Mike Macdonald says being the head doesn’t mean he should act like he knows more than everyone else “I was in the DB room when Eric Weddle was older than I was. I’m not about to tell Eric Weddle what to do. He’s taught me more about football than probably anybody.” “So you have to have that, ‘Hey, I’m working with this guy’ mentality. I think even as a head coach it’s the same. That’s the right approach.” “Let’s work with each other, as long as we’re coming at it with the right angle, with respect for one another. Let’s go attack it together. Rather than this whole, ‘Who’s ahead of who?’ hierarchy thing. It just gets all funky.”

Sean McDermott reveals after he was fired by the the Bills, he went back to people inside the organization and asked them to tell him the truths during his tenure that never made it to the top of the food chain so he could learn and grow “When you’re a head coach or a leader of any sort, you don’t always get this space to just live life and to reflect. I’ve been reflecting on my journey in Buffalo. The good things, the things I’d like to do differently in the next go-around.” “Doing some other types of reflection as well, which is asking other people and sort of a blind-spot type of exercise. People in the building in Buffalo who I respect. Because sometimes as a head coach, not everything gets to the top of the food chain. Every story. Every truth. So just going back and probing because, I want to know. I want to know what I don’t know.” “It hit me between the eyes. Hey, sharing more of myself. Sharing more of who Sean really is. From a personal level, dropping my guard a little bit and really just showing them my true self as a person. I think that just comes from getting so focused on the job and the task at hand.”

Joe Mazulla says the best coaches he had were just willing to be brutally honest “To me, they’re honest with you, whether you’re good or whether you suck. They're in it for the right reasons. To see kids get better. But they're honest with you on whether you're good or whether you suck.” “I remember I had a bad game in AAU and my coach came up to me and was like, ‘Man, you suck today.’ The guy you went against just kicked your ass, but… he’s going to make it one day and so are you.” “They’re able to be honest with you, but also give you the encouragement or the perspective that you need to go forward. They never let you settle being yourself.” “They hold you accountable to the person that you say you want to be or the person that they think you can become. That’s a space that many people aren’t willing to go to. At any level, that's what good coaches are.”