Dirk Koetter Q&A: New Bucs Head Coach on Roots, Strategy and His Franchise QB

TAMPA, Fla. — First-year Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Dirk Koetter keeps an array of interesting mementos around his office, starting with a collection of 12 helmets from every spot on his playing and coaching journey. The helmets line the top of a bookcase behind his desk. 

On a coffee table, he keeps a mint copy of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go! When asked about the book, Koetter turned very serious. “That book has one of the best messages,” Koetter said. “That’s a great book for a football player to read.”

Very true, and even for a coach. Particularly for a coach who wasn’t expecting to be sitting in this specific office when the 2015 season ended.

Koetter sat down recently with Bleacher Report to discuss his surprising rise to head coach of the Bucs after spending last season as offensive coordinator under Lovie Smith.

 

Bleacher Report: So you grew up in Pocatello, Idaho. That’s an interesting part of the football world.

Dirk Koetter: About 100 miles north of Salt Lake City and about three hours east of Boise.

 

B/R: I’ve been up in Pullman, Washington, and Coeur d’Alene, but never down that way.

DK: That’s not even close. Pullman is in Canada (smiles). That’s way the hell up there near the panhandle. Pocatello is southeast Idaho. Pullman is on the Palouse.

 

B/R: Oh yeah, it has a great view of the Palouse, as much as you’d want to see of it.

DK: But that Coeur d’Alene area is beautiful. Jake Plummer is up there, Dennis Erickson, Mike Price. They all have places up there.

 

B/R: Yes, Erickson and Price are part of that group of coaches up there from the Washington and Montana area. Kind of the Northwest Mafia of football. Were you part of that group?

DK: No, no, I was an outsider. I tried to bust into that group, but they’re a tight-knit group. Price was at Weber State, Erickson was at Idaho and my dad was at Idaho State. My first college job was at San Francisco State, and one of their disciples, Keith Gilbertson, was there.

I tried to get in with Price and Erickson, and they both turned me down, so Gilbertson recommended me to Bob Stull. Stull is out of the Don James tree. He was up there with James at Washington with Warren Moon and those guys. So I went to UTEP with Bob Stull, so that was kind of my start. I missed out that whole Price, Erickson, Jack Elway tree. They had a good group. A bunch of them are around, like Scott Linehan with Dallas. He’s out of that tree.

 

B/R: So why do so many coaches come out of that part of the country when we’re not talking about the heaviest population?

DK: The Big Sky Conference, back in the day, was a real powerhouse when it came to I-AA football, and so, at one point, Boise State won a couple of national championships, Chuck Pagano coached out of there. Marvin Lewis was up there with us, myself. Then Erickson had all his guys who were spread around. With the Montana schools, Marty Mornhinweg is out of there and coached a bunch of places.

That was a dynamic conference. It has kind of fallen off lately.

 

B/R: Was it because coaches were willing to take chances and be experimental because maybe the talent wasn’t as good?

 

DK: Maybe. I think that conference was ahead of the game as far as throwing the ball. You kind of had some of the stuff that has morphed into the spread and the quick game. And up at Idaho State, when we won it in 1981, Dave Kragthorpe became the head coach, and he had been the offensive line coach at BYU, and he was out of that tree when BYU was unbelievably hot.

 

B/R: It’s funny because Erickson traces back to San Jose State under Jack Elway, who brought that offense up from something his son, John, had played in at Granada Hills High School. That coach down in Granada Hills got it from the old Glenn “Tiger” Ellison book.

DK: I’ve got that Tiger Ellison book around somewhere.

 

B/R: Speaking of that, your dad was a coach, and he collected all sorts of coaching books along the way. Do you have a favorite memory of him that maybe inspired you to become a coach?

DK: Oh man, one favorite. I don’t remember one favorite. There were so many things. When I was a kid, I loved everything about it. I begged my mom to take me up there every day and hang around. It was football, basketball, track. He was the head football, head track and assistant basketball coach, so I was up there being around the players, being around the coaches.

When I was a kid, the coaches used to come to our house after games, and I would be listening to those guys talk, and they’d be having a couple of beers and having some food with a 16-millimeter projector on the kitchen table. I’d lay on the floor under the table and listen to those guys talk about football. Shagging balls at practice, taking Gatorade to the players.

There are a million things I remember. Road trips in a bus…I don’t know about one thing. Different things trigger different memories.

 

B/R: John Elway told me one time about learning how competitive his dad was. Jack was at Washington State coaching, and they lost a brutal game in the Apple Cup against Washington in Seattle. John was sitting in the bus after the game when his dad got on and said, “Sit there and shut up!” John didn’t say a word the entire way back to Pullman.

DK: (laughs) The reason I laugh is the whole time you’re saying that—this wouldn’t be my favorite memory—but the importance of winning and losing. My dad won a lot of games, and when we lost, oh man, it was similar. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation going on at our house.

 

B/R: Was it introspective for him?

DK: Definitely stewing in it. Playing it over and over in his head, going over the reasons why, and not let it happen again.

 

B/R: So did he start reading all those coaching books you mentioned before when he lost a game?

DK: In Idaho, the house we lived in had an upstairs and a downstairs. In our basement, we had a family room roughly the size of this office and we had this red-and-black-striped carpet. That was for the Highland Rams, that helmet you see over there (Koetter points to a helmet on the far right), and our colors were red and black.

Around that family room was all football stuff. Every football book ever written, and I can visualize in my head the Glenn “Tiger” Ellison book you mentioned, the cover of that. Every book ever written (about football) and there were tons of yellow legal pads sitting on every table with drawings.

As a kid, when my dad wasn’t around, I’d be picking up those notebooks and looking at those pictures and flipping through those books. That was all in the basement…I remember right off the weight room at school, there were these storage closets with all the equipment, and then there was this cage. They called it the “helmet room.”

Back in those days when I was a head coach, you had to fix the helmets. You didn’t have equipment guys. You were the equipment guy. You fixed the helmets, you lined the field…my dad used to make me and my brother go do it. He had this push cart like those old chalk machines, except he’d put fertilizer in there to burn the lines so he wouldn’t have to paint them for four months.

That was a nasty job right there. The smell and it was hot, and I’m sure we weren’t using proper protective clothing when we were doing it, either.

 

B/R: You’ve worked with David Garrard, Matt Ryan and now Jameis Winston. You have gotten statistically excellent performances out of all of them. What is the key to making an offense quarterback-friendly?

DK: First of all, all three of the guys you mention are excellent quarterbacks. David Garrard is a much better quarterback than he is given credit for. It’s really not a big secret. You take what guys are good at and you build it around that and try to avoid what they’re not so good at. You listen to them. You get to know them. They know what they’re good at and what they’re not good at.

So as you build your stuff through the week—your game plan—they’ll tell you they don’t like that. You might say, “I think this would be really good this week,” and they might say, “I don’t like it.” Maybe we try it in practice; maybe we don’t.

 

B/R: But there are coaches who believe in their system, and there are coaches who believe in doing what a player is best at.

DK: Yes, we have a system that can switch. I’ve switched systems—not concepts, but systems—a lot. I know how to teach concepts, but systems are whether you call it “brown” or “black.” To me, it really doesn’t matter what you call it, and that’s why I can learn to call stuff different, but the concepts don’t really change.

 

B/R: Give me an example of a concept that has to be part of what you want.

DK: Just for example, when I went to …

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