San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Christensen the man behind many stars
Confidant of Brady, quarterbacks coach shaped big names
As the Tampa Bay Buccaneers boarded their buses last Sunday to leave Lambeau Field, where they had just upset the Green Bay Packers to earn a trip to Super Bowl LV, Tom Brady assumed his regular seat across the aisle from quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen.
Even in the age of social distancing, Brady and Christensen are inseparable — two legends laser-focused on the same prize.
“We’re sitting in the back of the bus, and I’m looking up at all these signs saying Title Town and Lambeau Field,” Christensen said. “And our talk as we were driving out was, ‘Why us? How does this happen?’ The playoffs are a time when you gratefully retrospect your life. You think about how we got here, how many people helped us along the way. How lucky am I?”
In a phone call this week, Brady said: “We sit next to each other on the bus every road game. He and I get a chance to talk about everything that happened in the game. Kind of our little therapy session, win or lose. He’s got great perspective. When I’m sitting there listening, I’m very much — the story isn’t about me — but for him to say, ‘How lucky am I,’ I feel the same way. How lucky am I?”
Brady is not alone. Christensen, a minister’s son from Covina, Calif., who lived with Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor in college and was taken in by the family of Rev. Billy Graham, has legions of NFL quarterbacks who regard him as the best of the best.
“He’s one of my favorite coaches of all time,” Peyton Manning said.
“I truly think he embraces the idea of being a coach, a mentor, and a solid rock in someone’s life,” Andrew Luck said.
Put simply by Trent Dilfer: “He’s my hero in football.”
At 64, Christensen is half a lifetime removed from his days as a muscular, workmanlike quarterback at Fresno City College and North Carolina, where he met the Grahams and shared a four-person suite for two years with Taylor. Long gone is that floppy, shoulder-length hair that, as Dilfer says, made Christensen look like an extra from “That ‘70s Show.”
Yet he still has that tanned, round, boyish face and mischievous spirit that prompts him to turn quarterback drills into carnival games and trade needling jabs with his players.
“He’s got this sheepish grin about him that’s just kind of egging you on,” said former quarterback Brad Johnson, who played for Christensen in Tampa. “He’s just going to poke you in the side a little bit. He just wants to see the bulldog come out of you. He makes everything fun.”
Christensen and Brady spent 13 years on the opposite sides of the simmering rivalry between the Indianapolis Colts, where Christensen was an offensive fixture, and the New England Patriots, where Brady secured six Lombardi Trophies, a record for any individual quarterback. This week, Christensen playfully congratulated him on finally getting to the Super Bowl the honest way.
“He’s so cruel,” Brady said with a laugh. “But, believe me, I get him right back. There’s not a dig that he gets in that I don’t have a retort. We have a great back and forth. It’s very enjoyable.”
Whereas Brady draws a crowd wherever he goes, Christensen could walk unrecognized through throngs of NFL fans. He’s largely anonymous, and likes it that way.
“Clyde’s the unicorn of coaches,” Dilfer said. “His passion far exceeds his ambition to move up. He could have had any job. Peyton’s a kingmaker. Tom’s a kingmaker. He could have anything. He’s chosen relationships over everything. He’s a football guru. There’s no scheme, no quarterback thing, no defense that he’s not an expert in, yet it always starts with relationships.
“He wants to make sure you’re good first. Because the rest isn’t going to be sticky if you’re not good, meaning just in a good place as a human.”
Christensen’s football odyssey began with college jobs at Mississippi, East Tennessee State, Temple — where he first worked with current Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians — East Carolina, Holy Cross, South Carolina, Maryland and Clemson.
In 1996, he jumped to the NFL and variously worked as a position coach and offensive coordinator with Tampa Bay, Indianapolis and Miami before returning to the Buccaneers with Arians in 2019. Christensen won a Super Bowl ring during the 2006 season, coaching wide receivers for the Colts.
“Let’s face it,” Manning said, “head coaches get a lot of attention. The coordinators get a lot of attention. Clyde’s been a coordinator a couple times now, but he’s been an assistant coach for a long time. It shocks me that he hasn’t been a head coach because he checks all the boxes and he’s such a good natural leader. He’s got no ego. If that bothers him, I’ve never heard him complain about it.”