What prompted your return when Coach Drake passed away?
The year before the Steelers had asked me to come in and work with some of the young wide receivers – to observe and consult – but I had other things going on and couldn’t do it. But they called and asked me to come in the following year and I was able to do so. Darryl and I were also friends.
When Darryl passed away, he, I and James Daniels were all living in the same suite together. We used to all meet in the morning for breakfast and talk before our 8 am meetings.
Well, James and I were at breakfast talking and we were wondering where Darryl was. He should have been there by then. We called up to the room but there was no response, so we went up to the room. When we went in, James found him and told me Darryl wasn’t responding to him. He called the trainers and I went to tell Coach Tomlin. I told him Darryl wasn’t responding and he said “What?!” I told him again and he went up – the trainers were there trying to revive him and then the paramedics came, but they couldn’t revive him.
What happened after that?
They asked me to stay – I was in the receivers room helping already with those guys – it was a very young room. Diontae Johnson and James Washington were two guys they asked me to spend more time with before Darryl passed – so I already knew them and was working with them.
When they asked me to stay I said yes. It wasn’t about the money – the Steelers were always such an awesome organization – such great people – some of the people I knew in ’98 were still there. I had to say yes and help them stuck it out.
How did you handle working with those young guys and getting them through that – especially as Darryl was a friend of yours as well?
For me, I enjoyed working with and developing young guys. Helping them through growing pains. Every player is different – growing up they all had different things they went through. I want to get to know them as people – sometimes they don’t know who to turn to and I wanted to help them and be there for them.
Diontae – his mom had just recently passed away – he was a bit standoffish and quiet at first. I had to get to know him so he could feel comfortable with me.
James went through some tough times the year before and that was hard for him. The main thing for him was to boost his confidence – to get him to be confident again in what he could do.
I think they both ended up playing well and having good seasons.
What did you do to help them through all of that?
We would say a prayer before each meeting – something from the Scriptures or something else – me or player would say one. We talked a lot about life- that it wasn’t easy sometimes. Everyone goes through something and you have to make sure you trust and believe in yourself. We talked about that – that you can’t dwell and lose focus on the job. We discussed life and opened up with each other. We let each other know that we were all in it together.
After we exercised we all said “Coach Drake!” and we had his picture hanging up in the receivers room. He raised some of those guys. When I came in he asked me to talk to them about my experiences as a coach. They asked me about the guys I coached – about the four Hall of Fame receivers I coached – Owens, Jerry {Rice}, Moss and Carter. They wanted to know about those guys.
What did you tell them?
I said that none of those guys ever griped about working hard – no matter how hard we had them work. In fact we sometimes had to slow them down.
That was the mindset I told them they had to have. JuJu was a pup then himself – he wanted to know too and I told him they never complained. That sometimes things don’t go your way, but it’s how you respond that matters.
Then we lost Ben to injury – it was tough. We had young quarterbacks and it got very tough for the receivers. We had to hold them all together and not let them get frustrated. We had to get them to trust the process and held that room together. It was tough, to be honest. But their attitude was great.