The Quarterback Whisperer Page 10

  Tommy understood every nuance of our offense, and Ben was still learning its basics. So we certainly had to scale back the number of different things we did. Yet, even in his first NFL action, it was abundantly clear that the game wasn’t too big for this 6'5'', 240-pound rookie. He looked like he belonged on the field for one reason—he did.

  The entire staff knew it. The next week we flew to Miami, where Ben made his first start. We landed only hours before Hurricane Jeanne blew through South Florida. While we were told that our team hotel was hurricane-proof, that night the electricity went out. Transformers blew up all around us. The hotel staff gave our players flashlights, and then something else happened out of the stormy blue—our team bonded together.

  Guys ran through the halls and up and down stairwells playing flashlight tag like a bunch of twelve-year-olds on vacation. When a generator cranked up and pushed power to the kitchen, a group of players descended on it and gorged on ice cream. We all had a blast. “Chemistry” is an overused word. But that night our guys really began to care about each other. When you truly care about your teammates, you become accountable to them. Shared accountability, trust in one another, loyalty among one another creates unity of effort, teamwork—in short, a team.

  The rain poured throughout the game, but Ben loved it—thrived in it like a big duck. In the fourth quarter he did what he always did: After completing two key third-down passes to Plaxico Burress and Hines Ward, he hit Hines on a seven-yard touchdown pass—the only touchdown of the game. We won 13–3.

  We ended up going 13–0 in the regular season with a damn rookie as our starting quarterback. Fucking unbelievable. At the time the NFL record for most wins by a rookie starting at quarterback was six, held by Chris Chandler and Joe Ferguson. Ben vaporized that stat.

  Ben had the body of a linebacker and yet he could run like a tight end. He was just so damn athletic. When you have a quarterback who can move around the pocket and extend plays, it adds a dimension to your offense that is very difficult to defend against because a defensive coordinator can’t really prepare for it. Even from the perspective of the Pittsburgh coaching staff, sometimes it looked like Ben was out there making up plays like he was in some vacant-lot game, the way he scrambled around, pointed to where he wanted receivers to run, and would then just sling the ball all over the place. For us, he was fun to watch, even as we held our breath. As a young player he took far too many sacks, but that’s because he genuinely believed he could evade danger, remain upright, and throw a touchdown pass on every play. That was how much confidence he had in his own ability.

  Ben had an elite arm, no question. What separated him from so many others was his ability to pass with accuracy when on the move. So many times quarterbacks lose their ability to thread the needle once their feet start moving. But not Ben. He could be just as accurate running away from a 320-pound defensive lineman as he could standing statue-like in the pocket.

  At Miami University he played in a spread formation that typically featured three or four wide receivers fanned out across the field. This was why we planned to sit him during his first season. We wanted to teach him the basics of our pro-style attack and get him comfortable taking snaps from under center.

  But life in the NFL—just like life in the real world—rarely goes according to plan. So when Tommy went down with his elbow injury, we handed the keys to the offense to Ben. At first, we told him to drive the car at a slow rate of speed and not take any chances; just keep the wheels on the road. But then as we won game after game after game, we basically told him, “Okay, you’ve grown up before our eyes. The car is yours. Drive it as fast as you can without wrecking the thing.”

  Ben led us to the Super Bowl in his second year in the league. But inside the locker room it was hardly all rosy for him.

  During the season Ben often acted immature, as if all the stories that documented the greatness of “Big Ben” had gone to his head. He wasn’t signing as many autographs for teammates as he should; some days he would sign, some days he wouldn’t. Late in the season head coach Bill Cowher asked a few veterans to speak to the team before we played Detroit late in the season. At the time we needed to win our final five games to make the playoffs.

  Hines Ward, Aaron Smith, Jerome Bettis, and Joey Porter addressed the team. Each guy talked about what we needed to do to win, and Joey zeroed in on Ben. Using blunt language, he told Ben that if he was going to be our leader, he needed to be “one of us.” To his credit, Ben listened—though he didn’t really have a choice. After that moment he became a different person. He grew up fast.

  Everything changed for Ben. He started wooing his offensive line by taking them out to top-flight dinners and giving them meaningful gifts. He became the leader of our team, our Pied Piper. All young quarterbacks in the NFL have to grow up, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one mature as fast as Ben. That all went back to Joey’s advice to him.

  On February 5, 2006, we faced the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL in Detroit. We were up 14–10 in the fourth quarter and moving the ball down the field when I mentioned to Ken Whisenhunt, our offensive coordinator and play caller, that a reverse pass would work. I had been analyzing the movements of the Seahawks defensive backs and was virtually dead certain that they would run toward the line of scrimmage at the moment they saw the reverse. Then, I believed, Hines Ward would be open on a deep pass. No risk it, no biscuit.

  “If we make it to midfield with a first down I think we should call it,” I told Wiz over the headset.

  It’s so important for every coach—and every player, for that matter—to know his particular role on the team and accept that role. During this season my role was to protect Ken Whisenhunt and make his job as easy as possible. So one of my main duties was to keep our starting wide receivers, Hines Ward and Plaxico Burress, off Ken’s ass. Both Hines and Plaxico were strong-willed individuals, and they would get upset when they thought they weren’t getting enough passes thrown their way. But I also made sure they vented to me, their receivers coach, and not to Ken, who was busy calling the game.

  Earlier that season I had also talked to Bill Cowher about interfering with Ken’s play calls. There were a few times early on when, over the headset, Bill would hear a play call by Ken and say something like, “Here comes a fumble.” I eventually went into Bill’s office and explained that the head coach can’t undercut the confidence of the play caller. “Look, you got a young play caller calling plays for the first time,” I said to him. “You don’t want him calling plays to please you. You want him to call plays to beat the other team. I’ve heard you say ‘Oh my God’ on the headset after a play call. You can’t do that. You need to concentrate on your job and Kenny needs to concentrate on his job.”

  “I really do that?” Bill asked.

  “Yes, Coach,” I said

  After that, Bill kept his knee-jerk, oh-my-God thoughts to himself during games.

  During the Super Bowl, after I told Ken my idea for the reverse pass, he agreed to call it. Even though it was the first time all season that we’d run the play, it worked to perfection: a reverse to wide receiver Antwaan Randle El, a former college quarterback at Indiana, who then threw the ball deep down the field to a wide open Hines Ward. Just as I suspected, the Seahawks safeties charged at Antwaan once he had the ball. Hines caught the pass for a 43-yard touchdown and we never looked back. We won 21–10. Ben, at age twenty-three, became the youngest quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl.

  My parents had been with me the week of the game. They really enjoyed riding the elevator up and down with our players in the team hotel. I mean, they wouldn’t get off it. They loved talking to players and having photos taken with them. A player came up to me during the week and said, “Hey, B.A., I just rode with your mom on the elevator.” And I replied, “Is she still on that damn thing?”

  As soon as the game was over, the confetti fell on us as world champions. I quickly looked up into the stands to find my parents. Our eyes eventually loc
ked, and the smile on my dad’s face was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen since the look he had a quarter century earlier when I was introduced at a Temple University press conference as the newly hired youngest head coach in the country. This topped that. It’s like he finally knew that his son—the one who got kicked out of high school—had made his way in the world. I was aware enough to freeze that image of my beaming dad in my mind, because it was like my entire career and path in life had been vindicated and validated. All sons, no matter how old, want the approval of their fathers.

  My dad was so important to me. I called him after every game. When I was the head coach at Temple and we beat Pittsburgh in 1984 for the first time in about forty-five years, he was in the stadium to witness it. He was always there for the special moments in my life.

  After we won the Super Bowl, I took my mom and dad to our team party in the hotel outside Detroit. They were wearing Super Bowl Champion T-shirts and both had ear-to-ear grins on their faces. We eventually bumped into Bill Cowher. He leaned over and told my dad above the noise, “What a great call your son made. He’s a hell of a coach.”

  My dad smiled brilliantly again.

  That Super Bowl was the last game he ever saw me coach. He died of a heart attack a few months later at age seventy-nine. But those moments and experiences after that Super Bowl are something I’ll always cherish, just seeing how proud my dad was. This is football at its best, bringing a son and father close, sharing a bonding experience that can be savored for a lifetime.

  At my dad’s funeral I put a little bottle of gin and two golf balls in his pocket as he lay in his coffin. He always carried two balls with him because he always wanted to be prepared to hit that mulligan. And that’s really how life is—you always need to be ready to take another swing if your first shot doesn’t work out the way you hoped it would.

  The year after we won the Super Bowl, Ken Whisenhunt was hired to be the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. I took Ken’s place and became the Steelers’ offensive coordinator. That meant that my relationship with Ben was about to change.

  Ben and I did not always see eye to eye. He thought I had yelled at the receivers too much, and he told me so during one of our first meetings. “Dude, you’re the quarterback, man,” I replied. “I don’t yell at QBs. I gotta yell at the knucklehead receivers! They won’t listen if you don’t.”

  Ben laughed, and that broke the ice. But I still didn’t think he worked hard enough on his craft. Sure, we had just won the Super Bowl, but Ben’s fundamentals—such as his footwork and simple things like running out a handoff by acting like he still had the ball—still weren’t as good as I felt they should be. Plus his stroke needed some work. In his first two years he had a great defense behind him and basically he just had to win third downs. Now I wanted to make him into a complete quarterback.

  Ben and I had never taken the time to get to know each other on a personal level. To change that, I played golf with him at Treesdale, a country club in Pittsburgh. Later, I invited him to our new club in Reynolds Plantation, Georgia.

  I like to think that I can get along with everybody, that I’m as easygoing as a Sunday afternoon drive. In 1970, Virginia Tech assistant coach John Devlin handpicked me to become the first white player to room with a black player in school history. I didn’t think twice about breaking this segregation barrier; my closest friends in my old neighborhood in York were black. I was the quarterback on our Pee Wee football team—I had snow-white hair and was one of the few Caucasian kids on the roster—and the mothers of the black players called me “Whitey.” I thought it was hilarious.

  At Tech I became fast friends with my new roommate, James Barber; we hung a sign on our dorm-room door that read “Salt and Pepper Inc.” We wore each other’s clothes and hit it off as if we’d known each other for years. A few times white players would come by and ask me, “What’s it like living with a black guy?” I’d roll my eyes and shoot back, “I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot better than living with you. Your shit is dirty all the time and James is the greatest guy in the world.”

  “You’ve got to remember that this was Virginia Tech and there’s a lot of southern kids,” Chris says. “The coaches were looking around and saw Bruce, this Yankee guy who seemed really cool and got along with everyone. Bruce grew up in an integrated neighborhood and he’s never thought anything about color. It’s still that way today. It doesn’t even enter into the equation.”

  James and I became graduate assistants together at Virginia Tech. We grew so close that Chris and I babysat James’s twin boys, Ronde and Tiki—future NFL stars. Tiki was sick a lot as a kid—he had fevers and convulsions—and so Chris and I would take care of Ronde when the family was at the hospital with Tiki. I’ll never forget bouncing Ronde on my knee for hours. Even today, I get a big kick out of hugging those Barber twins.

  “Bruce can talk street with anyone, and if he needs to, he can be the most intellectual guy in the room,” New York Jets head coach Todd Bowles says. Todd played for me at Temple in the mid-1980s and he was my defensive coordinator at Arizona in 2013 and ’14. “Because of Bruce’s unique background, he can reach absolutely everyone on a football roster,” Todd says, “and that’s the key to building chemistry and building a winning team.”

  I knew the key to reaching Ben was winning his trust—just like I had won the trust of James Barber back at Tech. As always, I did my background research on Ben.

  Ben’s parents divorced when he was two. He lived with his father, Ken. When he was eight he was shooting baskets in his driveway as he waited for his mother, Ida, to pick him up for her visit. But his mom never arrived. She was involved in a crash with a pickup truck and later passed away due to her injuries.

  But Ben grew up in a loving family in Findlay, a town of about 37,000 in northwest Ohio. He called his stepmother “Mom.” His dad, a former pitcher and quarterback at Georgia Tech, helped him excel at sports. The people I spoke to said that in junior high Ben would shoot baskets for hours on end at his local rec center. He grew into a fabulous multisport athlete; he excelled in football, basketball, and baseball. Remember, that is typically a key to the development of a young quarterback, a predictor of his success.

  Ben was something of a leader as well. He didn’t drink booze in high school, and when he was at high school parties and the police were called due to a noise complaint, he typically was the one chosen by the crowd to speak to the arriving officers. On the field as a senior he was a sight to see. He threw 54 touchdown passes, including eight in one game, and passed for more than 4,100 yards. It was easy to see that this kid possessed the raw tools to become a future successful NFL quarterback.

  Everyone I chatted with described Ben as an intense competitor; whether he was playing a game of H-O-R-S-E or table tennis or pool, he was exceedingly driven to win. That is another hallmark characteristic that most future NFL quarterbacks display as young men.

  But I do think Ben had trouble letting people get close to him. One exception was when he played at Miami of Ohio and he became extremely tight with head coach Terry Hoeppner. Coach Hoeppner created a family atmosphere in his program—his grandchildren often attended practice—and Ben grew to consider him like a second father. I know Ben took it very hard when Coach Hoeppner died in 2007 from complications of a brain tumor. It was as if Ben had again lost a parent.

  Coach Hoeppner meant everything to Ben. They met in the summer of 1999 after Ben had finished his junior year at Findlay High in Ohio. Ben had spent that season as a receiver at the varsity squad—the coach’s son was the quarterback—but at a football camp Hoeppner spotted Ben throwing passes and quickly realized that the kid had arm talent. Ben had played quarterback on the jayvee team at Findlay, but he didn’t start on varsity until his senior season. He threw six touchdown passes in his first game, and that was enough for Hoeppner to offer him a scholarship. Ohio State later recruited Ben, but by then it was too late: He had committed to play for Hoeppner. And this is the thi
ng about Ben—he’s a man of his word.

  Ben left Miami of Ohio after his junior year. Coach Hoeppner went with him to the draft in New York City. The two were so close that Ben would call him every Friday night before our games on Sunday. So I knew there was a big void in Ben’s life after Coach Hoeppner passed away.

  But I never want to be a father figure to my quarterbacks. I’ve got my own kids. I want to be the cool uncle you’d like to have a drink with, the guy you can spill your guts to without fearing reprisal. And that’s what I told Ben shortly after I became his offensive coordinator.

  Once Ben was on the golf course with me at Reynolds Plantation, on Lake Oconee eighty miles east of Atlanta, I calmly started talking to him, man to man. For a few hours we drank cold beer—we both enjoy doing that—and we swung the sticks. We got to know each other.

  I told Ben about my own rebellious streak, explaining how I’d been kicked out of York Catholic High as a senior after I’d been caught swilling beer with a few of my football buddies. I felt that I had been unfairly singled out—thirty players went on a retreat; twenty-nine got suspended for three days and one got booted from school—but that was the hand I had been dealt.

  But that incident was a turning point for me. Before then, I had never really thought about what distant horizons might have in store for me. I knew I didn’t want to be a welder—I worked that job one summer and it was as hard as shit—but I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life. This changed the moment I saw the disappointment on my dad’s face when we were told I was being expelled from school. Because from that instant forward, I finally realized what had to be my life’s mission: to win back the honor of my family name. I still didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but damn it, I was determined to become a success.