ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — I trekked to Western New York during the week to spend time with Bills head coach Doug Marrone with a plan to discuss his early experiences as a first-year NFL head coach, playing against his former team Sunday when Buffalo plays the Jets at MetLife Stadium, his rookie quarterback EJ Manuel and their thrilling first NFL victory together last week.
But during an hour-long chat inside the Bills’ indoor practice facility, the Bronx native, former Jets offensive line coach and (most recently) the Syracuse head coach steered the conversation far from football.
I have known Marrone since his days with the Jets, but had no idea until this visit how little I knew about him.
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INSTEAD of recounting details of the Bills’ last-second 24-23 comeback win over the Panthers last Sunday, Marrone waxed poetic about one of his most influential high school teachers, Phyllis Preston, who recruited him to star in school plays.
“I’m a thespian at heart,’’ Marrone said, with a straight face.
Preston, an English and drama teacher at Lehman High in The Bronx, asked Marrone to take part as a way to break the stereotype that jocks don’t have a softer side.
“She said to me, ‘It would be great to get some athletes in here,’ ” Marrone recalled. “I said, ‘What’s in it for me?’ She hinted that I’d get a better grade, and I’m like, ‘OK.’ ”
Next thing Marrone knew he was playing the lead role of Joe Hardy in “Damn Yankees’’ in front audiences of 1,200, doing two shows a night.
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INSTEAD of talking about playing against the Jets, for whom he worked from 2002-05, Marrone revealed that if he was not a football coach he would be a state trooper.
He told the story of an incident in The Bronx that influenced him when he was a 7-year-old. Some state troopers set up a road block near his Harding Avenue home.
“The trooper, who looked like he was 6-8, had the leather hat on, the puffy pants, high boots, mirror sunglasses and carried 45 magnum, comes over to us and walks us across the street to a hot dog stand and said, ‘Stand behind here,’ ” Marrone recalled. “We said, ‘What’s going on?’ They told us some people robbed a jewelry store in Scarsdale and they were setting up a blockade. It was just like the old wild, wild West. The car came down, they’re shooting, bullets flew right through the hot dog stand. The car crashes, they get out, two men and a woman. The troopers handcuff them.
“The trooper walks over and says, ‘You boys want to see some real criminals?’ So he takes us back to the field. I never forget seeing the woman. She had these sunglasses on and she looked right at us. I was terrified. I had nightmares for days. After that, I always wanted to be a state trooper.”
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INSTEAD of describing what it felt like to win his first game as a NFL head coach, Marrone preferred to tell the story about how he met his wife, Helen.
He was coaching offensive line at Northeastern and was the only single guy on the staff.
“Everyone was trying to fix me up with their cousin or niece, and that never works out,” he said.
While out at a local pub with Northeastern colleagues, Marrone wrote on a paper napkin what he was looking for in a girlfriend and it got passed around the table. When the napkin got to a woman named Colleen, she said, “Oh my Gosh, I’ve got the perfect girl for you. She was my roommate at [Boston College] and is in law school now in Memphis. You’ve got to meet her.”
“At the end of the season I had an interview with George O’Leary at Georgia Tech, and on my drive down there I stopped in Tennessee and we went on our first date. When I drove back from the interview we went on our second date. And when I drove down after I took the job we went on our third date.”
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Marrone and Helen, whose father
James “Boots’’ Donnelly
was a legendary football coach at Middle Tennessee State, dated for six years before they got married.
“I don’t think she wanted to marry a football coach — nor did her mom want her to marry a football coach,’’ Marrone said. “It’s not an easy life.’’
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THE point to all of this is that Marrone does not need any of this.
He never was — and still is not — obsessed or impressed with being an NFL head coach, although he feels blessed to be one. Marrone simply wants to coach football. It’s been in his blood since he was a kid growing up in Throgs Neck.
He left The Bronx all those years ago to chase his football dreams and find a better life, but The Bronx has never left Marrone.
“Not many guys from around where I grew up went on to play football,’’ Marrone said. “So there were always people who would say, ‘You’ll never make it, you’re never going to be able to play in college.’ I learned a long time ago it’s not that people don’t want to see you succeed, it’s that they don’t want to lose you.’’
The irony to Marrone’s ascent to becoming an NFL head coach is that he never wanted to lose the feeling he had as an assistant coach.
“His ideal job still is being an O-line coach,” Bills defensive backs coach Donnie Henderson said. “When it’s all said and done, he would give up that [head coach] hat any day to go back and be an O-line coach.”
“Here’s what I struggle with,’’ Marrone said. “The things I love most about the profession is having your own group of guys that you see every day, work with and develop them into not only better players but better men, better husbands, better fathers. You can have that type of influence watching them grow and their families grow and have success, and that is an unbelievable feeling to have.
“When you become the head coach, you don’t have that room that you’re with constantly, that you’re coaching and teaching, where when you walk into that room the players look at you and say, ‘Coach, are you all right?’ because they know you better than anyone. Those are the things that I miss the most.’’
That is what Bills offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, the 33-year-old son of former NFL and college coach Paul Hackett and Marrone’s offensive coordinator at Syracuse the last three years, called “most refreshing’’ about him.
“He’s so darned honest,’’ Hackett said. “This is my fourth year with him, and through all the ups and downs at Syracuse, he hasn’t changed. He is what you’re going to get. He’s very passionate, he’s very fired up, he wants to win, he know what he knows and admits the things he doesn’t know. He doesn’t get upset to be a little vulnerable. It’s all very sincere and honest.’’
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