FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Coaching in the National Football League can very much resemble a hamster wheel. The seemingly endless routine fosters a nonetheless demanding lifestyle, particularly during the regular season, when one week looks quite like the next and even the long ones go by quickly. With NFL offseasons continually shrinking, the years themselves seem to accelerate as each one passes.
To combat the potential for burnout, Ivan Fears and his longtime pal, Mike Woicik, devised a plan that would become their ritual. Fears and Woicik first met at Syracuse University, where they worked on the late Dick MacPherson's staff throughout the 1980s. Fears coached wide receivers; Woicik, a Massachusetts native and Boston College grad, served as the Orange's strength and conditioning coach. A decade after they both left college for the pros, they became colleagues again here in Foxborough.
Before Fears and Woicik reunited in New England, the latter would win the first three of his six Super Bowls rings with the Dallas Cowboys, before picking up the other half here with the Patriots during the first decade of this millennium. Enjoying a cigar together became their way of reconnecting with one another … and themselves.
"On Saturday night, after all the meetings were done," Fears explains, "smoking a cigar was our way to chill and just decompress before Sunday's game. Wherever we were, at home or on the road, we would go outside, grab a chair, reflect on the week, calm ourselves down. It became something I looked forward to."
His most recent season as a football coach came to an end about 10 days earlier, when the Patriots lost to the Buffalo Bills in the Wild Card Round of the 2021 NFL Playoffs. Now in the offseason and the less frenetic work week just about done, a relaxed Fears props his head up against his left arm, which rests on his nearly empty desk.
"Then," adds Fears, "we started a celebration after the game. Every time we won, we had a little shorty out by the buses. The cigar helped me enjoy the moment. That was important. To appreciate everything that went into the win. Practice sessions, the week, they can be pretty stressful. If you don't find a way to enjoy what you're doing, you're not going to do this very long."
Fears has coached a very long time, indeed. Since 1976, to be precise. While the NFL was locking out its players as part of a labor dispute during the 2011 offseason, a then-56-year-old Fears sat down for another extended interview with patriots.com, during which he estimated, "I'm still looking at five, six years before I have to make a decision about that." He wound up doubling the time before he finally broached "that" subject in earnest. Retirement.
Having just completed his 46th consecutive year as a football coach – 31 of them in the NFL and all but six of those with New England – Fears, now age 67, believes the appropriate time has arrived for him to begin stepping away from the game to which he has dedicated his entire adult life.
"It's a very difficult decision," he admits. "Physically, I'm just not as mobile as I used to be. To do a lot of the coaching, the things we do, you need to be an example out there [on the practice field]. I think it's to a point where I'm nowhere near moving as much as I'd like to move.
"I'd be doing a disservice to the players [ if I stayed on ]. I don't think I should be doing that. I've always felt that the guys were first. I want to make sure I'm doing what's right for them, for their success. Younger [ coaches ] could get a lot more done. I think it's time for somebody else to take over. I just need to … reassign myself to something I can do that would help."
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October 06, 2022 at 10:13PM
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Back Away Slowly: Retiring Coach Fears to exit on his own terms - Patriots.com
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