned the temperature down to something comfortable, and just ripped the thermostat off the wall.

That was perfect for me, because I could let the other players police Adams. I didn’t have to be the bad guy as much in the relationship, because he wasn’t really going to listen to me anyway. With other players, he might not want to listen, but he at least respected who they were because they played. With me, I would be hard on him in practice, but I always did it with a smile on my face, with a lot of enthusiasm. I used every ounce of my energy making sure I kept Adams as pumped up as I could get him.

In the end, what made that Baltimore defense so great was the same thing that separated the 1985 Chicago defense. It was blunt-force
trauma, the kind of pain and fear that we could inflict on an opposition. That’s where Adams and Goose led the way. The way the NFL works today, defensive tackles aren’t the highlight players anymore. It’s the pretty-boy defensive ends who can run around and get sacks. The defensive tackles are specialists, playing two downs against the run and then subbing out.

Adams and Goose would come out on passing downs a lot, but not all the time. They weren’t out-there-on-every-down guys because of the damage they could do. In 2000, they both had career years. Whatever an opposing team tried to do to us, Adams and Goose just blew it up. They would take out the three offensive linemen in the middle, the two guards and the center, and allow everybody else to run around and do basically whatever they wanted to do. There was Ray Lewis, one of the most physical guys in the history of the NFL, playing his ass off all season because of the whole situation in the aftermath of the murder trial he went through in Atlanta. Lewis had one of the greatest seasons any human being could ever have, and he was able to do that while running around without being blocked. Like I said, I’m not going to say we were better than the ’85 Bears, but we were as close as it’s ever going to come.

In 2000, we set the NFL record for fewest points allowed in a 16-game season, with only 165. We allowed a record-low 970 yards rushing. Burnett had a career high with 10½ sacks. McAlister and fellow cornerback Duane Starks combined for 10 interceptions. In the playoffs, we were even better. We allowed 23 points combined in four playoff games, including two on the road. In the AFC Championship Game, Siragusa put such a brutal hit on Oakland quarterback Rich Gannon that he knocked him out of the game. It was a free-for-all by the end of the season, like sharks having a feeding frenzy.

And everybody benefited. Like I said, Adams made the Pro Bowl as a starter for the first time. Brian Billick was the AFC Coach of the Year. Marvin Lewis was named Assistant Coach of the Year. Ray Lewis was the Defensive Player of the Year and made the Pro Bowl.
Ogden and Woodson made the Pro Bowl, too. Even kicker Matt Stover won the Golden Toe Award.

For me, it legitimized all the thoughts I had about why I chose this profession. Getting each of these very different guys to play hard told me I could do this job. It made me know that I could be a successful coach, that I could contribute something. All that energy I spent all those years, even when there were maybe only five people listening, meant something.