Why They Coach: Defensive Coordinator/ILB Coach Peter Sirmon, Part One

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 defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon on the phone to talking about his path to coaching , coming from a seven year career in the NFL and more.

This is part one of an interview that has been transcribed and lightly edited for clarity.

Previous Installments: Justin Wilcox, Part One | Justin Wilcox, Part Two | Charlie Ragle, Part One | Charlie Ragle, Part Two

TT: What sports did you play growing up?

PS: Ice hockey, basketball, baseball, obviously football, golf, ran track in high school, kind of the typical kid stuff…

TT: Aside from ice hockey it’s typical, you don’t hear about that every day, was it just a bigger sport where you grew up?

PS: In Walla Walla, about 30,000 people, we had a small hockey program and a lot of the kids were in it.

TT: How did playing those different sports shape you as you moved forward?

PS: At the time, you don’t really know, but looking back reflecting on it, it’s learning how to roll the ball out, be on a team, understanding what the role is going to be that year or what the team needs, growing and adapting, understanding you’re not going to always be perfect at it. You don’t have to be a year-round guy, but to be on a team and enjoying being around other guys, it was always a lot of fun.

TT: Was there a point where football took over in being what you wanted to do?

PS: I was a late bloomer, my spring sport as a sophomore and a freshman was that I was on the high school golf team. I played football in the fall and I always liked it, but I didn’t have much stature, it really didn’t develop until I was 17 or 18 years old, when I physically started maturing a bit. I would really say the summer going into my senior year (is when football took over), I only played on varsity football my junior and senior year, it wasn’t like I was an obvious football player my sophomore year. I was a good player, I was a good member of the team, but I wasn’t like some of these players you see as sophomores that are going to be division one players that are dominating already. That definitely wasn’t me.

It happened later, that summer before my senior year I really dove in and poured myself into it.

TT: With that, how much has the recruiting process changed since then, where you’re now seeing and recruiting those sophomores that are future division one players?

PS: It’s obviously changed a lot, I think you don’t need area recruiters as much. In the past, area recruiters knew the lay of the land and just something as simple as knowing how to get around. Think about going to a new area in LA or Eastern Washington and not having a map on your phone and understanding getting around, where the coaches are, how you find them, it’s something we take for granted now with a text and Google maps. I think the coaches recommendation could carry more weight, because you didn’t have access to 10,000 names on Hudl or UC Report, all these other databases that people compile.

Had I been myself right now, I would’ve been maybe a kid that gets a scholarship at a summer camp going into their senior year. I’d have been very late in the process now.

TT: And that process has considerably sped up in the last five years, even since I’ve been covering recruiting

PS: Yeah, it’s continuing to speed up because of the accessibility of film, it used to be a VHS tape, and you’d have to send it in the mail, somebody actually had to watch it. It’s not as easy as four or five guys in the recruiting office going through Hudl film and clicking on a highlight tape. In the mid-90s, do you know how difficult it was to make a highlight tape on VHS? You didn’t do it, you had to watch game tape. That’s where the area-recruiter, having a relationship with the high school coaches, their weight was valuable in their opinions of the players.

TT: Backtracking a bit, in all those high school sports were there any examples of guys who’ve influenced you as a coach now?

PS: I had two coaches in high school football who I think were very influential on me. My head coach, Gary Myers and the defensive coordinator Mark Yonce, I think those two guys had big impacts on me.

TT: On another topic, you were a part of a group of players that helped Oregon turn the corner toward what they are today, what was that experience like?

PS: I enjoyed my experience, it really came down to three places to go, Washington State, Oregon State and Oregon, for me at that time, that was the best fit. I really didn’t know much about it. Steve Greatwood recruited me and I went on a visit, that must have been prior to their Rose Bowl, in December. He called me later in December, and said ‘Hey, we’re bringing in some more kids this week, we’re going to offer another linebacker, if you’re not going to take it we’re going to offer somebody else.’ I remember pausing for three or four seconds and saying ‘I’ll commit.’

He says ‘what?”

‘I’ll commit, I’d like to do that’

He says ‘that’s great news, I’m gonna go tell coach Brooks, he’s gonna call you all fired up, so hang tight there.’

I said okay, so we hung up. Rich Brooks never called, and I never expected him to call, but now, I would think that if a player committed and didn’t get some text message or something, it might be taken the wrong way. At that time, I was just happy I had somewhere to go. I didn’t have a commitment experience of ‘oh hey, this was so cool,’ I didn’t drop a video or anything.

TT: Not that you really could…

PS: Yeah, considering I just did that on the phone one morning and never talked to the head coach even.

(Brooks left for the St. Louis Rams after the Rose Bowl season, and Mike Belotti took over the head coaching duties in Eugene before Sirmon got there)

TT: Did you ever give coach Greatwood some guff about that while he was at Cal?

PS: Absolutely not, I loved the recruiting process, I think he called me a couple times, I went on a visit, and I was done. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the hot sauce and what’s required today. That’s not something that fires my personality up. I’m glad I was recruited at the time I was recruited.

TT: Jumping ahead a little bit, when did you know that the NFL was a possibility for you?

PS: Maybe my junior year in college, I started the first game of my freshman year, played three, and then got benched for five, then played the last three. Then my sophomore year, I started playing more consistently and had some pretty good production. Then going into junior year, i was like, ‘I’ve got the size, maybe if I get lucky, maybe this thing will work out.’

Unfortunately I got hurt three games into my junior year, I tore my pec. But going into that junior year I thought, ‘eh, maybe I’ll be able to do this for you,’ I never thought if I’d be able to make it or not.

TT: How did that process go for you as far as getting to the NFL after your senior year?

PS: At first the agents start contacting you, unfortunately that doesn’t mean a lot. I’d say most draft eligible players now are getting some kind of contact if you have some sort of playing experience. That was really the first time that I really started discussing the NFL with anybody, because it wasn’t anything I talked to my parents about. They were obviously very supportive and it wasn’t that they didn’t know, but what do you talk about (if you’ve never done it before)? What the process is now is different than what it was, and when I was a senior, I was just trying to play as best as I could, stay healthy and win games. That’s what I still think the recipe is for success in the NFL and being drafted high, those things are still the same.

TT: I heard through the grapevine that you had a story about being in the same group as Brian Urlacher at the combine, can you share that with me?

PS: We were in the same group at the RCA Dome, that was prior to the new one (Lucas Oil Stadium), it was like it is now, you’re in groups and you do drills together, and Brian and I were in the same group, there were 20 of us or something. The turf, which stretched in five yard increments across the field, was stitched at the 5,10, 15, 20 (and so on). We were doing the shuttle, the 5-10-5, and when Brian was doing it, when he would get to the second line, on his second transition, he would keep ripping the seam out. He had so much speed going and so much weight (that it would rip the turf up), he had to redo it three or four times, and they kept having to move on the shuttle because he kept tearing it out.

I had known Brian, because we were both in the Senior Bowl, I was on the front line of kickoff return and he was running down on kickoff in the Senior Bowl, and I remember thinking to myself ‘if every dude is going to be like this, this is going to be a problem.’ Because he was big and fast and obviously a hall of famer, but I remember it was the third quarter of the Senior Bowl, he ran down on kickoff, and I thought ‘this is going to be tough.’ Then seeing him and working out with him at the combine, this guy was something else. He was one of those guys that you work out with, that you remember.

TT: You lasted six or seven years in the NFL, which is longer than the average player, what do you attribute that to?

PS: I made it seven, and I think I was drafted into a good organization with the Titans. The GM at the time, Floyd Reese, to his credit he really believed in his draft choices, and he was invested in our success. I think that was really big, and even for that time, the Titans had a lot of success, early 2000s it was a very good franchise. I think a lot of that was Jeff Fisher and him, they put together a good team, but Floyd was personal in his draft picks, supporting them, helping them, and giving them every opportunity.

The first year as a rookie, you’re doing everything you can to hold on so you’re not getting fired every day. I developed quite a bit after that rookie year, I became a significantly better football player in year two and year three, and I was fortunate to be in an organization like that where I thought we had some good coaches at the time. Jim Schwartz was the position coach, then the defensive coordinator, he’s been all around, won a Super Bowl with the Eagles, he’s been a head coach. Gunther Cunningham (a former Cal defensive coordinator) came in and he was my position coach after (Schwartz) and really if I can attribute anything to the technique of football, the discipline and the mentality, I think Gunther Cunningham was the right person at the right time in my career to shape the mentality of playing, the mentality of how you approach the game, the mentality of how you study the game.

Then in my career was Dave McGinnis, who was just as good of a coach, but a different person, a very warm person, a person you can connect with. To have that dichotomy of what Gunther was and what Dave was and to see that you can get results both ways was impactful to me. Having Jim, Gunther, and Dave, if you call around, they’re all different personalities but all very successful in their own right. As I draw on my own experiences, (the lesson is that) you can have success and be yourself. You don’t have to be a meathead, you don’t have to be typical, you don’t have to be a stereotype of what people believe a football coach or whatever it is. You can be yourself and be successful. That’s what I took from those three different coaches in my career, just go be you, demand a lot and try to be the same guy every day.

The second half of this interview covers Sirmon's path from the end of his career with the Titans to getting to Cal