For a pure football man as blunt as the rock he implores his Detroit Lions to pound every day, Rod Marinelli arrives as the most mysterious of the 10 new NFL head coaches.
Bears general manager Jerry Angelo “reveres” Marinelli and Atlanta Falcons general manager Rich McKay calls him “a special guy and a special coach.”
As former Tampa Bay executives, Angelo and McKay praise Marinelli as the defensive line coach behind the success of the Buccaneers.
Yet Angelo and McKay both passed over Marinelli when they hired head coaches.
Former Tampa Bay coach Tony Dungy calls Marinelli “a leader, a coach’s coach, one of the best communicators I’ve ever been around, and a motivator.” Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin says Marinelli was “born to be a head coach.”
Yet Marinelli, 57, hadn’t been a head coach at any level before now.
Players who sometimes speak in the third person have heaped unsolicited endorsements on Marinelli.
Buccaneers defensive end Simeon Rice goes completely overboard in his inimitable way with words: “When talking about Rod Marinelli, you are talking about a man, a myth and a legend. . . . He’s a Michelangelo, an Aristotle, a Socrates. He changes coaching to an art form. He understands the psyche of man and how to motivate men.”
He’s also 0-1 as he leads his Lions into Soldier Field on Sunday against the Bears, so the accolades sound premature. But they are sincere, and so numerous they might be embarrassing if Marinelli were paying any attention.
It is his focus that attracts. His philosophy of football is simple and not one bit easy.
“Are you dying to be a great player? Do you claw the wall every day? Do you understand what that means?” Marinelli asks. “I want to get 53 men that live and die for football.”
Marinelli spent a year in Vietnam in 1968 and won’t talk about it. He walks with a slight limp and wears an elastic support on his left leg and won’t talk about that either. But he is eager to engage the moment and espouse his mantra about pounding the rock.
“You never know if it’s going to break,” he says. “It may never break–that’s not the issue. It’s the focus of the swing. And it might not be the hammer. It might be the guy holding it.”
The message gets through.
Defensive end Tyoka Jackson played for Marinelli in Tampa and now plays for the Lions.
“He’s honest and consistent, and unfortunately in this game that’s a rarity for coaches,” Jackson said. “Because there’s a lot of selfishness going on. He’s a giver, and what he’s going to give you is honesty and consistency. That’s all you want as a player.
“If I see you telling me one thing and going over and telling another guy another thing, or if you’re going to coach me hard on this but kind of let up on that guy, that’s when the trust starts to break down. There are a lot of great men in this league, a lot of great talent, a lot of great minds, but there isn’t a lot of trust and honesty, and that’s what he brings.
“Warren Sapp was the best in the league and he treated me and Warren Sapp exactly alike, and I was his backup.”
Echoes Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brad Johnson, who played for Tampa and Washington and has worked for five head coaches: “You better believe it. Rod’s awesome. When a person has it, they have it. I’d play for that guy for nothing.”
Adds San Francisco 49ers quarterback Trent Dilfer, who also played for Tampa Bay: “He’s the unsung hero of all those Tampa Bay teams. That defensive line he coached had some different personalities–Sapp, Rice–and Rod controlled them, motivated them, got them to practice hard every day.”
Quarterbacks usually don’t pay that much attention to the defensive line coach.
But in Detroit these days, everybody is paying attention to Marinelli’s defensive line coach, Joe Cullen, arrested Aug. 24 after allegedly driving naked to a drive-through window at a fast-food restaurant, and arrested again Sept. 1 after driving while impaired.
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The Lions suspended him for last week’s opening game but had not mentioned the incidents until they became public. Marinelli has refused to talk about Cullen except to say he will be reinstated this week.
Marinelli hired Cullen despite a record of other incidents involving alcohol and a firing from the University of Mississippi in 2005 before he had coached a game. If Marinelli knew the history, it only increases the mystery.
One of the Lions’ first camp visitors was former Los Angeles Rams coach John Robinson. Marinelli coached under Robinson at USC in 1995.
“I always thought he was the most unique coach I’d ever been around,” Robinson said. “He could motivate one of these blocking dummies into becoming a player. I’ve never been around a man who could get into another man’s face and demand things that the guy would say he couldn’t do, and then the guy wound up loving him after he did it.
“When you look at football, we all get caught in the sophistication of the NFL or whatever level it’s on. However, the real sophistication is the fundamentals and the toughness and being aggressive. Any of the great coaches in history if you plopped them up here, whether it’s Vince Lombardi or whoever, they would sound a lot like Rod.”
Marinelli likes to show players video of shark attacks, cheetahs lunging for meat or bears–real ones–fighting. Marinelli provides commentary, assigning names of his players to each wild animal.
“He must be a big Discovery Channel guy, but everything has a purpose to it,” Lions guard Damien Woody told the Detroit Free Press.
When Dungy hired linebackers coach Lovie Smith from Ohio State and Marinelli from USC for his first Tampa Bay staff in 1996, the two shared a hotel room. Angelo hired Smith after Smith had become defensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams. Smith wanted Marinelli as the Bears’ defensive coordinator, but the Bucs wouldn’t let him out of his contract. Why didn’t Angelo hire Marinelli as head coach?
“Because he hired a great man in Lovie,” Marinelli said. “Lovie’s my best friend in coaching. Chicago got the right man.”
Like McKay, who hired former San Francisco defensive coordinator Jim Mora instead of Marinelli in Atlanta, Angelo wasn’t ready to gamble on a position coach.
“We haven’t seen him coach yet as a head coach, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Angelo said of Marinelli. “You know I think the world of him. I was instrumental in bringing him to Tampa, so I always had tremendous respect and even revered the guy once I got to see him on a day-to-day basis.
“All the ingredients I feel you need to be successful, Rod has. I felt that way about Lovie too. I think when you are a coordinator and you’re coaching half the football team, there’s a little more you can tell than you can with a position coach. But Rod Marinelli has some rare, rare qualities. To me, he’s the essence of what football is. You want to see this guy do well because he epitomizes the game.”
Dungy is proud of his students.
“I was convinced Lovie would do really well in Chicago in a short period of time,” Dungy said. “I have the same confidence in Rod.”
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