Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches by Gary Myers Read Free Book Online Page B

came home and told his grandmother about Jackie and said that he had to learn how to speak Spanish. They had a daughter, also named Jackie, in May 2006 after Taylor’s second year with the Redskins. He embraced fatherhood. That changed his demeanor. He also was letting Gibbs into his life.
    “He had his first child, and you’d see him walk around with that little girl,” Gibbs said. “He started coming to our chapel services, and I felt there was real change in his life. The next thing, he walked down the hall and said, ‘Hey coach, how you doing?’ It was just a real change at how he looked at things.”
    Taylor was having his best season in 2007. The Redskins were 5–3 at the halfway point after an overtime victory against the Jets. But late in the third quarter the next week against the Eagles, Taylor sustained a sprained knee. Without him, the Redskins gave up 20 points in the fourth quarter and lost. Taylor told defensive coordinator Gregg Williams that he didn’t expect to be out very long.
    “Hopefully, Sean will be fine,” cornerback Shawn Springs said. “He looked like he’ll be fine. I wouldn’t doubt that he’ll be right back out there.”
    Taylor did not play the next week against the Cowboys in a tough 28–23 loss in Dallas. Terrell Owens caught four touchdown passes from Tony Romo as the ’Boys took advantage of the Redskins being without their best defensive player. Washington had now lost two games in a row and desperately needed Taylor to return to the field. They were in Tampa the next week, and once again Taylor was not healthy enough to play. When the Redskins were losing to the Bucs, Taylor was back home in Miami with Jackie, his fiancée, and their eighteen-month-old daughter, taking care of some personal business with his house, which had beenbroken into the previous week. It was Thanksgiving weekend. He had arrived in Miami on that Saturday. After watching the Redskins lose their third straight game the next day, he went on a thirty-mile bicycle ride. Maybe that workout would accelerate his return to the field. His team desperately needed him. But he would never play again.
    The knee injury that kept him away from his team would cost him his life.
    The phone call.
    It comes after midnight, and it’s the call every mother and father fear when their children are out of the house. It’s the call every coach fears when his players are not under their control. You can’t watch them 24/7. Nothing much good ever happens after midnight, especially when you are dealing with young men in their twenties, many of whom are millionaires, already with more money than they dreamed they would make in a lifetime.
    Giants coach Tom Coughlin got the phone call in 2008 that Plaxico Burress, who had been a close friend of Sean Taylor, accidentally shot himself in the leg on the night after Thanksgiving at a midtown Manhattan nightclub. He never played for the Giants again, and his absence cost them a chance to repeat as Super Bowl champions. The phone rang in the home of Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick after midnight, a few hours after the St. Louis Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta in 2000. Billick’s best player, Ray Lewis, was in trouble in Atlanta after a street fight outside a nightclub in upscale Buckhead at 4 a.m. left two men stabbed to death. Lewis and two friends were charged with murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault. Lewis was jailed for nearly three weeks before he was released on $1 million bond. He posted $200,000 in cash. His mother had been waiting for him in Honolulu for Pro Bowl week at the time he was arrested. He never made it. Thephone rang so late in the Billick house that he knew there was a problem.
    “Both my daughters, who were living at home at the time, were home,” he said. “I knew this was about my team. You don’t get a call that late when it’s not about one or the other. You knew it wasn’t going to be good.”
    Billick