Quiet Strength (23 page)

After the Super Bowl, the losing coaching staff from each conference championship game flies to Hawaii to coach the Pro Bowl. Our bittersweet experience of coaching the Senior Bowl after the 1998 season seemed like a luxury compared to this coaching assignment. I would much rather have coached the week before in the Super Bowl and watched the Pro Bowl on television. I flew back to Tampa after my lunch with the Glazers, packed for Hawaii, and changed my mind about firing Mike. I couldn’t do it.

I asked Rich what he thought would happen when I informed the Glazers about my change of heart. He didn’t know. I wasn’t concerned for myself. I believed that even if I were fired, I could find another job quickly. My concern was for my staff, who were no longer under contract. My contract as head coach gave me control over the selection of my staff, but if I were gone, their protection would be gone too.

Our time in Hawaii should have been a time of celebration. However, while nobody knew exactly what was going on, my assistant coaches could feel that change was in the air. Additionally, I was struggling with what God wanted me to do in relation to the owners, regardless of what my contract said. Everyone was uncomfortable.

I called a meeting in the middle of the week to explain the situation. Mike said he saw an easy solution to keep everyone from losing their jobs: he would step down. Mike knew I was pleased with the job he was doing, but he had grown up in a football family, so he knew that sudden change was always a possibility. His father, Don Shula, was a highly respected coach in the NFL for many years, and I’m sure Mike had seen this type of situation before. I should have anticipated that he would willingly step down, but I hadn’t. I was paralyzed by his resignation but accepted it. Mike and his wife headed back to Tampa that afternoon.

Clyde Christensen stepped in and called the plays in the Pro Bowl, and he did a great job. We scored 51 points to the AFC’s 31, with the Vikings’ Randy Moss and the Rams players doing most of the damage against the AFC team’s defense. Despite the win, I still had a catch in my spirit. I felt I had mishandled the situation with Mike and had made the wrong decision, both personally and professionally, in allowing him to leave.

Later, I
knew
that I had made the wrong decision. Just because a decision is deliberate doesn’t mean hindsight won’t make it clearer. And walking closely with the Lord, trusting Jesus, and looking to the Bible for guidance doesn’t guarantee that we’ll always make the right decision.

Looking back, I think that decision was the first chink in the Bucs’ armor, one that weakened our staff unity. Allowing Mike to resign was a superficial reaction rather than a measured response. It was a break from my philosophy. From that point on, we began a slow downward spiral, with more philosophical breaks. Although Mike and I are still very good friends today, allowing him to leave was the wrong decision, the one I most regret in my coaching career.

Chapter Thirteen: Tampa 2 and Open Hearts

Football is not your life’s work.

—Chuck Noll

OUR DEFENSE caused quite a stir after we held “The Greatest Show on Turf” to eleven points in the NFC Championship Game. During the 1999 season, people had talked a little about our defense. But after that championship game against the Rams, people began talking about our
defensive scheme.
For the first time, sportswriters and commentators started to use the label “Tampa 2,” talking about the Bucs defense as if we had introduced something radically new. The funny thing was, our defensive strategy was merely the blending of a couple of concepts that had been around since my days with the 1977 Steelers.

Most teams, at times, play some form of what’s called Cover 2 defense, even if it’s not their base defense. The Cover 2 is a zone defense, in which players are responsible for covering receivers who enter their “zones.” This is contrasted with a man-to-man defense, in which each player covers one particular person no matter where he goes on the field. Also, most defenses favor a “3 Deep” concept, in which the free safety and two cornerbacks protect the deep zones, the parts of the field farthest away from the line of scrimmage. Cover 2 has the two safeties playing deep and the cornerbacks and three linebackers covering the short zones. Many coaches think this makes Cover 2 more vulnerable to deep passes, but that’s not necessarily the case.

We actually began to formulate this system back in 1992, when I joined Monte Kiffin in Minnesota. Monte was coaching the inside linebackers when I arrived, and the Vikings’ defensive scheme was to rush the passer and have their secondary in man-to-man coverage. Ever since my days in Pittsburgh, I had always favored zone coverage, and I began to introduce those concepts. Monte, in turn, taught me about the “one-gap” style the Vikings used with their linemen and linebackers. Most teams ask their defensive linemen to protect two gaps, playing head-up on an offensive lineman, stalemating him, and then being able to tackle a ball carrier on either side of that lineman. The Vikings only asked their linemen to handle one side of the offensive lineman, using the linebackers and safeties to compensate. Because they never had to take on a man directly, Minnesota’s linemen didn’t have to be as big, and though they were generally smaller than the men on the other side of the ball, they were quicker, and they were exceptional pass rushers.

I inherited the perfect group of guys in Minnesota to blend Monte’s run defense with my coverage ideas. We had a tremendous defensive line—John Randle, Chris Doleman, Henry Thomas, and Al Noga—along with a veteran group of linebackers and defensive backs. We played well enough to lead the league in defense in 1993, although not many people noticed because we didn’t have a lot of success in the playoffs.

While most people saw the Cover 2 as a critical piece of the defense we put together in Tampa, it really wasn’t. We believed it was not our formations that made us good but rather how we played. We emphasized fundamental concepts, not making mistakes, and above all, eleven guys playing as fast and as hard as they could on every play.

The defensive line was critical to the success of our scheme. John Teerlinck was our line coach in Minnesota, and I saw how important he was in setting the tempo necessary for our undersized guys to excel. That was why hiring Rod Marinelli was such an important piece of the puzzle in Tampa. Rod could relate to, teach, and motivate each of our linemen, whether they were veterans or rookies, fast learners or not. He inspired all of those guys to play hard, fast, and smart. We used a number of high draft picks on defensive linemen, but Rod made every guy in his room feel valued and necessary, which they were.

During our first training camp in 1996, we were watching film as a staff, and Rod was particularly intrigued during the 7-on-7 drills. The 7-on-7 is a pure passing drill in which the linebackers and defensive backs work against the running backs and receivers. The linemen are usually at the other end of the field working on pass protection and rush. As a result, Rod never saw the 7-on-7 drills live. He kept stopping the film to ask the same basic questions after pass completions.

“How would you stop this one? Can you even cover that route? Won’t they complete this pass all day?”

He loved my answer. “It all depends on the pass rush. We know there are holes in zone coverage if the quarterback has time to find them. But if he’s under duress, he won’t always see the open receiver, and he won’t be able to hit him consistently.”

From then on, Rod started each season by telling his players—our defensive linemen—that they were the key to our defense. It would not work unless they controlled their gaps against the run. Even more important, he emphasized that they had to put great pressure on the quarterback. Defensive backs can’t cover every route in a zone unless they’re guessing, and we didn’t want them to guess. We didn’t want to have to rely on feast-or-famine blitzes, so Rod made sure his defensive linemen understood how much every play depended on them. Rod—and his linemen—took the personal challenge to keep teams from completing passes against us. If a player didn’t share his passion, Rod wasn’t afraid to bench him until he consistently played with the energy Rod demanded.

We had gotten close to the Super Bowl in 1999, but rather than continue to do the things that had gotten us to that point, we began to tinker—at least in my eyes—with some of the basic tenets of our philosophy.

One of the biggest problems with becoming a head coach is that the higher up the ladder you go, the less actual hands-on coaching you get to do. Being responsible for more things means you can’t coach every player the way he needs to be coached. You don’t have enough time to be in every individual meeting to go over assignments and technique. You have to rely on your assistants to do that.

I knew from watching Coach Noll and Denny Green how I wanted to do things as a head coach. I hired top-notch people, trusted them to do their jobs, and then came to grips with the fact that I wouldn’t be coaching as much. I missed that; coaching was what I had always done, and now I had to fight the urge to coach everyone. If I wasn’t careful, I would end up coaching through or around some very good assistants, which would lessen their credibility with their players. I knew I had to make sure I didn’t inadvertently devalue the coaches in the players’ eyes by not letting them do their jobs.

As head coach, I also had more off-field responsibilities, and I could see how easy it would be to shortchange my family in an effort to do all that needed to be done. But I was determined not to neglect Lauren and our kids. I had resolved during those long days and nights in Kansas City that if I ever had the chance to be a head coach, I would not spend all night in the office. Rather, I would trust my staff and get us all home at a reasonable hour.

As a result, and in order to allow Monte, Lovie, Rod, and Herm the latitude to run the defense, I rarely attended meetings with the defensive players. I mostly sat in on meetings with the offense and special teams. Because I was a defensive coach, I thought it was important for the offensive players to see me in their meetings. When I played in San Francisco, Bill Walsh orchestrated the offense but rarely got involved with the defense. As a defensive player, I had felt unappreciated. We knew how smart Bill was, but it seemed that he put all of his concentration on the offense. We felt forgotten on the other side of the ball. Since I had been a defensive coach, I didn’t want our offensive players to feel forgotten and unappreciated.

Even though I sat in on those meetings, I always made certain to allow Mike Shula (offense) and Joe Marciano (special teams) to coordinate their units, both in practice and in the meetings. I didn’t ever want the players to question their authority. Because of that, I continued to feel badly about having allowed Mike to step down. I had been in those meetings, and I knew what a good job he had done. He had been thorough and well prepared, and he had taught exactly the way I wanted. I felt I had violated a basic principle we were trying so hard to instill in our team: trust.

Along with that, I felt we were moving away from our philosophy in the way we were building the team. Rich had never been afraid to trade draft picks for additional picks. Occasionally we would move up to get a particular player, but our philosophy had always been to build through the draft and improve our team for the long term.

Now, having gotten a glimpse of postseason success, we seemed to be shifting away from that philosophy to “get over the hump.” Shortly after the Pro Bowl, we traded two first-round picks in the 2000 draft to the New York Jets for their volatile wide receiver, Keyshawn Johnson. My concern wasn’t that we added him—Keyshawn was a great player who made us a better team the moment he stepped onto the field. My concern was that we gave up the two first-round draft picks to get him. The trade did pay dividends. Keyshawn played at a Pro Bowl level for us and eventually helped the Bucs win a Super Bowl. But I believed we were moving away from some core beliefs as an organization by looking for the quick fix.

Change isn’t always bad; we should always be learning and improving. But the change I was seeing involved principles, not procedures. To my way of thinking, that was bad.

For the Buccaneers, 2000 was a good year—and very nearly a great year. We went to the playoffs again. We beat the Packers in Tampa again. And we lost a close game to them at Lambeau Field again.

I had hired Les Steckel, a good man and a fine coach, to replace Mike Shula. Our offense continued to develop under Les. In fact, we set a franchise record for points scored.

Yet we seemed to be a team of streaks. We won our first three games of the season, then dropped to 3–4 with a month of Sunday losses. Included in that stretch was a loss to the Redskins in Washington. When Shaun King orchestrated ten points in the final four minutes, the game went into overtime. But the Redskins were able to get into position to kick the winning field goal. Their kicker? Michael Husted. Even though it was devastating for us, I was happy for Michael.

We won three games straight, lost to the Bears in Chicago, and then won three more. At 9–5 we were on the verge of a playoff berth and possible NFC Central championship again. We only had two games remaining—the Rams at home and the Packers away.

The Rams game was one of the most remarkable games I’ve ever been a part of. It was hard to believe that our two teams had ground out an 11–6 game only eleven months before. We trailed 35–31 with less than two minutes to play. Shaun King threw a screen pass to Warrick Dunn, who—seeing he had
nowhere
to go—avoided being tackled by pivoting and flipping the ball back to Shaun, who somehow ran for thirty yards. We scored to take the lead, 38–35. Moments later, John Lynch intercepted a pass to clinch the game. It was the Bucs’ third playoff berth in four years. The atmosphere in the stadium was electric as we celebrated with our fans.