First off, can you let me know what you’ve been up to since your playing days?
I was a high school football head coach for the past few years – I’m taking a year off this year but I coached my son for a few years and fell in love with coaching.
Were there coaches who helped shape the way you approached coaching?
For sure, Nick Saban, Dick Vermeil and Dom Capers too – they all influenced me. For a long time I didn’t want to be a coach – I was close to my father growing up and my son and I are close. As a coach you don’t usually see your family a lot – I watched the coaches I played for and saw they had no lives. I just got bad vibes from it.
My son is 18 now though – he’s getting some opportunities to do some very cool things. I’ve been divorced since he was five and he lived with me for most of that time, though his mother also lives close by. We were super close and I wanted to make sure I had that time with him. But coaching has grown on me now for sure.
As a former NFL quarterback, do you like the way the quarterback position has changed from a coaching perspective?
Football has evolved so much over the last two decades. It was harder for quarterbacks in my day – most throws were downfield. Now quarterbacks have these inflated completion percentages because so many throws are behind the line of scrimmage. I fought that as a coach – I wanted to do it the NFL way. I didn’t want to use those short throws and bubble screens! But it started growing on me – they are like substitutes for the running game. I’m not a huge Brock Purdy fan but I do like how simple they’ve made it for him. It’s easier now for quarterbacks – there are less audibles and reads.
You played baseball professionally before you were drafted by the NFL – why did you choose football?
I was drafted out of high school to play baseball – I didn’t enjoy school and baseball came easy to me. I played baseball since I was six. Baseball came easy to me. Basketball and football – they were hard! I was a lazy Cali kid!
But when I was drafted in the minors by the Twins, I played 60 games in 70 days. In high school we’d play two games a week. For a 7 p.m. game they’d ask us to be at the stadium at 7 a.m. Why did we have to be there all day? I just wasn’t ready for it.
Contractually the Twins were obligated to pay for college but only if I continued to play baseball. So I decided to play football instead and went to a JUCO college – San Diego Mesa college. I fell in love with football then. It was harder but I loved it. As a Cali kid early on I wanted it easy, but as my body and mind matured I had a lot of success at San Diego Mesa and thought I might even get drafted from there!
Were there mentors you had early on in your NFL career?
Mark Rypien was awesome but he was going through a lot of stuff and wasn’t always there. I took Steve Walsh’s job – he wasn’t a nice guy. He was sneaky. I played well in the preseason and was competing for the starting job in St. Louis – but Walsh just signed a huge contract. He was very smart but physically though he couldn’t do it – he didn’t have the arm strength. He started talking to the vets behind my back telling them why I shouldn’t be the starter. So I didn’t have much help there.
When I was traded to Baltimore, Matt Cavanaugh became my first real mentor.
How did you end up in Baltimore?
Dick Vermeil had two trade offers and offered me the choice and I chose Baltimore. I figured I had a better opportunity there – I just had to beat out Scott Mitchell! I thought I had won the job but I wasn’t Brian Billick’s guy. I was miserable – I started off as their third string quarterback but they eventually came to me and I had a lot of success that season. I think he just didn’t like me at first – I was thuggish then. I didn’t come from the nicest part of San Diego – at first I thought I was Tupac and he didn’t like how I walked to the huddle and called plays.
After I signed a new contract with them Billick called me in the offseason and got my answering machine. My recording said “Hey this is T-Banks, I’ll get back atcha! Gone!” He didn’t like that – he said I was a franchise quarterback and needed to change that. That you don’t know who’s calling you. When I was with the Rams I wore a durag and had a Rottweiler named Feloni. When you’re winning that stuff is ok – but when you’re not winning it’s not. It took me a while to understand that – that there’s a lot more to playing quarterback than a perfect spiral.
Were you very aware of the Steelers rivalry then?
To me it was like the experience I had when I was at Michigan State and played Michigan. That first time I wasn’t really getting the big deal – I was a California guy. The same with the Ravens-Steelers – the first game wasn’t a big deal but then I got it by the second game.
I actually first played the Steelers when I was with the Rams my rookie year. Lloyd, Woodson… the list goes on. That was my first time playing against the 3-4 and it looked like they had 15 defenders. I had a hard time figuring out how they could blitz and make me throw hot. How was that happening? They beat the brakes off of us. We traded Jerome Bettis to them that year and he went nutso on us. It took the entire defense to tackle him – you could tell he had a big chip on his shoulder.
When I played them next it was with the Ravens and I was ok with the 3-4 by then. We had never beaten Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh then – I was the first Ravens quarterback to do it – also against the Titans and Jaguars. I had the worst first half of my career – I was skipping passes and had no idea why. But that second half we came out and I hit Qadry Ismail for 76 yards then two more big plays to Qadry. I was only 8-26, but I threw for over 300 yards and three touchdowns! The completion percentage wasn’t good at all but I did what I was known for – making big plays.
Any specific memories stand out from those games?
The Rams game – I remember that first half feeling like I was shredding the defense and I completed a pass to Isaac Bruce downfield. I ran by Levon Kirkland and yelled “I’m not a normal rookie QB!” He gave me a look – like you get from your father when he’s upset at you – and I just tucked my tail between my legs and ran into the huddle! I didn’t say another word to him!
I was 2-1 versus the Steelers as a starter. Of course I played versus Kordell and Kent Graham, so that didn’t hurt!
Do you like the way the NFL has changed – I know you alluded to it a bit before?
I’m not a fan of the way they have handcuffed the defense now. I understand they want to take the head out of the game – especially as a father of a son who plays. But there needs to be a happy medium. Back in my day you needed to be a stud to get those calls – I never got them as a rookie but if you sneezed on Steve Young you got a flag.
You can’t turn quarterbacks into punters and kickers. Especially with RPOs – things just happen too fast. You look at replays and think guys could hold up on hits, but the game happens much too fast. I hope all of those rules evolve. I know what its like as the defense, having to tackle guys after all of those interceptions!