Free Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy Page B

anyone any good. I declined and effectively ended my playing career.
    Immediately after the season, Coach Perkins followed through on his earlier comments, calling to offer me a coaching position. I was very interested, and after talking with him, I figured I was destined to go to New York. In the meantime, Wellington Mara, the owner of the Giants, mentioned to his close friend Art Rooney of the Steelers, that it looked as though they would be hiring a former Steeler—me—as one of their coaches.
    Mr. Rooney called Coach Noll, who called me. “If you’re really interested in coaching, I think we can create something for you right here,” he said. I accepted the offer and became a Steeler once more.
    In taking that job with the Steelers at the age of twenty-five, I became the youngest coach in the NFL . The situation could have been a disaster, but the Steelers made it easy for me to break in as a coach. Even though I was younger than most of the players, and they had seen me come in just three years earlier not knowing anything about defense, those guys were professionals. So many of them were locked into the idea of living for Christ that it didn’t matter who was coaching them. They worked hard and honored God through it because that’s just what they did. Before I knew it, I was doing odd jobs, breaking down film, and essentially acting as an assistant to the head coach.
    Chuck Noll always reminded us that “Football is what you are doing right now, but it’s not your life’s work. You’ve got to continue to prepare for your life’s work.” Occasionally it occurred to us that he had been in football for such a long time that it certainly seemed to be
his
life’s work, but I don’t think anybody ever had the guts to say it.
    Chuck often preached the importance of time away from the office, and we knew it wasn’t just lip service. Chuck lived out his message. He loved to cook, drive boats, and fly planes. He never wanted to just hang around the office, especially if the work was done. His philosophy was “Get the work done so you can enjoy the other parts of your life.” I was single at the time, so the other parts of my life in Pittsburgh did not include family. But the Steelers organization was certainly a great place for me to learn and to shape a philosophy.
    Even though I never did work for Coach Perkins, I have always been grateful for the encouragement and direction he planted in my mind. He had been around me for only a few weeks of camp, so for him to say what he did carried a great deal of weight, despite the fact that he was cutting me at the time. As a coach with the Steelers, I looked forward to going to work my second day on a job—for the first time ever.
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    It was Father’s Day weekend of 1981, my first year coaching with the Steelers. The phone rang late on Friday night, June 19. It was our chaplain, Hollis Haff, who told me he needed a last-minute speaker for the father-and-son breakfast at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sewickley, just outside of Pittsburgh. Each year, one of the Steelers players or coaches spoke, but this year’s speaker, lineman Ted Petersen, had gotten sick.
    I didn’t feel like getting up early—I had just walked in from an all-day, out-of-town football clinic. I think Hollis could read my mind. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’ve done this every year, and they’re really counting on us to have someone there. Ted’s sick, and I wouldn’t even ask, except …”
    I told Hollis I’d do it as a favor to him.
    The next morning I showed up at St. Stephen’s to meet with the senior pastor, Dr. John Guest. I made the appropriate apologies on behalf of Ted and the Steelers, and Dr. Guest asked if he could sit with me during the meal. “I’ve got a bio prepared on Ted, but I’m afraid I don’t know anything about you,” he said. “At least if we sit together while we eat, I could put together a reasonable introduction.”
    During breakfast, I