Who are these "Quality Control" guys? Read on.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

N.F.L. Quality-Control Coaches Learn It All
By GREG BISHOP

The modern N.F.L. quality-control coach was born in 1990 in San Francisco, where an offensive guru named Mike Holmgren solved two problems with one hire.

Holmgren wanted to transfer the 49ers’ playbook, a series of sketches copied and stapled together, onto a computer. To do this, he hired Jon Gruden, a young coach he wanted on the staff. But before Gruden could celebrate, he called his father.

“What the heck is a quality-control coach?” Gruden said his father asked.

He found out soon enough. Gruden made $500 a month, slept most nights at the office and drew plays on the computer using the program Super Paint 1.0. He fetched coffee, played gofer during practice and studied old tapes of Coach Bill Walsh installing his famous West Coast offense.

Learning an N.F.L. system from the ground level prepared Gruden for his own rise to head coach with Oakland and Tampa Bay. Same as it did for nine head coaches hired in the past four years, including five this season.

These coaches received no recognition for long hours and little pay. But each understood the importance of the position. Because for all the pageantry and complexity of an N.F.L. game, head coaches make decisions based on information provided by their quality-control coaches.

“We worked quadruple everybody else, but we got to feel like a coach,” said Todd Haley, now the coach in Kansas City, who worked in quality control with the Jets. “We had responsibility. It’s the greatest job in football as far as learning.”

Ben Kotwica wanted to coach in the N.F.L. but wondered where his experience would fit. Kotwica served as a captain and played linebacker at Army before beginning a military career in which he guided Apache attack helicopters in Iraq, earned a Bronze Star and flew convoy-security operations escorts for President George W. Bush.

In quality control, where Kotwica worked with the Jets the past two seasons, he found duties tailored to his military training. The job required multitasking, breaking down film up to five weeks in advance, coaching and analyzing data. It required following orders, and producing reports that ran 50 to 200 pages for coaches.

Better than anyone, Kotwica knows that football is not war. But he found a correlation in the preparation, most evident in the information and technology.

“The computer work and the data analysis that go into it, you’d think you were planning a deep attack mission in Baghdad,” Kotwica said.

The concepts of quality control date to Tom Landry, an engineer by training who built the Dallas Cowboys into a dynasty by using statistical analysis far ahead of its time. Advances in technology, in the systems and analysis available to teams, have led to an evolution in quality control. Gruden estimated the amount of information teams can generate is 20 times as great as when he worked for the 49ers.

Like the sons of company presidents, quality-control coaches start in football’s equivalent of the mail room. Most teams, including the Jets, have at least two quality-control coaches — one offense, one defense. The Jets had four last season under Eric Mangini, a quality-control veteran who is now the head coach in Cleveland.

Before games, head coaches who once worked on the bottom rung sometimes share their stories. Like Steve Spagnuolo, the coach in St. Louis who often slept in what he called a haunted dungeon at the old Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Or Brad Childress, the Minnesota coach who returned to the same offices one night to find a dead rat on the floor.

Haley shared a 6-by-6-foot office with the wide-bodied Charlie Weis and a cot. He ran penalty laps with Mangini whenever they messed up the practice schedule made by Bill Parcells. Even Kotwica performed duties unique to quality control, like picking up the cane of the special-teams coordinator Mike Westhoff when he threw it in anger.

Miami Coach Tony Sparano drew 400 pages of notes into a computer while working quality control in Cleveland in 1999. After 15 years spent coaching at the college level, Sparano wanted to capitalize on his first N.F.L. coaching job. So he worked on the assignment at all hours, in hotel lobbies, on airplanes, as nights faded into mornings.

When he finished, Sparano said he felt as if he had won the lottery. And as he climbed the coaching ranks, he took the notebook with him, a reminder of where he started.

“That job was the most valuable experience I had,” Sparano said. “That was my first piece of work in this league. Quality control rounded me, made me a better coach.”

For all the odd jobs, the full days and the minuscule paychecks, quality-control coaches can see their effect on the field. It happens when an opponent gains 6 yards on first down and the coaches respond by sending in an extra linebacker because the numbers indicate what will probably happen next.

Quality-control coaches also learn N.F.L. systems long before they install their own. From the hundreds of hours they spend watching film, they learn the intricacies of football, the subtle differences between victories and losses. They learn how teams organize practices, run their off-season programs and incorporate weight training. They are exposed to the scouting, video and personnel departments, and the front office.

They are immersed in football 18 hours each day, and when they interview for head coaching jobs 10 or 15 years later, they draw on that experience.

“Every time a new approach is introduced or a new way to use technology is discovered, every quality-control coach in the country cringes,” said Raheem Morris, the head coach for Tampa Bay. “I feel their pain.”

Morris also feels their pride, and like most who went from the bottom to the top, he fills those positions with coaches who remind him of himself — hungry, computer savvy, perfect for grooming in his system.

These days, Gruden says he has noticed two trends about these detail-oriented positions: special-teams coordinators ask for their own quality-control coaches, and quality-control coaches now have agents.

But before any of them can take over their own teams, they must do the work of the men who came before. So when Gruden once needed to transfer thousands of pages onto his computer, he knew exactly where to turn.

He handed them to the quality-control coach.

[TrickyNicky]

Did I ever tell you about my good friend Reed Post?

[Hammock Parties]

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Must have been posted by one of my ignore douchebags.

Oh well!

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by GoChiefs

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by Raised On Riots

Must have been posted by one of my ignore douchebags.

Oh well!

You have GoChiefs on ignore?

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by Raised On Riots

Must have been posted by one of my ignore douchebags.

Oh well!

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Originally Posted by GoChiefs

Watch your step, pup.

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by Raised On Riots

Watch your step, pup.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Oh we can do this.

[Hammock Parties]

OK...THAT...was genious.

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