Legend of the Game: Ted Ginn Jr.

Q: You grew up in a football family, your dad was a legendary coach (at the Ohio high school level), I was curious what your experience as a head coach was like this spring and what you found out about that after playing as long as you did?

Ginn: “Well, as you get older in the league, you try to become a player-coach, and that kind of started a little bit there in Carolina, a little bit with the Saints (from 2017-2019), because you come in and you’re a lot older than a lot of the guys that are coming in.

“But my experience this year was great. I enjoyed it. It’s something that I want to carry on. You just learn the ins and outs about being a head coach. You get every component that comes with the game of football. So, making travel plans, making schedule plans, making sure everybody’s on time, coaching your coaches, making sure that you’ve got the right players. So, it’s like you’re a GM, you’re player personnel, you’re a travel agent, you’re a discipliner, you hire, you fire, especially in this realm that I’m in with the UFL. But I enjoyed it. It was a blessing in disguise; when I say that is not having the potential to really go and coach in some high schools, some colleges, some NFL teams, gave me an opportunity to see it in a different realm than you see it as a position coach, or you might just see it as a GA. I always said I didn’t really want a room, so God kind of blessed me with being able to see all rooms, and it’s been a great thing. Like, as of right now, I’m going through trying to get the UFL draft boards together, having weekly meetings with my coaches. So, it’s exciting where, it’s like being a receiver and a kick returner and a punt returner, in that everything is in your hands and this person’s going to do this, and this person knows that, then we’re going to have some type of success.

“The record don’t really give the amount of greatness that I had this year; we were 3-7. We could have easily been 7-3, just understanding that there are different components of the game that I have to look at and pay attention to. I have to have all the right people around me because I’ve got to pay attention to penalties. You’ve got to pay attention to people, the refs not calling certain things. You’ve got to pay attention to whether my people see that this guy’s tired on both sides of the ball. I look out for injuries,  so it’s just a whole lot of different things that go on that I enjoyed, that I was happy to have a say in and have the last word on?”