Worthing helped shape Mike Singletary

Story Courtesy of Houston Chronicle 

Mike Singletary already has come full circle in a way, returning to high school as a coach last year.

Singletary had never been a high school football coach before taking the job at Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, just north of Dallas. But from the time he started busting heads as a scrawny ninth grader trying to make the team at Worthing High School, Singletary has been a coach on the field.

On Saturday, Singletary will add another layer to the circle when he comes back to his old high school for the Hometown Hall of Famer program presented by Ford Motor Co. Worthing will be named an “official school” of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where Singletary is one of 13 former Texas high school players to have been inducted.

Former Worthing stars Otis Taylor (Chiefs) and Cliff Branch (Raiders), who both caught touchdown passes in Super Bowl victories, could join him one day, as they are widely thought of as the most deserving Hall of Famers not yet in from their respective teams.

Singletary is “honored and proud” to part of an impressive legacy of achievement at the Sunnyside school.

“My memories of Evan E. Worthing are just fantastic,” Singletary said. “I couldn’t mention Worthing without mentioning Oliver Brown. That was my coach, who meant so much to me at that time and really taught me so many different things about life as well as football.”

Brown, who retired in 1997 after 40-plus years of coaching and teaching, including 33 years as a defensive coach at Worthing, was a key role model for Singletary.

A “yes sir, yes ma’am” kid, the youngest of 10 children from a strict, religious household, Singletary was easy to coach. Hard work and sacrifice were more than just slogans.

In the early 1970s, there was no weight room at Worthing for the young Singletary. He trained by lifting buckets of cement connected to the end of a bar. After he made it to the NFL with the Chicago Bears, as a second-round pick in the 1981 draft, Singletary bought the school its first set of weights.

Singletary wasn’t a celebrated recruit coming out of high school. There were bigger, faster, stronger players — he was not quite 6 feet tall and weighed less than 200 pounds — but no one outworked him.

He credits Brown with encouraging him to strive for greatness and teaching him how to harness his tenacity.

“He told me what was in me and brought that out of me,” Singletary said.

Football intelligence is a phrase often overused, but Singletary was a genius. The two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year was in the “right place, right time” so often because he studied the game and learned the techniques.

It started at Worthing, where Brown made Singletary responsible for calling defenses and putting teammates in the right position.

Grant Teaff, the legendary coach at Baylor, tells the story of seeing just one bit of Worthing film with Singletary on the team.

The clip was of three consecutive series, three three-and-outs, nine offensive plays.

“Mike made nine tackles and made them from one side of the field to the other,” Teaff told the Chronicle in 1998, when Singletary was about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “I said, ‘We want him.’”

Interestingly, though Singletary was always able to see what others couldn’t, he couldn’t see particularly well. The look from those eyes, that scary stare you see on the classic NFL Films footage, wasn’t an intimidation tactic.

Singletary was trying to focus because of his poor vision. His bespectacled, off-the-field look, which went from studious, even nerdy, as a youngster to fashionable as an NFL head coach, didn’t play well under a helmet.

His stellar career — 10 straight Pro Bowls and a Super Bowl victory — long done, Singletary sees himself on an NFL sideline again. He was last in the league as an assistant with the Rams in 2016.

“I don’t believe that the Lord brought me to the NFL to allow me to experience the things that I have experienced to take me out and say, ‘OK, we’re done with that.’” Singletary said.

Singletary, who was head coach of the 49ers for 2½ years (2008-10), is only 60 years old. Six current head coaches are older.

Ron Rivera, Singletary’s backup for several seasons and his teammate for nine years with the Bears, is the head coach of Carolina. The Panthers face the Texans on Sunday at NRG Stadium, a few miles from Worthing.

Rivera is challenged with trying to slow the Texans’ Deshaun Watson. As much as he loves Watson’s multifaceted game, Singletary chuckled when I suggested defenses might never regain the edge they have lost in recent years.

“I think I have a solution to that, but as of right now, I’m going to keep working,” he said. “We’re so busy on the defensive side of the ball trying to find out what the rules are, what you can and cannot do, that sometimes we get away from the base technique of what we need to do.

“I still believe that when you play technically sound football — alignment, assignment, technique football — that you’ve got a chance to win your battle and hopefully win the war against the team you’re playing against time and time again.”

One thing is certain: Football will never again be played the way Singletary played it.

One of the hardest hitters in history, he has thus far avoided cognitive issues that have plagued many players from his era.

Singletary, who was so intense that he was penalized once for yelling at himself, is said to have broken 16 helmets at Baylor.

The greatest middle linebacker of all time will bring that same intensity to the Ford Motor Co. function, because that is who he is.

Good thing he will be there to enjoy old friends and family and not there for a football game.

He split five helmets at Worthing, where at some point they had to stop him from going all-out at practice.

The mild-mannered gentleman off the field was too much of a terror on it.

“I had a gift to hit,” he likes to say.