telluride
01-07-2009, 12:38 PM
Very good piece in the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/sports/football/08spagnuolo.html?_r=1&hp) about our (allegedly) leading candidate. What the heck, let's post it:
On the road to becoming one of the N.F.L.’s most sought after head coaching candidates, Steve Spagnuolo has coached in three countries, at six colleges and with four professional teams through almost 27 years.
As an intern with the Washington Redskins, he ferried released players to the airport. In Philadelphia, as a defense quality control assistant with the Eagles, he logged hours of game tape at age 40. In his current post, as the Giants’ defensive coordinator, he designed the defense that stopped the undefeated New England Patriots in last year’s Super Bowl.
His crazy coaching odyssey has taken him to Massachusetts, to Washington, to Lafayette College, to Connecticut, to Spain, to Maine, to Rutgers, to Bowling Green, back to Europe and to both ends of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Where to next?
At least four teams — the Jets, the Denver Broncos, the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns — have interviewed Spagnuolo, 49, for their openings in recent days.
“The more places you coach with lesser skill players, the better teacher you have to be, the better innovator you have to be, the better coach you have to be,” said Charley Casserly, one of Spagnuolo’s mentors and a former general manager in the N.F.L. “He didn’t have a godfather. Nobody planted him in a good job at a young age. This guy had to hustle everywhere to get jobs. He literally came up from the bottom.”
Two summers ago, Spagnuolo and his younger brother, Kevin, pondered the path that he had taken. Noting that his brother had been accepted to Harvard Law School, Kevin said he asked him why he did not become a lawyer.
“All you do is read,” Spagnuolo answered.
Spoken like a true coach.
Raised in Grafton, Mass., Spagnuolo earned mostly A’s in school. He ran the wishbone offense nearly to perfection as a quarterback in high school. He played second base on a state championship baseball team and served as a diminutive yet feisty hockey center who was unafraid to skate into the corners and mix it up.
Richard Egsegian, who taught Spagnuolo geometry and coached football in Grafton for 32 years, said he remembered the bruises after Grafton lost in the state championship game, his quarterback’s knees and forearms covered in strawberries, and how he still rallied the team around him.
In high school Spagnuolo predicted that he would become an N.F.L. head football coach. None of his friends doubted him.
“Steve is a brilliant, brilliant man,” said Mike Conway, a longtime friend and a high school teammate. “He very easily could be at Mass General doing brain surgery instead of coaching football. You’ll never meet anybody smarter than him.”
Another friend, Steve LeMay, said Spagnuolo possessed an important gift.
“He was one of those kids who had a special knack for making everybody feel like they were important,” LeMay said. “All the kids liked him, and all the kids’ parents liked him. He’s the same guy now, except we see him on TV.”
They remember Spagnuolo as tough, organized, intense and thorough. He was the kind of quarterback who sat for hours in the bleachers with Egsegian after practice, studying football like no player he ever coached.
Kevin Spagnuolo described his brother’s relationship with Egsegian as profound and said it shaped Spagnuolo to his core. Egsegian said Spagnuolo continually quizzed him about football, always returning to the central question: Why?
Last year, after Egsegian had a benign brain tumor removed, Spagnuolo called and wrote and sent his former coach a T-shirt. Never has a man displayed with more pride something in his central Massachusetts living room containing the phrases New York Giants and Super Bowl Champions.
“When I see Spags on TV, it’s a surreal thing,” said Egsegian, now 75. “I say: ‘Jesus Christ, this is the kid from Grafton! He beat the undefeated Patriots!’ ”
Few could have imagined that in 1983, when Spagnuolo interned with the Redskins. He fetched newspapers and made coffee and stocked refrigerators. He charted plays during practices. He picked up players, the first being the Hall of Fame cornerback Darrell Green, at the airport. He wrote the manual for future interns.
“I can say this,” Casserly said. “There was no question in my mind this guy was going to be successful.”
Spagnuolo carried Grafton with him, in his intensity and in his preparation and in the thick accent that remains.
When he became the defensive coordinator at Connecticut in 1989, he started working 20 hours a day instead of the usual 14. Kevin Spagnuolo knew it then: his older brother was on his way.
With the Eagles, Spagnuolo spent three seasons working with defensive backs, training Pro Bowl safeties like Brian Dawkins and Michael Lewis.
Even before Spagnuolo took over the linebackers in 2004, Ike Reese noticed the way he knew every facet of the defense, and everything about special teams, and the way he filled notebooks with ideas.
“He reminds me so much of John Harbaugh,” Reese said, comparing Spagnuolo to the former Eagles assistant and first-year head coach in Baltimore. “You’re talking about guys who have aspirations of controlling a facet of the game or even managing the whole team.”
When the Giants called after the 2006 season, Reese worried for his coach. He told Spagnuolo that Coach Tom Coughlin had one year remaining on his contract, that he could be fired — along with Spagnuolo — at the season’s end.
But Spagnuolo is a man who pens the Bible verse Hebrews 11:1 alongside his signature. It reads: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
“If I don’t take this opportunity right now,” he told Reese, “I may never get it again.”
Folks in Grafton, and on all of Spagnuolo’s stops along the way, watch the Giants defense now and see the personality — aggressive, attacking, intense — of its coordinator.
In his first season, Spagnuolo moved defensive ends Justin Tuck inside and Mathias Kiwanuka to linebacker to use the team’s talent fully. That defense sacked Patriots quarterback Tom Brady five times in the Super Bowl.
This season, with Michael Strahan retired and Osi Umenyiora on injured reserve, Spagnuolo reshuffled and the Giants reloaded for another Super Bowl run.
“The numbers and success speak for themselves,” Tuck said. “He has been a huge part of the success we’ve had, not only defensively, but this entire team. It’s infectious the way he goes around here and how he goes about his business.”
Last summer Spagnuolo returned to Grafton, a pocket of New England that he has transformed into a Giants stronghold deep in Patriots territory. About 50 friends and family attended. They ate hot dogs and hamburgers, salad and corn on the cob.
There was the same Spagnuolo they had always known, with one noticeable, gaudy difference: the Super Bowl ring. They took turns wearing it, snapping pictures with their cellphones.
And they wondered, the same as everybody else: Where to next?
“Everything has a progression, and he pretty much did it his way,” Kevin Spagnuolo said. “He was as patient as anybody could be in that position. No one is more driven than him. These types of things don’t happen by mistake.”
This guy needs to be our next coach.
On the road to becoming one of the N.F.L.’s most sought after head coaching candidates, Steve Spagnuolo has coached in three countries, at six colleges and with four professional teams through almost 27 years.
As an intern with the Washington Redskins, he ferried released players to the airport. In Philadelphia, as a defense quality control assistant with the Eagles, he logged hours of game tape at age 40. In his current post, as the Giants’ defensive coordinator, he designed the defense that stopped the undefeated New England Patriots in last year’s Super Bowl.
His crazy coaching odyssey has taken him to Massachusetts, to Washington, to Lafayette College, to Connecticut, to Spain, to Maine, to Rutgers, to Bowling Green, back to Europe and to both ends of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Where to next?
At least four teams — the Jets, the Denver Broncos, the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns — have interviewed Spagnuolo, 49, for their openings in recent days.
“The more places you coach with lesser skill players, the better teacher you have to be, the better innovator you have to be, the better coach you have to be,” said Charley Casserly, one of Spagnuolo’s mentors and a former general manager in the N.F.L. “He didn’t have a godfather. Nobody planted him in a good job at a young age. This guy had to hustle everywhere to get jobs. He literally came up from the bottom.”
Two summers ago, Spagnuolo and his younger brother, Kevin, pondered the path that he had taken. Noting that his brother had been accepted to Harvard Law School, Kevin said he asked him why he did not become a lawyer.
“All you do is read,” Spagnuolo answered.
Spoken like a true coach.
Raised in Grafton, Mass., Spagnuolo earned mostly A’s in school. He ran the wishbone offense nearly to perfection as a quarterback in high school. He played second base on a state championship baseball team and served as a diminutive yet feisty hockey center who was unafraid to skate into the corners and mix it up.
Richard Egsegian, who taught Spagnuolo geometry and coached football in Grafton for 32 years, said he remembered the bruises after Grafton lost in the state championship game, his quarterback’s knees and forearms covered in strawberries, and how he still rallied the team around him.
In high school Spagnuolo predicted that he would become an N.F.L. head football coach. None of his friends doubted him.
“Steve is a brilliant, brilliant man,” said Mike Conway, a longtime friend and a high school teammate. “He very easily could be at Mass General doing brain surgery instead of coaching football. You’ll never meet anybody smarter than him.”
Another friend, Steve LeMay, said Spagnuolo possessed an important gift.
“He was one of those kids who had a special knack for making everybody feel like they were important,” LeMay said. “All the kids liked him, and all the kids’ parents liked him. He’s the same guy now, except we see him on TV.”
They remember Spagnuolo as tough, organized, intense and thorough. He was the kind of quarterback who sat for hours in the bleachers with Egsegian after practice, studying football like no player he ever coached.
Kevin Spagnuolo described his brother’s relationship with Egsegian as profound and said it shaped Spagnuolo to his core. Egsegian said Spagnuolo continually quizzed him about football, always returning to the central question: Why?
Last year, after Egsegian had a benign brain tumor removed, Spagnuolo called and wrote and sent his former coach a T-shirt. Never has a man displayed with more pride something in his central Massachusetts living room containing the phrases New York Giants and Super Bowl Champions.
“When I see Spags on TV, it’s a surreal thing,” said Egsegian, now 75. “I say: ‘Jesus Christ, this is the kid from Grafton! He beat the undefeated Patriots!’ ”
Few could have imagined that in 1983, when Spagnuolo interned with the Redskins. He fetched newspapers and made coffee and stocked refrigerators. He charted plays during practices. He picked up players, the first being the Hall of Fame cornerback Darrell Green, at the airport. He wrote the manual for future interns.
“I can say this,” Casserly said. “There was no question in my mind this guy was going to be successful.”
Spagnuolo carried Grafton with him, in his intensity and in his preparation and in the thick accent that remains.
When he became the defensive coordinator at Connecticut in 1989, he started working 20 hours a day instead of the usual 14. Kevin Spagnuolo knew it then: his older brother was on his way.
With the Eagles, Spagnuolo spent three seasons working with defensive backs, training Pro Bowl safeties like Brian Dawkins and Michael Lewis.
Even before Spagnuolo took over the linebackers in 2004, Ike Reese noticed the way he knew every facet of the defense, and everything about special teams, and the way he filled notebooks with ideas.
“He reminds me so much of John Harbaugh,” Reese said, comparing Spagnuolo to the former Eagles assistant and first-year head coach in Baltimore. “You’re talking about guys who have aspirations of controlling a facet of the game or even managing the whole team.”
When the Giants called after the 2006 season, Reese worried for his coach. He told Spagnuolo that Coach Tom Coughlin had one year remaining on his contract, that he could be fired — along with Spagnuolo — at the season’s end.
But Spagnuolo is a man who pens the Bible verse Hebrews 11:1 alongside his signature. It reads: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
“If I don’t take this opportunity right now,” he told Reese, “I may never get it again.”
Folks in Grafton, and on all of Spagnuolo’s stops along the way, watch the Giants defense now and see the personality — aggressive, attacking, intense — of its coordinator.
In his first season, Spagnuolo moved defensive ends Justin Tuck inside and Mathias Kiwanuka to linebacker to use the team’s talent fully. That defense sacked Patriots quarterback Tom Brady five times in the Super Bowl.
This season, with Michael Strahan retired and Osi Umenyiora on injured reserve, Spagnuolo reshuffled and the Giants reloaded for another Super Bowl run.
“The numbers and success speak for themselves,” Tuck said. “He has been a huge part of the success we’ve had, not only defensively, but this entire team. It’s infectious the way he goes around here and how he goes about his business.”
Last summer Spagnuolo returned to Grafton, a pocket of New England that he has transformed into a Giants stronghold deep in Patriots territory. About 50 friends and family attended. They ate hot dogs and hamburgers, salad and corn on the cob.
There was the same Spagnuolo they had always known, with one noticeable, gaudy difference: the Super Bowl ring. They took turns wearing it, snapping pictures with their cellphones.
And they wondered, the same as everybody else: Where to next?
“Everything has a progression, and he pretty much did it his way,” Kevin Spagnuolo said. “He was as patient as anybody could be in that position. No one is more driven than him. These types of things don’t happen by mistake.”
This guy needs to be our next coach.