'Skinny little safety who was tougher than nails' returns home to run Bills offense

Sal Maiorana | Democrat and Chronicle

Show Caption Hide Caption 'Get some Nick Tahou's': Bills' Daboll happy for Rochester return Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll talks about his days playing at University of Rochester and growing up in western New York.

Brian Daboll was born in Welland, Ontario, but grew up in Buffalo.

He attended the University of Rochester where he played football and earned a degree in economics.

During more than 20 years as a coach, he earned five Super Bowl championship rings with the Patriots.

Twenty-six autumns ago, John Snell was sitting in the stands under the Friday night lights at St. Francis High School outside Buffalo, searching for candidates to play football for the University of Rochester.

Snell, an Albion, Orleans County, native who was on UR head coach Rich Parrinello’s staff and in charge of recruiting in the western New York area, said recently, “I liked going to St. Francis because they always had good football teams.”

Meaning, they usually had good players, and one he certainly liked was Brian Polian, the son of then-Buffalo Bills general manager Bill Polian. But that night, there was another Red Raider Snell liked even more.

“I saw this skinny little safety who was tougher than nails,” said Snell, who, for the past 24 years has worked at Baldwin Wallace University, first as an assistant football coach, later for 15 years as the head coach, and now as the school’s assistant athletic director.

“I can’t remember who it was against,” Snell continued, “but I remember, clearly, a play where he was playing safety, came downhill and stuck his nose in there and I instantly said, ‘I love this kid.’ I remember seeing that, him taking on a running back, and he clearly had no fear about making that tackle. That was impressive. He stood out for me, and I remember thinking, 'That’s a kid I want to meet and talk to and recruit.'”

Snell did indeed meet him, talk to him, and ultimately persuade him to come play for the Yellowjackets at Fauver Stadium. His name was Brian Daboll, who returns to Rochester for Buffalo Bills training camp this week in his new role as Buffalo’s offensive coordinator.

Like anyone who has made football his life’s work — be it as a player, coach, or administrator — Daboll’s journey has taken him to so many places that it’s tough to keep track of it all. But make no mistake, the place where it all began was over on Wilson Boulevard on the banks of the Genesee River.

“Great institution, academics were important to my family,” Daboll said of UR. “I had a couple other (offers), but at the end of the day I felt like it was a good fit. John Snell is the coach that recruited me, coach (Chris) Battaglia was the defensive coordinator, and coach Parrinello, just all good people.”

Daboll played sparingly as a freshman, but he earned a starting role as a sophomore and he was in on 51 tackles and made two interceptions that year, a prelude to what took place on Sept. 9, 1995, opening day of his junior year, when Daboll played his greatest game, one of the greatest games ever by a UR defensive player.

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In the season opener at Case Western, Daboll intercepted three passes, the last in the end zone with nine seconds remaining to secure a 9-5 victory. And what made it all the more memorable is that one of his best friends growing up in Buffalo, wide receiver Brian Flynn, caught the go-ahead touchdown pass with 54 seconds to go.

“That was a game where we were struggling offensively and he kept making plays that kept us in the game,” Battaglia said. “He was a pit bull. A student of the game. His whole college career was made because he played so hard with so much heart. We had some really good kids, but Brian was the leader of the defense.”

Daboll doesn’t talk much about his playing days, but he did say of that game, “That was a good one."

Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll comes back home New Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who has worked for some of the best coaches in football history, talks about his big breaks.

One that wasn’t so good occurred two months later, a 44-7 season-ending loss at Union, the game that turned out to be the last one Daboll ever played. “I got dinged up; I’ll leave it at that,” Daboll said, the memory still difficult to reflect on.

While making a helmet-to-helmet tackle, Daboll suffered a neck injury that left him prone on the field. Thankfully, Daboll was able to get up and walk off, but after he was examined in the days after, the determination was made that it was no longer safe for him to play football because the next neck injury could result in paralysis.

“At first, you’re scared because back then, we didn’t know about head injuries, neck injuries,” said Battaglia. “You were like, ‘OK, he’s not paralyzed (and he’d be able to play again).’ It was hard to understand when they said he couldn’t play anymore.”

Brian Daboll got early start as coach

Football was Daboll’s passion, and to have it taken away so suddenly at the ripe old age of 20 was traumatic. Yet, in a way, one of the worst moments of his young life turned out to be the first step in what is now a two-decades plus coaching career, 17 of those years spent in the National Football League during which he has collected five Super Bowl rings with the Patriots and one college football national championship with Alabama.

When he got hurt, Daboll still had a year of school remaining to complete his degree in economics, and though he couldn’t play, he felt he could still help the team. He had knowledge, energy and a burning competitive spirit, and there was no way he was going to waste it, so he asked Parrinello if he could work the 1996 season as a volunteer coach, and Parrinello agreed.

“That year I was going on to high school (coaching), and I remember going to a game and Brian sat with me, and he knew everything that was going on,” said Battaglia. “He always told me he wanted to coach. We spent time in my office, he would watch film and he knew what everyone was doing on the field. Did I know he’d become a coach at (the NFL) level? Probably not; not that he couldn’t do it, but the connections you have to have to get there.”

Eric Thurley, who is a social studies teacher at Webster Schroeder, where he also serves as defensive coordinator of the Warriors football team, was a teammate of Daboll’s for two years at UR and he still can vividly recall the passion that permeated from Daboll.

“Brian was a great teammate, super intense, just the type of guy you want to be running the secondary as a free safety,” said Thurley. “I was the middle linebacker so it was nice having him back there. Not the biggest kid or the most athletic kid, but he hit like a truck, always knew where to be, commanded the huddle. I remember seniors listening to him when he was just a sophomore. After he got hurt, I remember missing his presence in the huddle in the games. I knew not having him out there was going to be a big loss for us.”

That year Daboll spent helping the Yellowjackets defense had an impact on Thurley, especially gameday mornings, when Daboll would call Thurley with heavy metal music blasting in the background to get the junior defensive captain properly fired up.

“He wasn’t on the field, but he was still all about being intense, motivating people, inspiring people to go beyond what they were capable of,” Thurley said. “He was always fired up on the sideline, that was his personality. I remember coach Parrinello and Battaglia calming him down a little. I can remember multiple times sitting in the dining hall and it was just football, football, football. It was cool to know him, a great dude to hang out with.”

Jeff Smith of Hilton could attest to that. When Smith made his college visit to UR, Daboll was his host.

“Brian was one of the first guys I met at UR during my recruiting trip,” said Smith, who decided to quit football and went to the University of Maryland, but then realized he missed playing so he transferred to UR after his freshman year and joined the Yellowjackets the season Daboll was coaching.

“I was a senior in high school in Hilton and me and a couple of my teammates there went to UR and stayed with Brian and a couple other guys. It was the best recruiting trip that I ever went on, and from what I hear, it was one of the best recruiting trips any of the guys ever had. Just down to earth, and we hit it off right from the get-go.”

His one year of coaching was enough to convince Daboll that a job in the real world could wait, so after graduation, he asked Parrinello whether he could make a couple calls. “I didn’t have a set plan on what was going to happen, but I really enjoyed it and I thought there’s no better time to give it a try than when you’re young,” Daboll said.

Brian Daboll meets Sean McDermott and coaches under Bill Belichick

Parrinello recommended him to William & Mary College coach Jimmy Laycock, and off he went to Williamsburg, Virginia, to serve as a restricted-earnings coach (meaning about $2,000 for the season) for a team that had an undersized, tough-as-nails safety in the Daboll mold named Sean McDermott.

“He was a fifth-year senior, a year older than me,” Daboll said. “It’s not like we had some great connection, but there was a respect on my part on how he handled his business. He was a good football player, tough, hard-nosed, so I had a lot of respect for him.”

McDermott remembered that original encounter with Daboll this way: “As a college player, there's graduate assistants in and out every year … so you get a feel for which ones have a future in the profession a little bit and are good, and which ones are kind of nine-to-fiving it. You could tell early on that Brian was serious about it, was professional in his approach, polished as much as you could be at that point in one's career.”

At the end of 1997, Laycock kept the ball rolling for Daboll by calling Nick Saban to see if he had a spot on his Michigan State staff. After two years in the Big Ten working as a graduate assistant, Daboll got his big break when Saban suggested him to his pal Bill Belichick, who was taking over as head coach of the New England Patriots in 2000.

Daboll started as a defensive assistant — he jokingly called it a 20-20 job, meaning 20 hours a day for about $20,000 per year — before getting promoted to receivers coach in 2002.

Asked what he learned during that seven-year period, when he studied at the foot of the master, Daboll said, “Do your job mentally. Everybody has a job in the organization to do, and whatever that job may be, you’re expected to do it and do it well. That’s really all it is. No special potions you can drink, shortcuts you can take. It takes a lot of hard work and a lot is expected.”

After Smith graduated from UR, he moved from Hilton to take a job in Boston around the same time Daboll started with the Patriots. Smith remains a big Bills fan, even though he still lives in Patriots territory. However, it was tough to root against the Patriots when his buddy was coaching there, especially when that buddy brought him along to two of New England’s Super Bowls, Nos. 38 and 39 in Houston and Jacksonville, where they beat the Panthers and Eagles, respectively.

“We had some good times, especially when they were going on their Super Bowl runs,” said Smith, who said the first playoff game he attended was the infamous Tuck Rule game when the Patriots defeated the Raiders in the snow thanks to one of the most controversial non-fumble rulings in NFL history.

“We still keep in touch by text, but you get older with families and priorities change. It was a lot of fun having him here then. We got to hang out like old times.”

That ended when Daboll left after 2006 for New York to become quarterbacks coach of the Jets under his former Patriots colleague, Eric Mangini, with one of those years spent coaching Brett Favre. He then went with Mangini to Cleveland, where he served two years as offensive coordinator, followed by one year as OC for the Dolphins, one as OC with the Chiefs, and then a return to the Patriots for four more years with Belichick as tight ends coach.

When Lane Kiffin quit as Saban’s offensive coordinator at the end of 2016, Saban asked Belichick to return the favor from many years earlier and send Daboll back to him for 2017, and as OC, Daboll helped the Crimson Tide win yet another national title. All of which has led Daboll back to his hometown as McDermott, at the end of his first season as the Bills’ head coach, fired Rick Dennison and hired Daboll.

Brian Daboll returns home to WNY

“It’s a special place for me, it’s where I grew up,” Daboll said. “People are hard-working, committed, try to do the right thing, help each other out. There’s a lot of tough people in this town.”

And you could count Daboll as one of those. He never knew his father, a Canadian who abandoned him after he was born in Welland, Ontario, in 1975, so his mother moved back to Buffalo to live with her parents. His grandfather was a farmer who also worked as a groundskeeper for the West Seneca school district, his grandmother took care of their home, and Daboll’s mother worked several jobs through the years, all three playing a key role in raising him.

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“A lot of respect for my grandparents and my mother trucking me back and forth to different places,” Daboll said.

Usually, that meant sporting events because as a kid, sports were everything, and he played whatever was in season. Hockey was a particular favorite, and he was good enough to be on a travel team, a grinding right winger who scored “some junk goals” along the way. Eventually, he homed in on football because that was the sport he thought he’d have a chance to play in college.

Buffalo was a great place to grow up, and now his own family will get to experience that.

New Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll owns 5 Super Bowl rings The Buffalo native, who just won an NCAA title with Alabama, won five Super Bowl championships as an assistant with the Patriots over 11 seasons.

Daboll had two children with his first wife, and his second wife, Beth, had two children when she and Daboll got married in 2009. Those four are now all teenagers — the oldest, his son Mark, will be the first to head off to college in the fall — but Brian and Beth wanted children together, and they now have a 2-year-old and an 8-month-old as part of their brood.

“God bless my wife; she doesn’t get much sleep,” Daboll said. “It’s different when you have these teenagers and all their friends running around the house and then these two younger ones. It’s great. You just hope people don’t ask me if I’m their grandfather.”

Throughout his football journey, Daboll always held out hope that he’d get to come back to Buffalo, and now that he has, he feels like this is right where he belongs.

“I think it was the right time, with the right people, from the ownership to Brandon (Beane) and Sean,” he said. “It fell into line and it happened to be in my hometown, but the most important thing is the people running the organization, trying to do the right things. That’s the type of people you want to work for.”

When he returns to Rochester, he’ll be busy at St. John Fisher College, but he hopes to have time to reconnect with some of his old friends from UR because the four years he spent there remain a special time in his life.

“I made a lot of good friends along the way that are doing well in their respective fields,” he said. “College is important for building relationships and meeting a lot of good people, and that’s what stands out, the people that I came across.”

MAIORANA@Gannett.com