What's it like for five first-time NFL head coaches to prepare for the regular season
When the 2022 NFL regular season kicks off this week, five men will make their head coaching debuts.
In Chicago, 52-year-old Matt Eberflus leads the way after 13 NFL seasons as a defensive assistant (serving most recently as the Indianapolis Colts’ defensive coordinator from 2018-21).
In Denver, 42-year-old Nathaniel Hackett steps into the spotlight after 13 NFL seasons that included offensive coordinator stints with Tampa Bay, Buffalo, Jacksonville and, most recently, Green Bay.
Miami’s Mike McDaniel, 39, previously served as offensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers. The former Denver Broncos ball boy now enters his 16th NFL season.
NFL NEWSLETTER: Sign up now for exclusive content sent to your inbox
NFL COACH HOT SEAT RANKINGS: Mike McCarthy, Matt Rhule on notice ahead of Week 1
At 37, Minnesota’s Kevin O’Connell was the youngest head coach hired this offseason. The former Patriots, Lions, Jets, Dolphins and Chargers backup quarterback and seven-year coaching veteran most recently served as the Los Angeles Rams' offensive coordinator.
Meanwhile, New York Giants coach Brian Daboll, 47, toiled in the assistant ranks for 21 seasons and now hopes to carry over the success he experienced as an offensive coordinator in Buffalo from 2018-21.
Despite their extensive resumes, all five rookie head coaches are learning that a lot changes after making the jump from coordinator to leading man.
“It’s definitely a crash course,” Hackett said last week with a laugh.
USA TODAY Sports caught up with all five first-time head coaches for a roundtable discussion about the lessons gained from their first training camps and preseasons and how they hope to draw on those experiences as they approach their Week 1 debuts and the looming season as a whole. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
What was the biggest lesson that you will take away from your first training camp and preseason?
Brian Daboll: “The biggest lessons that I’ve learned up to this point is when you’re a coordinator, you’re focused on call sheets and fundamentals and plays, and that’s where your head has to be. But as a head coach, what I’ve come to learn is my door is always open and the amount of people that come into my office every day — it’s a lot. You’re in the middle of doing stuff and there’s two or three visitors every half-hour and instead of being overwhelmed, I’ve learned to say, ‘You know what, I remember when I had to go talk to the head coach and whatever was on my mind was the most important thing in the world, because to go into the head coach’s office, you don’t want to waste his time.’ But now, being the head coach, I see it might be the 700th on your list, but the ability to be a really good listener is probably the biggest lesson that I’ve learned up until this point.”
Nathaniel Hackett: “I would say one of the bigger things that I’ve had to adjust to is the amount of media. There’s so many (obligations). You’re always (used to) walking off the field to watch tape: football, football, football. And I used to do media once a week and it was about 10 minutes, but now, it’s way more extensive, which means you have to be even better with your time when you also have to do football. The other thing is, you’re not just dealing with the 25 offensive players. Now, you have to support the entire team, put together a team meeting, which then leads me into negotiating my voice. The beginning of training camp, I really lost my voice. I always kind of lose my voice, especially when doing installs, but now it was watching tape, doing an install, doing a team meeting, and doing media. How you budget your time in general — and thank God I’m already organizational. I take a lot of pride in that and always have, but now so many more factors have been put in with the team, with the media, with everything. Heck, even in just OTAs there was just a lot, and especially when you think, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to do a team meeting every day. What am I going to talk about now?’ Or, ‘What are you going to show?’ So, getting into my time and trying to be really organized for the team is really the big one.
“And finally, another one is there are just so many decisions to be made in an organization. Before, you were just dealing with an offensive play but now you’re dealing with everything from uniforms, to towels and clothing and planes and buses and all those little intricate things that people want to know what your opinion is because they want to do it the right way. I’ve always had a clear and concise vision, but now you’re having to explain it and I think it’s just the magnitude, especially in the first year, because you want everything to be right, but you know not everything will be right, right out of the gate, but you want to try to put your stamp on as many different things so I have no excuse to say something bothers me. If I haven’t said anything, then I can't be upset about it. So, I think the amount of people you deal with now has just quadrupled.
Kevin O’Connell: “I think the biggest lesson — and I was really lucky to get some advice from some guys who had gone through this recently — was to take the time in the summer and spring to really plan out how you envision building your team and to systematically build it. I actually broke up training camp into a five-part process between the ramp-up, the true training camp phase, which was about six or seven practices in full pads in about eight or nine days, and then we had the Niners’ (joint) practices and we kind of transitioned to the Raider preseason game where we simulated a game week and then finished off with an intrasquad scrimmage type feel. But really, it was the time put in ahead that allowed me to feel comfortable diving in and being a major part of installing our offense, teaching our offense, being around the defense when I can, special teams so that ultimately, guys — all 53 of the guys on our football team and the 90-man roster that was here with us in camp felt like I was completely invested in every body.”
Matt Eberflus: “I would just say that laying down a foundation of how we want to do our business, how we want to be in meetings, what we want to accomplish in walk-throughs, what we want to do on the practice fields and actually how we practice and really as a whole football team. Obviously, I’ve been a defensive coordinator for a long time and have always done that with the defensive side of the ball, but now having done it with the entire football team, that was probably the biggest, most important takeaway that I had of working with the offensive staff of how we go about every drill, how we go about finishing every rep in practice and what that means for every position — O-line, receivers, tight ends, runners, all that. So, I think for me, that was the biggest takeaway from all this and it was great because we worked together hand-in-hand as a coaching staff and I thought guys really did a nice job of taking steps forward every week of training camp.”
Mike McDaniel: “The biggest lesson was not as much of a surprise as much as exactly what I was expecting, which is the number of people having to orchestrate a symphony for things to go right. So bringing mindfulness and a deliberate presence to each day as a prerequisite, but for everything to go the way you want it to, it’s a lot of people with concerted effort attacking each day and having to be successful for the team to have ultimate success.”
What was the most unexpected curveball or twist that required flexibility, and how did you handle it?
McDaniel: “I’ve never been a part of an NFL practice that was canceled in my career. Coming to work (on Aug. 25), getting ready for a team meeting and getting news that there were seven players that had a stomach bug that was clearly contagious, but didn’t know the root — that number growing to something in the 20s and having to make the decision that it’s not in the best interest of the Miami Dolphins nor the joint-practice partakers, the Philadelphia Eagles, for us to push through. I never would have thought we would have lost one of those valuable practices, but in the moment, I had to make the decision that was best for the team with the given circumstances. … I learned that the phrase, ‘Expect the unexpected,’ lives and breathes, that you’re not always going to know what’s going to come at you, what the key is, set direction and really make sure that – really the idea that something is good or bad is totally irrelevant. It’s about just doing the best thing for the team with the given circumstances and deciding to cancel practice, although that goes against everything a coach ever thinks or feels that can be the best thing for a team, can be the best decision you make.”
O’Connell: Obviously, the one that comes to mind was a lot of what I planned training camp around was our quarterback and when he would possibly play in preseason games and when we would be able to get our full group and 1’s vs. 1’s, and we were well on our way to doing that, and then (Kirk Cousins) did get COVID early on in camp, leading into that first preseason game. You can do all the planning you want and you can have contingency plans, but that was one where I found myself adjusting things and altering a couple things here and there in a way that I never thought I would, but I was doing it in the best interest of our team and Kirk and now I’m sitting here today on Sept. 1st saying to myself, ‘I feel like we’re able to handle that, kind of have some agility when we need it to ultimately put our players in the best possible position to feel good going into Sept. 11th.’
“The experience of having gone through different times over the last couple years and knowing we can still get a lot done (helped). Fortunately for Kirk, he didn’t have a lot of serious symptoms and he was still able to be involved and he and I were able to speak quite a bit, and use that Raider week as a mock in-season game-week because he was going to have the opportunity to potentially play in that game a little bit, but we had to alter our plans a little bit not only for him, but for some of the guys I wanted to be in the game with him, and ultimately, we committed to that plan and were happy with how it turned out.”
Daboll: “Curveballs — seems like there’s a curveball every day and you don't know what it’s going to be. Or maybe you’re wanting a curveball but the next day is a knuckleball — from a player got sick to a player got hurt, to someone complaining about something. There's no manual for this and I think I've tried to be myself and be a good listener and be a good leader. Don’t react too quickly with anything that comes across your desk. Try to sit back and have good communication with everybody, whether it’s (GM) Joe (Schoen) or members of your coaching staff. You have to trust the people around you to do their job. Again, we have yet to play a game, so whether you want to call it the honeymoon stage or not, but every day there’s something. You think a guy can practice but he can’t practice, someone has to be away from practice for a personal reason, but those are some of the things you have to deal with on a daily basis. … You can’t fly off — you have to be level-headed because there are so many things that do happen and you can’t let it get to you one way or the other, and as you go, your team goes too.”
Eberflus: “We set our training camp schedule and got through all that then our preseason schedule came in with the games and we actually had our second one being a Thursday game — a road trip out to Seattle — and that really required some flexibility. But I think going forward, that will have really helped us with our Thursday game during the season, because obviously, we played on Saturday and had the day off, but that short week to prepare our guys for that game. Again, they didn’t play a whole bunch in that game because of the travel aspect of it, but that required some flexibility in terms of ‘Hey, we’re going to do more walk-throughs, more shorter practices, then we got to travel out there on Wednesday.’ I felt the guys handled it really well, the coaching staff was outstanding and logistically, the whole Bears organization handled it really well.”
Hackett: “I don’t necessarily know that I have had a curveball yet. I think there’s been a lot of things that have come up that I haven't had to address in the past. I was very lucky being in Green Bay because any time anything came up, Matt (LaFleur) was always asking my opinion or letting me be privileged enough to hear what was going on, so that really helped me in this process, having been in Green Bay. So, it’s just that there’s more. That’s basically the biggest curveball. Not just focusing on offense, but if something is going on on defense, I have to talk about it. But there’s more, whether it’s a player wanting to talk to you or whatever. So, right now I’m hitting the curveball pretty good, but there are just a lot more curveballs.”
Any additional lessons or points of emphasis that you’ll draw upon this season, or experiences from this first go-round that will stick with you?
Eberflus: “I think that communication is something everybody always needs to work on, and everyone really needs to work on the listening part of it. You have to really have to do a good job of listening to your staff and communicating with that. I enjoy doing that and it’s something that always needs to be worked on because you can never be good enough at that.”
Daboll: “The other thing (that will stick with me) is, I’m a pretty empathetic person as is, but sitting in this seat for the first time and having to tell this player when you’ve been through this trying couple of days of releasing a person who’s given everything they have ... I’ve always been the third or fourth or fifth person to talk to them when they’re released, but now, that’s a crappy part of the job, I would say.”
Hackett: “My dad always used to tell me, ‘Don’t judge any head coach until you’ve sat in that chair,’ and I never judged any head coach and I’m glad that I didn’t because it’s a lot different being in this chair because there are a lot more things that come to your attention. I’m thinking back in my career and remember wondering, now it makes sense why those people reacted the way they did because now I know there was always something else going on.”
McDaniel: “I think one of the things that I’m not sure how often it happens, but I’ve heard stories of people taking the responsibility and owning it, but also putting themselves in a position where they’re not performing at their best because they feel as though they have to do too much. I think part of the formula that I kind of theorized before I got started with this, but it was super evident that I myself will doing nothing even close to alone. It takes motivating the coaches who have to then motivate the players and not overdoing something to the point that my contribution to the team is hurt because I’m strung out and pressing. It’s understanding that I have a big role, but it’s just that – a role – and do rely on all the people that are trying to accomplish the very same thing that I am.”
O’Connell: “I can sit here and lie to you and say, ‘Hey, it’s going to go exactly how we planned, and every week is going to be crystal clear in how the plans come together and it’ll be perfect weeks of preparation,’ but I’ve been around this league long enough to know, and now I’m in a position to know that now it’s not. When there are moments that require us to handle some adversity and have some agility to put the best interest of our team at the forefront, I’m going to have to rely on the people around me, but I’m also in charge of making those decisions for those reasons and those reasons only, and that might not always be easy, and I might be required to make those decisions outside of my comfort zone or do it differently than I’ve planned, but we also have to show we have the ability to overcome whatever’s out in front of us. And that’s why you worry so much about culture and your football philosophy, and you sit back and realize that’s a constant thing that needs attention and emphasis put on, but you feel good knowing where we are today, we’re even further along than I thought we’d be in those two areas and I feel like we’re prepared to start this journey.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: First-time NFL head coaches reflect on 'crash course' entering season
