IT’S HIS TIME
DAVID CULLEY BEGINS CHALLENGES OF REBUILD.
A half-century ago, on a cleat-scraped field in Knoxville, Tenn., a series of cheap shots and after-the-whistle abuse battered White County High School’s star quarterback, David Culley, until he finally had enough. • John Eldridge, White County’s tight end on that Friday night in 1972, remembers how his oldest friend called the offense together, gritted his teeth in the huddle and delivered an unyielding plea. • “They’re trying to take me out,” Culley told them. “I need your help. Let’s do this together. We’re going to show them they’re not going to take me out unless they take the whole team out.”
A bounty was placed on the talented lefty, a Black quarterback who endured racist attacks in several neighboring towns that season. One time the stadium lights even got shut off during a game in Crossville, and Culley waited in the shadows before piling more points on the opponent when the lights turned back on.
White County won in Knoxville, too. Decades after the resulting victory, Eldridge recalled the story days before Culley’s first regular season game as an NFL head coach, an insightful moment that shows how the 65-yearold Tennessean can handle the myriad challenges that will come while managing players during the Texans’ ongoing roster rebuild.
Yes, Culley’s Sunday debut against the Jaguars at NRG Stadium is a dream that required 43 years of waiting as an assistant coach to fulfill. Culley is the NFL’s oldest first-time head coach, and over a dozen mentors, coaches, players and friends gushed with pride during interviews about the man whose chance has finally arrived.
But they know the son of Sparta, Tenn., is in a tough spot. They know the 2021 season could be much like that Knoxville game all those years ago. A constant barrage of blows, fair and unfair. They know Culley can grit his teeth and pull a huddle together with an unyielding plea.
“He didn’t try to do stuff by himself,” Eldridge said. “He used the team because he knows that’s what life’s about. It’s not about an individual. It’s about everybody working together on a common goal. That’s the approach I know he’ll pull from: We’re in this together, and if the ship goes down, we’re going down together.”
‘My word is my word’
Here’s a rubber hose. Grab one end. Don’t let go.
No matter how hard the other player pulls, those who lose their grip in this grisly drill must get back in line and fight again until one player remains.
Welcome to 1973.
Eighteen players were driven out by Vanderbilt’s grueling offseason training program, run by future Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells. David Lee, a former longtime NFL coach and Commodores quarterback, said Parcells was “a mean piece of meat” back then as Vanderbilt’s defensive coordinator.
Among those who survived Parcells’ offseason program: Lee, Vanderbilt’s team captain, and Culley, the first Black quarterback in the school’s history.
There were rubber-hose pulls and dislocated shoulders. Boxing and broken jaws. Parcells wanted to know who came for an education and who came to play Southeastern Conference football.
“They’d arrest everybody today for that kind of thing,” said Lee, a former college and NFL coach of over 40 years. “That’s where Culley and I came up. We were in that kind of system. I mean, we walked in the first day of offseason and there were six big trash cans that were around the indoor area where we were, and we were all looking at them and wondering what they were all for. It wasn’t about 20 minutes lat
“He didn’t try to do stuff by himself. He used the team because he knows that’s what life’s about. It’s not about an individual. It’s about everybody working together on a common goal. That’s the approach I know he’ll pull from: We’re in this together, and if the ship goes down, we’re going down together.”
JOHN ELDRIDGE, DAVID CULLEY’S HIGH SCHOOL TEAMMATE AND FRIEND
er we figured it out. We all knew. We were all puking in them.”
This was Culley’s reward for choosing Vanderbilt over Tennessee, Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee State in what was perhaps the wildest recruiting battle Sparta ever saw.
Former White County coach Dee Harris hosted Culley’s recruiting visits at his home, and his son, Mike, remembers how the SEC coaching legends of the 1970s cycled through the small town smack between Nashville and Knoxville more than ever to check in on Sparta’s All-American.
Tennessee coach Bill Battle even phoned ahead one night to let them know his plane got delayed and wouldn’t arrive until after midnight. Mike and his brother begged their parents to wake them up to watch Culley’s visit with Battle, and they awoke to the sound of moving furniture. The kids stayed up until 3 a.m. watching Battle go over defensive stances with Culley on the living room floor.
That’s where Tennessee fell behind. Culley was intent on playing quarterback, and the race narrowed to a pair of recruiters, two future NFL head coaches who’d become lifelong mentors: Parcells and Romeo Crennel, then Western Kentucky’s defensive line coach.
Parcells held the ace. Steve Sloan, a former Falcons quarterback and one of Bear Bryant’s favorite passers at Alabama, had just taken over as Vanderbilt’s head coach and was previously Georgia Tech’s offensive coordinator and coached the school’s first Black quarterback, Eddie McAshan. Culley knew Sloan would sincerely honor his desire to play quarterback.
Crennel still had a shot and secured a visit from Culley for Western Kentucky’s home game against Middle Tennessee State. Mike remembers how the Western Kentucky staff couldn’t find Culley after the game for a closing conversation. They searched around and found Culley in the visiting locker room, cornered by Middle Tennessee coaches.
The intensity increased as the deadline for scholarship paperwork arrived. Culley said Parcells even bought a room at a Holiday Inn Holidome in Cookville, Tenn., where he kept Culley and Eldridge overnight so the Tennessee coaches couldn’t get to them.
“He was definitely in demand,” Mike said.
Culley quarterbacked three seasons for Vanderbilt, although a certain headline that ran in The Tennessean just before national signing day signaled an alternate history: David Culley Signs With Blue Raiders.
Indeed, Culley’s picture ran beneath the headline, along with his quote: “I knew after my last high school game that this is where I was coming. It was just a matter of time.”
Parcells, who thought he had received a commitment from Culley, called the quarterback to clear things up. Culley explained he was following the rules at the time — which allowed him to sign with schools from multiple conference, so long as he chose a final school by the deadline — and he still intended to sign with Vanderbilt if their agreement still stood.
“You know what?” Parcells responded. “You just doublecrossed Middle Tennessee State University.”
“So, every conversation I’ve had with Coach Parcells when I talk to him, first thing he says to me is, ‘Double Cross,’” Culley said. “I say, ‘Coach, that’s been 30 years ago. I don’t do that anymore.’ I say, ‘My word is my word now.’”
‘He’s a tough guy’
Every other year or so, Boots Donnelly could count on a phone call from one of the first assistant coaches he ever hired.
They were the sort of ritualistic calls mentors often receive from protégés who are full of hope and angst and really just need reassurance that their next career move will help them fulfill their goals.
And why wouldn’t Culley have options? Donnelly, Culley’s backfield coach at Vanderbilt, witnessed his quarterback’s acute knowledge of football schematics. But, more importantly, Donnelly recognized Culley as a “tremendous communicator” who understood people.
That’s why Donnelly hired Culley twice — first as his running backs coach at Austin Peay in 1978 (Culley’s first job), again as his running backs and quarterbacks coach at Middle Tennessee State in 1982.
Culley inherited charisma both from his father, Ulysses, and Harris, two beloved men in Sparta who died within the same week earlier this year. Locals see their qualities mirrored in Culley, a tenured coach who’s mastered the balance between encouragement and sternness.
“He’s a tough guy,” said Donnelly, a Hall of Fame coach and MTSU’s second-winningest in history. “He’s a hard-nosed guy. When it comes to being a disciplinarian, he is that.”
Lee recognized plenty of Parcells when he hired Culley to be his offensive coordinator at UTEP in 1989. Lee, UTEP’s head coach from 1989-93, remembers Culley “butt-chewing” receivers until they executed techniques to perfection. Lee once walked past an offensive team meeting when the doors were closed and could still hear Culley tearing into a few players who’d missed class like “those guys robbed a bank.”
Culley maintained his standards-will-be-met message throughout 27 years as an NFL assistant, in which he earned a reputation as a tough technician as a receivers coach with the Buccaneers, Steelers, Eagles, Chiefs and Ravens.
“He was always on the receiver’s head, man,” said Texans running back Mark Ingram, who played the last two seasons with Culley in Baltimore. “He was always on them, on them, on them. I always knew right away. He was on them about catching passes, on them about their route depth, on them about their details, on them about finishing plays. So, I’ve known that he was holding those receivers to a high standard.”
Marty Mornhinweg, a longtime former NFL offensive coordinator, coached 10 seasons with Culley and the Eagles, and he said Culley had a teacher’s knack for making complicated things simple, which freed the offense to venture into numerous schematic options with its players.
Culley eased the professional transitions for DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin, two receivers who thrived as rookies for the Eagles in consecutive seasons.
“His unit, and it sort of spread to the whole team, always had a lot of juice, lot of enthusiasm,” Mornhinweg said, “and that goes a long way.”
‘He’s a winner’
Step up to the golf cart in the bowels of NRG Stadium. Approach Culley, who’s smiling and reclining in the leather seat two days before his head coaching debut. Add up the mentors over his 43 years in assistant coaching.
Parcells. Donnelly. R.C. Slocum at Texas A&M. Sam Wyche in Tampa Bay. Bill Cowher in Pittsburgh. Andy Reid in Philadelphia and Kansas City. John Harbaugh in Baltimore.
A question develops: Why did it take so long for Culley to get his shot at being an NFL head coach?
Culley has never been a fulltime coordinator, and that has long been viewed as a glaring omission from his résumé. He said he did feel at some point he got labeled as a receivers coach, since he’d coached the position for so long.
But as the years passed, Culley thought of how Reid had never been a coordinator either, nor had former Chiefs coach Todd Haley, a longtime receivers coach who didn’t have full play-calling duties although he held the coordinator title under Ken Whisenhunt with the Cardinals.
Reid held an “assistant head coach” title in his final two seasons with the Packers under Mike Holmgren, and Culley said he was grateful when Reid gave him the same title during their four years together in Kansas City. Culley left Kansas City to be the quarterbacks coach in Buffalo, and, after two seasons, he said Harbaugh’s offer to give him the titles “assistant head coach” and “passing game coordinator” were one of the reasons he joined the Ravens staff.
“The perception is when people see that, they look at you differently,” said Culley, who said he felt like he was ready to be a head coach 10 years ago. “And quite frankly, I wasn’t doing anything differently then than I was prior to that.”
When Culley emerged as a lead candidate for the Texans in January, criticism abounded over the longtime position coach’s lack of titles and inexperience as a playcaller.
Culley was skeptical himself. It was his first interview for a head coaching job in 27 years of NFL coaching. He’d never worked with an agent (he has one now) and had maneuvered his coaching career entirely through the relationships he’d established with fellow coaches.
“David is not a pusher,” Donnelly said. “He’s not out there beating his own drum, screaming and hollering. He doesn’t do that. I never could understand. Somebody’s got to recognize this kid.”
The list of hot names who interviewed with the Texans included Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, Panthers offensive coordinator Joe Brady. Culley told Jim Trotter and NFL Network’s Steve Wyche on his podcast Huddle and Flow that the first question he asked Texans general manager Nick Caserio: “How do you justify hiring me?”
The NFL also has a long racial equity problem in its collective failure to hire Black coaches, and Culley said he wanted to know he wasn’t a token candidate that satisfied the league’s Rooney Rule, a policy that requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior operations jobs.
“I wanted to make sure I wasn’t a part of that,” Culley told Trotter and Wyche. “And they assured me they were looking for the best head coach to fit this situation.”
The situation with Houston’s pro franchise is blatantly volatile.
Ask anyone who knows Culley best about the Texans, and the answers will usually be preceded by a chuckle, a groan, a tone of unease.
The Texans are undergoing an immense roster overhaul, and they are expected to be outmatched in almost every game this season, a circumstance that was cemented earlier this year when uncertainty clouded the future of the franchise’s star quarterback Deshaun Watson.
Disgruntled by the direction of the organization, Watson had made it clear he wanted to be traded even before Culley was hired. Then 22 civil lawsuits alleging sexual assault and harassment were filed against Watson, and the quarterback has not been placed on the commissioner’s exempt list and remains on the team’s 53-man roster while the franchise awaits the resolution of his legal issues with the possibility of trading him to another team.
Culley has insisted since training camp began that Watson has “not been a distraction at all” to the team while attending practices, workouts and team meetings on his own time to avoid being fined.
Meanwhile, Culley has been tasked with fostering a competitive culture in the short term while Caserio has been candid about the organization’s longterm, “process-oriented” approach that has already included rebuilding moves like trading starting cornerback Bradley Roby to the Saints in exchange for a 2022 third-round pick and a conditional sixth-round pick in 2023.
Culley said he understands players focus more on the shortterm, that “everything is now,” and maintains “every time we go out to play a game, we go out to win. We feel like the guys we’re playing with right now are good enough to do that with.”
There were some players who questioned the Roby move. Safety Lonnie Johnson posted on Twitter “I don’t understand it.” Others who spoke with reporters leading up to the season opener echoed a strikingly similar message that they understood the NFL was a business and they’d instead focus on the things they can control.
Still, a veteran-heavy team with players such as Ingram and wide receiver Chris Conley who’ve played for Culley in previous stops share a respect for the head coach who’s navigating them through a murky future.
“He’s very familiar with winning football, what it takes to win in this league,” Ingram said. “He’s a winner. He wants to be a winner. We want to make sure he’s a winner as well.”
“He’s very familiar with winning football, what it takes to win in this league.
He’s a winner. He wants to be a winner. We want to make sure he’s a winner as well.” MARK INGRAM, TEXANS RUNNING BACK
‘David knows what it takes’
Grab a schedule. Check the favorites. Despite the obvious challenges, Culley will partly be held accountable for the pending results.
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” said Parcells, reciting the familiar quote when asked about what’s ahead for his former pupil. “That’s really what it is. He’s been an assistant coach for a long time. Now you’re in charge of the whole team, and all the eyes of the organization are pretty much looking at you every day when you walk through the door because you’re the one that’s kind of choreographing the script, so to speak.
“So, I think just trying to maintain a steady plan that you believe in regardless of the results, and just because the results aren’t good sometimes, that doesn’t mean the plan’s bad.
“You’ve just gotta do the best you can, help your team gain confidence and be insistent on the things that allow you to win games and be very, very astute in your recognition and criticism of the things that cause you to lose.”
Eldridge said he’s seen his old friend in plenty stressful situations, and he “always comes away as cool as a cucumber.”
But will the franchise have the patience to honor Culley’s fiveyear contract?
That’s Donnelly’s question. And he’s not alone in thinking Culley can succeed if given the chance.
“David knows what it takes, and he’ll quietly get that program better and better and better,” Lee said. “You wait and see.”
“He’s been an assistant coach for a long time. Now you’re in charge of the whole team, and all the eyes of the organization are pretty much looking at you every day when you walk through the door because you’re the one that’s kind of choreographing the script, so to speak.”
BILL PARCELLS, HALL OF FAME COACH