Terrell Davis joins Coach Pete to discuss lessons from his football career and the value of consistent progress. They connect the idea of a four-yard run with financial discipline and planning for the future.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listens. Well folks, very excited today to have in studio Super Bowl XXXII MVP and NFL Hall of Famer. Of course his name is Terrell Davis. He played with the Denver Broncos. He's from the University of Georgia originally. Go Dawgs! Welcome in the studio Terrell. Hey Coach Pete, thank you man. This is great to be here. This is a West Coast kid back down south. This is awesome.

00:45 Back in the East Coast. That's right. It's not often we interview people about every week, but it's not often we have people in studio. So I'm glad you got to come in here. I'm glad we got to see you in person too. Yeah, I am too man. You know, just enjoying the off season right now. The season's about to start, but yeah man, it's good to be here. Good to meet you. Good to meet you. I've heard that voice on the radio and it's quite sexy. Yeah. Does the face look like the voice? No. Different story. You know, we were talking before the show though, and it's how important. And with the correlations between football and people's financial picture. Yeah. And you said as a running back, your goal was to get four yards every time you carry the ball. Now explain that concept and let's tie that into the financial world. All right. So in football, there's the concept of the four yard run.

01:30 Right. And to me, and I've been told it's the most powerful run in football. And let me tell you why. When I was in college, I used to try to break off the long runs, right? But long runs are unpredictable. Right. You can't repeat them and there's no formula to make them happen. Yep. So my coach, when I got to the NFL, said, hey man, we're not trying to have the long runs. If you break a long run, that's great. But what we want is consistency. We want to be able to say what is repeatable. Yep. And in football, the four yard run is the most repeatable play in all sports. And the reason it's powerful is because if you get four yards on every carry, three carries, that's 12 yards, right? You've got the ref running out saying first down. That is a first down. Marching down the field. In football, the name of the game is to move the chain.

02:17 Absolutely. So first downs leads to touchdowns. Touchdowns leads to scores. Scores leads to winning games. Winning games leads to winning championships. So we were always taught to focus on the four yard run. And the financial word is the same thing. Yeah. You know, you're not trying to look at the high returns. You want something that you can repeat, that's consistent, that you're not trying to swing out offenses, and there's no risk really involved. There's a lot of risk trying to break that 20 yard run. You see Barry Sanders, as great as he was, and he is, there's more risk to a 20 yard run because you have to, sometimes you have to lose yards to gain 20. I've seen guys loop around and then start dancing around and they maybe get blindsided by somebody else too. And that happens in retirement when people are swinging for the fences, like you said, and taking too much risk. That's it. To go backwards. That's it. My coach, he was risk adverse. He hated risk. He wanted four yards. He said, man, listen, I want my four yards. If you give me anything more than four, I'm fine with that. But I want my four yards.

03:12 Now, who was your coach in college? Ray Goff was my head coach at the University of Georgia. Was it the same philosophy there that you had? No, no, there was, it was different because, you know, in college, I thought I really failed, man, because they were used to big runs. You know, I played behind Garrison Hurst and Garrison would make the 80 yard runs, 90 yard runs. I wasn't so much a guy who could break long runs. I was more of a chain mover. So when I left Georgia, I was, I kind of felt like, man, like I kind of failed. You know what I mean? Like I wasn't successful. Well, you were consistent and persistent and you were reliable. That's important. Well, not then it wasn't, I guess they didn't see it that way because, you know, college football is a little different. They want more explosive plays. Right. But what I was built for was the pro game. And when I got there and my coach said in the meeting, he said, hey, I just want four yards.

04:02 Uh, I want you guys to just get four yards. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's it? Four yards? I said, I can get you four. So it made it where it registered in my head and it was something that I was, I was pretty good at doing already. And so once I was able to get four yards, then sometimes I could take chances and break a longer run. But I always made sure in the back of my mind to get the four, get that four yards. Yeah. Now we're going to be talking to you a lot in the future, though. We're going to follow the progress of the book. We're also going to go over that is make sure people understand from a point of view that that's understandable because a lot of advisors are talking over people's heads. We're going to bring it right down to the, to the, to the ground floor and make sure people get educated going forward. I really appreciate your time. Absolutely. Thank you, man, for having me. Folks. Again, that was a NFL hall of famer and Superbowl MVP, Terrell Davis. He's going to be a guest on the show coming up a lot of times in the future. Thanks for your time today, Terrell. No problem. Folks. We'll be right back after this.