Do You Love Football?! (20 page)

Of course, none of the preparation or studying I did could have ever prepared me for what happened to Leon Bender, a big defensive tackle we drafted from Washington State with the second-round pick we received that year after veteran defensive tackle Chester McGlockton left us to sign with Kansas City.

Two weeks after we signed Leon to a contract, he had an epileptic seizure and died tragically at the age of twenty-two.

Although I was a young coach and a head coach, that just showed me how vulnerable we all are. This was a young guy, full of life. He was a husband, a father. We were looking at him and our two first-round picks, cornerback Charles Woodson and offensive tackle Mo Collins, as building blocks for the future. And in an instant all those hopes and dreams disappear, and there's nothing left but sadness and tears.

I wasn't kidding myself about the job in front of us. Not only were the Raiders coming off a 4-12 season, they ranked near the bottom of the league against the pass, against the run and in total defense. We had questionable morale on the team. When I got there I found only six guys working out.

Without trying to sound arrogant or cocky, we had a lot of confidence that we could lead this team and that we could help this team improve. I knew the offseason schedule we were going to put together was demanding. We were going to be a more disciplined team. And the owner was committed to getting us players. That was one thing that fired me up about the job. I knew Al Davis was going to get players.

I planned to have a minicamp about a week after I was hired. As soon as Bruce Allen saw that on the calendar he said, "You can't have a minicamp this soon. We only have twenty-four players under contract." At the time, the Raiders still had to adjust their salary cap, but I was going to have that mini-camp as scheduled. Our personnel department ended up having to sign about fifty guys from a three-day tryout camp just to give us enough bodies for the workouts. Some of them had played in the NFL, but some of them looked like they had never put on a helmet.

Jeff George, our quarterback, was throwing quick outs, hitches and slants. Tim Brown would catch one. James Jett would catch one. The next guy up was from the tryout camp and Jeff almost killed him, almost knocked his head off with the ball.

I was going to get to know the players. I wasn't going to say a lot, but the message I delivered would be "We're going to bust our asses and you're going to be accountable for how you play.

I don't really care if I'm here ten days or ten years. We're here to turn this sonofabitch around and we're going to do it. If you're with me you're with me. If you're not you're not."

I liked Jeff George. During our first minicamp he moved to his right and threw a pass from his hip thirty-eight yards on a rope that Olanda Truitt caught right at his Adam's apple. It was unbelievable. I looked up at the video guy in the sideline tower and asked, "Did you get that on film?"

"Yes," the guy said.

"Good. Because that's the greatest throw I've ever seen."

The Raiders were Jeff's third team at that point. The Colts had made him the top overall pick of 1990, then traded him to Atlanta in 1994 for a couple of first-round picks. He had a lot of talent as a passer. He came to Oakland as a free agent in 1997 and was the top-rated passer in the AFC that year and first in the league with 3,917 yards passing.

The offense Bill Callahan and I put in was the one I had been studying since I was in San Francisco, but with a Raider spin on it. For instance we'd use "Casper" for a comeback route, after Dave Casper, the Hall-of-Fame tight end. The concept was basically the same, although Jeff looked at quarterbacking differently from the other guys I had seen run this offense well. He would look way downfield and say, "I can make that throw," where a lot of other quarterbacks would say, "No way. It takes too long. I'm going to get hit by three guys before I ever get the pass off. I'm going to check it down to a shorter route right here."

In seven-on-seven drills, where there wasn't any pass rush, I don't know if Jeff ever checked the ball down, but you'd see him throw a seventy-one yard pass that hit a guy right on the screws. Everybody would be oohing and ahhing-the crowd, the writers. You'd hear people saying, "This guy's really a good fit for your offense." And all I could think was We're in for a rude awakening. As a coach, you knew the reality of the situation as you watched the tape: Every one of these is a sack. We're never going to get any of these off. We've got to throw a wide flare. We've got to throw the ball in the flat right here.

We got ripped in our first game against the Chiefs, who sacked Jeff ten times. Between injury and inexperience, we struggled on the offensive line, which didn't blend well with a pure pocket passer who was always standing in there looking for the big ?sh. That was why the Raiders had brought Jeff there-for that vertical game. And my understanding of offensive football was a big reason that the Raiders brought me in.

After we scored eight points in my head coaching debut, I knew at that meeting the next morning all our players and coaches were going to be looking at me saying to themselves, "Oh, Mr. Offensive Guru. Nice game, loser. What have you got to say to today?"

I remembered what Mike Holmgren went through when he began his head coaching career at Green Bay. We lost by a field goal in our opener at home against Minnesota. We went down to Tampa and got destroyed 31-3. And there we were in our third game, trailing Cincinnati at Lambeau. Our starting quarterback, Don Majkowski, was on the ground with a twisted ankle. In comes Brett Favre-who has just joined the Packers and doesn't know very much about the plays, formations or anything else about the offense-and he ends up throwing a bomb to Kitrick Taylor to win the game. Brett's performance had a lot to do with us going 9-7 that year, but the biggest thing I noticed was that Mike never changed. I remember watching him install game plans with the same confidence, whether we won or got our asses kicked. His approach and his personality remained the same. I drew a lot from that.

In the second week Jeff came back to throw for three hundred yards to beat the Giants, who were the defending NFC Eastern champs. Denver, the defending world champs, beat us in week three, but we came back with another close win in Dallas. We were 2-2 after playing four damn tough games. Jeff was throwing the hell out of the ball. I felt we had a chance to be pretty good.

Then in our fifth game, at Arizona, Jeff suffered a badly torn groin muscle that would put him out for most of our final eleven games. We had to go to Donald Hollas, who had barely thrown an NFL pass to that point in his career. He actually did a decent job of keeping us competitive. He even got hot and won a couple of games in a row before a brief return by Jeff, who ended up reinjuring his groin muscle. With a lot of help from our defense we managed to salvage an 8-8 season.

The season seemed so much longer, with so many more peaks and valleys emotionally, than any other season I had ever gone through. As a head coach you're accountable for the play of the entire football team. It took a physical and mental toll, but I gained confidence because we did show improvement as a team.

I thought the morale on the team was on the rise. I thought we made great strides in coming together as a team and learning a new offense and a new defense. I thought our discipline, in terms of our practice tempo, was much better as the year went on. Guys were finishing plays, moving more explosively. It became more gamelike as far as the speed of the practice.

So despite the huge demands it placed on me, I'd have to say that first season was the most satisfying, because ultimately the responsibility fell on my shoulders.

TEN
Who's Chucky?

HARVEY WILLIAMS had 128 rushing attempts for us in 1998. I don't remember a whole lot about most of them, except for maybe two that were for touchdowns. The one running play I do remember the best wasn't for a score. It certainly wasn't for a big gain. In fact, it wasn't even a carry.

This was an attempt at an attempt, and it came during a 27-20 win against Seattle in what was then called Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Going into the game we knew that we were going to see a lot of weak-side blitzes, so we came up with an audible that would let Donald Hollas call a running play away from the overloaded side where the blitz would come from. When he said, "96 Seattle" or "97 Seattle" the back would know that he was going to get a handoff and run in the direction opposite the blitz.

As Donald stood at the line and called signals, he could see that the blitz was coming from the weak side. He called 96 Seattle. For whatever reason, Harvey ran 97 Seattle. When Donald turned to hand the ball off, no one was there. We had a busted play that made all of us-players and coaches-look stupid. It made us look like we didn't have a clue, and the crowd of fifty-one thousand let us know about it by booing. I got pissed. I got mad. I just lost it.

"What the hell are you doin'?" I yelled as Harvey came to the sidelines. "Geez! We've been working on it all week. You know it's a blitz on that side. Why are you running over there?"

A few days later Harvey told a reporter about that encounter. He said that when he saw me yelling at him he thought I looked like Chucky, the evil doll from the movie, Child's Play. In the next day's newspaper there were pictures of Chucky and me side by side. I had no idea the comparison would attach itself to me with the same relentlessness that the little psycho doll has for causing mayhem.

Until then I had never even heard of the movie. At first I didn't really give the comparison much thought because I've had people imitate some of my strange behavior ever since I started coaching. I've seen players in the locker room and in the back of an airplane kind of acting like me, doing my voice and hand gestures. A lot of coaches get that.

One of the greatest parts about the Coliseum is the "Black Hole," the south end-zone seats where the most rabid Raider fans-and there really aren't any other kind-can be found with their faces painted silver and black and the rest of their bodies covered in all of these wild, spiked costumes. I'd go on the field for pregame warm-ups and I'd hear them start chanting, "Gruden! Gru-den! Gru-den!" I appreciated the support, especially after seeing how they got after the opposing teams. Besides, it was a whole lot better than what I had heard during some of those pregame warm-ups in Philly. So whenever I heard the "Gru-den!" chant, I would always turn around, run to the Black Hole and give them high-fives. When I did that before a game, not long after Harvey's comment and the Chucky picture next to mine in the newspaper, I noticed people in the Black Hole holding up Chucky dolls. After that I began to see more and more of them.

Like it or not, this was a nickname that wasn't going to disappear any time soon.

I've been accused of playing to the cameras, of knowing exactly when one of them will be zooming in, which is supposed to be my cue to start making all those crazy Chucky faces. Give me a break. When I'm on the sidelines during a game, I'm thinking about a million different things. I'm having conversations with the offensive coordinator in the press box and other coaches. I'm talking to the quarterback. I've got plays to call, options to consider, adjustments to make. The last thing on my mind is what kind of facial expression I'm going to make for the cameras.

If I'm closing my eyes or twisting my face, it's because I'm thinking, I'm concentrating-or I'm just pissed. I guess I've always been kind of a natural squinter anyhow. Sometimes it's out of sheer comfort to loosen the tension or whatever. It's also, in part, because I'm an animated kind of guy. A lot of guys in this business are animated. What's wrong with being animated?

I try to keep my cool, but it's hard for me. I'm an irritable person to start with. Then when I get to that stadium on that early bus and I get in my little room with my sideline sheet, I start feeling the excitement of the game. My heart's pumping at a pretty good pace. I feel a sense of anticipation as I start to think of all the situations that are going to come up. And when I get on that sideline and put on my headset, my mind just temporarily becomes somebody else's.

"Here we go! It's second-and-nine. They always blitz long yardage on second down. What? They didn't blitz? Goddang it!

Why did I call that play?

"What are we doin'? What's the coverage? Ah, shit! We can't run! We can't throw! We can't tackle!"

Except for the language, it isn't a whole lot different from when I'm fishing with my oldest son, Deuce, and he catches a nice big blue gill, or when he caught his first bass. I get excited, man. When we get that bass on a hook and get him out of the water and then we lose him? I'm saying, "Ohhh! God! Geez!

Man, we had him."

I'll also admit that some of the language I use on the sidelines, especially when I'm yelling at the officials, is bad. When the cameras do catch me saying a foul word, that's seen by a lot of people. I've received some letters of complaint, and as a result I've done a better job recently of trying to keep my language under control.

But I've never scripted anything as far as my facial expressions or what I've said to my team. Everything I do and say is from the heart. I'm a passionate guy. I love football. The title of this book is, for me, the reality of it. There is nothing I hate more than a lack of effort, such as when it comes to studying the game plan, because you're letting the rest of the team down. This is a team game. If you're not going to be all over that game plan and you're not going to execute your assignments on Wednesday, on Thursday and on Friday, how in the hell are you going to do it in a live, physical combat like you have on Sunday afternoon?

You aren't.

I try to portray the kind of mentality I expect from the players every single day. I've tried to do that my whole career. As a receivers coach and as an offensive coordinator, I was responsible for setting the tempo of the offense, for the quickness of our attack. In practice I'd be yelling, "Get in the huddle! Get out of the huddle! Hurry up! Finish plays! Run down the field! Simulate making a long run! Practice breaking tackles!" I wanted the defense to know, "At least this guy is demanding."