Schiano arrives: Beware the Jaw

Column

If jaws equal victories, the Bucs just won themselves another Super Bowl.

You have to drop a quarter in a viewfinder at Mount Rushmore to see a better lower jaw than the one on new Bucs head coach Greg Schiano. It's a Shula jaw, a Cowher jaw, a jaw you could play handball off of. Here's a jaw that says follow me or else.

Are these the Jaws of Life for the Bucs?

The square-jawed, granite-jawed, (fill-in-your-own)-jawed Schiano has arrived, having conquered the college game _ what's a man do with himself after winning the Texas, International, Papajohn's.com, St. Petersburg and Pinstripe bowls?

So ends this Bucs coaching search, far and wide, though still limited since the two guys everyone wants to hire, Dungy and Gruden, well, the Glazers fired them.

From Dungy to Gruden to Raheem to Rutgers … where are we going with this?

We shall see.

No coach loses his first news conference. No one loses a first news conference, with the possible exception of American president William Henry Harrison, who took two hours to answer a question at his first news outdoor conference, caught pneumonia and died 32 days later. He didn't win the Big East, either.

Structure, discipline, stability, trust, belief, accountability _ those were some of the words Friday.

Greg Schiano won his news conference. He took charge. He hit the major points, precisely and sometimes profoundly. You could have taken his sentences and pasted them, verbatim, on a locker room wall _ or in a sports column.

Like:

"There is going to be a Buccaneer way, there are going to be Buccaneer men."

Like:

"We're going to be the best we can be every single minute. When our best is the best, we'll be Super Bowl champs."

There was The Jaw on accountability:

"I grew up in the coaching system of Joe Paterno, that's where I cut my teeth. His No. 1 statement was 'Time is our enemy." That's the only thing that all of us on the planet have the same amount of, 1,440 minutes a day. What you make of them, that's going to determine our success."

On relating to players:

"There's an old saying in coaching: Until they know how much you care, they don't care about how much you know. When they know you care, they'll run through a wall for you."

On discipline and boundaries:

"It doesn't work unless there are consequences. That's human nature, right? As a kid, I was always best as a young adult when I knew where the boundaries were. When you don't know where the boundaries are, you start drifting and all of a sudden you're in a bad place and you don't know how you got there."

On college coaches flaming out in the NFL:

"It's easy to point at college coaches who've made that jump, but six, eight, nine coaches a year get replaced. So there are pro coaches getting fired as well."

Greg Schiano said he wasn't always going to be a coach. He played linebacker in college (it figures) and planned on two years in the CFL, then 10 more in the NFL. He played in one preseason for the Toronto Argonauts.

"I was going to go to law school. I signed up for the LSAT, but my high school coach, Mike Miello, he said while you're doing that, taking (LSAT) class at night, why don't you come coach at the school? The minute I started coaching, I started studying less and less for the LSAT and more and more it was 16 millimeter film. I hung a sheet in my bedroom. I was still living with my parents. I'd just be up there watching tape."

Fast forward.

Schiano has a five-year deal here, but words carry only so far, even great words.

"We weren't winning, so we need something," Buccaneer man LeGarrette Blount said.

It's a new day. Start the clock at 1,440 minutes. It's time to run through walls.

Lead with The Jaw.