The Players’ Coach by Tom Moore, review

“My job is to make the best players in the world even better,” says Tom Moore, who has been coaching in college football and the NFL for over 60 years. This book gathers the lessons and stories of that vast career, which has included Super Bowl rings with Pittsburgh, twice, Indianapolis and Tampa Bay. He remains offensive consultant at Tampa Bay at the age of 85.

The story hops around the chronology of Moore’s life, beginning with his stories of working with numerous Hall of Famers, including Chuck Noll, Terry Bradshaw, Peyton Manning and Edgerrin James. Then it jumps back to his time at college, in the army and his first steps in coaching. After that we go back to his parents and his early life in the Great Depression, ahead to his time at the Steelers, and so on.

Probably the most notable thing about Moore’s career is the amount of change he has seen in football. His first job, as a graduate assistant at Iowa, came six years before the first Super Bowl. Some of the lessons he has learned along the way are gathered in coaching points outside the main narrative: Things to Guard Against, and Myths of Football.

Also presented alongside the main text are reminiscences from friends and colleagues, including Manning, Bradshaw and Tony Dungy, who was a player at Pittsburgh when Moore was a coach, then his boss 20 years later as head coach of the Colts.

Title: The Players’ Coach
Author: Tom Moore, with Rick Stroud
First published: Diversion Books, 2024
Buy the Book: Amazon US | Amazon UK

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His player-focused approach to the game means that he doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about his preferred schemes, or how he sees the game. His goal is to find out what works for the player and build a system around them. It remains an obsession. He says he still starts work at 3:15am. “What am I supposed to do,” he writes, “lie there and stare at the ceiling? I’m eighty-five. I’m not sure how many days I’ve got left to live, but I know one thing: I’m not going to waste them sleeping. They’re going to take me off the field boots-first.”

THE AUTHOR

Tom Moore has been a coach for more than 60 years. He has won four Super Bowls – two with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and one each with the Indianapolis Colts and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He has coached numerous Hall of Fame players.

Rick Stroud covers the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and hosts the Sports Day podcast.

EXCERPTS

But as Chuck Noll always told us when I began coaching with the Steelers, “It ain’t pressure if you know what you’re doing.”

It all began in Week 14 of the 2000 season when we trailed the Jets 14-0. “Peyton!” I screamed. “We’re going to run the no-huddle the rest of the game.” He nodded. We lost the game, but on the plane ride home, Peyton asked, “Why are we waiting to get down fourteen points?” That’s when “Lightning” was born. That’s what we called our no-huddle attack.

One thing about coaching: you can guarantee that 100 percent of the time, 50 percent of the coaches are pissed off and 50 percent are happy.

Before you tell a potential player what you can do, ask him what he’s looking for. Then, you’ll know what to talk about. It’s the same with coaching. You should ask the players, “What’s your vision? Where do you want to go?” Then, talk to them. If you don’t know what they’re looking for, anything you offer that doesn’t hit the mark can come off as disrespectful or even offensive. There’s a saying that players don’t care how much you know until they know you care. I think that’s true.

In the offseason, Peyton [Manning], the quarterback coach, and I would start the second Monday in March. We’d go four days a week. We’d start at 6:30 a.m. and go through all the game tapes play-by-play. We’d go through the interception reel. We’d go through the touchdown reel. We’d go through the sack reel. What caused those things? Peyton would make notes going through all these tapes; he was making a list of what he felt he personally needed to work on.

The morning of the draft, Bill Polian came up to me and asked, “What would you do, Tom?” I said, “Well, Bill, a couple things. If you draft Ryan Leaf, you’ll always wonder what it would’ve been like if you had drafted Peyton Manning. If you draft Peyton Manning, you couldn’t care less.’

It was personified immediately when Chris Godwin stepped up and gave his jersey number to Tom. Chris had worn No. 12 since high school. In fact, he was known as CG12. The gold necklace he wore said as much. But immediately, Chris said, “That’s Brady’s number. I’ll take 14.” That set it off. That’s how it started.

One of the things that we changed more than anything else for Tom [Brady] was the pass protection. A lot of our pass protections were slide protections where the running back had to read two people to get out. But Tom likes a protection where the line blocked the four bigs, plus the Mike linebacker, and the running back blocked the Sam or Will depending on which side you threw hot off of, and Brady felt comfortable with that. I’d say protection was No. 1 for him.

Early in the game, Tony [Dungy] was on defense and snared an interception. Later in the game, he was behind center and he threw an interception. Nobody else in the NFL has matched the feat yet.

REVIEWS

Told in a conversational style, The Players’ Coach often feels like listening to Tom Moore reminiscing in a bar. That gives the book a sense of immediacy but means it can be rambling and repetitive. For example, we are told at least four times that the rules for wide receivers were changed because Mel Blount was so good at jamming them on the line. The book would be stronger with a more chronological structure and with the various asides – coaching points and reminiscences from others – merged with the overall narrative. I suspect budget and time constraints were the reason this wasn’t done; it’s simply quicker to write it as almost a transcript. Fans of teams Moore has coached – particularly the Colts and Steelers – will enjoy this, as will those with a more general interest in NFL history.
Shane Richmond, Pigskin Books

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