An NFL coach begins feeling ill in the middle of a season. His throat hurts, his chest burns. He feels light-headed during a round of golf on a rare off-day. He keeps telling himself it’s nothing because that’s what football coaches do, so he pops a couple of aspirin and goes back to work, until one day he finds himself on a gurney being wheeled into surgery — several weeks before a Super Bowl run.
Sound familiar?
This season, it’s John Fox.
Fifteen years ago, it was Dan Reeves.
“Tell John I hope it turns out better for him than it did for me,” Reeves said, laughing.
The Falcons were 12-2 in 1998 when Reeves, their head coach, underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery. He missed the final two games of the regular season, but returned to lead the team to a playoff win over San Francisco and an NFC championship over heavily favored Minnesota, which was punctuated by Reeves doing the “Dirty Bird” dance on stage afterward. The Falcons then lost to Denver in the Super Bowl.
The Broncos had not returned to the Super Bowl until this year. Ironically, there’s a similar backdrop. Fox felt dizzy while golfing in Charlotte, N.C., during a bye week in early November. That led to him having emergency surgery to replace an aortic valve. He missed four games, then returned for the last four and the playoffs.
“I really don’t think about it much now,” Fox said. “Those first four games I thought about it because it was like getting hit by a truck. I got better every day, just like most players who get hit by injuries. But I never thought I wouldn’t be back once I was going through the process.
“I’m 180 percent better than I was eight months ago. I had a valve that was the size of a pinhead. Now it is the size of a 50-cent piece.”
Reeves and Fox spoke shortly after Fox’s surgery. They’ve known each other for several years, and their careers overlapped for two years in the NFC South near the end of Reeves’ tenure with the Falcons and the start of Fox’s with Carolina (2002-03).
“John’s situation was so similar to mine,” Reeves said. “I wanted to reach out to him. I felt I knew what he was going through.”
Stress is a given for a football coach. But Fox said he has learned to monitor his hours better, take breaks when needed and watch his diet, pretty basic stuff.
“This is a cause of age,” he said. “Really, it’s been a blessing. I’m way better than I was physically the last 10 years of my life. It’s really been kind of an upgrade.”
He said his condition was “misreported as a heart attack.” Technically true. He had aortic stenosis.
But “misreported” shouldn’t be taken as “overstated” in terms of the seriousness of this. This wasn’t just a matter of Fox merely being sleep deprived or having indigestion.
Consider his description of his symptoms: “I wasn’t getting any oxygen. It was more like suffocating.”
Coaches are like athletes, to some degree. They believe they’re invincible. Fox’s valve condition actually was diagnosed during a routine physical examination several years ago when he coached in New York.
“It was one of those things where it was going to have to get fixed at some point,” Fox said. “If it hadn’t happened in kind of an emergency type of way about nine weeks ago, I’d be looking at having that like next week.”
Well. More drama this way.
Fox credits family and good doctors for his recovery. I’m guessing the knowledge of having Peyton Manning to come back to also can speed a coach’s recovery.
Fox long has been one of the NFL’s more respected coaches. He has worked for a number of organizations, including the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants, where he was defensive coordinator for five years. He was head coach in Carolina for nine, taking them to three playoff berths and a Super Bowl. But he was fired in 2010 after going 2-14.
Notable: Carolina starting quarterbacks in Fox’s final season were Jimmy Clausen (10 games), Matt Moore (5) and Brian St. Pierre (1). Lombardi couldn’t win with those three guys.
He wasn’t out of work long. Denver hired him two weeks later. He has won three division titles in three seasons. It helps that he has worked his way up the quarterback food chain: Clausen to Tim Tebow to Peyton Manning.
Is he a better coach now than he was in Carolina? Or does he just have better players, a better quarterback?
“All years are different,” Fox said. “Coaches change, players change. But I’ve enjoyed all the teams I’ve been on. But I think you get better as you go along, you learn from your experiences.”
Lesson one: Don’t put off valve surgery.
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