GregR_2
Footballguy
Almost done with Charlie Weis' book, No Excuses. Not exactly Pulitzer material, but I loved hearing insights from someone who was actually there and knew how things went down and why. Thought I'd share the interesting parts for anyone who is interested.
On Bill Belichick:
"As smart as Belichick was, he was never afraid to ask for advice, regardless of who you were. Even if he disagreed with you he would always listen. That's one of the reasons he is so successful today."
"I've always felt that [belichick's] greatest asset, though, was his insight and foresight into today's football. By insight, I mean that on a week-to-week basis, he could dissect the game -- through an analytical approach using all of the computer-age technology at his disposal -- as well as or better than anyone I know. By foresight, I mean that he always seemed able to look a year or two years or three years down the road and head off issues -- whether they were personnel issues or salary-cap issues -- before they became problems."
On Bill Parcells:
"He is a master psychologist... he controls the psyche of the team. He controls the psyche of the media. He's able to manipulate people -- and I mean this in a positive, not negative way -- to get them to think, or at least react to the way he thinks.
"One of the greatest tactics I learned from Bill is what I call 'button pushing'. He would make it his business to learn all he could about everyone [in his locker room, on the coaching staff, and in the organization]. He would find out what made you tick, and then he would find the right buttons to push in order to elevate your performance to a level higher than you ever thought that you could reach. My button was him questioning how hard I worked. I always worked hard but he would say things like, 'So, I see you're trying to get out of here early again, huh?' It never failed. I felt I had to work harder every time he said that."
Weis talked at one point about the reason he first got to start doing the play calling under Parcells was because Parcells was looking to take a bigger role in it and he wanted a younger, less-established OC who wouldn't have a problem with not being able to run the offense the way he wanted with less interference from the coach.
On Ben Coates, who Weis was the position coach for:
"...Coates was a long strider. Long striders usually aren't very fast, but when Ben got going, he'd run faster. Long striders tend to have problems with the short-to-intermediate routes because it's harder for them to get in and out of breaks than it is for someone with shorter legs, but Ben learned how to use his body to get open. He would push off and rarely get penalized by the officials for doing it. He also had very dependable hands."
On Keyshawn, who Weis was a position coach for:
"I had Keyshawn and Chrebet right after Keyshawn's book, Just Give Me The Damn Ball, had come out. In the book, Keyshawn was critical of Wayne, referring to him as 'the team's mascot'. That was a tension-filled receivers meeting room every day...
"I never saw them argue. I never heard them say boo to each other. They might not have liked each other, but they played hard together. On the field, they covered each other's butt."
"... all I saw from Keyshawn Johnson was one hardworking, competitive player that made plays for us for three years. I have zero complaints about Keyshawn."
On Tom Brady, Bledsoe and Damon Huard
"You could see that Tommy just had something special about him. We liked his moxie and his intelligence....
"[before he became a starter] One of the things that immediately stood out about Tommy was the great job he did leading all of the other young guys on offense. He would take it upon himself to throw to the younger receivers on his own in practice....
"You could also see his natural grasp of the game. In the classroom, with the other quarterbacks, the only other guy that was on the same level intellectually with Drew as Tommy. He would always ask questions during the week, but he would always ask higher level, astute questions."
On Brady becoming Bledsoe's backup over Damon Huard:
"It wasn't a landslide where Tommy was much better than Huard on the field. Damon had a good training camp too. We felt that if it was close to even on the field, all of the strengths that Tommy had off the field would move him ahead of the other guy. It was those off-the-field qualities that pushed him ahead."
"When Drew was eventually healthy, he wanted to go back to being the starter. You never want to lose your starting job as the result of an injury, but in this case it wasn't as simple as just restoring his previous status. The chemistry and the makeup of the team had changed. When Drew was in there, everyone else was waiting for him to make the play. He was the security blanket. He was always going to be able to bail the team out. As a result, Drew always had a lot of added pressure on him."
"When Tommy was in there, the other players knew they had to step up and give him help rather than wait for him to do something. We asked the other players on offense to accept a lot more responsibility which they did. Our game plans, at least initially, were set up to not make Tommy have to be the guy. There would be games when he had to be the guy, but initially -- such as in the first game he started, against Indianapolis -- we threw a lot of screen passes and little dump-offs."
"Now the Chargers had one blitz that we had worked on all week long in our meetings and practice. We didn't have many audibles with Tommy in there, but if the Chargers were going to show this one blitz, we were going to audible and have him throw the ball downfield to David Patten on an out-go pattern.
"Through sixty minutes... San Diego never showed that blitz. On the first play of overtime, sure enough, there it was. The kid saw it, called the audible, and [Chargers were called for pass interference resulting in a big gain]... The fact that Tommy could go through an entire ball game, not see that blitz, go into overtime, see it, and have the presence of mind to make the correct adjustment was phenomenal. Learning it and then actually performing it under duress are two different things."
"[After recount of The Tuck] As [brady] got to the sidelines, I told him, "We're going to get the ball back. They're going to call this an incomplete pass."
"Tommy looked at me as if I were on drugs, because to him it was not an incomplete pass. To him it was a fumble. Whether I actually knew the call would be reversed after the replay review was irrelevant. It was our only chance of winning the game, so I had to say that, but Tommy wasn't buying it."
"I was a big fan of Drew, whom we would trade to the Bills after the season. He was as tough a QB as you could find. As a matter of fact, his toughness sometimes became a weakness because rather than getting rid of the ball, he'd hold it, willing to take the hit to try to make a play. Sometimes that would result in a sack, or worse, a turnover."
Super Bowl:
"The success of the Rams receivers was predicated on the timing between Warner and his receivers, and we were jamming the heck out of their wide receivers to disrupt that timing."
"Bill turned to me and asked, "What do you think?"
"I think they've got all the momentum," I said. "I think we should go down and try to score."
[bill:]"Ok, call something safe. If we get a first down here, we'll go ahead and be more aggressive. Let's make sure we don't start off with a sack."
"The first [play] was [supposed to be] a pass to Jermaine Wiggins who was running an in-cut. The Rams brought a weak-safety blitz, which would normally have triggered a sight adjustment, where the QB throws to a WR on a slant route to the left-hand side. However Tommy knew that if we threw the slant to the left-hand side, the clock might run out, so instead he rolled to the right and threw the ball away, stopping the clock..."
"In our first Super Bowl win, our defense played great and we did enough on offense to win. Now [2 years later] we felt that we could do enough to hold up our end of the bargain. If the game had to be one of those games where the offense played exceptionally well, we were capable of doing that."
"To be successful with the empty-backfield formation, you need a QB who can recognize the weakness of the coverage and direct the protection to pick up the most dangerous pass rushers, and you must have guys that can get open. The hardest part for the QB is figuring out how many guys are going to rush him."
"Tommy Brady has become the best at doing that by far. I don't think anyone's a close second. I know Neil O'donnell had good success with the formation in Pittsburgh, and he did some of it when we were with the Jets, but Brady took it to another level."
"One of the biggest problems that play callers have is they're not thinking of the next play. They're watching the play they just called and waiting for the result before they decide what they're going to do next. When I call a play, you'll always see me looking right down to the call sheet for the next play even while the play I just called is being delivered in the huddle."
"If I call a pass, I already know the play I'm going to call if it's complete and the play I'm going to call if it's incomplete. Often when you see a team penalized for delay of game or when it looks like guys don't know what they're doing, that's because the play caller has not thought through what might happen on the play previously called and what his alternatives are going to be based on that play."
On Corey Dillon:
"For all the media attention over his unhappiness in Cinci, I never had a problem with him. Not once. He was as nice a kid as I've ever had. I think he just wanted to go somewhere and win. He liked play-action and we liked to run play-action. It's always easier to run play-action when you have a running back of his caliber."
On his gastric bypass surgery he nearly died from:
"Tommy Brady, who was one of the few people aware that I was having the gastric bypass surgery, had stopped by the hospital on Saturday morning to see how I was doing. He just showed up so he wouldn't have to listen to me nag him for not stopping to see me. He never bargained for what he would find when he got there.
"Basically, it was Tommy's support that got [Weis' wife] Maura through Saturday and Sunday until the reinforcements -- our out -of-town family and friends -- could get there on Monday. If it hadn't been for him, Maura would have gone off the deep end."
On Bill Belichick:
"As smart as Belichick was, he was never afraid to ask for advice, regardless of who you were. Even if he disagreed with you he would always listen. That's one of the reasons he is so successful today."
"I've always felt that [belichick's] greatest asset, though, was his insight and foresight into today's football. By insight, I mean that on a week-to-week basis, he could dissect the game -- through an analytical approach using all of the computer-age technology at his disposal -- as well as or better than anyone I know. By foresight, I mean that he always seemed able to look a year or two years or three years down the road and head off issues -- whether they were personnel issues or salary-cap issues -- before they became problems."
On Bill Parcells:
"He is a master psychologist... he controls the psyche of the team. He controls the psyche of the media. He's able to manipulate people -- and I mean this in a positive, not negative way -- to get them to think, or at least react to the way he thinks.
"One of the greatest tactics I learned from Bill is what I call 'button pushing'. He would make it his business to learn all he could about everyone [in his locker room, on the coaching staff, and in the organization]. He would find out what made you tick, and then he would find the right buttons to push in order to elevate your performance to a level higher than you ever thought that you could reach. My button was him questioning how hard I worked. I always worked hard but he would say things like, 'So, I see you're trying to get out of here early again, huh?' It never failed. I felt I had to work harder every time he said that."
Weis talked at one point about the reason he first got to start doing the play calling under Parcells was because Parcells was looking to take a bigger role in it and he wanted a younger, less-established OC who wouldn't have a problem with not being able to run the offense the way he wanted with less interference from the coach.
On Ben Coates, who Weis was the position coach for:
"...Coates was a long strider. Long striders usually aren't very fast, but when Ben got going, he'd run faster. Long striders tend to have problems with the short-to-intermediate routes because it's harder for them to get in and out of breaks than it is for someone with shorter legs, but Ben learned how to use his body to get open. He would push off and rarely get penalized by the officials for doing it. He also had very dependable hands."
On Keyshawn, who Weis was a position coach for:
"I had Keyshawn and Chrebet right after Keyshawn's book, Just Give Me The Damn Ball, had come out. In the book, Keyshawn was critical of Wayne, referring to him as 'the team's mascot'. That was a tension-filled receivers meeting room every day...
"I never saw them argue. I never heard them say boo to each other. They might not have liked each other, but they played hard together. On the field, they covered each other's butt."
"... all I saw from Keyshawn Johnson was one hardworking, competitive player that made plays for us for three years. I have zero complaints about Keyshawn."
On Tom Brady, Bledsoe and Damon Huard
"You could see that Tommy just had something special about him. We liked his moxie and his intelligence....
"[before he became a starter] One of the things that immediately stood out about Tommy was the great job he did leading all of the other young guys on offense. He would take it upon himself to throw to the younger receivers on his own in practice....
"You could also see his natural grasp of the game. In the classroom, with the other quarterbacks, the only other guy that was on the same level intellectually with Drew as Tommy. He would always ask questions during the week, but he would always ask higher level, astute questions."
On Brady becoming Bledsoe's backup over Damon Huard:
"It wasn't a landslide where Tommy was much better than Huard on the field. Damon had a good training camp too. We felt that if it was close to even on the field, all of the strengths that Tommy had off the field would move him ahead of the other guy. It was those off-the-field qualities that pushed him ahead."
"When Drew was eventually healthy, he wanted to go back to being the starter. You never want to lose your starting job as the result of an injury, but in this case it wasn't as simple as just restoring his previous status. The chemistry and the makeup of the team had changed. When Drew was in there, everyone else was waiting for him to make the play. He was the security blanket. He was always going to be able to bail the team out. As a result, Drew always had a lot of added pressure on him."
"When Tommy was in there, the other players knew they had to step up and give him help rather than wait for him to do something. We asked the other players on offense to accept a lot more responsibility which they did. Our game plans, at least initially, were set up to not make Tommy have to be the guy. There would be games when he had to be the guy, but initially -- such as in the first game he started, against Indianapolis -- we threw a lot of screen passes and little dump-offs."
"Now the Chargers had one blitz that we had worked on all week long in our meetings and practice. We didn't have many audibles with Tommy in there, but if the Chargers were going to show this one blitz, we were going to audible and have him throw the ball downfield to David Patten on an out-go pattern.
"Through sixty minutes... San Diego never showed that blitz. On the first play of overtime, sure enough, there it was. The kid saw it, called the audible, and [Chargers were called for pass interference resulting in a big gain]... The fact that Tommy could go through an entire ball game, not see that blitz, go into overtime, see it, and have the presence of mind to make the correct adjustment was phenomenal. Learning it and then actually performing it under duress are two different things."
"[After recount of The Tuck] As [brady] got to the sidelines, I told him, "We're going to get the ball back. They're going to call this an incomplete pass."
"Tommy looked at me as if I were on drugs, because to him it was not an incomplete pass. To him it was a fumble. Whether I actually knew the call would be reversed after the replay review was irrelevant. It was our only chance of winning the game, so I had to say that, but Tommy wasn't buying it."
"I was a big fan of Drew, whom we would trade to the Bills after the season. He was as tough a QB as you could find. As a matter of fact, his toughness sometimes became a weakness because rather than getting rid of the ball, he'd hold it, willing to take the hit to try to make a play. Sometimes that would result in a sack, or worse, a turnover."
Super Bowl:
"The success of the Rams receivers was predicated on the timing between Warner and his receivers, and we were jamming the heck out of their wide receivers to disrupt that timing."
"Bill turned to me and asked, "What do you think?"
"I think they've got all the momentum," I said. "I think we should go down and try to score."
[bill:]"Ok, call something safe. If we get a first down here, we'll go ahead and be more aggressive. Let's make sure we don't start off with a sack."
"The first [play] was [supposed to be] a pass to Jermaine Wiggins who was running an in-cut. The Rams brought a weak-safety blitz, which would normally have triggered a sight adjustment, where the QB throws to a WR on a slant route to the left-hand side. However Tommy knew that if we threw the slant to the left-hand side, the clock might run out, so instead he rolled to the right and threw the ball away, stopping the clock..."
"In our first Super Bowl win, our defense played great and we did enough on offense to win. Now [2 years later] we felt that we could do enough to hold up our end of the bargain. If the game had to be one of those games where the offense played exceptionally well, we were capable of doing that."
"To be successful with the empty-backfield formation, you need a QB who can recognize the weakness of the coverage and direct the protection to pick up the most dangerous pass rushers, and you must have guys that can get open. The hardest part for the QB is figuring out how many guys are going to rush him."
"Tommy Brady has become the best at doing that by far. I don't think anyone's a close second. I know Neil O'donnell had good success with the formation in Pittsburgh, and he did some of it when we were with the Jets, but Brady took it to another level."
"One of the biggest problems that play callers have is they're not thinking of the next play. They're watching the play they just called and waiting for the result before they decide what they're going to do next. When I call a play, you'll always see me looking right down to the call sheet for the next play even while the play I just called is being delivered in the huddle."
"If I call a pass, I already know the play I'm going to call if it's complete and the play I'm going to call if it's incomplete. Often when you see a team penalized for delay of game or when it looks like guys don't know what they're doing, that's because the play caller has not thought through what might happen on the play previously called and what his alternatives are going to be based on that play."
On Corey Dillon:
"For all the media attention over his unhappiness in Cinci, I never had a problem with him. Not once. He was as nice a kid as I've ever had. I think he just wanted to go somewhere and win. He liked play-action and we liked to run play-action. It's always easier to run play-action when you have a running back of his caliber."
On his gastric bypass surgery he nearly died from:
"Tommy Brady, who was one of the few people aware that I was having the gastric bypass surgery, had stopped by the hospital on Saturday morning to see how I was doing. He just showed up so he wouldn't have to listen to me nag him for not stopping to see me. He never bargained for what he would find when he got there.
"Basically, it was Tommy's support that got [Weis' wife] Maura through Saturday and Sunday until the reinforcements -- our out -of-town family and friends -- could get there on Monday. If it hadn't been for him, Maura would have gone off the deep end."
I obviously have man-love for Tom Brady for everything he has done for the Patriots organization. This last paragraph gave me chills to think of the type of guy that Brady is. He seems to be the type of chips is down friend/teammate that anyone would be incredibly proud to call friend.I was actually never a great fan of Charlie Weiss when he was the OC for the Pats (thought he was a bit too much of a self promoter compared to the downplayed ultra respected Romeo Crennel on the defensive side). He also came off incredibly arrogant in that 60 minutes piece about him. However, love all of his comments above. I might have to pick up that book.
