Garrett reveals his Mount Rushmore of NFL QBs
Jason Garrett joins Dan Patrick to discuss what makes a great coach, the way coaches communicate with each other week-to-week and his Mount Rushmore of all-time NFL quarterbacks.
Video Transcript
Jason Garrett, NBC Football Night in America studio analyst, former head coach.
He was there with the three Super Bowl wins with the Cowboys.
And, he's got a new show, a new podcast, Coach to Co- Coach to Coach.
That's Coach to Coach.
And, can be found on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcast.
And, he goes inside the minds of top leaders in sports to explore how they became champions.
Great to see you again.
Give me an idea of the, coaches or former coaches that you're speaking to or you've already spoken to.
Yeah, we've done a lot of them already, Dan.
We did four sit-down interviews with current NFL head coaches, Andy Reid, Sean Payton, Dan Campbell, and Dan Quinn.
And then we've done podcast interviews with Sean McDermott, Tony Dungy, Cori Close, the, women's basketball coach at UCLA.
Kelly Amonte Hiller, the women's lacrosse coach at Northwestern, Jeff Monken, the head football coach at Army.
Trying to think who else.
Oh, Joe Girardi and Joe Maddon, baseball guys.
And, it, it's just been a really fun experience talking to all these guys.
You know, the, the, the podcast goes for an hour, and I literally could go for three or four hours with them 'cause I'm learning so much.
A- and y- you know, you know this, the great Fred Gaudelli says, "Enough with the platitudes.
I want stories.
I want reasons for the stories."
And, you know, we s- we spend a lot of time having them talk about their stories, when they went to these different places to build their teams, and what it was like, and, and what they learned from the different experiences.
So, they've been incredibly generous, incredibly humble, and I've learned a lot.
Yeah, Freddie Gaudelli, the, decorated producer with, Football Night in America.
Is there a common thread with greatness at that level?
You know, I think it, at, at, at the core of it, these guys are all coaches.
These men and women are all coaches, and they really want to do whatever they can to help their players be their best.
How do they create that environment for them?
They obviously wanna build something special.
They're interested in building programs, not just teams.
So, you know, we go through those processes, and they're all a little bit different.
What I love about it is, they share stories about their mentors and their experiences and their influences, and what I got from this guy, and what I got from that guy, and what I learned from this.
And that all shapes them in a very unique way.
And what I loved is they were very authentic, they were very open about their experiences, and very humble about their experiences.
What we did well, what we didn't do very well.
And I think that's probably the thing that allows them to be great, 'cause they're constantly growing.
Tougher to get to a championship level or remain there?
Great question.
You know, I tried to ask the guys who've won multiple championships that question.
Kelly Amonte Hiller, the women's lacrosse coach at Northwestern, they've won, like, nine national championships.
She won two as a player at Maryland.
And they won a lot early, and then there was 10 years where they didn't win, and now they've won again.
And she went through that process.
They won seven out of eight, and then they had that, a decade dry spell, and what she learned through that, and what they were able to do early on.
But then how she had to change as the athlete changed, and maybe how she changed.
So I think each of them have unique experiences.
I would always argue that it's hardest to get there.
Think about all the great coaches who have had built great teams in all sports that never won a championship, not unlike a great quarterback who never won a championship.
So to win the first one, I think is the hardest, but there's certainly a challenge in maintaining it.
We talked to the, Seattle Seahawks head coach, Mike McDonald, last week.
And he said, I said, "Who would surprise me that you talked to leading up to the Super Bowl with the Patriots?"
And he said, "Well, I did talk to one person with a conflict of interest."
I immediately said, "Bill Belichick," and he said, "No.
I've had beers with Belichick, but no, he was not the guy."
How, how normal is that, that you can reach out to somebody who maybe played for a team, coached for the team that you were facing in a Super Bowl or a big game?
Well, I, I think what's really normal is you, you talk to, to people in the division that compete against that team.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
So, "Hey, we, we play the AFC East," and, you know, after the game I talk to a friend of mine on, say, the Patriots, and we have the Jets coming up.
He says, "Hey, you know, can, can we visit a little bit about the Jets?"
You know?
And, and they kinda give us their insight on it.
I think that happens a lot.
I think the thing you're describing maybe happens less frequently, because if you're with a team, you've had success with a team, I don't know that you're gonna be completely forthcoming unless you have an ax to grind.
Yeah.
And, you know, someti- Right?
Yeah.
And sometimes a guy gets cut or a guy gets fired, and he does have an ax to grind, and I think that probably is what precipitates those conversations.
"I hate these guys.
They screwed me.
Okay, I'm gonna give you all I got."
You know?
But I think the first one happens more.
The second one probably happens less.
And it wasn't Tom Brady, by the way.
People in New England keep saying I'm covering up for Tom Brady.
I go, "I know who it was, but it's not Tom Brady."
Okay?
I don't have a relationship with Tom Brady.
I can only tell you that Mike McDonald told me who it was, and it's not Tom Brady.
Yeah.
By the way, we ran into, some players out there in Tahoe, and they were counting the days down, like the dread of going to training camp.
Yeah.
It's like, "Hey, you know, when's training camp start?"
"Oh, 10 days."
You know, Kyle Hamilton- Wow of the Ravens and Baker Mayfield, like, they all knew, "Ugh, 10 days."
Do coaches feel that way?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
You, you get a, like a three or four week window in the summertime and it's like, "Ha, this is what I'm living a normal life."
But then you're getting right back into the grind and, you know, it's, it's seven months every minute of every day.
You know, training camp for these guys, and I don't wanna be the guy that says, "Hey, way back when when we played," but you know, training camp isn't really training camp anymore.
I mean, the, the, they got days off left and right.
They, they practice in the morning, walk through in the afternoon.
They're done by 7:00 at night.
I mean, it, it, it, it's a far cry from what training camp used to be.
But you know, once you step your foot in there for the first time, you're, you're in it, and the Super Bowl's played February 14th.
So you know, summertime's over.
Lake Tahoe's over.
All that hee hee and ha ha with Dan Patrick- that's over.
Talking to, Jason Garrett, Coach to Coach, go inside the minds of top leaders in sports and explore how they build their successful teams, the organizations.
You can find it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
If Vince Lombardi was coaching today, could Lombardi have the same mindset, the same coaching style he did in the '60s with Green Bay?
Or does he change because he has to change?
You know, I read a quote recently from Frank Martin, the, the basketball coach down at South Carolina, and he said, "I'm so tired of hearing people talk about how the kids have changed.
You know who's changed?
The adults have changed."
"We've changed.
We let them do whatever the hell they want," you know?
He, it was, it was a real rant.
And you know, I, I, I, I agree with a little of that.
I, I, I really do.
I don't know that Lombardi could be as extreme when you really think about the stories that, that, that people tell about those years he had in Green Bay.
I don't know if he could be that extreme.
But I always say this, and this comes up in the, in the podcast when we talk to Andy Reid, you know, I call Andy Reid a fraud.
I said, "You know, I think you're a fraud."
And, and he's a great friend of mine and certainly a mentor, but you know, he stands on the sidelines and he's kind of a fatherly figure, a grandfatherly figure, and he does the Nuggie's commercials with, with Mahomes, and he dresses up like Santa Claus.
But go to Andy Reid's practice.
And?
Go wa- go watch the K- go watch the Kansas City Chiefs practice.
Shirts are tucked in, they run, they hit.
He threw the GPSes away 10 years ago.
He's not counting how many steps and workloads and all that stuff.
They're running.
They're doing long drives, 18 play, 20 play, 22 play drives in practice.
It's an old school mentality.
So I think that gives him an advantage.
When I travel around to training camps and I see teams practice that way, I think that gives them an advantage.
Now, is it to the extreme of Lombardi?
No.
But I do think you can still coach players tough, you can coach them hard, you can develop relationships with them, and that's one of the great takeaways from it.
You know, we talk about this a lot.
It's easy to be a black and white leader.
"Hey, I'm the hard ass," or, "I'm the coach's player."
You know, greatness comes when, you know, high standards, high accountability, but I also develop relationships with these guys.
The nuance of leadership, I think that's what the best guys do.
Before I let you go, ESPN had the quarterback list, the top quarterbacks, and I kind of view those lists as regular season, you know?
That they're stats.
If I Because you know, there's certain players that are in there and ranked high, like Dak Prescott or Lamar Jackson, they don't have playoff success.
If I said, "Let's have the list," and it comes down to this criteria: game on the line, two minutes to go, how different is that list in your opinion?
I think it's different.
I, I, I did something the other day with Kevin Jennings, the, the, the quarterback at SMU, and he and I did an interview, and the last question he asked me was, "Your Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks of all time."
And you know, it's one of the hardest questions there is, and there's a lot of potholes all over the place on this one, but you know, I just said, "I'm gonna be honest with you."
And I went, I went Unitas, I went Montana, I went Brady, and I went Aikman.
I said, "You know, I'm biased 'cause I played with Troy for, for eight years, and we won three Super Bowls and all of that."
But to your question about game on the line, you know, we're racking up stats left and right.
Guys are throwing for 80,000 yards, all of that, but is that as meaningful as what Terry Bradshaw did winning four Super Bowls?
Or Joe Montana leading the drive against Cincinnati, or Troy Aikman just being impeccable in three Super Bowl performances?
You know, Tom Brady obviously the best of all of them.
So you know, those big moments, that's when those guys get measured.
And, you know, I think it applies to other positions too.
Lynn Swann, what does he have, 400 catches?
Less than that.
You know?
Yeah.
That's Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's two years for two and a half years for guys these days, right?
But his catches were pretty meaningful, weren't they?
Yeah.
Go back and see the images of Swann in the back of the end zone in the Super Bowl.
So you know, I do think those are the things that guys get measured by, and you look at the guys who have won, those are the guys that you put first.
Patrick Mahomes is one for me, right?
'Cause he has all the other stuff, but then he's won the big games.
Yeah, I'm with you on that.
Look, I love Josh Allen, but he's a regular season quarterback.
Like, I, I have to look- I, I, I, I'd, I'd be careful of that.
You know, for years they said John Elway is a regular season quarterback, but you and I both know that John Elway put that, that city of Denver on his shoulders, and he carried them there.
And then when they got to play in the Super Bowl they weren't as good, right?
And so if you look at J- Yeah, but he got to the Super Bowl.
He got to the Super Bowl.
Yeah, I know.
And, and he was leading drives in the playoffs, like, y- you know, when you're beating Houston, you're beating the Browns, and it's John Elway who's doing that.
Look, Josh Allen is probably the best quarterback in the NFL, but I'm saying, like, I'm trying to think Like there's Caleb, Caleb Williams is really good in the fourth quarter.
He might not be a great regular season guy, but, you know, fourth quarter, he's proven to be really, really great.
I think sometimes we- But- Yeah, go ahead.
Let, let's I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Let's go back 20 years.
You're doing this show and we're, we're having the same conversation about Peyton Manning.
Okay.
Guy throws all these touchdown passes, but in the big games, you know, New England knows how to shut him down.
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
Y- you know, and, and, and, and that's a story.
That's been a story for a long time in a lot of different sports, how the guy can't break through, the guy can't break through, the guy can't break through.
He's not good enough.
And then he breaks through.
The circumstances around him are better, and then he's able to do that.
So Jo- Josh Allen will win a Super Bowl, and I believe he's gonna win multiple Super Bowls, and he's knocking on the door.
I know, but game on the line, I You're not taking Josh Allen over Patrick Mahomes.
I'm taking Patrick Mahomes.
Yes.
But goddamn, I love him.
Goddamn, I love Josh Allen.
No, Allen is wonderful.
I But I'm saying there's a different list if I look at a game on the line and it's a playoff game.
Lamar Jackson hasn't produced.
Until he does, I can't put him up there and go, "Oh yeah, he's, he's an incredible talent, but he's like Josh Allen."
Agree.
Yeah, agree with you completely.
Agree with you completely.
And, you know, let, let's go back to the greatest one that ever walked in basketball, right?
What are the conversations about Jordan, you know, through the mid, late '80s, right?
Boy, the guy can score.
He's incredible, whatever, but he's never won a championship until he does, until they get the team around him and the circumstances are right, and then he wins six of them.
So I agree with you.
You, you I, I couldn't agree with you more- But, but Hurts- Until they- Hurts was 17th on the list.
But if you said game on the line and it's a playoff game, he's top five.
Yeah, and, and, and, and- Right?
He's an enigma because there are a lot of things you don't like about, you know, they seem inconsistent during the season, but go back and look at his performances in the Super Bowl, in the big games.
Talk about a guy who takes a deep breath and comes up and makes plays.
He, he's been fantastic, so you make a great point.
He should be higher than 17.
Good luck with the podcast.
Great to talk to you again, Coach.
Thanks.
You're the best, man.
That's Jason Garrett, Football Night in America, former head coach.
Coach to coach.
You can, find it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.
