Ray Didinger

Football Stories

By RAY DIDINGER

Football coaches often use famous quotations to make a point. They usually quote military leaders, political statesmen (Marv Levy was partial to Winston Churchill) and other historical figures. I recall Minnesota Vikings head coach Bud Grant once quoting Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu from 565 B.C.

“A leader is best,” Grant said, “when people barely know he exists.” It was Grant’s way of explaining his low-key style of leadership. Obviously it worked because Grant is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame today.

We’ve heard coaches quote other, more famous coaches. They are always recycling the wisdom of Vince Lombardi, Bear Bryant and Bill Parcells. They reference the great motivators, like Knute Rockne. There is a rich anecdotal library for coaches to draw upon.

But to the best of my knowledge, Chip Kelly is the first coach to quote Fred Flintstone.

As he wrapped up the Eagles mini-camp in June, Kelly was asked if he welcomed the one-month break prior to the start of training camp. A little vacation time, a little R&R, is a beautiful thing, right? Kelly seemed puzzled by the question.

“I don’t look at this as I need a break from what we’ve just done,” he said. “This isn’t like Fred Flintstone with the ‘Yabba-Dabba-Doo’ and we’re trying to get out of work. I think anybody that’s in our situation, that coaches, isn’t like ‘I can’t wait to get out of there.’ I think most of them can’t wait to get back in there.”

It was an off-the-wall answer that drew a laugh, but that’s not a surprise coming from Kelly. He is a different kind of guy, cocky and often flippant. He works fast, he talks fast and last season proved he gets results fast. One thing is clear: He is totally consumed by the game. The notion of “getting away” is foreign to him. For Kelly, there is no “away” from football.

“I love the game,” Kelly said. “I have a passion for it so it’s not like if a conversation (about football) comes up three days from now and I’m on vacation, I don’t want to talk about it. I’d probably be the one starting the conversation to be honest with you.”

It is a quality shared by many career coaches. The great Bill Walsh once told me a story about sitting on the couch with his wife watching television. He had agreed to come home early from the office that day to spend some time with the family. So he was watching TV, but his mind was still working on the game plan. He had his arm around his wife but, without realizing it he was diagramming plays on her back with his finger.

When his finger stopped moving, his wife asked: “Did you score?”

“She never asked me to come home early after that,” Walsh said. “She knew it was a waste of time.”

“We live,” Walsh said, referring to football coaches, “in a different world.”

He was right about that. Dick Vermeil was a classic example of a man consumed by football. He slept in his office four nights a week, studied film until dawn and finally succumbed to burnout after seven years with the Eagles. He needed twice that long away from the game to regain the strength to come back and win a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams.

So in terms of their commitment, Vermeil and Kelly are similar. They are similar, too, in the sense they both were coaches who came to the NFL from the college ranks (although Vermeil had worked briefly as an assistant with the Los Angeles Rams under George Allen). But after watching Kelly’s first season with the Eagles, Vermeil feels Kelly handled the transition better than he did.

“You first get to the NFL and you think, ‘Wow, I hope I belong here,’” Vermeil said. “For me, it was a little overwhelming. I think you can be a little insecure in that environment so you go to work trying to prove to yourself that you belong there. Me, I was so damn intense and emotional that I was going 110 miles an hour all the time. I think Chip Kelly is a little further along as a head coach than I was. He is going to do what he wants to do and it’s working.”

Kelly’s cockiness, in other words, is a huge asset. When he came in last season, many people questioned whether his fast paced offense would work in the pro game. Kelly never had a doubt. He had total belief in what he was doing. He was comfortable with his system, comfortable with his approach and it rubbed off on his players who bought in right away. As a result, he became the first Eagles head coach to win a division title in his first year on the job.

Either in Philly or Bedrock, that’s a pretty good accomplishment.