Successful Man Interviewed Says He Would Trade All of His Accomplishments to Be Twenty Again

At 80 years sometime, Pete Jenkins is spry for his age. He shuffles about, his back biconvex and arms awkwardly hanging by his side, and possibly he's a affect ho-hum in climbing the two flights of carpeted stairs in his abode, merely he'south no slouch.

His days of weight-room clanging long gone, he keeps in shape by briskly walking and working out with rubberband bands. He travels more a dozen times a yr, and not for a beach getaway or Carnival cruise. Jenkins instead keeps a busy annual excursion of tutoring the next wave of corking defensive linemen. These days, he is merely a part-timer, paid amply past college teams equally a consultant and NFL players as a personal trainer.

He is an artist in defensive line technique—paw placement, anxiety positioning, center focus. His paintbrushes are decades-former technical videos, his canvas the players themselves and his work studio a loft office atop those carpeted stairs—a "sanctuary," as one of his buddies describes information technology. It'south his hideaway, a football game autobus cavern on the second floor of his and wife Donna's quaint bayside domicile nearly 15 miles due east of downtown Destin.

Jenkins creeps upwardly the stairs, crosses the top-most step and moves into his work station, which includes a large television and 2 apartment-screen figurer monitors resting on a desk. The walls are covered in memorabilia from a 57-year career equally a journeyman defensive line double-decker. There are reminders of the 11 colleges at which he has coached and the more 40 defensive linemen he has helped send to the NFL.

Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

The loft is set in traditional decor. Lamps with pull bondage. Armchairs with sleeves. It'southward like going back in time, except for the modern pieces of electronics. Taught by his son, Jeff, Jenkins can splice videos over two separate computer monitors. He clicks a few buttons on a keyboard and pops up side-past-side still-frame images of defensive linemen operating the identical drill, 35 years apart.

Few coaches have retained their relevance in a sport beyond nearly six decades. Even fewer are equally cherished and integral to the industry at this man's age. The story of Pete Jenkins is vast and wide. His influence has touched and then many parts of college football game, the long branches of his coaching tree stretching into well-nigh every conference and a dozen of the sport'south aristocrat programs. Master of the D-line. Greatest of all time. I of the founders of the three–4 defence force.

But of all his accomplishments and his relationships, there is one few actually know almost, one that he doesn't oft crow virtually.

"I don't recollect it's easy for Nick Saban to take long-term relationships, just he does with Pete," says J.T. Curtis, a Louisiana high schoolhouse coach and longtime friend of Jenkins.

For the past two decades, Jenkins and the Alabama jitney have been engrossed in a symbiotic relationship, an emotional connexion betwixt two men connected by their vision of a bruising game. Jenkins says he's indebted to Saban for bringing him dorsum to LSU, a school Jenkins previously coached at for more than a decade and a place where he nonetheless owns a home.

Saban is indebted to Jenkins for a peachy many things. His deep connections in Louisiana helped the coach build a powerhouse in Billy Rouge and has since repeatedly turned to Jenkins to construct some of the game's fearsome defensive lines.

Jenkins wouldn't call himself Saban'south secret weapon, only others might.

Those who take been around Jenkins say he is a principal of item on the about granular level.

Drew Hallowell/Getty Images

On a cool Oct twenty-four hour period earlier this year, Pete Jenkins knows his company is arriving to discuss his relationship with arguably the greatest passenger vehicle in college football history. He is prepared, holding multiple marked-up notebook pages with what he says are the characteristics that make Nick Saban the all-time.

Hard worker. Not bad communicator. Forgiving (yes, he says, it's true). Compassionate (yes, this too is true). Holds everyone answerable. Splendid talent evaluator. Intelligent. Saban is smart enough that he would be successful in whatever field, including the political realm, Jenkins says. "If he were the president of this state, it'd exist a meliorate land."

If anyone knows Saban, it is this man. He'southward been one of the longest-standing coaches in Saban's orbit, going on 22 years.

Scroll to Go along

SI Recommends

"I've ever respected Pete because he is a football guy," Saban says. "I call up he'southward old-school like me when it comes to how you develop players and how you lot exercise things."

Jenkins is Saban's Wolf.

You lot know, the "Wolf" grapheme from the Hollywood striking Pulp Fiction? Histrion Harvey Keitel portrays a skilled fixer whose talent is solving problems. In the movie, The Wolf is called into a situation where he must direct others to efficiently and quickly dispose of a dead trunk. Jenkins isn't disposing of anything, simply he does detect himself, multiple times a yr, on the other end of a phone phone call with Saban, who summons him to Tuscaloosa to fix Alabama'southward defensive front bug.

The calls come at various times. After the regular season. Before spring practice. In the eye of preseason army camp. In the heat of the summer. A few years back, Saban phoned with an emergency. The Scarlet Tide, preparing for the Citrus Bowl against a Michigan squad that ran the ball quite well, needed to repair cracks in its front.

Get hither at present!

Jenkins, who was training NFL draftees in Dallas, boarded a aeroplane sent by the academy. He arrived at the Alabama facility, was handed a souvenir pocketbook from Saban'due south secretarial assistant and was hurriedly ushered into a dark meeting room where the omnibus himself was leading a film session. Jenkins glanced inside the gift handbag to find peanuts, crackers, a few chicken breasts, his favorite drink Coke Zero, and some bottles of water.

"I retrieve looking in in that location and I idea, 'I might be here a while,'" Jenkins cackles.

During these trips, Jenkins doesn't piece of work with players. That'd be an NCAA violation. Instead, he coaches the coaches. He identifies technical weaknesses from watching hours of Alabama exercise and game footage of its defensive line before making suggestions using his own didactics methods and videos. Those who have been around Jenkins call him the all-time teacher they have e'er seen, a master of detail on the nigh granular level, correct down to the positioning of a defensive line bus during a drill.

"He has to stand here," Jenkins says, "then he can have the best angle to evaluate his players' techniques!"

"He's had boilerplate higher players and made them great higher players," says Terry Bowden, who hired Jenkins at Auburn in the 1990s. "Nick appreciates teachers of the game and people that have the cognition and authority. He teaches kids to be fundamentally sound."

Jenkins has a standing trip to Tuscaloosa each spring to teach the new defensive staff, or reteach the old staff, the "Pete Jenkins Way," says Karl Dunbar, a former Alabama banana and Jenkins protégé who is now a defensive line motorbus for the Steelers.

And what exactly is the "Pete Jenkins Way"?

"Pete coaches a different brand of football game. I try to coach the same style, teaching guys to use your hands and leverage to defeat blocking schemes. Information technology's a lost art," Dunbar says. "A lot of guys don't teach guys how to utilize their hands to have on blocks. Coaches now want guys but to go upfield. Simply if you can't control the gap, you miss out on a lot of things. When you've got guys who can defeat one-on-one blocks, that's the divergence."

Dunbar describes Jenkins and Saban as "kindred souls" who view football game in a like mode. For years, Saban has built the foundations of his teams on the defensive line. Win the line of scrimmage, win the game. Despite the evolution of offensive football, that's notwithstanding the mentality.

His teams oft control the front defensively using a Jenkins philosophy built around the one-time coaching adage of "the niggling things." Jenkins is a technical coach, not schematic. In football game'due south i-on-one trench warfare, he is the five-star general, not positioning his troops or cartoon battle plans but education them how to properly aim and accurately burn down.

"I think technique is most significantly of import on the offensive line and defensive line," Saban says. "Pad level, mitt placement, remainder and body control. Pete is the accented all-time at [teaching] all of those things."

Saban was the get-go to begin using Jenkins as a consultant. The decision led to a lot more than piece of work for Jenkins. Saban's former assistants who became head coaches copied their one-time dominate's program. They all began to utilise Jenkins as a consultant, also, chasing the magic recipe for success. (Saban likes to joke that he "subsidizes" Jenkins'south retirement.)

Jenkins has a devoted following. Many of them, now higher and NFL D-line coaches, started an organization years back chosen the Two-Gap Club, a nod to Jenkins's teaching philosophy. His linemen marshal straight up across from an offensive thespian, or slightly shaded, and are responsible for the gap to the left and right: two-gap. The organization is dozens deep and includes some of the sport'due south most high-profile D-line coaches. Jenkins has been around long enough to take instructed the sons of fathers he taught back in the 1980s and '90s.

His D-line tree is then profound that Andy Reid'southward search for a new Eagles line coach in 2007 landed on a group of candidates with one similar characteristic. They were all "Pete Jenkins guys."

Finally, Reid figuratively threw up his hands.

"Why don't we simply hire this Pete Jenkins fella?"

Jenkins was the Eagles' defensive line coach from 2007-09.

Nick Saban started working more closely with Pete Jenkins when he was head coach at LSU.

Al Tielemans/Sports Illustrated

In 1999, Hank Tierney was a loftier schoolhouse bus in south Louisiana preparing for his first visit from the new hotshot head coach at LSU, Nick Saban. Before Saban entered his office, Tierney scribbled a proper name in large letters on his chalkboard.

PETE JENKINS.

Saban was amassing his first staff, and Jenkins had called Tierney with a favor: Put in a proficient word for me. Maybe Saban would run across Jenkins'due south name on the lath, Tierney idea, and the two would strike upward a conversation, at which indicate Tierney could boast nearly his old friend.

The plan didn't go and then well. Saban didn't mention the proper name at all. They talked very niggling almost Jenkins. The motorcoach left and Tierney immediately phoned his friend. "I don't think I did likewise healthy."

Over the next few days, more than people around LSU and south Louisiana recommended that Saban bring back Jenkins, who worked equally an banana at LSU for 11 years ending in 1990. And so he did.

Jenkins's two seasons as Saban'south defensive line coach in Baton Rouge supplied the foundation of their relationship. They recruited together. They sculpted the Tigers' defence force together. They worked long, long hours together (during one of those years, the staff worked 48 of 52 weekends). That LSU staff under Saban in the early 2000s included many young bucks who are in high-profile jobs today. Volition Muschamp. Jimbo Fisher. Mel Tucker. So lx years old, Jenkins was the former man of the gang, the only ane who could actually josh around with their taskmaster. He could push button Saban's buttons, in a good fashion.

Once during a staff meeting, Saban joked with Jenkins about his historic period, suggesting he wished he had the extra years of wisdom.

"Hey, Coach," Jenkins replied, "I wish I fabricated your salary!"

The room fell silent. The other assistants froze. And then, Saban cackled in laughter.

After the 2001 season at LSU, Jenkins retired for the first time. Saban himself hosted his retirement party at a restaurant in Baton Rouge.

"The nicest I've e'er seen Nick was at Pete's retirement party," Tierney recalls. "Yous should take seen him. He was telling jokes!"

Jenkins brings out something different in Saban. The steel armor subsides and a more vulnerable Saban emerges, those close to them say. He fifty-fifty has a nickname for Jenkins: Petey. Petey tin can attend an Alabama game whenever he wants, as a guest of the head coach. Simply don't get it confused, Jenkins says, they don't pal around together as dinner mates.

"We may be the odd couple," he says, "but we ain't buddies. When he calls me, he calls me to come up to work."

This isn't unique to Jenkins. Saban does this with virtually anybody.

"I don't chat with everyone," the coach said during his radio call-in prove last calendar week. "I don't talk to people throughout the week. Perhaps Miss Terry [Saban's wife], if I am lucky, but I don't see anybody except our staff. My days are planned out. I don't have a lot of time to say, 'Imma call my buddy and see how he'south doing.' I would dear to do that, and I wish I had fourth dimension to do it."

This connection of theirs dates further dorsum than those days in Billy Rouge. Unbeknownst to one another and then, Saban and Jenkins, separated past 10 years, studied the defenses of the 1980s Giants, led past double-decker Bill Parcells, coordinator Pecker Belichick and star linebacker Lawrence Taylor.

Those Giants defenses, dubbed the Large Blue Wrecking Coiffure, helped the team win two Super Bowls and three NFC East titles while popularizing the 3–4 defense.

"A lot of our thinking, Nick and I, was born and bred in New York," Jenkins says.

Jenkins's connection to Alabama goes even further back. He was born and raised in Warner Robins, Ga., not too far from the Alabama country line. His mom was a homemaker and his dad was a butcher. He'd spend each Saturday scrubbing the butcher block, an objectionable task that convinced him of something: Don't become a butcher. Jenkins played football considering it was the just outlet at his loftier schoolhouse where he could, as he says, "requite someone a lick" without getting in trouble.

He traces his early mastery of defensive line play to Alabama equally well. His mentors were erstwhile Giants D-line coach Lamar Leachman and Ken Donahue, who worked as an assistant for 19 years nether Behave Bryant. In 1971, Bryant offered a recruiting chore on his Alabama staff to Jenkins, then a young assistant coach at North Alabama. The position included enough of travel, long nights on the road and no on-field coaching. Jenkins turned it down.

"As the years went by, have I thought nigh information technology? Yep," Jenkins says. "I could have worked for two of the greats in the game."

Pete Jenkins'southward coaching career has primarily been at the collegiate level, but he served equally the defensive line coach for the Philadelphia Eagles from 2007-09.

John Iacono/Sports Illustrated

Three days into a five-day consultant visit to Tuscaloosa, Jenkins sounds exhausted.

"Just got back to the hotel," he says in a huff.

Don't permit him fool you; he loves this stuff. When Nick Saban calls, The Wolf answers.

He spent about all of last week at Alabama equally the top-seeded Cherry-red Tide (12–1) began do ahead of the College Football Playoff. For the 11th time in the by 13 seasons, a Saban program is alive to win the national championship in mid-Dec—arguably the greatest dynasty in the modern history of college football with half dozen titles over that bridge.

And to think, an 80-twelvemonth-quondam semiretired defensive line coach has contributed in at to the lowest degree a small way. Last twelvemonth during a visit to Alabama, Saban asked Jenkins for communication before the top-five regular-flavour clash against Georgia. Well, they've got a curt quarterback, and so y'all'd better tell them to get their hands up.

Alabama'south defensive linemen deflected four passes in the game and the Tide rolled, 41–24. Jenkins got a call the next twenty-four hours. Information technology was Saban. He thanked him.

If he'due south annihilation, Jenkins is fiercely loyal. There is no sharing information he learns on a visit to 1 program with another. In fact, in 2016 and '17, he came out of retirement for the last time to join Ed Orgeron's staff in Billy Rouge as full-fourth dimension line coach. He went roughly 18 months without visiting Saban's staff during that time.

"He was pissed," Jenkins says with a laugh.

Jenkins really began his college consulting service after his 3-year stint with the Eagles ended in 2009. In all, he's been hired by 41 higher programs. He's visited eight programs in the past year and three of them are in the Playoff: Alabama (three visits), Georgia and Michigan.

Back in his loft office, Jenkins'southward schedule is laid out on a desk against a far wall. Colored markers are used to announce trips each week. In Jan and February, he trains NFL-bound college players in Miami or Dallas, usually. In March through May, he visits colleges. In July, it'due south back to training the pro players. And then there are college camps in August.

In between those trips are visits from his disciples. At ane point or another, they make their way up the ii flights of carpeted stairs and step into this man's second-floor sanctuary. Information technology's almost a ritual of sorts, Jenkins flicking on the 2-screen workstation to show twoscore-year-one-time clips of some of his first nifty players similar Leonard Marshall and Karl Wilson, juxtaposed side by side to his modern-day trainees like Justin Ellis and Dalvin Tomlinson.

"The game has changed all over the field except in the box," Jenkins says. "Information technology'due south how to defeat blockers, gaining separation, shedding and making tackles. That's why I'm still relevant to people today. It's the same equally it was in 1964 when I started."

Many of his erstwhile players, now coaching, nevertheless send him clips on a weekly basis, seeking assist nigh a technique—perhaps it's hand placement or foot positioning. That includes Texas defensive line coach Bo Davis.

"They don't make 'em any improve than Autobus Pete," says Davis, a sometime Jenkins player at LSU who nearly quit college football subsequently the schoolhouse fired the entire staff, including Jenkins, in 1990. "He told me then, 'Just because you're mad at the motorbus driver, don't get off the bus.' He's the reason I connected to stay and play."

In that sanctuary of his, Jenkins calls downstairs to his wife and upwards comes Donna Jenkins with glasses of water for her husband and their guest. The two accept been married for 54 years and have two children, both grown and long gone from their home.

Donna is well enlightened of her husband's football crush on the Alabama head coach. After all, he has saved on his phone a 19-second voicemail from Saban. After one particular consulting trip to Tuscaloosa, Jenkins left disappointed in his work. He felt like he permit downward Saban. So ashamed, he left the coach a handwritten note on his desk expressing his apology.

Days later, Jenkins missed Saban'south phone call, and the omnibus left him that voicemail.

"Hey, Pete," Saban begins, "distressing I missed you. Don't have a heavy eye. No reason to apologize."

Saban is at the center of Jenkins'due south football game sanctuary here. The largest framed slice of art in the loft is a three-foot-high photo of Jenkins and Saban coaching together on the sideline of an LSU game—a souvenir from the coach presented to Jenkins at that retirement political party in Baton Rouge.

Saban isn't a man who routinely delivered superlatives about much of anything. He's non a guy who dishes out compliments oftentimes. Just during a brief interview with Sports Illustrated about Jenkins, Saban gushes.

"He'due south probably one of the all-time defensive line coaches, if non the all-time defensive line autobus, that I have ever been associated with," he says.

Jenkins'south eyes well up when he hears the comment. In many ways, this is what's all been about, to take the blessing from the greatest of all time.

Jenkins rises from his workstation to begin the hike downward his carpeted stairs. He reaches to grab his smartphone and slides it into his pocket. Fifty-fifty if it's for a fleeting moment, The Wolf tin can't gamble missing a call from the man. Jenkins laughs about those phone calls. As he does with everyone, Saban calls from a blocked number. When Jenkins sees that flash beyond his telephone, he knows who it is.

And he knows what's coming.

"Pete, hither's what I demand you lot to do," Saban always starts.

"I hope," Jenkins says, "he doesn't ever phone call and say, 'Pete, here'due south what I need yous to do—go kill somebody.' I don't desire to spend the rest of my life in prison, considering I'd kill the son of a b----."

More Daily Cover stories:

• He Virtually Died on 'Bulldoze to Survive.' Now He'southward Faster Than E'er.
• Tom Brady Wins the 2021 Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year
• 'He'south Made the Departure': LaMelo Ball Has Charlotte Buzzing Again

densonbropper.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.si.com/college/2021/12/21/when-alabama-nick-saban-calls-pete-jenkins-answers-daily-cover

Share this post