Washington Head Coach, Jedd Fisch on Still Being Nervous, What Bill Belichick is Really Like + MORE

coach thanks for being here uh it's going great how are you doing pretty good I mean with you with the season just like a couple weeks away are you like where you're just itching to go to like we are or do you just look forward to more time to prepare H all right year one I'm looking for more time to prepare but usually I would say that I'm itching to go but uh right now practice is what we need the most of whenever you go into a new place and again uh congrats on the success and and getting that job but how much language are you actually changing and is it a slow change or do you go in with a full the playbooks new and everyone has to learn all of your terminology now yeah everything is brand new every uh every word uh our offense is all our Playbook that we had at Arizona most of it's similar to what we did at the Rams um and then uh really probably before that even and then um defensively it's all brand new so these kids have had to learn everything brand new we haven't carried over for one thing are there some kids who are light years ahead athletically even just straight football-wise but can't quite get the concepts and so you kind of have to handle all personalities different at this point oh yeah I mean there's a couple things right we were able to we had a couple guys that came over from Arizona so they kind of knew a lot of the stuff that we wanted to get accomplished um and they knew the verbiage but for the most part um um you know everybody's kind of new and um there are certain guys that pick things up faster there's certain guys that just know things a little bit better um and you know it's kind of unique like that the better athletes are also usually the ones that are the the quicker Learners when it comes to um offense and defensive football so um it's been fun to see how quickly some of these guys have figured it out uh I'd say this it's a very smart team this team knows what they're doing this team is um even though they've from all different areas and backgrounds they are uh they're picking up the scheme really well now we just got to figure out a way to execute it at the level we want to do you think it's advantageous being a first year coach that you have inh helmet communication like those two together are going to help more uh because you are a first year coach then maybe if it were a different time yeah I mean I I think it's just advantageous to begin with uh it's such it's it's an easier way to call a game um I you know when I was when was in Jacksonville 11 years ago we were calling the game through a a coach the you know helmet uh communicator and every ever since then um depending on where we were at pro or college you always wish you had it um when you were in college football and to have it back is great and then I do think that there's some reminders and tips that you can potentially give to the quarterback or to the Mike linebacker or safety depending on who's wearing it um that may be just a little bit of a reminder if they don't have the experience that other people have because uh this is year one in the offense year one in the defense which is very different than let's call it um some other places where you're year three or you know if we were still back at the last place it would be year four in the same system do you think with your experience in the NFL it actually helps with nil and college football because now again there's a financial hierarchy in college which there also was in the league yeah you know I've kind of said this that we've gotten almost back to the old days where it was um everyone had 85 scholarships and then you had to figure out how you were going to get a player um other than because of the scholarship now um everybody has money um the last four years it was depending on how much money you had determined how good of a player you could get now with the revenue share going on next year I think the top 25 programs are going to be able to spend pretty similar amount of money so now you're going to have to figure out what's the next separator so um we've kind of gotten ourselves back in this weird world where um you're going to be back to a facilities discussion you're going to be back to a um kind of player Centric Focus discussion you're going to be back to coaches and who's going to develop you the best because we're all going to be sharing the same Revenue here pretty soon at least the top you know 30 or 40 teams that can afford it so that's going to make it uh awfully interesting and and hopefully the experience we had in the NFL uh will give us somewhat of Advantage there whenever I was living in Texas and they were like hey move your show to Nashville and you're GNA do this National show and so I lived in an apartment for like two months and then I found like I had to like study the neighborhoods and like find a house whenever you move do you just they just throw you in an apartment and then you find do you rent like what's the deal uh it depends uh I don't know if you've seen my my uh resume I've moved a bunch so depending on where I depending on the situation in life is kind of determined you know have we rented or have we bought um it's certainly based on the where we were going and what we were doing uh in this case here uh I got hired January 15th and uh was in an Airbnb across the street from campus on a street with all of our player with not our players but bunch of college students for about four months um while my wife and kids were finishing out in Tucson um and my kids were going to school and then we bought a house and uh moved into our house on June 1st and I told Amber that uh on June 21st we were gonna have 100 people over to the house for a recruiting weekend so uh pressure was on quick yeah that would be tough to have to have I just know my wife I were like hey I have well 10 people coming over it would not be met uh warm so are you totally moved in everything good we well uh you know we are totally moved in but we started a project to uh to make our backyard more player friendly so uh we're putting a pickle ball court back there a sport court back there and it's a little miniature golf deal and we're we're trying to make it a place where my players want to come hang out um and uh our recruits want to come hang out and you know our goal is to to open our house to our players and become you know their family and uh whether it's our current roster whether it's our recruits so we we have a pretty significant renovation going on back there which is really putting me in a great you know uh a great place with my wife right now yeah we just went to a pickle ball renovation that itself took four months to do and was just people all it's just people my wife would be like there's people here all the time because there was always something to be done in the backyard yeah well that's what I'm about that that started uh last Monday so things are going great at the house right now a lot of travel just in general but now you got to travel all the way across the country and I was just looking at some of you guys's games because like again it used to be Pack 12 used to be I mean you got to like hydrate like super hydrate now right because I fly south if I Fly Southwest over two hours I got a headache when I land because I didn't drink enough water you guys are flying all over all over the freaking Country Coach uh how do you prepare your players on time zones I mean is there a Playbook yet to that well you know we it's kind of very NFL like in that regard because when you're playing I mean I coached in New England and we were flying across the country to play in LA in San Francisco we played Arizona when we were coached in La we flew across the country to play the Giants the dophins um so you kind of steal that Playbook and I would say that Playbook is one in which you you know you leave two days early um you try to get I guess those scientists call what Cadian rhythms right um you've got to overhydrate before you get on the plane you've gotta en enforce uh especially young kids 18 to 22 like all right every 30 minutes we have to have a bottle of water completed um we have to make sure that when we get off the plane we get enough moving around I mean we're flying to ruter from Seattle that's five hours and whatever it's like an 8 hour and 15 minute you know day let's call it with the three-h hour time frame and the 5 hour flight we're flying to State College we're flying to Iowa City we're flying to Indianapolis I mean all these flights are four or five hours long um if not even a little bit more going to State College so we've got to come up with a plan we're we think we have a decent plan I don't know we haven't played the game yet but uh you know it also depends what time you kick off like if we kicked off at 12:00 that's 9:00 a.m. our time um I don't know how much football we've played at 9 am other than a training camp if we kick off at 7:30 at night um in Seattle that's 10:30 at night for some of these East Coast teams so I think really we're GNA have to figure all that out as we go but um we're going to do everything we can to keep these kids hydrated up and and uh not let the circumstances uh Define how we play the game see I need to write that in overhydrate before and then a bottle of water every 30 minutes cuz I get off a plane and I'm like my head hurts and my wife like you idiot this happens every time you fly why do you not drink more water coach whenever you're in the NFL and you have the resume that you do and you've been around so many NFL players can you pretty much spot collegiately physically who can make it in the league yeah I think you can um it's you know it's one of those challenging things right like you could stand in front of your college football team and you could say who's playing on sun who has the dream to play on Sunday and every person in the room is going to stand up and then you can kind of say like all right who has a realistic um who realistically believes they're gonna play on Sunday and they all keep standing so you know you don't want to ruin anyone's dream you don't wna you know kind of tell them hey you know this is probably going to be a four-year run for you but um you do have an idea of what it takes you kind of know what their bodies look like in the league you know what their work ethic looks like uh it's very hard to just change that over a course of time so we spend a lot of time talking about what what these guys look like like I show them all the time pictures of NFL players and I you know hey this is what a safety in the league looks like do you look like this do you look like this when you're working out do you look like this when you're running do you look like this in the weight room is this you or is this what you want to be and uh if it's not you are you willing to commit to trying to get your body to look like that um we do that with every position group constantly and it's not trying to make people not feel good about themselves but more it's about trying to get these kids to understand like let's have a realistic goal and let's Embrace college football I don't think there's a better sport in America than college football but if all you're doing is you're just waiting for the next opportunity and you're not appreciating the moment then you're missing out on such great opportunity here so we try to encourage them to say like hey yeah you might end up being an NFL player and we're going to try to do everything we can to help you there but like let's love the fact that you know there's 75,000 people watching 11 people play and if it was easy there'd be 11 people watching 75,000 people play dang I should look at uh more ripped up dudes then that's what I need to just see pictures of things I need to be uh coach inspiration insiration it hasn't worked for me by the way I'm just saying for the players it could work with your story about how you came up in coaching and you know you were someone who knew you wanted to be around great leader so you could learn leadership I'm I'm inserting words you know when I read your stories about um you and Spurrier and the coaches that you worked under do you look for that with people that want to work for you now where maybe they don't have quite the resume but that you see something in them that is extra special yeah you know I think that for us we want to have people that are that as to succeed and and grow in the profession um I I love people that have been around great player great coaches great players that are inspired to to do certain things I mean we have uh Pete Carrol son on our staff Bill belich son on our staff our two coordinators we have um John Lynch's son on our staff as our defensive graduate assistant we have Jack Del Rio's son on our staff as our offensive quality control coach assistant running back coach um I I do that because those guys know what it took um their dads were they were moving around as kids they were a part of all different um staffs they heard the stories from their dads uh when they got home from work um so they they know you know what that felt like and looked like they know what when their dads were talking about Good coaches or bad coaches and what that meant and then we've got some other coaches on our staff that either played in the league or um aspired to play in the league and I want those guys to to really be around that group and be able to not just be around Brennan and Steve but also be around Pete and Bill and uh we invite those guys to our building uh coach bel's been here all week um coach Del Rio's coming tomorrow I think he'll be here for a week U coach Carol's been around practice a bunch because I want our assistant coaches to be able to grab those guys and be like hey what do you think about this or what do you think we should do here how do I grow in this profession um but in the end you know I think you just got to work you know every day like somebody's working 24 hours a day to take your job I feel like coach bich has shown me a new side of him where he's actually pretty funny I've been watching him on TV a lot where you know you get the presser he' say nothing and that was just the expectation but like if you're having dinner with him is he just like cuttingly funny at times yeah he's got a great he's got a great personality and um yeah I think that the way he's handled the media over the years is probably based on 30 something years of how went right like I don't know what it was like in 1994 in the media right and and I think all these years have gone on that he created a Persona and he also created uh a messaging that he wanted to give which really was what we do in house is in house and uh it's really not that important um for the others to know what we're doing in house that was maybe the way he handled it um but when you're with them privately or when you're with them in a in a different type of setting uh we we we really enjoy him my wife and and have spent many of times out for dinner and vacation you certainly learned so much about the guy and he's brilliant he's brilliant outside of football um he's so well read and well versed but he's also funny and uh really a good dude to just hang out with is it crazy to you that you'll just be hanging out with these dudes that at one point you looked at as like Mentor like you just mention like three or four guys and it's they could be at your house you got Pete Carrol bellich and you're like man they also think I'm cool now like isn't that like freaking awesome well it's cool I mean I let me just say this I've never called any of them by their first name so they're they're still my mentors uh I I have a really hard time not calling them coach and uh when when you're around coach Carol or uh coach belich like you know I I don't think uh I just look at them uh you know in a way that I just I see them as somebody that I've looked up to my whole career and um now to be around it's pretty cool it's pretty awesome um it's it's cool to be running the practice but I've always said like when those guys are at practice man I I'm the assistant head coach uh I still look at those guys as the head coach whether they're just sitting in the stands or watching the game or whether they're standing on the practice field talking to me or one of our coaches uh in the end uh those guys are revered and um they've done some things in football that we all just aspire to do is it bad form to show up to coach bich and say will you sign this football coach like would that be weird to just have have them autograph stuff or you hey can we take a quick selfie yeah like I feel like I would want to do that all the time I I would want the all the all the coaches that came in like that are helping right now I would want them all to sign a ball but I so my move is coach if there's somebody that I'm with that I'm like a massive fan of I'll have somebody come up and be like oh you two should get a picture together that way I didn't ask so you could have someone on your staff be like hey we're presenting uh coach fish with this ball all the assistants that came in it's like coach Carol coach bich all on one ball but secretly you wanted it and you can have that tip for free coach that's a good tip I like that idea then you don't have to ask you must get it all the time people are always trying to take pictures with you um it happens a little bit but sometimes also people are are like confused as to why other people are taking pictures with me so like someone will take a picture and then someone else will walk up and be like hey um who are you and then then when you have to explain no it's like they don't care because not famous to them you know no question can you go to the grocery store without people being like coach fish you're our savior uh yeah oh yeah the every now and then we'll get a how we doing coach go dogs but uh there's a lot of things happening in Seattle so um they are Husky fans though through and through and we have a great fan base um we have a group you know I would say that the fans here are just they they've showed out to everything we've asked them to do do we know we're going to sell out our games we know that the sailgating on the water is going to be incredible you know I've heard that you've made it out to the West Coast a couple times and I you know I was kind of thinking youd check out Seattle and be on the water and we' get on a boat and do this thing but maybe next year we could get you out here and you could see it well coach uh full transparency all that is true but I um I did we did not come we did not get invited in time we went out to another school which we won't mention not important not important not important at all a couple schools we went to your old school as well and they they still speak of you extremely lovingly they're not even that mad at you really I promise you I'm telling we we spent a lot of time there even ex players do not speak ill of Coach fish I'm telling I would just not say anything at all but you are still well here well I love those kids and uh this the head coach that got coach Brennan's a great a great coach and a good friend um so I'm excited for them I'm excited to root them on but obviously the players over there that we that we recruited and we brought in there um I I I can't wait to watch them succeed they are fantastic kids and um really a special batch out there in Tucson final three questions um but I'll say this NE we're next season we're coming out I love it A+ we're gonna come okay Eddie go ahead yeah coach um I have four boys and they all play sports and I tell them you know your your body language is important you know you have bad Body Language Coach is not going to think you're serious doesn't look like you're listening is that important to you is Bo body language bad body language all that is that important to you as a coach fantastic coaching tip I would absolutely tell my kids I tell my own kids that um body language is I would say the most important thing when you're talking to a player how they respond uh you could feel it you could see it if they get disappointed or their shoulder shrug or like walk confidently like I always tell them you want to walk on the field and you want to tip the field you want it to look like this when you're walking downhill all the time so body language is critical great parenting right there thank you coach what I want to hear it's awesome as a coach do you still get nervous yeah yeah I get nervous uh or that about game day yeah yeah I'm yeah like for a game I mean I don't know about I don't know what else you're up to but for games like that's what I'm talking about yeah I get nervous about are we going to have enough nil money I get nervous about a lot of things but uh without a question on game day there's nothing more there's nothing more exhilarating but yeah I mean I I have this like I still have to call the offensive plays and I always go into this panic attack like what if I just like freeze um and can't think of a play so um yeah we work I work very hard and we work as a staff very hard to be as prepared as you could possibly be but yeah I mean like I mean I yeah I get nervous and I try to do the best I can to alleviate the ner the anxiety for our players but I try to I do take it on myself this isn't the final question but something you just said about nio money so I have I have a friend who's a head football coach somewhere I won't um Implement him into this but he says he spent more time on the phone uh ever just he's just talking to people about money like he more than he ever thought he would he is a head coach of a major program and he's like it's what I do I dedicate a lot of time to it very similarly I was um asked about running for the governor of Arkansas where I'm from back in the day and they were like you're on the phone all the time begging for money that's really what it is it feels like at least until some there are some changes that it's a lot of politic and for cash right now to keep up would you say that's accurate yeah and I'd also say I mean it's kind of frustrating in a manner that I could imagine for others that you feel like every conversation you have it's always you're talking to people you're trying to get them to build a relationship with you just mov to a new community and then it traditionally always SKS off and saying now if you can help our program we would really appreciate it or you know any help uh will make a huge difference in the success of our program and uh but it's every day it's every day it's all day it's uh every opportunity to send an email to send a note to get on the phone uh every break that I have is really dedicated to fundraising and it's fun raising for nil it's fundraising for our facility it's fundraising for our program um I think that's just the nature of being a college football head coach right now and uh hopefully at some point it'll maybe uh recalibrate but right now yeah I would I would agree with your a friend who's a coach that a lot of our time has spent trying to fundraise all right final question you're Mount Rushmore of your favorite musical artists of all time I need all four of them all time coach uh Darth Brooks strong Billy Joel um Bon Joy I'm from New Jersey does that count I would say Kenny CH wow from New Jersey with two country guys very my wife's from Texas I was well there you go yeah well then that makes sense hey coach we really appreciate the time and we're rooting for you guys and um we're we're on a boat not only we coming next year you promised a boat we don't care what body of water it is but we're going to be on a boat and we're going to come up and spend some time there uh thank you for the time we really appreciate it thank you guys appreciate it Bobby take care man thanks coach