Hauck coaches softer approach

The very basis for education-by-experience is to place individuals accomplished in a particular task in position to pass along every learned skill and memory.

Then, there is Tim Hauck, the coach of the Eagles’ safeties, a former NFL player of fine achievement, a pro-turned-coach with a long resume in the field.

His message to the Eagles’ safeties: Don’t do it my way.

“The game has changed,” Hauck was saying Saturday at the NovaCare Complex, during a quiet day off for the Eagles. “And it’s for the better.”

A safety and special-teams force for nine NFL franchises, including the Eagles from 1999 through 2001, Hauck was gifted with speed and instincts. But because he could do something else – create on-field violence would be as good a description as any – he was known, is known, and forever will be known as one of the sport’s great hitters.

So it was noteworthy, if something less than breaking news, that new discoveries about brain injuries to football players had to

change the way the sport is coached. How, exactly? “You can’t,” Hauck said, “go run through a guy’s face.” So that’s one way. And that’s why Hauck wonders that he might not have been able to play under current NFL rules, which prohibit hits to the head and other such acts, moves defensive backs once used to gain an edge on receivers.

“Now you better be getting

great breaks on the ball and actually making great plays on the ball,” Hauck said, “rather than dislodging it very much, or using an intimidation where the receiver doesn’t want to catch the dang thing.

“It’s a different game than it was in ‘90s and the early 2000s. Any more, even a legal hit you see getting flagged, because it is too violent. Now, that’s wrong. They shouldn’t flag a hit that they don’t actually see the hit to the head. But you still see the flag coming out.”

Hauck, 50, was a noted contact hitter. But he has become a valued member

of Doug Pederson’s coaching staff, still with the familiar, easy, conversational style he had as a player. So there are no outward signs of any post-career stress … not that he doesn’t consider the possibility.

“I guess you are always a little concerned; you hear about the CTE,” Hauck said of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a form of brain damage often revealed in football players. “If I see an article, I’ll follow it. I don’t think there’s a whole lot you can do about it. I’m very fortunate now that I still feel very good, both mentally and physically.

But I know a lot of guys have problems both ways. So it’s one of those things that you knock on wood and say your prayers that you come out fine.”

With that caution, Hauck supports the newer NFL regulations.

“I think it had to change,” he said. “Guys are getting bigger and faster. It was becoming an issue. The game has changed. It is obviously different now. But I think real changes had to be made, just for that matter. There were too many long-term issues, whether they were concussions or shoulders or knees or necks or whatever.”

For that, Hauck believes there will not be a player like him again, or at least any time soon.

“I played in a leather helmet,” he kidded. “But the players have to adapt to the rules.”

Hauck said he was diagnosed with roughly seven concussions, but that if current guidelines were followed, he would have been found to have had up to 100.

Even with that, he believes his reputation as a hitter may have, itself, been overstated.

“I can’t remember too many times when I was actually running through a guy’s head,” he said. “You

can still play fast and you can still play physical. But it’s just the shots above the shoulder that you’ve really got to be concerned with.

“And that goes for the offensive player and the defensive player. More of my concussions were based on shots that I put on somebody else than on shots somebody put on me.”

Because of that experience, Hauck has learned never to tell players they ought to try it his old way.

“No, you can’t say that,” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “In fact, you have to go out of your way not to say it that way.”

COURTESY PHOTO Former defensive back Tim Hauck, once a heavy hitter, now preaches safety first in his new role as assistant coach.