Timing is everything in this league, and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I never lost my confidence. Atlanta was changing coaches and systems. I knew they'd make personnel changes.
Everyone wrote our obituary but us and the coaches and the kids who stayed with us. The obit was, 'Vanderbilt will have to leave the Southeastern Conference. All the coaches are leaving, and all the students are transferring.'
Since I've been in the NBA, I've played for four different people. I don't know how much more you can go.
Players suffer coaching changes all the time; it's life in the NFL.
I was at Marseille and had four coaches in four seasons. Changing coaches is nothing new.
In any rebuilding process, I feel like there's probably going to be two or three coaches.
When you play professionally, you get accustomed to turnover. Players come and go - they get injured, they get transferred, they get cut from the team. Coaches are hired, and coaches are fired. It's just part of the world you live in.
I went through five different coaching changes at Fulham.
Managers come and go, and first-team coaches and players can leave suddenly.
At Tennessee, I said I can't wait to beat Florida in the Swamp and sing 'Rocky Top' all night long. The thing at Tennessee I felt was that there needed to be energy in the program immediately. Two of the last three years there, they were 5-7. Urban Meyer and Nick Saban were at all-time highs. I felt like the fan base and players needed confidence.
It's been tough throughout my career having different coaches and different philosophies, different style of plays throughout this entire time.
Coaching changes are a part of football; they arrive ready to meet the goals they have been set, so you respect them and work with them like any other.
It's normal in a top club that people change.
It's never a good sign when many players leave the club or when you have many coaching changes, because it brings a lot of distraction to the team and the club.
As coaches, we usually have plenty of changes from one year to the next. Sometimes it seems like it's at one position. Sometimes it's across the board. But this is really a part of every year that we have in coaching in the NFL.
I've seen 18 managers go at the clubs I've been playing for. It's a part of football, isn't it?
There's a handful of teams that have a revolving door, that are changing coaches every couple of years, and you can look at the success that they're having. They're not.
So I know all about the ups and downs of football, I know that one day I will be sacked.
You see it everywhere in football: when results are not there, then the first guy who has to go is the manager. It's not always the managers; sometimes it's also the players who we have to blame.
Any time you have coaching changes and things like that, you go and study everything.
