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Why They Coach: Cal TE Coach Marques Tuiasosopo, Part Two

With football in a nebulous position and the recruiting process in a relative holding pattern, we at Golden Bear Report are looking to do interviews wherever we can. This week, we got Cal tight ends coach Marques Tuiasosopo on the phone, talking about getting into coaching, how he ended up at Cal, and coaching the tight end group.

This is the second part of the interview with Tuiasosopo.

Previous Installments: Justin Wilcox, Part One | Justin Wilcox, Part Two | Charlie Ragle, Part One | Charlie Ragle, Part Two | Peter Sirmon, Part One | Peter Sirmon, Part Two | Aristotle Thompson, Part One | Aristotle Thompson, Part Two | Angus McClure, Part One | Angus McClure, Part Two | Tim DeRuyter, Part One | Tim DeRuyter, Part Two | Andrew Browning, Part One | Andrew Browning, Part Two | Burl Toler, Part One | Burl Toler, Part Two | Bill Musgrave | Marques Tuiasosopo, Part One

TT: When did you know you wanted to get into coaching and at what point did you know that was the transition you wanted to make?

MT: I knew I wanted to get into coaching at a young age, about at the same time that I had dreams of playing in the NFL and leading a team down the field to win the Super Bowl. I also thought, ‘well shoot, when football’s over, whenever it gets done, I want to coach.’ I’ve always had a bug in my heart to lead young men and coach and teach, inspire and encourage. I can remember in 7th or 8th grade talking to my teachers about wanting to play in the NFL and then after that, coach a team, coach a college team. The fact that I’ve been able to live out two dreams is a tremendous blessing, and I love it. It’s a passion of mine to teach and share, and really encourage passion and build belief in the guys that I coach.

Someone took a chance on me and believed in me, and that’s how I want to pay it forward to the guys I have the honor of coaching. With my experience of playing in the Rose Bowl, playing in the Pac-12, playing in the NFL and playing on a Super Bowl team, I’ve got a lot to offer these young guys and I think we have a lot of fun doing it. I love my job.

TT: Do you ever give coach Wilcox crap since you technically have the better head coaching record? (Tuiasosopo was the interim head coach for Washington for their 2013 bowl game win, prior to their staff heading to USC under Steve Sarkesian. Justin Wilcox was the defensive coordinator for the bowl game as well)

MT: (Laughs) No, not at all, we experienced that bowl game together and it was a crazy time, he did a great job of getting the defensive guys ready. We were understaffed, we tried to have fun and to keep the guys focused through the coaching change, and we did that. It was something we did together, and I know all the Husky fans like to talk about it. It was a unique experience for the guys that stuck around and coached, it’s something I’ll never forget, they asked me to do it and I appreciated everyone who stayed because they were able to do something that hadn’t been done in Husky football for a long time.

So no, I don’t give him crap, we’ve been coaching together for a long time and we’ve had a lot of fun together, gone through stuff together, and it’s fun to be doing it here, building this program up.

TT: You got into coaching as an assistant strength and conditioning coach, how did you get back into that role?

MT: When I was finished playing with the Raiders, this was 2008, Jim Harbaugh had been one of my quarterback coaches with the Raiders, we struck up a great relationship, he had gotten into coaching and he was at Stanford. He called me and said ‘hey, I know you still want to play, but I’ve got some opportunities over here for you to maybe get into the coaching world, be part of the staff in staff meetings, do everything our coaches do, work out with our players because I know you still want to play, and maybe in September/October, someone gets hurt and they’ll call you. So you can stay in shape, but you can start getting into the coaching world.’

I was going to do it, I was all set to do it there, but at the same time, my wife was pregnant with our oldest son now, she gave birth and it was ‘should we stay down here and do this, or should I call up to Washington,’ who had just hired Steve Sarkisian, who had coached me in the NFL. I had known the AD, Scott Woodward, for a while going back and doing alumni stuff. I had called him and called Sark about the opportunity I was going to do at Stanford and that I’d love to do it up in Seattle, because we had our first son, my parents are up there, my wife’s parents are up there, and we wanted our son to be around their grandparents, their cousins and their aunts and uncles, we could knock out two birds with one stone.

Sark liked the idea and created the opportunity for me to start my coaching career, who knows where I’d be if I stayed down here at Stanford, but I’m thankful for Jim for getting that process started for me, he’s helped me along the way a bunch.

TT: What did being an assistant strength and conditioning coach entail during that time?

MT: It was doing everything the strength coaches do, that was preparing the weight room or the fields for any workouts that our head strength coach was going to put the team through. My role was to monitor the quarterbacks through their workouts, make sure I was there to help support their lifts, their technique, and take them through their lifts so we could quality control their work. When that was done, I would go sit up in the office and in essence be a quality control for the football staff, make coffee, go on coffee runs, put together the playbooks, anything that anyone needed, special projects for the offensive coordinator, I did whatever was needed to be done.

It was great, because I wanted to do the coaching path the right way, I didn’t want to feel like I had a silver spoon in coaching, even though I had really strong relationships to get it started, I wanted it to be known that I was willing to work and no job was too big as I was developing my skillset as a coach.

TT: How was it getting your first position group, from what it looks like, it was at UCLA in 2011?

MT: Well, 2011 I was still a quality control, I did three years of basically being an analyst or intern, that’s what they call it nowadays, when I went down to UCLA in ‘11, Rick Neuheisel, who was my last coach at Washington, I got to shadow him for the year.. He was coaching the quarterbacks while he was the head coach, and my office was a chair in his office, I had to sit there and listen to every phone conversation, all the decisions he made as a head coach, and that was a unique year.

That year didn’t go quite as planned and UCLA let Rick go and they hired Jim Mora. Prior to 2011 Jim was in Seattle, because he had just gotten done coaching the Seahawks and so there was a gap year, he was coming over to the University of Washington a lot and I would see him a bunch in the office. He did our coaches clinics, I spent a lot of time with him, and I remember him coming into where I worked in the office staff room, where he said ‘hey, if I ever become a head coach, I’m going to hire you.’ I was like ‘I’m down, Jim.’

So fast forward, UCLA hires Jim, and I’m like ‘I wonder if this conversation that we had a couple years ago is going to come full circle,’ he brought me in, to talk to everyone that was a part of Rick’s staff, and he said ‘hey, I want to offer you a job, to coach the inside receivers.” I said ‘yeah, let’s go.’ So in 2012, I coached, in essence, the tight ends.

TT: When did you reconnect with Justin Wilcox, because at Cal is now the third different staff you’ve coached on together?

MT: I knew Justin obviously because we played against each other, his dad played for the 49ers, my dad played for the 49ers, and there’s all those connections that if you’re involved and knowing football, you know the names. I’d been following him as he moved up, I was playing for the Raiders and he was coaching at Cal, he moved to Boise and had all that success, you’re watching TV and you’d hear the name, defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox. Always from afar, as a fan of football, I followed his career.

When I got the call from Steve (Sarkisian) to coach the quarterbacks in 2013 at the University of Washington, that’s when I first spent any meaningful time with Justin, that was being part of the staff, working together, recruiting together, we connected, went through the coaching change and coaching the bowl game, then going down to USC for a couple years, we lived in the same town, Justin’s a salt of the earth guy, loves football, and we connect on a lot of levels, I’ve really enjoyed working with him. He’s no-nonsense, he’s fair, and like I said, he loves the game, so he’s a great guy to be around.

TT: You’ve coached tight ends a handful of times, is there something in particular about the position that you enjoy coaching?

MT: I think for me, I enjoy coaching the tight ends because you’re involved in all aspects of the offense. You’re teaching run blocking, run schemes, and you’ve got to be a receiver, so you have to teach routes, teaching route running and how to get open.

I hope to call plays one day, so this keeps me involved in everything, not just the pass game or just the run game specifically, and we’re also involved in protection. It keeps me involved in the entirety and it’s a fun group. It’s kind of a position that people, I don’t know if it gets its fair shake. I don’t want to say people disrespect the position, but I definitely think it’s undervalued, you have to do everything. In a way, you’re the special forces position of football, you’ve got to operate in three facets, so it’s fun to coach the group. It’s fun to get them to buy into that. They enjoy it, they get to be physical and they get to have the finesse, it’s a fun group.

You have to really manage the practice time so that they’re getting the right amount of each aspect of what they need to do, it can’t just be all run blocking or route running or pass protection, you have to manage where each player is at to make sure that you’re developing the skillsets, not necessarily in order, but together. You may have to have a drill, at least the time in a drill where you are doing one or two different things to get them what they need, given the time that you’re able to work with them on it. We talk about maximizing what we’re doing and loving the game of football so that when we go out there, we know what we need to work on, let’s work on it, and let’s apply it. That’s the challenge of coaching, and it’s one we take on full speed ahead, and I love it.

TT: And you get to have a bigger TE room now with what Musgrave wants to do, how much does using time more efficiently come into play?

MT: The nice thing is that you can break down the whole group into smaller groups, and once they understand the drills and what we’re doing, then there’s less time teaching the drills, then it goes into organization of maximizing those drills so that everything is squared away. Having coach Musgrave is here, and how he wants to utilize the tight end position, it creates the buy-in for the things they want to do, it has been fun, we understand our role in how we’re going to make this offense be great and it definitely helps in recruiting as well.

TT: How did you end up getting hooked back up with Justin in getting to Cal in 2017?

MT: I was at UCLA at the time, and he was up for this job, interviewing. He reached out, asked me what my situation was and would I be interested in coming up and working with them. We had a couple conversations like that, and he eventually called and offered me a job on his staff based off my previous experience with him. It was a no-brainer for me, I wanted to help him and I have some family ties to the program. My uncle Faasamala Tagaloa played there in the late 80s, with Troy Taylor, Mike Pawlawski, Brian Treggs and that whole crew. Then my grandmother’s brother, my mom’s uncle was Johnny Olszewski (Cal’s leading rusher from 1950-52). So the fact that I could work for a program that I had family who played for, that made that decision a lot easier. Plus spending time here with the Raiders, growing up here as a younger child, I knew the Bay Area well and I felt comfortable here. It was really easy for my wife and I to make that move.

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