‘Take in the moments or they just pass you by‘: Aden Durde, the first British coach to win a Super Bowl | NFL

A a middle-aged man pulls down his baseball cap, crosses Leicester Square and heads towards Greggs for lunch before taking the Piccadilly Line home to Southgate. It’s only been two months since he won the Super Bowl, but none of the thousands of tourists thronging central London recognize him. Aden Durde should be a British celebrity.

Olympians often say there is a massive drop off after winning gold medals. Some people think: “What now? How do you feel after winning the Super Bowl? “I wouldn’t say it’s a comedown, but there were times after you won it, like in the parade, I felt numb. The little disappointment is that even though you might have another chance to create it, you’re not going to do it again with this group of people. You realize that this special thing that we had is over. I thought that on the bus going back to the hotel after the game.”

You looked so satisfied at the end of the match, you just soaked it all in rather than running onto the field to celebrate. “Yeah. At a certain age, you don’t tear yourself or pull a hamstring or something. It’s nice to just be grateful, enjoy the moment. If you don’t, they just pass you by.”

NFL teams have seven months between seasons. What do coaches do in the offseason? “A lot of self-research, self-seeing as a group. How can you improve? What do you need to take out? What do you need to add? And then looking at players, free agency, the draft. You study players all the time. There’s personal development: how can we be better teachers? Talking about leadership, culture, how can we refine that area of our team and build on that? So the off-season days are busy and actually quite We’re doing a lot more collaborative work this year and it’s a lot of fun too because you talk about football with different people and see the game from their eyes.

How long did you take your leave? “Not much! I had a week after the season ended and a week in London. But we have five weeks off in June when the whole NFL shuts down. We see the players this month in the first phase. They can’t go on the turf, so you do classroom lessons and they train with a strength coach and start to improve their body. Then in phase two you can go on the turf, work with each player, all kinds of fundamental development. And then the third phase, you start working against each other, so it lasts about eight to nine weeks pre-season.

Given all the ups and downs of your professional journey – national star player, NFL Europe, NFL practice squad, junior coach, elite coach – do you find yourself telling players, “I’ve been where you are”? “That’s a really good question. It’s like with kids. It’s hard to tell them you’ve been there and done that because their experience may not be yours. I’ve tried that before and it doesn’t always work. So it’s more: share what you see and how they can improve, what they’re doing well and where they can grow. Use your experiences to see these patterns and how you can change them. If you suddenly attack them, sometimes they say, “Whatever, everyone says that.” But you’re right, the practice squad is a tough place to be. People who stay very focused, work on their craft and understand what they need to do normally end up coming off the practice squad and playing.

When you have equipped guys on the sidelines who are way down the pecking order, do you have to talk to them like they can get along, even if you think you won’t need him? “You can’t think like that – you need everyone. We saw it last season. We had players that got hurt and people have to come and play. The guys that play up front, on defense, they all play, every game. It’s a rotation position. There are players on the special team that will play if someone gets injured. You have to coach everyone and everyone has to expect them to play. You should look to be the best in all the reps you get, because if you maximize them, you normally get more. It’s our job to instill confidence in the guys on the sidelines, so they’re comfortable when they move forward.

When did you realize you knew as much, or could know as much, as an American coach? “When I first went to Dallas [as a coaching intern in 2014]. I thought so, but you don’t know that until you go there. I was trained by NFL coaches, but I had real imposter syndrome. As a player, I never thought I was ready. I just didn’t have the confidence that the other guys had. I was always trying to get somewhere and felt like I was a little late. By the time I finished playing, I probably knew enough and was confident, but it was too late. But I learned to be my own coach. Coaching is about teaching, empowering people, giving them answers, putting them in the right place and being honest. You have to do all these things just to survive in the NFL. I didn’t realize it, but when I was a player, I did all these things. If I couldn’t figure out how to do something, I would just study a guy who was really good on our team and say, ‘OK, this is how he does it.’

What did you do after you stopped playing before becoming a coach? “I have always been a coach [at London Warriors]. And then I volunteered in a reference unit for students in my region. My wife became a midwife and we ended up starting a business together, helping children access education who were out of school or out of work. We did that for three years. »

What did you learn from this? “A lot! It was a crazy time. That’s a whole other conversation. I use the same teaching and cultivating methods now that I did then. I use my experiences to understand how responsibility teaches people professionalism, and football taught me how to be professional.”

Did it make you realize that none of us really know what’s going on in another person’s life? “Definitely. You don’t know what someone is going through. And people can change. People in sports are so young now and they’re under the microscope of social media all the time. It’s different from when we were young – ​luckily​, because none of us would be doing our jobs!”

You launched the International Player Pathway with Osi Umenyiora in 2017. What will make you fully satisfied that it worked? “When they don’t need it. I don’t know if it will ever happen, but it’s a great tool. There will be a point where players will come from different backgrounds. I think the NFL Academy (at Loughborough) does that. You’ll obviously always pick a player who you think is a good athlete from another sport, but the general vision was to figure out how to create a pipeline. My first vision was to create an academy, but first we needed proof of concept, so we ended up doing it the other way around.”

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