Michael Irvin: ‘I’ve been bitten by the coaching bug’
If Michael Irvin ever embarks on a coaching career, he will have started it with perhaps the most star-studded pupils of any coach ever, at any level.
Who else can say his first real coaching experience came as a two-time winning Pro Bowl Legends Captain?
Team Irvin 2016, which beat Jerry Rice’s bunch 49-27 the week before Super Bowl 50, featured Seattle’s Russell Wilson at quarterback, three members of the Dallas Cowboys’ vaunted offensive line and some of the biggest playmakers in the NFL.
But it was over the summer, at his first youth camp held at the University of North Texas, that the Hall of Famer and former Cowboy wideout found his coaching sweet spot.
“I’ve been bitten by the coaching bug the last few years, whupping people at the Pro Bowl,” Irvin said. “I’m getting old. I want to do some coaching, so this is my best medium right now. This way I can get my coaching in without having to give up my TV job.”
Irvin had some of the best athletes in the world at his disposal in his first two coaching assignments, as well as the entire coaching staff of the Green Bay Packers for the 2016 Pro Bowl, but he felt just as at home among football campers as he did on an NFL sideline.
“I can give my knowledge and experience to these young men about how to play the game of football,” Irvin said. “Then they can take these tools they use in the game of football to try to get better at the game of life.”
With his unique combination of football experience, which combines an 11-season playing career, induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, eight years’ experience as an NFL analyst and budding coaching aspirations, Irvin said there is nowhere for the Cowboys to go this season but up, starting with training camp, which kicks off Saturday in Oxnard, Calif.
“A healthy Dez [Bryant] is as important as anything. A healthy Tony Romo is as important as anything,” Irvin said. “But a healthy mindset going into the season is more important than all things, and last season I was one of the ones that was barking pretty loudly about ‘Man, what a horrible off-season.’”
The Cowboys certainly took their share of losses that hindsight would call harbingers of doom in the off-season before the 2015 season: DeMarco Murray, who led the NFL and set a Cowboys single-season record for rushing yards in 2014, signed with the NFC East rival Philadelphia Eagles and Bryant held out in a contract dispute for part of the off-season.
“Nobody was talking about what was going to take place on the field. Everybody was talking about contracts,” Irvin said. “You can’t wake up in September and say ‘Let’s do something great.’ You have to start that in March when you start training, and that’s where they blew it last year.”
The fragility of a key collarbone also had something to say about the Cowboys’ 4-12 record in 2015, but according to Irvin, the table was set last year long before Romo went down and missed 12 of 16 games.
This off-season, though, has taken on quite a different tone. Murray’s potential replacement was drafted in the first round of April’s NFL Draft in Ezekiel Elliot. The team isn’t dealing with potentially season-derailing contract negotiations. Bryant and Romo are ready to go.
“Everybody is in and everybody has a different attitude about heading into the season. It’s a positive attitude,” Irvin said. “I think that makes next year a pretty good year.”
This story was originally published July 27, 2016 at 12:50 PM with the headline "Michael Irvin: ‘I’ve been bitten by the coaching bug’."