Why They Coach: Defensive Coordinator/ILB Coach Peter Sirmon, 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 defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon on the phone to talking about his path to coaching and his belief in consistency of expectations.

This is part two 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 | Peter Sirmon, Part One

TT: How much does that philosophy of ‘being yourself’ guide you as a coach now, since you had a player in Evan Weaver who was very much himself and successful?

PS: I think I ask my guys to behave in a certain way and to be accountable, but I think there’s something about letting everybody be their own person. I think as a player, it was hard to play for somebody where one day, you do a technique and it’s great, the next day you do it the same way, it’s not good enough. That was mixed messaging to me. Obviously coaches have bad days and good days as well, it’s not always about football for them and something may have happened that affects their attitude, but I want my standard to be so high, that when I ask a player of mine ‘is this good, what needs to be corrected,’ regardless of how I’m feeling, they know what the standard is.

That gives them freedom to be themselves, because they don’t get caught in ‘yesterday was good, today it’s not good enough, so I don’t know what to say, coach. I don’t know what’s good.’ I think you’ve got to be consistent if you want people to be themselves.

TT: Moving back a little, when did you know it was time to get out of the NFL and to get into something else?

PS: I finished up my second contract with the Titans, and there were going to be a couple one-year free agent deals that were presented to me. I think I was 29 at the time and I was good. I was really good, and I was thankful to finish two contracts with the Titans. Nashville, I was very blessed to be drafted there, it’s a great place, great community to be around and I really enjoyed my time there. I never had ideas of grandeur that I’d be able to make enough money to retire for life. The money thing, I always thought I was going to transition to something else, I didn’t know what it was going to be, but I wasn’t that concerned, I was going to pour myself into the next thing like I poured myself into football.

I didn’t want it to be one year here, one year there, try to hang on. Most guys, when you’ve been there for six or seven years can usually squeeze out another one or two from being a good dude, being a veteran, and being able to plug and play because you know the league so well. I didn’t see myself doing that, so I started the transition and really never looked back.

TT: What point did coaching become your focus?

PS: About within a year of being retired, of being done. About two weeks after I retired I had my residential real estate license, I was in Nashville doing some real estate. Then I was doing Titan pre-game and post-game radio, and really enjoyed that seat. You can pretty much say anything you want and you’re always right, heck of a deal.

Then after that, it was 2008-ish, not a lot of houses were selling at that moment, with the recession and the crisis there. That kinda (spurred the thought), if I’m not going to be passionate about what I’m gonna do, I need to find something I can be passionate about. That’s when I transitioned into coaching.

TT: From there, what was your first coaching job and what was the first coaching job you got paid for?

PS: First coaching job, I was a volunteer position coach at Central Washington University, a division 2 school. I didn’t get paid there. I went to Oregon and GA’d for a year, I didn’t get paid there. Then I went to the University of Tennessee, GA’d there for a year, then in my second year there Derek Dooley hired me on as the inside linebackers coach. So it was my fourth year of coaching that I got a paycheck.

TT: That was with Wilcox at Tennessee, how’d you get hooked back up with him?

PS: We had stayed in touch, there was an opportunity to go back there and be a GA. It was great to get back there and coach a position, I coached the safeties. That was a great experience for me, but the most important thing I did is that I poured myself into recruiting. I think that’s why Dooley ended up hiring me, Justin obviously had a lot of impact on that, but in the SEC, just like with the Pac-12, it’s how do you differentiate yourself. There’s a lot of people who can coach linebacker, a lot of people that would coach linebacker at a power five school.

It’s how you differentiate yourself, and for me, the avenue was that I knew I could outwork people in recruiting.

TT: Did you feel like you got more of a crash course in recruiting being in the SEC at that point?

PS: You know Trace, I don’t know, I’ve been at Tennessee and at Mississippi State, the SEC is a great conference. It’s different in terms of consolidation in population and consolidation of the schools, you’re really in people’s backyards. I bet, without looking at a map, you could hit six campuses in a day driving around in certain pockets down there. There’s a lot more crossover in some of the recruiting footprints typically than on the west coast, where we get stretched vertically. We have our pockets of pairs, but not anything more than that.

TT: On another topic, what’s a Justin Wilcox story you can tell me that won’t get either of us a phone call about it?

PS: (Laughs) Holy smokes, well (pause), I can’t think of one off the top of my head, there’s about 8000 of them, if he wants it to be known it’ll be known. What I will say about Justin is that he’s super competitive. Doesn’t matter if it’s intramural basketball and we’re running football guys versus somebody else on the courts. When it’s time to go, he’s as competitive of a person as I’ve been around, and when it’s done, people have always gravitated towards him, they like him. He’s a good guy to be around.

TT: You came to Cal at the beginning of 2018, how did that happen for you?

PS: It was the right time for myself. I was at Mississippi State and my son Jack was transitioning to his senior year (at the Brentwood Academy in Nashville). Starkville wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be, Louisville was the best (opportunity) at the time, it’s two and a half hours dead north of Nashville. That allowed Jack to finish his senior year and not have to go to a third school. I also, selfishly, got back to three or four of his games and got to watch him win his second state championship at the high school he was at. Those were very important in my view for him, important for me to be as supportive as I could be in the capacity of not living in Nashville with them.

Once Jack had graduated and made his choice (Washington), he made his choice when I was still at Louisville, I wanted to get everybody back together. Through the travels, being exposed as a coordinator at Mississippi State and Louisville, those were great learnings, I really cherished my time at both the places, but I found value in people, that was more important to me than the title (of defensive coordinator). It worked out with Justin and coming back, getting back with people I really believe in.

TT: With that, why Cal in particular?

PS: I believe that Cal’s a good fit, when I look at Cal and the type of people you’re going to be able to recruit, I think that’s a positive in terms of really trying to find a young man that can handle the course load in high school, that really demonstrates the ability to finish things that he begins, and somebody that is attracted to a life when football is over. A lot of people talk about if football doesn’t work out, I don’t speak to the recruits that way, I say ‘when football is over, what do you want to do?’ I think Cal offers an unbelievable opportunity to have that conversation.

TT: You talked about coming back to the west coast as an opportunity to get the family together again, how is it now, with the shelter-in-place, that you’re kinda forced to be back in the same household?

PS: It’s awesome, I love it. Like most parents, it’s great to come home from work, see your kids, give them a hug, go to their high school football game and watch them. We have three younger daughters, so we’ll go support them, watch them cheer and just be around them. There’s never a time where I’m going to say ‘oh it was great that I was living away from my wife and kids for two football seasons,’ that’s never going to happen in my mind. It was important for me to get them back together and it’s important for me to be in their lives every single day.