Some college football programs produce Hall of Famers. Washington gets them. Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll each spent several days at the Huskies’ facility during spring practice, and it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see Steve Spurrier show up. Belichick’s son Steve is Washington’s defensive coordinator and Carroll’s son Brennan coordinates the offense, but the Huskies’ ties to the elder Belichick and Carroll aren’t just familial. New head coach Jedd Fisch worked for both men, as well as Mike Shanahan, Jim Harbaugh, Sean McVay and Brian Billick. Fisch recently spoke about the lessons he learned from each and how he’s applied them to the programs he’s led — first Arizona, which went 10-3 in 2023, and now Washington, which hired him in January. (His comments have been lightly edited for clarity.)
Fisch didn’t play football in high school, but was a tennis player. But when he came to the University of Florida, he wanted to be a coach. He eventually got a job as a student assistant and then worked as a graduate assistant.
Before every game, (Spurrier) wrote on the whiteboard: Have fun competing. I did the same thing.
It wasn’t fun to have loud music playing at practice. That wasn’t the right attitude. The fun was throwing the ball to three and four wide receivers when no one else was throwing it. All of that was fun.
I just feel like you can never lose the joy of competing. You smile when you achieve great success. You celebrate when you succeed. You have to practice it every day in training.
We do not call it practiceWe call it Recess. I remind my players every day: they go to the break. When they come out into the real world, they don’t have to run around in sports clothes for two and a half hours chasing a ball. They now have the opportunity to do that. We emphasize that in our daily communication.
In a sport where coaches often boast about the hours they work, Spurrier was a proud underdog who told his coaches to go home and played golf with his staff. On Wednesdays, players’ families were invited to dinner with the team. Fish does the same.
After spending two years as a quality control assistant with the Texans from 2002 to 2003, Fisch landed a job as an offensive assistant with Billick’s Ravens. With the Vikings, Billick was the NFL’s best offensive coordinator, but his Ravens teams were built around a strong defense led by linebacker Ray Lewis and safety Ed Reed.
One word: Trust. He inspired it. He could command a room and lead a team meeting so that everyone believed we were going to win. Keeping egos in check… when you think about that group, I just give him so much credit.
He was able to be one of the best offensive coaches in the ’90s and then win (a Super Bowl) on defense. He was more interested in winning championships than in stroking his ego. I can’t believe he didn’t get another head coaching job after his nine years in Baltimore. It shocks me. Brian Billick was without a doubt one of the biggest influences on my entire career.
The Ravens fired Billick after the 2007 season and hired John Harbaugh, who did not retain Fisch. In Shanahan’s final season in Denver, he hired Fisch as his receivers coach.
He’s brilliant. The offense we all play comes from Mike Shanahan. We’ve all tweaked it, we’ve all adjusted it, but the principles — understanding how to attack a defense — start with Mike Shanahan. He’s by far the best at teaching you how to attack a defense and do things that aren’t necessarily regular football. It’s OK (for receivers) to run splits, which nobody was doing back then. He was more of a (pre-snap) motion coach than any other coach in the 1990s.
One of Fisch’s most vivid memories of Shanahan’s fearless play-making wizardry comes from when he was on the opposing sideline as an assistant for the Ravens.
We were down three points. They had the ball. Second down. He called a reverse. Nobody would take those risks. But he understands the game of football.
Fisch spent a year at the University of Minnesota as offensive coordinator and quarterback coach before returning to the NFL in Seattle as Carroll’s QB coach.
Pete kept it simple. I try really hard to do that too. I don’t think I’ve done it nearly as well as Pete.
He reminds you it’s all about the ball. My first year at Arizona, we were the worst takeaway team in the country. In 2021, we took the ball away six times.
Those Wildcats finished 1-11. The next year they finished 5-7.
In the third year, I finally made (sales) our top priority. You know the saying: You get what you emphasize. If you focus on schemes or blitzes, man coverage or go routes, that’s what you’ll get.
We started each day with a turnover and takeaway exercise. After training we asked: How did we protect the ball? How did we take it away from him? We demonstrated it. If you took the ball away, it automatically became a play ball. I just realized that I was missing Pete Carroll’s most basic principle.
In Fisch’s final game in Arizona, an Alamo Bowl win over Oklahoma, the Wildcats forced six turnovers – as many as in his entire first season.
The change in a period of three years because I reminded myself: Go back to basics. It starts and ends with the ball.
Does he start Washington’s practice with a turnover and takeaway drill?
Oh yes. I am never not will do this again.
Fisch left the Seahawks to become offensive coordinator at the University of Miami. He stayed there for two seasons and then took the job as offensive coordinator with the Jaguars. He then went to Michigan to coach quarterbacks and receivers and coordinate the passing game under Harbaugh for two seasons.
I think I would say with Jim: Football is tough. I remind our guys every day: what we’re asking you to do is very difficult. If it was easy, 75,000 people would do it and 11 would see it every Saturday. You’ll see our guys putting it out there on their IGs and tweets.
You can’t expect to win or compete at the highest level if you don’t work hard for it.
The pride Jim showed at Michigan: Yes, it’s his alma mater, but he makes his team bleed maize and blue. He makes his team perform at a level they never thought possible because they realized how much fun it is to win.
Harbaugh famously gives his team work shirts and hard hats to instill a working-class work ethic.
We don’t do that – we don’t wear hard hats, per se. But we convey it the same way. Our guys know that we expect a certain level of toughness from them. They’re relentless.
Coach Harbaugh is the absolute best at squeezing every drop of water out of the towel. He lives for the things that aren’t easy. He loves to find the rule that nobody knows, the guy on the roster that nobody knows. He tells the coaches, “I’m going to coach him. If you think he’s not good enough, I’m going to coach him.”
After spending the 2017 season as UCLA’s offensive coordinator, Fisch served as the Bruins’ head coach for their bowl game. When Chip Kelly, eager to call his own plays, was hired as UCLA’s coach, Fisch became an offensive assistant to Rams coach Sean McVay. The Rams made the Super Bowl in Fisch’s first year with the team. McVay is considered one of the game’s best offensive minds, but the biggest lesson Fisch learned from him had nothing to do with X’s and O’s.
You win with people, you compete with schemes. That’s a saying we’ve lived by. You have to build relationships with the players first and foremost. Our program is player driven. We get the right people and then compete with our schemes. How good can we be in this regard? But in the end, it’s about people. We have to do everything we can to make sure our players and our coaches have a (strong) relationship with each other.
Fisch left the Rams to accept his final assistant position, becoming quarterback coach with the Patriots.
I try to emulate the way he communicates with the team and the staff. You’re always challenging them to be better. Coach Belichick has a competitive stamina that allows you to perform at the highest level every day. You have to leave no stone unturned and assume nothing – almost to the extreme of “assume nothing.”
Belichick was known for cross-examining his assistants to make sure his team was prepared for any scenario. Where some see a relentless interrogator, Fisch had a different insight.
I think he’s the best listener I’ve ever met. It’s not that if you do something wrong, you have a problem. He just reminds you of what you said or what your position was and asks you what’s changed. Did you do your due diligence before coming to this opinion? He will make sure you are consistent in your messages. I never felt like he was making me feel guilty or being scolded. He always wanted to make you feel better.
Belichick taught Fisch another important lesson: Preparation doesn’t end with kickoff.
He really views the first quarter as an evaluation quarter. Then you use the second and third quarters to make adjustments and the fourth quarter to close out games.
Fisch’s 2023 Arizona team outscored its 13 opponents by 20 points in the first quarter – and by 153 points after that.
When Fisch was studying in Florida, he shared an apartment with Howie Roseman, now the Eagles’ general manager. What did he learn from his fraternity brother?
Live your dream. He would probably say he learned that from me and I learned that from him. None of our friends thought it was very smart that we said we wanted to be general managers and head coaches. I think our friends thought we were crazy and stupid.
