Sir Purr
Well-known member
- Mar 16, 2019
- 1,969
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On Cam Newton and the Panthers quarterback situation:
“To be quite fair, I probably haven’t had a chance with regards to any player yet to talk to Marty and Mr. Tepper in terms of long-term vision. I would never want to speak out of school or uneducatedly. What I will say is this, I had a chance to talk to Cam yesterday and I have the utmost respect for him and what he’s done, and I loved the way he talked to me, to be quite honest. He didn’t want to talk about the past, he wanted to talk about the future. But other than that, I would much rather talk to those guys and get a feel for not just Cam, but all the players on the roster, and really have a good process moving forward for the entire roster.”
On his history of turning programs around:
“When we took over at Temple, they were moving up in conferences. We had been in the MAC and we had gone into the Big East and then the American Athletic Conference, so we had kind of needed a reboot. When I went to Baylor, we were supposed to have 85 scholarship players. I started the first year with 45 that were inherited. To me, the key to being a great leader is not to make excuses and complain, it’s just to get to work, figure it out. What we did both of those places is we found the guys that were going to fit. If they were freshmen, they were freshmen, and they were seniors, they were seniors. We found the guys that fit into that thing I talked about, being tough, being hardworking, being competitive, and we played them. We gave them experience, we played them through the adversity and my first year at Temple I was 2-10, my first year at Baylor I was 1-11, but we were a championship-caliber team in three years. I think the thing for me is, it’s easy to talk about process, it’s easy to say, ‘Hey, these are the things we’re going to do.’ Will you still be saying that when you’re having not a lot of success? I was able to do that twice. I learned a lot from that and I think our players, the biggest things I learned from those things is that the players learned in those years where we had adversity that I wasn’t going to throw them under the bus. I wasn’t going to talk bad about them. I wasn’t going to say we’re losing because. I was right there in it with them and our coaches were right there in it with them. And when we started to have success, they realized that, ‘Hey, these coaches are for us,’ because that’s really what this is supposed to be. The coaches are there to help the players be their best. I’m going to say it, and I get caught up sometimes, but as we talked, I’m so committed to our players, and I know Mr. Tepper and Marty are so committed to our players having the very best in terms of sports science, in terms of recovery and regeneration. This should be a place that players say, ‘I want to go there.’ We practice hard and we prepare hard, but we do the things to extend your career and allow you to play at peak performance. I think our players saw that in those hard times and then they had success and we really had a great relationship.”
On the transition from coaching in college to the NFL:
“I think any time you talk in global terms like that, it comes down to different people. I had a chance to be in the NFL, I worked under Tom Coughlin. It wasn’t a real long experience, but I think it was a good experience. I think I went to be a college coach saying, ‘Hey, this is how I’m going to do it.’ I played for Joe Paterno, I worked for some great coaches, but I worked under Tom Coughlin. I went back to the college game, I said, ‘OK, I’m going to do it this way.’ Different than a lot of guys, I’ve kind of done it that way, and I think the players that you look at that I’ve had come out of Temple and come out of Baylor, we have a lot of guys in the pros. We have a lot of guys that get there and get second contracts and have had a lot of success. I think that’s because I’m going to be demanding, but I’m going to be demanding of myself first. I’m going to want accountability, but I want accountability of my staff and I first. Players that I’ve had, when you can communicate with them, when you have the same vision, that’s the one thing as I’ve talked to guys so far. Every guy that I’ve talked to has reminded me that, ‘Hey, coach, we’re all in this for the same thing,’ and I completely agree. I think the college thing is maybe true for a lot of guys, but I think for me, I’ve had some unique experiences.”
On his coordinator hiring process:
“I’ll have a diverse staff and a mixed staff. I have, I think, one of the best staffs in football at Baylor. A lot of my guys got to Baylor from the NFL, so a lot of guys have NFL experience. I think two things, there are a lot of guys that I know that are interested in coming here, and there are a lot of people that are really excited about this organization. They’re really excited about what Mr. Tepper and Marty have already started. I’m getting calls from guys that say, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of that,’ because I think what you see here is you see alignment. You see an owner, you see a general manager and a head coach that aren’t forcing themselves to do things. They see things the same way and people understand that that’s how you win in this league. When everyone’s on the same page, you’re going to be successful. I’ll probably get here, I’m going to start working with Marty today or tomorrow, whenever, and start working on getting some people here. The one thing I’ve learned and the advice I’ve gotten from so many people in this league is don’t rush. Get the right people, so that’s what we’ll do.”
On the sport science aspect influencing his decision to come here:
“It was nothing really about, ‘Hey, are you going to build?’ As we started talking, the worlds of sports science, the worlds of analytics are things that I’m interested in and as we talked, we had just a common interest in those things. I think the big thing about (them) is they’re always evolving, and I think it’s just a commitment to the application of things. Like, we have Catapult at Baylor, they have Catapult here, where they monitor the loads on players. It really just comes down to the application of it and can you get alignment from your football staff to your sports medicine staff to your sports science staff. We didn’t get into great detail about, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this, this and this,’ it was just more like, this is what I believe in, this is what they believe in, and to me, I just believe in common vision. If we believe in our players having the very best, then we can be really successful. I think when you’re in college football, things people don’t realize is we don’t get to draft anybody, and I don’t get to offer anybody a signing bonus. We’re all trying to get the best stuff, so we were way ahead of a lot of other college teams in terms of the sports science that’s at Baylor, so I’ve kind of gotten very used to it.”