That’s all I think about. That’s all I care about right now. I don’t golf. I think about winning a championship for Mr. Ford. (1) I wake up in the morning thinking about how we’re going to do that and I go to sleep at night thinking about how we’re going to do that.
I expect our quarterbacking to be much improved.
I see maturity in him. (2) There’s a certain resolve that he has to prove that he’s the guy for long term here.
We’ve got to grow our young guys fast, which means play ’em. Practice ’em and play ’em. They’re not standing around.
I’ve got to get some leadership from our veterans.
I expect our run to be much improved. It has to be.
He (3) spent the whole night here when I came to visit. He came over to the hotel and we just talked all night long about the pros and cons of doing this.
I know this state. It’s a football state. We all love hockey, we all love the Pistons and the Tigers. But I know this is a football state too. There’s nobody else who gets 111,000 people in the Big House in the rain against somebody that may not even be the rival.
When I was growing up, we had breakfast together before we went to school and dinner together every night.
We all as coaches probably feel that we’re not being the dad that we really want to be because of our time restraints here. We don’t get to do homework with our kids as much as we want to. We don’t get to play catch in the back yard as often as we want to. Or even sit and have a meal together. That simply doesn’t happen until Friday night.
They’ve seen classmates criticize their dad and their dad’s team. They’ve seen the newspapers and the talk shows since they were born. They’ve developed thick skin too.
My dad was a school teacher, guidance counselor and wrestling coach. He pushed me. He pushed me. He made me train hard. Run and lift and practice.
My mom was the nurse, the psychiatrist, the mom. She wore a lot of hats. She made sure we ate our vegetables, took our vitamins, got enough sleep.
She even calls me now: “Are you eating right? Are you getting enough sleep? That’s a nice haircut you have.” To this day.
I don’t look back. I don’t want to speculate why, what if, what it could’ve been, should’ve been. It doesn’t really matter at this point. I had a great experience for six years in San Francisco.
You ought to see my wine cellar. I have a heck of a wine cellar out there. Twelve-hundred bottles.
If you play high school football or college football, you dream, right? That’s a good thing. It helps you set some goals. It helps motivate you.
Be yourself.
I’ve never met the pope. I met the president of the United States. I’ve met a lot of people I think the world of. Some of my schoolteachers growing up are people that I think the world of.
Scout the Bears? They’re like us. They’re trying to get better, They’re trying to get to the top of the division. Green Bay is the team that everybody’s trying to dethrone. We and the Bears are trying to build our teams up as quickly as we possibly can.
(1): Lions owner William Clay Ford.
(2): Lions quarterback Joey Harrington.
(3): Tom Izzo, Michigan State basketball coach and Mariucci’s childhood friend
