THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL – That Marc Trestman was back in town Friday to begin his fourth season with the Montreal Alouettes was significant for the much-travelled coach.
It is the first time since his days as a volunteer coach and later quarterbacks coach at the University of Miami in the early 1980s that he has spent four seasons with the same team.
“I have not thought about it,” the 55-year-old said. “Football takes you where it takes you.”
“I’m excited to be back. Everything feels new, it feels fresh. We’ve got some new guys on the team. We have a new coach (Carson Walch, special teams assistant), a new co-ordinator (Tim Tibesar, defence), and the league has changed as well.”
The Minnesota native has taken the Alouettes to the Grey Cup game in each of his three seasons, winning the last two. He has a chance to make Montreal the first CFL club to win three in a row since Edmonton won five straight from 1978 to 1982.
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Head Coach Marc Trestman was back in Montreal Friday, signing copies of his book Perseverance: Life Lessons On Leadership And Teamwork. |
But once a championship game ends, he heads home to Raleigh, N.C., to rejoin his wife and two daughters, who stay behind during the season, although his wife Cindy was on hand at a downtown bookstore as he signed copies of his biography Perseverance: Life Lessons On Leadership And Teamwork.
In the book, he relates that before taking his first head coaching job with the Alouettes in 2008 he worked under 17 head coaches in 10 cities, moving his family each time. He calls it “amazing” the deal he made with team owner Robert Wetenhall to spend his off-seasons in Raleigh instead of at a desk in Montreal.
In his career, Trestman has been on the coaching staff of the Minnesota Vikings, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cleveland Browns, Minnesota again, San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, Arizona Cardinals, Oakland Raiders and Miami Dolphins in the NFL and also worked in 2007 as a consultant for the New Orleans Saints.
His specialty was coaching quarterbacks, but he was also offensive co-ordinator for four teams.
Now his family has a chance to stay in one place, and his daughters don’t change schools every year or two.
Asked how he spent his off-season, Trestman said: “Basically, it’s family time and down time. Certainly we spent time on professional development and research to get better as a team. It was a good combination of both.”
The most unusual part was something he was unaware of at the time – being mentioned on a hit TV show.
In an episode of the NBC comedy 30 Rock in January, a Canadian character is forced to share work space with a colleague, who rips his football poster off the wall.
“What happened to my poster of the Montreal Alouettes? It’s signed by Marc Trestman,” says the character named Danny.
The joke may have been about the obscurity of the CFL in the U.S., but Trestman’s name is known at least to football fans in lot of cities.
And every off-season, his name comes up as a potential candidate for head coaching jobs in the NFL, something he declines to muse about publicly.
“I see myself getting ready to coach this team, this year, and that’s as far as I’m going to take it,” he said.
Over the winter, he worked with a couple of college quarterbacks ahead of the NFL draft, and he stayed in touch with his players.
“We’re in contact with all our players; that’s what I do when I’m in my car in the off-season,” he said. “I call a player. Our other coaches do the same. They keep in contact with their segments.
“It’s important to know how they’re doing and how their lives are going, because it determines how our lives will go as the season starts and progresses.”
His message, when the team gathers for camp next week in Sherbrooke, Que., is much like last year – that a team cannot repeat as champion because it is not exactly the same group from one year to the next. He doesn’t want them thinking they have a lock on the Cup just because most of them have won it twice in a row.
“You can’t repeat and you can’t three-peat because the team changes every year,” he said. “I’ve been very specific about that and I think the guys get it.
“The organization can three-peat by name, but it’s going to be a different team, so we can’t get ahead of ourselves and think that’s going to be the end result. The end result is to work hard every day and try to grow as a team.”
Trestman’s book came out a year ago, so it is his second round of book signings. The proceeds from sales go to support research on Alzheimer’s disease, which took his father-in-law. He seemed surprised that more than 80 per cent of the sales have been in Canada, since it deals mostly with his NFL career guiding pivots like Bernie Kosar and Rich Gannon.
“Part of the reason I like to do (book signings) is because I never go out during the season and it gives me an opportunity to at least say thank you back,” he said.
