Do You Love Football?! (13 page)

When we got married that summer, Coach Hackett gave me $500 from his own checkbook for my honeymoon. That came in handy. We got a one-bedroom apartment in North Hills.

Thanks to Jerry Attaway, the 49ers' strength coach who helped hook me up at Pitt, Cindy got a job as a personal trainer for Nicki DeBartolo, the youngest daughter of Eddie DeBartolo, Jr., who lived in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. Two or three times a week Cindy would drive her old blue Subaru from Pittsburgh to Youngstown to train Nicki at the DeBartolo estate.

I wasn't looking for a relationship with a woman who necessarily had an interest in football. I wanted a different perspective. I didn't want her to call plays or help me study my game plan. I wanted to be with a woman who was sincere, who was an independent person-somebody who excited me and dazzled me. Somebody exactly like Cindy. When I'm with football, it's personal, it's what I do. When I get away from it, the last thing I would ever want to do is take my wife out to One Buc Place and start diagramming Double Switch Beaters, you know what I mean?

Cindy is off the charts as a wife and mom. The most satisfying thing for me is going to work knowing that my kids are taken care of. She doesn't have to be at every game or come with me every year to the owners' meetings. She stays at home with the kids. She makes an enormous sacrifice, very much like my mom did with my brothers and me. That, to me, is huge.

When I met Coach Hackett I was totally convinced that he could help me continue to learn, because he was another Bill Walsh coaching disciple. For a young coach, the next-best thing to getting to work directly with Bill Walsh was to work with the people who had been around him. I had been working with Mike Holmgren, who was with Bill up to the time of his retirement, so I got a sense of what he was like at the end of his coaching career. Bobb McKittrick had been Walsh's offensive line coach forever, so he gave me the historical perspective. Paul had been the 49ers' quarterbacks coach in Walsh's early San Francisco years. That would give me three different interpretations of one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game.

Coach Hackett was there for "The Catch" by Dwight Clark from Joe Montana, to beat Dallas in the 1981 NFC Championship Game and put the 49ers in their first Super Bowl. He was with Tom Landry, who had handpicked him to be his offensive coordinator with the Cowboys. He was a superstar coach; he still is, as offensive coordinator for the New York Jets.

Chad Pennington is a great quarterback for the Jets, but I also know that Paul has helped him tremendously.

The best part about the responsibility that Coach Hackett gave me with the quarterbacks at Pitt in '91 was that it was all carefully monitored, carefully scrutinized so that everything I did would truly be a learning process. Some of the greatest lessons came when Paul had me watch film and grade each play by the quarterback based on the footwork, the decision, and the location of the throw. I had to type up a detailed account of how I saw each play. There were no letter grades or numbers involved, just a thorough assessment that had to be in complete sentences and paragraphs.

A typical grade by me would read something like this: "This

is a beautiful decision on 22 Z In. The primary receiver is open.

Your rhythm is perfect. It's a five-step, one-hitch delivery. It's on time. The location of the throw is sensational. It's shoulder-high between the numbers, one he can catch easily." Or like this: "This one is a poor decision. Obviously, you've misread the coverage. They've rotated strong, which was not what we expected.

However, your response is horrific. You're forcing the ball into a double zone and you failed to reset and locate your complementary receivers. To compound your error, you're late with the throw and it's thrown way behind the primary receiver. A catastrophe for the Pitt Panthers."

The grades, which covered about sixty-five plays, had to be written in such a way that the guy could replay the game in his mind ten or fifteen times. They weren't just items on a checklist where you just said, "Nice job" or "Good play." They had to be descriptive. They had to have depth. Before the quarterbacks could see them, however, I had to submit my assessments to Coach Hackett the Monday morning after a game. He would go over them like a professor grading a term paper. A lot of times when I got them back, they would be covered with red ink. He'd circle a bunch of plays and write, "See me in my office."

"I totally disagree with your evaluation of 76 X Shallow Cross," Paul would say. "The decision when the free safety rotates to the side of the motion is the exact correct one, indeed."

It wasn't really a two-sided conversation. If Coach Hackett wanted a grade changed, it was changed. I was on the money a fair amount of the time, but he wanted to have a discussion on just about every play. His main reason for doing that was to make sure the message he, as head coach, wanted to deliver was getting through to his quarterbacks. Coach Hackett also knew that each discussion would help provide me with the additional education I needed to develop as a coach.

For a young guy looking to coach quarterbacks, you couldn't have done much better than I did as far as being around the "H-men"-Harris, Holmgren, and Hackett. By the time I got to Pittsburgh I felt that I knew what I was talking about. I felt I could have conversations with guys I considered geniuses. I could talk with them about fronts, coverages, game planning, quarterback and receiver play, offensive line, protections. I could talk football all day and all night, whether I was working for a nighthawk like Paul Hackett or a morning person like Walt Harris. I was ready to roll.

We had some players at Pitt who would find plenty of NFL success: offensive guard Ruben Brown, center Jeff Christy and defensive lineman Keith Hamilton. Curtis Martin was a freshman running back. Our quarterback, Alex Van Pelt, was also a freshman. He would go on to break most of Dan Marino's school passing records, but we were a young team. We went 6-5 that season. We got off to a wonderful start, but then we kind of fell apart a little bit. We lost a heartbreaker to East Carolina; Jeff Blake beat us at the end of the game. We lost another heartbreaker to Penn State.

As I mentioned, I usually wake up at 3:17 A.M. Coach Hackett usually went to bed about that time. That made it a tough year for me physically because I'd start my day early and when I was kind of ready to wind down, Paul was just getting going.

Whenever I see the movie A Beautiful Mind, I think of Paul Hackett. He's just like John Nash, staying awake day and night to come up with a brand-new football theory. I remember the week we were getting ready to play Notre Dame, he came up with a whole new package of plays, something he was convinced that the Fighting Irish had never seen or even thought of.

We had changed some shifts and formations and I was thinking, Man, we haven't really worked these plays very much. But what Paul was doing was a classic Walsh-ism-hit the opposing defense with something it can't prepare for because it doesn't have any film of you running it.

"This offense is about plays that start off looking the same but are actually different," he would explain. "You want to present the illusion of sophistication and complexity, yet remain simple and basic."

We ended up getting our asses kicked by Notre Dame 42-7.

Bill Walsh got his ass kicked sometimes as well. I still thought it was a hell of a plan. I felt pretty good about the element of surprise. I think our players believed in it, too, and it stimulated them. The changes weren't things our guys couldn't execute. It was just that we didn't block them that day and we turned the ball over and we didn't play good defense. Oh, and one more thing: Lou Holtz's Fighting Irish were rolling at that time.

It was just another reminder that even the greatest plans won't work if your players don't have what it takes to get the job done on a particular day. That's why I try not to be too deeply philosophical about this game. You're still talking about an eleven-man play-eleven men who've still got to do a job.

Forget about the throw, the route, the catch, the decision, the feet and all that. If your left guard can't block their right defensive tackle at all, good luck, Sherlock.

When I started out in coaching my dad told me, "You don't want to be one of those guys who changes jobs every year just to change jobs. The only time you should change jobs is if you get a better job. When I left Dayton, I went to Indiana. When I left Indiana, I went to Notre Dame. When I got fired from Notre Dame, I went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. You don't want to go from UCLA to USC back to UCLA. You don't ever want to make lateral moves. You always want to get better."

He also stressed that it was more important to strive to be around blue-chip caliber people than at a specific school. Paul Hackett would be high on anyone's blue-chip coaching list.

Although this was the fourth college program I had worked for, my vision was totally on landing a coaching job in the NFL.

I was hoping and praying every night that Mike Holmgren would get a head coaching job and maybe call me. At that time I did not want to recruit, which is a large part of what college coaches have to do. I did not want to spend half of my time calling recruits, going out with alumni, and checking on players' grades. I wanted to learn football and coach football. Still, I did work at being a good recruiter for Pacific and Pitt. I knew it was vital to our program, that it was every bit as important as coaching, maybe more important. But I did not like it at all. I didn't like flying all over the country, getting in a rent-a-car, driving to different high schools, calling recruiting coordinators, documenting my calls. I didn't learn one damn thing about football while doing that. I felt everybody else in coaching was blowing by me. Everybody else was getting better while I felt I was standing still.

The excitement I got from coaching at the college level was helping to get a play in the game plan and getting it called and seeing it work. It came from helping a young player develop, then watching him get into a game and do well. That was when I felt great. When I went to a high school and was able to get a player to sign a letter of intent, that wasn't as fulfilling at the time as maybe it should have been. That just never turned me on. Some guys are really geeked up to go recruiting. Maybe I will be, too, someday, but I'm not right now.

After the 1991 season ended at Pitt, the 49ers were knocked out of the playoffs despite finishing 10-6. But they still had one of the best offensive schemes in football, making Mike Holmgren a hot candidate for some head coaching jobs. I'd be watching TV at night and there would be all these stories about Mike interviewing in three or four places, including Minnesota and Green Bay.

As that was going on, we were having a month of recruiting weekends at Pitt, where we would bring in recruits and their parents for a basketball game, take them to dinner, and just do some general schmoozing. On one of those weekends I got home about eleven o'clock at night. Cindy was waiting up for me.

"Hey, Jon, you've got to call Mike Holmgren," she said.

"He just called to say he got the Green Bay Packer job and wants you to call him right away. He's staying at the Embassy Suites in Green Bay. He's registered under an alias." I dropped everything and called him up.

"I want you to come out here and work for me," Mike said.

I didn't know what the job was. I didn't even ask. All I knew was that it was a chance to get back in the NFL and to work with Mike again. I flew to Green Bay and signed a two-year contract.

It turned out that my role wouldn't be all that different than it was with the 49ers. I was sort of a glorified quality control guy. As Coach Holmgren pointed out, the duties didn't matter as much as the fact, at twenty-eight years old, I was working for the Green Bay Packers and he was going to put me in a position to get what I deserved-whatever that might be. To this day I believe that you get what you deserve in anything you do. If you do a poor job, you're going to get poor results. If you do a good job, you work your ass off, you've got a chance to have some success.

I also knew football and I was pretty sure that Coach Holmgren knew I knew football. Every once in a while as he was installing the offense with the other coaches he had brought in who weren't from San Francisco-Andy Reid (tight ends/assistant offensive line), Steve Mariucci (quarterbacks), Tom Lovat (offensive line) and Gil Haskell (running backs)-he'd check with me to confirm whether we were doing something we had done during my one season with the 49ers. That told me that a couple of years after that very first interview, he had developed some trust and respect for my understanding of his scheme. It was a satisfying feeling. I knew all those notes I had taken when I was around him and Bobb McKittrick would come in handy.

"Hey, Gruber, against this front did the center make a 'bang' call?" Mike asked.

"No, Bobb had him make a 'snuggle' call right there," I said.

"He wouldn't commit himself to the full slide of the offensive line (to pick up a potential blitz off the edge). He would snuggle, he would stay inside and pop out late if that slot blitzer came." The expression on the faces of the some of the other coaches was like, "This guy might actually know what he's talking about."

On game day Mike called the plays and I was the one who signaled them to our quarterbacks, Don Majkowski and Brett Favre. This was before we had the communication system between the sideline and the quarterback's helmet. Mike would tell me the play through my headset, which also allowed me to hear his conversations with Steve Mariucci, who was in the press box.

Before games I would always go into Mike's locker and take a look at what he highlighted on his sideline sheet, how he prioritized the plays. I'd go, "Oh, he's going to be aggressive today, man." Then I'd tell the receivers, "Be ready. The ball's going to be coming to you guys all day."

Sometimes during a series I would write notes to Mike, just as I had with Walt Harris at Tennessee. I might just give him a reminder like, "You liked Fox 3 Naked Right Fullback Slide during the week. Don't forget that one." He might nod or he might say, "Get away from me." I'd pick my spots carefully.