Whereas the Chargers had been warming up in Denver final Sunday, Jim Harbaugh felt his coronary heart racing. He knew that feeling, having skilled it as a participant in 1999 and as an NFL head coach 13 years later.
The 2 earlier episodes led to medical procedures on his coronary heart. His third bout, which started to floor the Saturday night time earlier than the Broncos recreation, had the Chargers coach dipping into the blue medical tent and finally heading to the guests’ locker room for an EKG to verify his coronary heart and an IV to replenish his fluids.
At 60, the sinewy Harbaugh is as match as any head coach within the recreation, and his coronary heart points — recognized as atrial flutter — usually are not indisputably attributable to the stress of the sport.
“The heart of an athlete was the direct quote from my cardiologist,” Harbaugh instructed reporters, smiling and flexing on the lectern.
“So that made me feel good. Said the stress test was really good, too. I think he used the word incredible. … Said my stamina was incredible and got stronger as it got more stressed. Back in rhythm.”
Nonetheless, to lots of people who’ve finished that job, the visible of him strolling to the locker room wanting pale and distressed, surrounded by medical personnel, was eerily relatable.
Ravens coach Brian Billick, proven on the sideline in 2007, has skilled the unhealthy stress of being an NFL coach.
(Keith Srakocic / Related Press)
“This job can kill you,” stated Brian Billick, who coached the Baltimore Ravens from 1999 to 2007. “I’m serious about that. I have [atrial fibrillation], and did, and it’s something you’ve got to be very conscious of.
“The stress is something that, whether you have a heart issue or not, you have to learn to deal with. Everybody has stress in their job, I get that, but the stress in that job is truly 24/7.”
Not many individuals are going to shed a tear for NFL coaches. There’s an infinite line of people that need a type of 32 positions, and the job pays hundreds of thousands of {dollars} per yr. Stress, and the flexibility to deal with it, comes with the territory. However dealing with that stress is a major problem.
“Yes, it’s a sport, and you’re not an emergency room doctor or air-traffic controller, but it’s a different kind of pressure,” stated Steve Mariucci, previously head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions. “But it’s real and it’s public and it’s out there, and your family lives it too.”
Mariucci was fired as coach of the Lions with 5 video games remaining within the 2005 season. He was proven the door simply after Thanksgiving, and didn’t set foot outdoors his house for 3 weeks. Lastly, with Christmas approaching, he was so stressed he needed to get out of the home.
He drove alone to a Costco, aimlessly strolling the aisles and tasting the meals samples. It was a child step towards re-engaging with the true world.
Lions coach Steve Mariucci screams to an official throughout a recreation in 2005.
(Doug Benc / Getty Pictures)
“I could just feel eyeballs on me, like, ‘There he is. There’s the loser,’” Mariucci recalled. “I was just eating those little sausages on the toothpicks, walking and walking. It was too cold to walk outside. I thought, `I’ve got to buy something here.’ So I bought some white sweat socks.
“I had to buy something, otherwise I’d look like I was trying to steal something. You’ve got to figure out how to get back on your feet some way.”
However Mariucci observed one thing else, one thing constructive in these making an attempt occasions. In some way, he was getting more healthy.
“I think it’s a good idea for anyone in any profession to get a physical every year,” he stated. “So I went and got a physical after things calmed down, and my everything tested so much better. Blood pressure, cholesterol, you name it. All the tests that you can think of were better. Being away from coaching was almost like a healing process.”
Bear in mind, these are individuals who love the sport and have devoted their skilled lives to it. Working their approach up the teaching ladder has afforded them fame and fortune. However there’s a appreciable trade-off, and that incessantly comes within the type of deteriorating well being.
Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians was sporting his radio unit throughout his coronary heart in 2021.
(Mark LoMoglio / Related Press)
Bruce Arians was widely known as one of many recreation’s excellent offensive minds as an assistant coach and coordinator, then was NFL coach of the yr in each Indianapolis and Arizona earlier than successful a Tremendous Bowl with Tampa Bay.
All through, he battled well being points, ones incessantly associated to emphasize. As soon as, after a loss with the Cardinals, he was so upset concerning the officiating that he sat upright in mattress at 3 a.m. satisfied he was having a coronary heart assault.
“All of a sudden I got those pains in my left arm you always hear about,” he stated. “I woke my wife up and said, `Let’s go to the hospital. I think I’m having a heart attack.’ And they did the catheter thing and said, `Nope, you’re good.’ It was just stress. Stress does crazy things to your body.”
Generally, that surfaces in a really public approach. Gary Kubiak, then coach of the Houston Texans, collapsed on the sphere simply after halftime started in a 2013 recreation in opposition to the Indianapolis Colts.
Whereas strolling throughout the sphere, he dropped to his knees and seemed as if he was having bother respiratory. Shortly, he was surrounded by medical workers and brought to the hospital by ambulance.
Houston Texans head coach Gary Kubiak is helped to his ft after collapsing on the sphere in 2013.
(David J. Phillip / Related Press)
Medical doctors decided Kubiak suffered a transient ischemic assault or mini-stroke, presumably associated to dehydration. The coach took a number of weeks off earlier than returning.
Three years later, when teaching in Denver, Kubiak was taken to the hospital after a loss to Atlanta. He was recognized with a fancy migraine that led to excessive fatigue and physique weak spot.
“My two situations were kind of exactly the same,” Kubiak stated. “I had the one in Houston, which was a little bit more scary, and the one with Denver I made it through the game. … In both cases I was starting a young quarterback. I’m probably doubling up, doing everything I can to get him ready to play and give our team the chance to win the next week. And I ran myself into the dirt.”
An NFL head coach isn’t simply answerable for himself. If he had been, the job can be a lot simpler. However he feels answerable for the roles of two dozen assistant coaches, who’ve households. He’s additionally involved about his circle of relatives, and, in fact, the gamers on his roster.
Being a head coach is much less about precise teaching and extra about protecting a cabinet stuffed with plates spinning.
“For me it wasn’t about the pressure of coaching,” stated Tony Dungy, Corridor of Fame coach of Tampa Bay and Indianapolis. “But it was a sense of you had so many things and people to take care of that you don’t always take care of yourself.
“That was the thing for me. You’ve got time constraints, you’ve got a staff and you’ve got players and game plans. Then you’ve got family, your kids and wife and all of that, and you’re trying to do the best you can. And then when it comes to, `Well, I need to take care of myself,’ or, `I’m not feeling great,’ or, `I need to see a doctor,’ you can’t. Pretty soon you stop worrying about yourself and you just let yourself go.”
For Mike Martz, former coach of the St. Louis Rams, lack of sleep turned an enormous situation. He would get to the workplace at 5 a.m. and infrequently wouldn’t depart till 10 p.m. Sleep deprivation led to endocarditis, a uncommon and life-threatening an infection of the guts’s interior lining. It landed him within the hospital, the place solely his spouse was allowed to go to him.
“When you’re sick like that, you’re just screwed up,” Martz stated. “I just wouldn’t let go of the team. I wouldn’t let it go. I felt like I was responsible, that I had let the team down, the organization. I had to stay home for two months and I was going crazy. … At the end of the year, they wanted to go in another direction.”
Kubiak, who backed up quarterback John Elway for 9 seasons in Denver, stated turning into a coach gave him a a lot fuller appreciation for the coaches who guided him.
“When you make that switch, man, when you go from playing to coaching, it doesn’t take long,” he stated. “It probably takes you a year, maybe six months, when you step into that fire and you start to understand just what those guys were up there doing to make you successful when you were going home to have dinner with your family and do all those things that normal people do … you get a true appreciation very, very quickly.”
