............. it's about time we got a coach out of the Permian Basin. Excerpts from excellent linked interview follows ...........
Quotes from >>> https://www.chargers.com/news/a-conversation-with-chargers-linebackers-coach-jeff-howard
Your first coaching job was at Odessa Permian High School, which is obviously a famed high school in Texas. How was that experience like?
"It was awesome. Coaching in my blood, my dad coached at the Division II level his whole career, and I was always around with him. So traveling on Fridays with the team, practice, I filmed practice, filmed games, was on the sidelines helping out with the equipment staff, so I was always around the team. When I was studying in college, I thought I was going to push away from it, but when I got done playing, not being a part of a team, not being a part of football was tough. I ended up taking a different direction and ended up taking that job at Permian and I was teaching chemistry and coaching football. It's awesome, anybody that knows Texas high school football knows it's just some small college environment. There's 15,000 people at a game, it's very important to the kids that play, they're coming in early in the morning and staying late in the evening. It was a great experience, something that I really enjoyed and there were some really great coaches that I was under that I learned a lot from."
Did being a chemistry teacher during those days help you at all?
"I feel like it helped me a lot because even what we do at this level is like teaching. Can you teach? I feel like that situation helped me a lot, just being able to teach kids. Some of them were super interested in it and others weren't and it was kind of like, 'Can you reach the kids that weren't, and can you also help the kids that had a high interest in the subject?' Reaching your audience. My wife taught physics and then biology, and I taught biology, so she was right down the hall. From there, I went to Texas Tech for two years, did my last year coaching safeties and then from there I went to Minnesota, where I was for eight years."
What did it mean to get your first NFL job?
"It was awesome. Leslie Frazier hired me with the Vikings back in 2013 and it was awesome. I would do anything to get my foot in the door and when he gave me that opportunity, it meant the world to me because I knew I didn't have a whole lot of connections within the NFL and I wanted to make sure to do a great job for him and the organization. It was a positive situation. All three kids were born in Minnesota, we have a lot of great memories there being there for eight years."
Quotes from >>> https://www.chargers.com/news/a-conversation-with-chargers-linebackers-coach-jeff-howard
Your first coaching job was at Odessa Permian High School, which is obviously a famed high school in Texas. How was that experience like?
"It was awesome. Coaching in my blood, my dad coached at the Division II level his whole career, and I was always around with him. So traveling on Fridays with the team, practice, I filmed practice, filmed games, was on the sidelines helping out with the equipment staff, so I was always around the team. When I was studying in college, I thought I was going to push away from it, but when I got done playing, not being a part of a team, not being a part of football was tough. I ended up taking a different direction and ended up taking that job at Permian and I was teaching chemistry and coaching football. It's awesome, anybody that knows Texas high school football knows it's just some small college environment. There's 15,000 people at a game, it's very important to the kids that play, they're coming in early in the morning and staying late in the evening. It was a great experience, something that I really enjoyed and there were some really great coaches that I was under that I learned a lot from."
Did being a chemistry teacher during those days help you at all?
"I feel like it helped me a lot because even what we do at this level is like teaching. Can you teach? I feel like that situation helped me a lot, just being able to teach kids. Some of them were super interested in it and others weren't and it was kind of like, 'Can you reach the kids that weren't, and can you also help the kids that had a high interest in the subject?' Reaching your audience. My wife taught physics and then biology, and I taught biology, so she was right down the hall. From there, I went to Texas Tech for two years, did my last year coaching safeties and then from there I went to Minnesota, where I was for eight years."
What did it mean to get your first NFL job?
"It was awesome. Leslie Frazier hired me with the Vikings back in 2013 and it was awesome. I would do anything to get my foot in the door and when he gave me that opportunity, it meant the world to me because I knew I didn't have a whole lot of connections within the NFL and I wanted to make sure to do a great job for him and the organization. It was a positive situation. All three kids were born in Minnesota, we have a lot of great memories there being there for eight years."
