Quiet Strength (14 page)

“When I get mad,” I continued, “I usually talk at the same volume I’m talking now. And when I get really mad”—I paused—“I
whisper.
So if my voice at this level won’t get your attention, and you believe you need someone to yell at you to correct you or motivate you, then we’ll probably need to find you another team to play for so that you can play your best.”

In that first meeting, I outlined several basic tenets that would become our hallmarks:

• Top 5 in the
NFL
in giveaway/takeaway ratio

• Top 5 in the
NFL
in fewest penalties

• Top 5 in overall special teams

• Make big plays

• Don’t give up big plays

These basic tenets were not exactly rocket science; in fact, they are exactly the same principles I would later use with the Colts. Some people think of me as a defense-minded coach, or they think I somehow changed who I was as a coach when I went to Indianapolis. But the reality is, I’m a former college quarterback who played defense in the
NFL
and coached under Chuck Noll, Marty Schottenheimer, and Denny Green. I learned that it doesn’t matter how you win. You play to your team’s strength, whether it’s offense, defense, or special teams. I believe the best way to achieve success in each of these three areas is by attention to detail and a commitment to the fundamentals—doing the ordinary things better than anyone else.

I then began to talk about our future. Going back to something Mr. Rooney had always taught us in Pittsburgh, I said, “We expect to win a Super Bowl. But if that’s all we do, it will be pretty shallow. We need to not only win but win with players who positively impact the Tampa Bay area.”

I told them that I expected our team to live and play by the concept “Whatever it takes,” then ended with a second basic phrase, which I posted in our locker room: “No excuses, no explanations.”

Overall, I thought it was a good, positive meeting that clearly outlined the frame of mind we needed to embrace for the future of the organization and for the future of our lives.

When the meeting was finished, Herm felt the need to make sure everything was even more clear, so he selected some of the team leaders, including John Lynch, Warren Sapp, and Derrick Brooks, and then he read them the riot act, reiterating everything I had just said, but in a much more animated manner. It was his first act as bad cop. Herm was so good in that role that I’m sure I never even knew about some of the issues faced by our team. Herm was my first line of defense. I’ve heard that he was known to tell guys, “We can either resolve this now and get it behind us, or we can get Tony involved. I don’t think any of us want that.” Very few things hit my desk.

When I was in Minnesota, Denny Green had been a big proponent of creating what I call “artificial adversity,” making things tougher on the players than they had to be. He believed this was an essential foundation for handling the turbulence of a season or game. As coaches and as players, he wanted us all to be comfortable enough with our routine to know what to expect and when. When we would have an upcoming Monday night game—and thereby an extra day available to practice and plan the game—he often gave us that extra day off or had us work on something that turned our attention away from our opponent.

“After all,” he reasoned, “if the coaches and players start to think that we need an extra day to prepare for a big game, what happens when we hit the playoffs and only have the usual number of days or, worse yet, a short week?” If players got too comfortable in their routine, what would happen when that routine was disrupted? “Players might begin to wonder, ‘Can we win a big game without an extra day?’ Sure we can—if we’re efficient and disciplined.”

Denny knew that football, like life, is unpredictable, but it was our job to train the team to remain disciplined even in unusual situations. As I thought about how to prepare the Bucs to handle any situation we might face, I went back to some of Denny’s tactics. Once we had become locked in on a schedule, he often created a disruption to that schedule just to see how guys would respond. During the preseason of my first year with the Vikings, Denny announced that we were going to Cleveland on the day of the game. He said we would get off the plane, head to the stadium, and play. This was unusual; most teams travel to an away game at least a day before the game—sometimes arriving even two days early if it’s an especially long trip. But Denny wanted to see how the players would adjust—who would adapt and who couldn’t. His larger point was that there were always going to be moments of adversity and confusion during a game or a season, and players either adjusted or they crumbled. He wanted to know as much as possible ahead of time about the innate character of his team. On that occasion, the players grumbled a little, then flew into Cleveland and beat the Browns 51–3.

During our first training camp in Tampa, we were headed to Jacksonville for a morning scrimmage with the Jaguars. Taking a lesson from Denny Green’s playbook, I told Herm I wanted to disrupt the schedule and bus our guys to Jacksonville.

“Herm, the guys might think that we’re just looking to save some money by driving up there”—the Glazers were still trying to shed the frugal reputation the team had gotten from the prior owner—“so I’ll need your help. I want everyone to understand that I think it’ll be good to disrupt their schedules.”

“I think that’s smart.”

“Good. We’ll leave at five o’clock.”

“Five? You don’t want to meet at the hotel that night? Just get up there, have dinner at the hotel, and then do bed checks?”

“I mean five
in the morning.
We’ll have a wakeup call at four, leave at five, roll in there, and scrimmage with Jacksonville.”

Herm didn’t mind. He usually gets up at 4:30 anyway. But the players hated it. We emerged from the buses a little on the groggy side, just as I thought we would, and were destroyed by the Jaguars during the first practice of the morning. We were beaten physically and mentally. We got a little better in the afternoon. I told our players that I liked our improvement, but we could have done better. The players couldn’t believe it. They thought they had done well—
under the circumstances.
But that was my point. We couldn’t let circumstances matter. If things got unusually tough, for whatever reason, we still had to function and get the job done.

No excuses, no explanations.

As a team, we got some lasting benefit from that experience. For the next several years, when we’d get into crunch time in a game, I’d occasionally hear a player call out, “Come on, guys! It’s time for a five o’clock bus ride!”

Whatever it takes.

That first year, we definitely inherited some talent. In 1995, the Bucs had two first-round draft picks and came out with a terrific haul—Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks. When I got there in 1996, we had two more first-round picks, and we added to our defensive line again with both picks—Regan Upshaw and Marcus Jones. In the defensive scheme we planned to run, defensive linemen would be critical. Rod Marinelli loved coaching in our system because of the spotlight it placed on his defensive linemen.

My goal was to add to our core through the draft and then continue to add strategically through free agency. We wanted guys who had been productive in college, and we made it a point to pick performance over potential. Because the salary cap limits each team’s total payroll, we only wanted to pay significant sums to keep truly special players. We decided we would let others leave for greener pastures in free agency, even if it meant taking a slight step backward while we groomed a successor.

After emphasizing defense in the first round of the 1996 draft, we turned our attention to getting a big-play guy on offense in the second round. The Jets had the first pick in each round that year (they took Keyshawn Johnson first overall). We wanted Leeland McElroy, a running back out of Texas A&M, but we doubted he would still be available when our number five pick came in the second round. So Tim Ruskell, our director of player personnel, lined up a trade with the Jets if McElroy was still available when their pick arrived. He got on the phone with Jets assistant general manager James “Shack” Harris, working out the particulars of the trade. I heard Tim conclude the conversation with, “But if our player is still on the board, we have a deal, right? Good.”

The Redskins made their pick at the end of the first round, and McElroy was still on the board. We were ecstatic, and Tim had Shack on speed dial. Before Shack answered, however, the Jets’ pick came in: Alex Van Dyke from Nevada—the Jets’ second wide receiver in two rounds. They hadn’t kept their part of our deal.

Tim was not happy when Shack picked up the phone and said, “Tim, I’m so sorry. When Van Dyke was still there, the coaches just went ahead and took him right away.”

We were thrown for a loop and began frantically working the phones to try again to move up from our pick. We called the three remaining teams in front of us, sure that one of them would take McElroy. We were offering picks, players, our children … but the Arizona Cardinals took McElroy with the next pick.

The Jets, as it turned out, had been our only hope.

We were disappointed and frustrated, but we had only two picks in which to gather ourselves and decide whom we wanted next. We had been so focused on McElroy that we needed time to turn our attention to others—time we didn’t have. Even though we needed a great, game-changing back, we decided our best option was to make do with the next player on our board—a battering-ram, short-yardage running back.

Mike Alstott.

Of course, after the pick, we knew we would need to meet with the media and say how thrilled we were to have Mike. But as we gave our separate interviews, I know we were all extremely disappointed at how close we had been to getting McElroy. Years later, we came out looking like geniuses for having picked Alstott. He went on to become the second-leading rusher in Buccaneers history and to score almost twice as many touchdowns as any other player in the history of the franchise. I’m a firm believer that the Lord sometimes has to short-circuit even our best plans for our benefit.

We had two picks in that second round, and we were prepared to trade our second pick. Rich had told me during the week that Bobby Beathard of San Diego would probably call and offer us their first-round pick in 1997 for our second-rounder this year. Given that we had so many needs, we figured that was the way to go.
If
he called.

When that pick was approaching, I was starting to have second thoughts. We still hadn’t fully recovered from the McElroy/Alstott pick, and I was focused on Donnie Abraham. Donnie would fit our scheme perfectly; he was a solid person, exactly the kind of guy Monte and Herm would like to add to our defense. While we knew that building for the future with an extra first-rounder next year made sense, our previous pick hadn’t gone well, and we wanted to walk out of there with a second-rounder we liked.

When we were on the clock to make our pick, the phone rang. I’m still amazed that Bobby called, just like Rich had said he would. Rich told him we would call him back. We debated and finally decided to trade.

Donnie Abraham was still there when we picked in the third round, making our 1996 draft a nice combination of preparation and God’s providence.

By the way, two years later, we added Leeland McElroy to our roster when Arizona cut him. Although he was a good player and a great person, he couldn’t make our team. Funny how things work out.

As we were adding players through the draft and free agency to improve our level of talent, we had to continue working on the mind-set of a group that had lived so many years within a negative culture. I thought back to the things Tom Lamphere and I had talked about. Nehemiah also inherited a defeated group and had to change their culture and attitude so they could move forward. Nehemiah kept his people focused on their task of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. Rather than dividing their attention and focusing on the external threat that sought to destroy them, they stayed ready with their swords by their sides while they continued to work on the wall. Each person and family worked to build the portion of the wall in front of where they lived.

The Buccaneers were a group in need of remaining on task, focusing on what was before them. I knew that my job was to keep the guys focused on the things they could control, not on outside noises from media and fans or other things they couldn’t control.

It’s hard enough to be successful in this league—and in life—without hauling around the extra baggage of distractions. Right off the bat, we discussed how to deal with the media. “Negative will sell,” I told the team. “But so will the positive. So let’s always be positive. Whether you like them or not, the media will always be present in the
NFL
. It’s a fact of life, so you have to deal with it and make it as positive as possible. If they hate you, they won’t suddenly disappear. They’ll just make your life miserable. So don’t give them reason to hate you.”

We then discussed body language and the importance of nonverbal cues. “Make eye contact when you’re answering the media. Don’t act like a loser, even when you’ve lost. Don’t blame anybody else.” We had to make sure that we were together in this project.

We needed to let the media do their jobs, but we also needed to be proactive about getting the message out rather than letting them dictate the stories. I always tried to be very cordial with the media, and my goal was always to be sure that my responses were well thought out. I never wanted to antagonize anyone, but I planned to answer the questions in a way that emphasized the positives without giving away too much information. I think the media appreciated our treating them professionally and with respect, although winning probably improved the tone of their stories more than anything else.

No excuses, no explanations.

Talent at Tampa Bay wasn’t a major issue. The Vikings had played the Bucs twice a year, so I already knew the talent level was good. The Bucs had also been drafting many of the guys that we had wanted for the Vikings—Sapp, Brooks, and John Lynch among them—so I knew the Bucs had been drafting the right guys, at least on defense. When I arrived in Tampa, the talent was there. It was the culture that had to change.