Unbreakable with Jay Glazer: A Mental Wealth PodcastWelcome to Unbreakable! A mental wealth podcast hosted by Fox NFL Insider Jay Glazer. This is a very difficult week for many people in the NFL. It is the week where coaches lose their jobs, there is a lot of turnovers, and there is NO guidebook for it. But there is a man who lived it, Denis Allen. The former head coach of the New Orleans Saints joins Jay for an incredible chat. Dennis shares his stories, knowledge and experiences that will absolutely be led to helping others deal during difficult times.
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This is Unbreakable with Jay Glacier, a mental wealth podcast, build you from the inside out. Now here's Jay Glacier. Welcome into Unbreakable, a mental wealth podcast with Jay Glazer. I'm Jay Glazer, and I do this podcast to help empower and inspire people to overcome adversity, to get through adversity, because we don't really need books and podcasts to help us in the good times.
That's easy.
Life is really about getting through the hard times and getting through challenges. And those of us who get through them better really have I think a much quicker path to success. To get to success. And look, a lot of people in the NFL watch his podcast thankfully. And this in the NFL is a difficult week for a lot of people because the week where coaches lose their jobs is turnover. There's no guidebook for that. That's why I'm proud to be joined by Dennis Allen, former head coach of the New Orleans Saints and Oakland Raiders, and Dennis kind enough to join us. First of all, thank you, brother, appreciate it. Man to help these coaches of what you're gonna go through. Dennis lost the job this year with the New Orleans Saints been season and there isn't And he and I were talking about there's no guy, there's no Hey. This is what you go through, This is the emotions, This is kind of a track you fall into.
This is what happens to you.
So I'm like, you know, it's great that friends will come on to use their experiences to help out this. So again, thank you for joining.
Man. Yeah, absolutely, Man excited about doing this?
Are you really?
Yeah?
He's again want to get fired? Now I gotta go in places podcast? So you know, first of all, real quick, like I guess we'll go over different emotions. But when it first happens, when you get fired, First of all, how many like how many people I always tell coaches, gms, whatever, head You get a chance to watch your own funeral. And what I mean by that is it's a very valuable lesson because you get to see who carried the casket, who kicked during the casket, who's laughing that you got put in the ground, who's like I said, who carried you?
Ask it?
Who's really there for you? And well it sucks for a lot of people fall off. Afterwards, you get to really know who to put your time and effort, you're soul into what's it like like in that way? I guess shortly after them, in the weeks and months after.
That, Yeah, well I think initially, man, you have a lot of people that reach out to you and you know, offer support. Maybe it's a call, maybe it's a text. You know, obviously it's a really busy time of year, so you know, coaches don't have a lot of time to have hour two hour long phone calls, you know, so usually it's some sort of a text just giving you support, telling you you know, hey, look, we know you're a great coach. You know you're gonna land on your feet. You know, best of luck to you, hope if I can do anything for you, just letting me know, you know that that kind of stuff. That's what happens in the first couple of days. And then as the days go on, those become less and less, and then what you what you see is the people that really are there for you. They're the ones that you know they're going to check on you. You know, they send you a text the first week, you know, and then ten days later you're going to get another text, Hey, just checking on you, you know, and then you get into the holiday season and it's Happy Thanksgiving, and then it's Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all the and so uh, it's it's obviously an interesting dynamic to see. And look, I believe I'm fortunate that I feel like I've got a lot of people that have reached out to me and shown me a lot of support.
What's the percentage that drop off? Like I'd say, you had a couple of hundred texts when it first happens, and then you're down to Yeah, then you're down twenty fifty, you're down to ten.
You know, you're getting a couple of week.
Do you appreciate the ten or do you get resemful of the one ninety that stopped checking it?
I think you always got to be appreciative of the tent, you know, because look, I'm kind of a glass half full type of guy, you know, and so I don't get real been out of shape about people that don't do things. I try to be more appreciative of the things that I do.
Get When you got fired or you you get a chance to think about it. The players, you like, what's the process?
You know, how quickly you have the office so It's kind of weird because you know, typically it's going to happen on a Monday morning, maybe it's a Tuesday, depending on when it when it is, But like, for instance, in this instance, I was like, go on Monday morning, Mickey came into my office, closed the door, said let's talk Mickey Loomis. And Mickey was not really in favor of this move. Uh and and we talked, uh and we had a really good conversation. So then he kind of said, well, let me let me there's a couple of guys. I want to talk to the coordinators. You know, I want to talk to Darren Rizzy, who's you know, he's going to have coach you want to talk to. He wanted to talk to them, and I said, I said, look, I just you know, I want to I want to be able to address the staff. I want to be able to talk to the staff. And so I had a meeting. Usually we have the players come in at eleven o'clock, and I had a meeting at ten o'clock with the coaches and you know, told them, hey, look this is what happened.
Wow, this is you take all the coach and say, hey, I just got I got fired, I got I gotta let go.
It's all conversation. That's it's It's an awful conversation, you know, because when when when the coach gets fired, it doesn't just affect the head coach. It affects the head coaches family. It affects all these assistant coaches. It affects their families, It affects the people in personnel and their families, because you know, like I was the one that brought a lot of these people here into this organization, and there's gonna be a lot of change. And so not only does it affect me and my family and what we've got to go through and where we have to pick up and figure out what we're going to do next, it also affects all these other coaches and their families. And obviously as the head coach, I've I've been fortunate enough to have enough success and I've got enough status in this league, and I've made enough money that I feel like like I'm gonna be able to be okay and I'm going to be able to provide for my family. But there's some young guys that are on my staff that, man, it's gonna be really hard for them, and so I've got to figure out how I'm gonna help them stay alive in this professional do.
You tell your staff how long is you? And then after you tell your staff, okay, good chance, tell them players or no?
Usually not. And you know again because in the in the in the world that we live in nowadays, like things happen and it becomes now public knowledge, and it happens fast. And so as a prideful man, I don't want to be walking out of the parking lot with a thousand cameras on me, you know. And given that, you know part of the story. So most of my stuff with the players ended up being you know, sending in a text you know, or call or whatever.
And uh, but it's pretty wild too you think about it. You're you're in New Orleans forra total fifteen years, right, and then you're fired and you're just gone. It's like again, you guys say, next man up. For players, it's same thing with what happens when a coach cats youm moved to and just the players they just never see again, you know. And these guys for a long I mean, how long were you with kem Jurdan for well, so much of his career, most of us got we don't.
See him again since two thousand, when in fifteen I was I was with the cancer. What's that nine years? Right?
You know what I'm saying, and then ultimate one day you just don't see that.
It's tough. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard because you go through so much together, you know, in the profession that we're in, a it's a it's a great profession, but it's a difficult business to be in. And you know, here's the thing for the players it's really difficult. Is they see it a lot more than we do as coaches, because when you really think about it, when you go through training camp, we fire or cut you know, thirty forty right people in training camp, right, and so their friends each year, year, each year, and they just got to show up, back out of practice the next day and here we go, right, you know, And so man, it's kind of an interesting tough time.
Yeah, do you almost prepare because you've been around it and your dad playing the NFL, you've been around it. Is it easier for you to say yours elf, Hey, it's just the way the league is. I'm just not gonna see people. I'm not gonna hear from a lot of people because they got a game.
Sunday and that's it. Or it's still like, man, it's it hard to play that mind game something yeah, well yeah, and you got to try not to, you know, I try to not project my self or my feelings onto somebody else, meaning I don't know what's going through their mind. I don't know what how are they look, it's a hard process for them to deal with, like how do they process that information?
You know? And even all my staff, you know, I had some guys that came in and saw me right after I had a meeting. They came into my came into my office and said, you know, hey, I appreciate you know what you've done for me, and I appreciate how you've help me along. I've had some guys that then I get a text from them a day later. Some guys called me a week later. You know, they just they'll process differently. Well, it's let's let's process grief how we process grief, right, like, and you have to allow people to be able to process it the way that they need to process it.
Interesting. What advice would you give to people this week? Now that you've been through twice who were just going from So.
I would say this, I would say, look, you have to control the things that you can control, and you can't control somebody else's decision on what they want to do with their business. And so look, you wake up as a as a head coach every day or as a coach every day, and and you have one of your purposes is to help people get better? Right, well, so how do I how do I fulfill that purpose? I pour that out into my family, you know. So I spent the last what's it been two months really trying to pour into my family because as coach, you miss a lot, like you know, you miss Thanksgiving, you miss Christmas, those things with your family. I mean a lot of times those are like you go into work half day and then you get half half of that day, Whereas you know, a lot of people in this world get to experience those things. So you just pour into your family, like I've done a couple of you know, kind of vacation things to get away. I went and saw my daughter swim in Cleveland. I went and saw my son's swim and Charlotte, things that I don't normally get an opportunity to do so, appreciate that.
Appreciate that because it's the only time you're ever going to do it, really, when you're fired. There's no other time. No, you're gonna be able to do this, if you're a coach in the NFL, if you're a personnel anything that's right.
And so again, let's it's a tough situation. Nobody likes it. I mean, it hurts, right, But you can sit there and dwell on the negatives, or you can take a bad situation and try to turn it into a positive. And so I try to, you know, pour that into my family and get to spend some family time that you know, look, unfortunately in our lead, you hope that you don't really get a chance to do that a.
Lot, right, you know a lot of times when I when things will happen with me, it's easy to say, man, you're angry when it happens. One of the things I'm trying to do with my like to help myself is take away the resentment toward whatever I was helping and just like, what was my culpability?
What was this? Now?
A lot of times it could have been there a full one hundred percent but I still if I live in that way and just have blame and resentment toward that person, I'm never going to get through it. I mean, what did you do here between the years? Like I say, I played that little game with myself. Is there anything else you've done to kind of because we can't move forward in resentment? Right?
Yeah? That again I think this. I think I really try to focus on controlling the things that I can control, and when I think about getting fired, I really think about, well, look, as this is your this is your company, this is your organization. You have the right to do whatever you want to do with that. And I don't look at it as you know, I failed. I look at it as they just decided they wanted to go in a different direction. And if I'm not what they want, I think there's a lot of thoughts that I will be what they want.
Right the guy I found in an organization where I help people veterans and athletes get through transition of not having your locker room. And that was the biggest thing. When you lose your locker room, it sucks. And that's you know, always talk about one of the biggest ways we get through I call the great depression, anxiety, his team.
Have your team, team, team, team, team. When you lose, it sucks.
It's a scary thing. It's about guys like me, still sparred fifty five years of age. I need that, I need my team, I need my locker and everybody, Scotts, what are you still doing this for? I'm doing it because I need that group. How hard is that to lose your locker room? I would think that's one of the more difficult parts of it.
It's Look, it's the most difficult part because you spend so much time with these players, these coaches, these personnel people, and there you're there, You're you spend more time with them than you do with your family sometimes. And so what you have to do is find out who's your other team. So my other team is my family, my wife, my son, my daughter, my mom, my brother, my sister, and you lean into them and they become your your team, you know. And then you have friends, you have friends like Jay Glazier that you can lean into uh and talk to and and feel like you're still part of something that's bigger than yourself, you know. And so you just got to find who's your who's your next team, and your next team, not necessarily is the next NFL team you work for.
You were telling my wife the other day, how many places have you been in your hold?
You? I am fifty two?
Fifty two? May you look terrible?
Yeah?
Oh, I on the other hand, looked that guy exactly.
How many places?
How many stops have you lived in in your when'd you start your career?
Uh? So I started when I finished playing at Texas A and M. So my first year coaching was nineteen ninety sixty twenty three.
Okay, who was that? Twenty nine years? Yeah? Okay? How many different places have you lived in twenty nine years? This is the thing that people don't get. They don't understand, like your wife, kids left, and how many places you have to move? Yeah, it was just you know, my wife was just this.
Yeah, well, so I was my wife and I we got married as soon as I finished playing football, so she's been with me through this whole thing. We coached as graduate assistant Texa A and M for four years, and we were two years at the University of Tulsa. We were four years at the Atlanta Falcons. We were five years with the New Orleans Saints. We're one season with the Denver Broncos. We were three seasons with the Oakland Raiders. We came back to New Orleans for now ten years and then now we're where.
We're going to be seven places, Yeah, seven places, and I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate I had stays of four years, five years, ten years. You know, like there's a lot of coaches that are there for two years, three years, and then they're moving on.
The kids can never get friends because they've got to bounce around. Absolutely like an army prize. Absolutely, it's very similar. You know, like I look at it like I'm I'm fortunate that I've been able to spend fifteen years in one spot. Not many people in our profession get to do that.
So it's yeah, there's a lot of picking up and moving and so you got to have a strong family dynamic to get through it over time.
Do you again you still look, you know, be the same for that last ten years. That's a long period. But again four two, three, whatever it is, do you intentionally make sure you don't get close to people because you know you can leave or you say no, I'm friends nowt it's good. We'll collect them over over the years.
Well, no, I think you've got to be where your feet are at that moment, and you've got to try to, you know, invest everything you possibly can into that situation for the amount of time that you're there, you know, and then when it becomes time to move on, then you move on. And here's the cool thing.
Like I was talking to my wife about this, you know, because again, like I said, this doesn't just affect me, right, this affects everybody, and it's difficult on her.
But like I said to her, you know, look when we we were in New Orleans for five years, and she had a friend that she became really really close to, and they hung out and they did everything together. And then all of a sudden, we move and we go to Denver, and obviously it's for promotion, so there's that positive part of it. But then she meets Kelly McCoy, who she becomes friends with and she still talks to to this day. And then we leave Denver and we go to Oakland and we start over and we've got friends that lived across the street from us that we still vacation with and do all kinds of different stuff with that have become best friends to us, and so like each move, man, I look at it like we had an opportunity to make some really great friends that are friends for life. So that's cool.
Like that, we bring up my wife, Allison, what advice would you give lives out there had to go through this when this happens. Yeah, I think just these, like you said, they're just as bad a part.
I think, I think the key to the whole thing is is just you know, enjoy and appreciate the things that you have or had and try to try to try to think about it from the the positive aspect and don't dwell so much on well this happened and why did this happen and how come? And and I don't really try to figure out the wise and I and I encourage her not to really figure out the wise because we don't know the wise because it wasn't our decision and we weren't in control of it. So I would I would encourage all the wives to really just try to enjoy the time that you have with your with your family and have your family altogether, and not worry about, you know, the negative aspect of it and what you lost.
Yeah, because I think there's an interesting dynamic because the wives are usually angrier than the husbands, right, But at the same time, right, no questions because they're protectors. But at the same time, when they're angry, you're like, let's pull it off because then I don't want to be angry. I don't want to live in that. So they're protecting you. At the same time, you're like, hey, we need more positivity, but it's hard for them to be positive because they're protecting you.
Yeah, And I would say that that's a struggle for me individually, and I would assume I probably can't speak for other people, but just I would assume that that's probably something that all coaches kind of go through because we we're we're we're so used to we don't need help, you know, we can handle it. We can deal with it, you know. And so and like I said, everybody, everybody a grieves differently, right, and so you have to allow people to grieve in their way. And I think, look, it's obviously, you know, a challenge for me, and I have to work on that with her.
You know. The head coaching job is interesting. And I go and talk to team a lot now and I tell all the players listen, leaders and coaches. Leaders take care everybody else who takes care of the leaders, who's there for them. They got to take on all yourself, all your grief. Every time there's a tragic, every time there's an issue, whatever it is, it all comes across your desk. And you train to be a football coach. You didn't go to school for psychology or you're a psychiatry or trum a trump expert. And I really learned this back in and I'm going to say, oh five, Mike Nolan was the head coach of the forty nine ers, his first ever training camp, their first preseason game. You're right tackle Thomas Arrah who passed away in the locker room right there, and just first time, first time a preseason game. Guys with his whole life to be a you know, head coach, first ever a preseason game. And I remember talking to his wife. I said, how was he holding up? She's like, not good. Just's he's acting like he's good so he could be there for everyone else. But I'm worried about I said, I'm on a plane and I lived in New York.
I live.
He often a plane, flew across the country to make sure he had someone to cry to and someone break down to. And it was just like that, like he and was in some hotel room he could walk it in, just started crying.
Right.
But that's my point. There's no schooling. How do you lead fifty three other men the whole building through a tragedy? How do you lead people through when you have, you know, in personal issues in the building, Like there is no forse for this for a head coach. And I always thought it was just an interesting dynamic, and especially this, like you've got to be there for everybody else, but who's there for you?
Yeah, And I think that's where you have to have somebody that you can lean into, the not in that building all the time. And so it has to be your escape. It has to be your way to get away. For me, that's my family, right, you know, because you do deal with a lot of things, and again there is no there's no manual for how to deal with these things. You just have to kind of step back and give yourself a moment to think about, how do I want to you know, approach this and and and I'm sure there's probably times where you approach it better than others, Like in that situation you're talking about with Mike Nolan, I mean, how do you how do you deal with that? But what you have to do is somebody has to stand up and be out front and be a sense of calmness and a sense of security that everything's gonna be okay, even though inside it may not be. And so because when you get in those situations, there's so many crazy thoughts that are going through everybody's head and you have no idea what's going through everybody's head because again, people handle things differently, right, And so what you what you have to be is you have to be the guy that's out front that's gonna, you know, give everybody a sense of calmness.
But there's no godbook to tell you that. No, you just have to figure it out on the fly, correct, Right.
It's just any situation is different, right, I mean, like how do you handle these things? Right?
And there's all sorts of stuff that comes across your like you got to deal with baby Mama drama, you gotta do right, You gotta deal with agents, but you gotta deal with players all of a sudden, like man one day and look, we're all I think the world is a is a I'm gonna say it's a little crazier now than never before because of social media. So now there's all this pressure that guys didn't have way back in the day when you started and I started, And they're worried about what people are thinking, and they're you know, getting crushed on just Twitter NonStop, and you know these are these are sensive cat It's funny. My fight team and I we well teammates and I like me Randy guitar marker and Alex Carolex has got together recently and we were joking around saying, you know that old sticks and stones way break my bones, and words and never hurt me. We're the opposite six and soelves do not break our bones. But man, words hit the hurt the ship out of us. You deal with some sensitive ass people. We are sensitive man, and you've got to deal with all that again while you're trying to put together a game plan for everybody else. Is the head coaching job more about that or more about the game plan?
Oh, it's definitely more about managing people because and again, there's so much more that goes into it than just football. You know, in the in the world that we live in was social and and everything everything that every person does in the National Football League has lived out in the public eye, and so you're constantly having to deal with what other people's thoughts and opinions are about you. And so again, I think that's where you just got to be able to talk to your players and get them to understand. Look, again, control the controllables. Control the things that you can control, you know with which is your work ethic, which is your attitude, which is your love for the for the sport, and your love for your teammates, and your willingness to go to battle with those guys. Because a you're never going to make everybody happy, and so be you can't control the way somebody is going to feel about you, and so you know, and that's easier said than none.
Yeah, because back in the day, it used to be, hey, don't read the paper, and it was there for one day. If you didn't read that paper, the next day, you're okay. Now that doesn't exist.
Well, you can't avoid it. You can't avoid it. And in all of us.
And you can tell these guys not to go on social media, they're gonna go on it. That's it as much as you can tell them, they go or if they don't go on it, some one of their circle goes on and start telling them. Then you want to look up what did this person say about me?
Exactly right, you know, and so which is it? It's it's it's difficult.
Yeah, they can't. Yeah, coaches can't just say get up social media and it's not gonna work, and and you got to deal with it better.
And so you just got to try to educate them on look, you're not gonna make everybody happy. You're not gonna nobody has the perfect scenario. And so you have to think about you and what are you doing? And it's all about your own self satisfaction. Don't ever let somebody else else have the power over you to control your mood or control your happiness. Your happiness has to be controlled by how you feel about yourself. And again in the day of the teacher's stead that done when when the head coach gets fired, it's not just the head coach. There's a lot of things that go into that, you know, I mean, you know there's some there's certainly some some things that from a coaching standpoint that needed to be done better. Right from the head coaches standpoint, from the coordinator standpoint, from the assistant coaches standpoint, and there's some things from a playing standpoint that needed to be done better. You know, very rarely do you see the players playing great and the head coach get fired. Right, So there's a lot of factors that go into it. There's some personnel decisions that go into it, you know, and uh, but as the head coach, you know, it falls under your guys and responsibility for the whole organization and so so therefore that's usually you know, where the change occurs. But there's usually a lot of other things within the organization that need some change when those things happen.
So I've had guys go both ways in this. When you lose your job, some guys they still dive in, like I just love footall. I'm gonna keep I'm gonna watch everything next week and after it keep doing it. You know, looking at guys personal and some other guys say I turn it off completely. I just need to step away and exhale, which is your way. I'm closer to the second way. I'm closer to the exhale, get away from it all. You know, Look, it's it's part of It's not it's not who I am, but it's part of what I am, right right, And it's been that way for a long time. I mean, I started playing tackle football in the second grade, so it's always been a part of my life and so it's hard to just totally eliminate it. But like I said, I want to choose that time to do things with my family that I don't I don't have a chance to do. And so that's that's because I'm not gonna forget football in two months, right right right.
I'm still gonna know how to coach football. And I know that that I'll have other opportunities. I don't know what those opportunities are going to be, but I know I'm gonna have other opportunities, and so I'm gonna try to get away from it. I'm gonna try to relax a little bit, because you know, you get into the season and it's twenty twenty hour days, you know, seven days a week you're working, you know, and so recharge the battery a little bit, put put your energy into other areas that you probably have been lacking in a little bit. I mean, I get back into working out, you know, spend time with the family, take some vacations that you don't normally get to do, and then wait till the end of the year and then figure out what you want to do.
By the way, they're working out part because every coach is health suffers during the season and they'll do like you, Hey, when I get some time off, I'm gonna eat right, I'm gonna you know, I wanna, I'm gonna work out and all that stuff, which never makes sense to me because you have all these strength coaches in the building, you have people work on your body, you have chefs in the building. And I'm always trying to convince my guys like I just don't have time. But man, if you made that forty minutes a day, whatever, it is right and now it's it's kind of hard because you just don't think. Man, there's not enough hours in day to get your job done.
But it is amazing to me.
After all the time, we all know what the pitfalls are, and everyone's cholesterol goes through the ceiling, everyone's blood pressure goes through the ceiling.
It's a it's toxic to your body.
I wish we can get coaches to put that time aside, there's not a lot on to do, like like Seaman Bay does. Yeah, right, Matt, what floor does. There's guys who you know, Kevin, they make sure they do that.
What's interesting you mentioned those names because those are some of the most successful coaches in our business, you know, and and they do a great job with their teams, and their teams are always well prepared, they always execute, and so you can still come up with a game plan, you can find time to do it. You know. I wasn't one of those guys, but most aren't. Most It's so here's what's interesting, right, So you think I'm going to get exercise and that's going to be a way that I can alleviate stress, right, which normally it is. It creates more stress for me because you think because I think that I'm doing this and this is what I should be or could be doing, you know, and so I'm always thinking about what I'm not doing as opposed.
To you'll be better at what you're doing if you take this forty minutes, Corre. It's not how you're yeah, I know.
It's not how. That's not how. You know a lot of a lot of guys are wired that.
Yeah, it really is. If you're missing out of Man, I got forty extra minutes, I could be working on this game planner, watching this tape, and now, Coaches, if you're hearing this, take the forty minutes. Take the forty minutes, trust workout. The film will still be there when you get done right right right, Man. I appreciate you joining us, dude, I really do. I'm proudy and I think you could help a lot of people with us, because, like we said, as a head coach, there's no guidebook for when the players or somebody else has to go through something difficult. Well, there's no God book for you guys when something like this happens. So I'm glad you could be a guide for a lot of brotherren out there.
Man. Yeah, absolutely, because there's a lot of us that go through it. Appreciate your brother absolutely.
Man Hey will continue no matter what dnos. He has teammates that are out there. You too too. Thanks for joining us on the Unbreakable Mental Wealth Podcast.
