From Tom Reed:
How Mike Pettine's career gamble transformed him from a high school coach into coach of the Cleveland Browns
BEREA, Ohio – Twelve years ago, Baltimore Ravens coach
Brian Billick sat in a room with Mike Pettine and begged him not to take the entry-level position he was offering.
Why would a successful high school football coach in his 30s with a wife and small kids leave the security of a good teaching job in suburban Philadelphia to work in the Ravens’ video-operations department?
Pettine was willing to uproot his family, accept a 50 percent pay cut and dip into his retirement fund to finance a new home -- and a dream of coaching in the NFL.
“When I came in to offer him the job
I did my damnedest to talk him out of it,” Billick said. “I was like, ‘This is what it is, it doesn’t pay much and there’s no guarantee of where this is going to lead.’ I told him, ‘If I’m you, I don’t understand why you would take this job.’ ”
On Thursday afternoon, the 47-year-old
Pettine stood on a dais in the Browns' fieldhouse and faced similar questions. He had just agreed to become head coach of a franchise that people around the league reportedly term “radioactive,” a franchise that fired its last coach after one season, a franchise that saw at least three candidates withdraw their names from consideration.
The Browns have had more owners (three) than winning seasons (two) since their 1999 NFL repatriation. Berea is to quarterbacks and coaches what the New Jersey swamplands are to mobsters running afoul with their dons.
Why would someone else risk being a first-time head coach in this environment?
Because as Pettine explained, he’s comfortable “betting” on himself.
Growing up under the roof of a demanding prep coach steeled him for future challenges. You think operating a sideline printer on game days for NFL coaches is humbling work? Imagine having your old man make you duck-walk up and down a football field in front of teammates in practice.
The bald and goateed Pettine, who looks like he could patrol a cell block, isn’t afraid of long odds or adverse to public scrutiny.
When he was a high school junior, community members petitioned against him starting at quarterback. ESPN aired documentaries about him coaching and losing games to his famous father.
And, no matter how much success Pettine has enjoyed in stops with the Ravens, New York Jets and Buffalo Bills -- the last two as a defensive coordinator – he acknowledges the stigma attached to his unconventional route to the NFL.
“I coached, especially early on, with a bit of a chip on my shoulder,” Pettine said. “Whether it was real or not, in my mind (I) was thinking that people saw me as just a high-school coach. Here’s a guy trying to make it in the NFL, but he’s just a high-school coach in the NFL. That drove me.”
Maybe Pettine is destined to fail like Pat Shurmur and Rob Chudzinski before him, an uninspired choice in another Browns coaching search that rarely attracts the proven winners ownership promises. Even Pettine was ready to pull out if the club had waited past the Super Bowl to name a coach.
But he’s here now, armed with a four-year deal and
secure in the knowledge he’s already won the biggest gamble of his life.
Life in the shadows
Filled with trepidation, Mike Pettine Sr. drove his son through the winding roads of Owings Mills, Md., to a secluded site that looks better suited for the Batcave than an NFL team headquarters.
The Ravens' complex is a fortress nestled in a wooded area. Assistant coach Matt Cavanaugh, who met Pettine when he was a grad assistant at the University of Pittsburgh, greeted them.
“We’ll take care of him,” Mike Sr. recalled Cavanaugh saying.
None of it felt right to one of the winningest coaches in Pennsylvania prep football history. The father didn’t know the half of it. He was unaware of the pay cut, the 401(k) withdraw and Billick’s warnings.
“Junior told me some white lies,” Mike Sr. told cleveland.com this week in a phone interview.
“He was the risk taker and I wasn’t. I had opportunities, but I didn’t want to move my family. It was a track I never wanted to take.”
Father and son share a name and a love for football. Theirs, however, is a complex relationship, one that’s grown stronger since days spent together as coach and quarterback. The dad had both mentored and maddened his son as patriarch of the dynastic Central Bucks West High program in suburban Philadelphia. He won four state Class AAAA championships over 33 years and amassed a 327-42-4 record before his 1999 retirement.
Pettine, who began splicing C.B. West game film at age 8, said his coaching foundation is rooted in his father’s teaching. Not schematically, but
in his attention to detail and common-sense approach. Those who know the family well say “Junior,” as many call him, strikes a balance between stern and fun-loving with his players. That was seldom the case with the no-nonsense father, especially when coaching his only son.
Mike Sr. admits he’s “ashamed” at how he treated Pettine at times in wanting to show no favoritism.
“It could be brutal,” said Mike Carey, a longtime C.B. West assistant. “He was hard on Junior and he definitely toughened him up.”
Carey recalls the coach making an example of his son during a junior season in which some fans in Doylestown, Pa., charged the coach with nepotism. After a mistake in practice, the father cleared the field and made Pettine walk up and down it in a squat position like a duck. It’s a grueling exercise to endure for 20 yards, let alone 200.
That season taught Pettine a valuable lesson regarding outsiders’ opinions. The petition wanting him out as quarterback stung until his dad helped narrow his focus.
“For me, that was a lot for a teenage kid to handle, and it bothered me,” Pettine said. “It really started to affect me on the field. That’s when he grabbed me and said, ‘Listen, you have no control over that, so don’t waste another second thinking about it or stressing about it. The things you have control over, focus on them and be full-speed ahead.’ ”
Father and son argued so much that Pettine’s mother, Joyce, banned football talk in her house. Instead, they stopped in a middle-school parking lot after practices where Mike Sr. concedes, “I read him the riot act.”
Pettine earned all-state honors as a senior, throwing for 1,500 yards and 15 touchdowns and finishing his career as a free safety with 21 interceptions. But C.W. Bucks went 9-2 in his last season as quarterback – the team would win its next 50-plus games – with Pettine absorbing plenty of blame from the community.
“Playing for (Dad) was a rough experience,” said Pettine, who went on to play at the University of Virginia. “I really wanted to get away from football after I was done playing for him, but after a while ended up circling back and just fell in love with the game.
“That’s what I’m most passionate about and it’s something that, again, he gave me the advice that I think a lot of good parents give: Find a job that you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
After college, Pettine served as Mike Sr.’s assistant for several years before working as a graduate assistant at Pitt. In 1995, he became a first-time head coach at William Tennett High, turning around the program before accepting a job at North Penn High, a large school that shared a conference with powerhouse C.B. West.
Money was so tight for Pettine and his growing family that dad loaned him a car dubbed the “Blue Meanie.”
“It was a piece-of-junk Buick or Oldsmobile that they hand painted,” said current North Penn coach Dick Beck, a prep teammate and longtime Pettine friend. “He’d parked it in the teachers' lot, and people complained because they thought it was a student’s car.”
Beck busts chops the way only old buddies can.
“Junior looks like Bronko Nagurski now with that bald head, but he was a pretty boy in high school,” Beck said. “He played basketball and was the 3-pointer shooter that never passed. To look at him, you would think he was the guy inside grabbing the rebounds, but that wasn’t Junior.”
Beck was on the North Penn staff that won 45 games during Pettine’s five seasons. Once again, he resurrected a downtrodden program, but could not topple C.B. West, losing to his father all five times.
The family rivalry riveted a region and became the centerpiece of two documentaries. “The Season,” chronicled North Penn’s 1999 campaign; and ESPN’s “The Last Game” focused on the father’s final team.
The films produce several wrenching father-and-son scenes, perhaps none more captivating than after their final game, a 21-0 district final verdict, in which they meet at midfield and Mike Sr. says, “That was your last shot, buddy.”
“The ESPN piece, there were some hardcore moments in that,” Pettine Jr. said.
“The only thing I was not appreciative of in that was they filmed 500 hours and edited it down to five. They took really every flipout I had during the season, and I looked like Coach Kilmer from Varsity Blues. I was the devil, but I got a lot of feedback from around the country because ... it was on ESPN, it was football, high school football. Hard-core football fans loved it.”
But even with his father in retirement and plenty of job security, Pettine yearned for more from the game.
He spent his mornings drawing up plays while working as the district’s audio-visual coordinator. He reconnected with Cavanaugh, who told him of an opening in the Ravens’ three-man video staff.
There was no promise of coaching. It was menial work normally performed by enterprising would-be coaches in their 20s. But Pettine took the chance his dad would not.
“It shows you how confident Junior was in his abilities,” Beck said. “You wanna talk about a risk – making that move with a wife and three young kids. He had just got vested and was probably making $65,000.”
The coach had slid all his chips to the center of the table.
From the bottom up
Not long after Pettine’s arrival in Baltimore, Beck received a phone call from his excited friend.
“Junior told me, ‘I found this coach and I’m going to hook my wagon to his star,’ ” Beck recalled. It was the Ravens’ defensive-line coach. His name: Rex Ryan.
The two men hit it off. Each knew how to have fun with players. Each was the son of a legendary coach. Buddy Ryan was the architect of the 1985 Chicago Bears' “46 defense.”
Pettine drew Ryan's attention with his work ethic. No task was too small. No job order too large.
On game days,
Pettine took presnap photos sent to a sideline printer/fax machine and affixed down-and-distance information to the pictures before running them to assistant coaches.
Years spent toiling for a hard-boiled father was paying off.
“I told him,
‘I don’t want you to become a pain in the ass where you’re constantly trying to work your way into one of those (coaching) positions. If it happens, it will happen organically,’ ” Billick said.
“He went about it the right way. Whatever job came up, he did it. And as people recognized his competence, more people had him doing things for them. Rex saw that.”
Ryan made Pettine his defensive-line assistant in 2004. A year later, he was named outside linebackers coach, a job he retained until Ryan became Jets head coach in 2009, and took Pettine with him as defensive coordinator. His ex-wife and their three children, Megan, Ryan and Katie, still reside in Baltimore.
In their first two years together in New York, Ryan and Pettine reached the AFC title game.
“He and Rex meshed well personally and professionally,” Billick said. “They developed a relationship that typically happens. You have to latch onto somebody in terms of making a place for yourself in the organization.”
A season ago, Pettine emerged from Ryan’s shadow, taking a job as defensive coordinator with the Bills. Despite a 6-10 mark,
Buffalo finished 10th in total defense and second in sacks and interceptions. The Bills sent four defenders to the Pro Bowl, and Pettine produced measured improvement in a handful of underachievers.
Ironically, Buffalo allowed a season-high 37 points in a loss to the Browns, a game that included 17 points scored directly or indirectly from punt and interception returns.
"Some games you shut out, they go to dark places in your brain and you don't want to retrieve them, and the Browns game is one of them,” he said.
Few believe Pettine was a top candidate when the coaching search started. Many seem underwhelmed by the choice, which is more a reflection on Browns' ownership and management. One must wonder what Pettine was thinking as Jimmy Haslam referenced his 0-5 record versus Mike Sr. in the owner’s opening remarks. Who needs Jay Leno making wisecracks when the Browns boss is feeding the public material?
The new coach remains undaunted. So does his dad. Mike Sr. recently addressed the notion his son made it in the NFL as a caretaker of Ryan’s defense.
“I know perception is one thing and reality is another,” the father said.
“I was a grinder, and Junior got to where he is because he’s really smart. He gets that from his mother.”
Billick said his former assistant
will bring “toughness” to Berea and demand player accountability. Cynical Browns have heard it all before.
Who can make this team a winner? Mike Pettine is betting it’s him.
http://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.ssf/2014/01/mike_pettines_career_gamble_to.html
