Ron Zook on Returning to Coaching for the Green Bay Packers

Ron Zook joined Jeff Thurn on Wednesday's edition of Overtime. 

Zook is a former Illinois and Florida football head coach. He was currently hired by the Green Bay Packers as an assistant special teams coach.

Zook discusses how he landed a job back into coaching with the Packers:

"Mike and I were together with the New Orleans Saints. I was the defensive coordinator when he was the offensive coordinator. In fact, I actually lived with him until my family moved out there. We knew each other and couple guys on the staff actually coached in my prior time in the NFL. So, it's been a lot of fun. It turns out a lot of my close friends that were living on the lake in Florida are from Green Bay and are giant Packers fans. It's all funny how this has happened."

 

Zook on getting back to the game after being absent from the NFL since 2001:

"It hasn't really changed. I think maybe some of the styles have changed and so forth, but game itself hasn't changed. It's continued to get better, faster, stronger. For most part what I've seen in the last month, breaking down tape, and watching tape, studying players and so forth, it hasn't really changed that much."

Zook talks about how his high-energy style may have attracted him to the Packers:

"I'm not exactly sure why, but I have two years of energy stored up in me, and I'm excited every day I wake up to come to work. I said this the first day I was here, I'm back to coaching for the reason I had gotten into coaching, and that's because I love the camaraderie, the coaches, being around the players. Try to make players be the best they could possibly be, and that's the one thing I learned when I was in the NFL before because these players all want to be good, and as long as you know what you are talking about, they are going to listen and do what you asked them to do."

 

Zook compares working with college players to NFL players:

"When I first went into the NFL in 1996, that was a concern I had, and that was the question I asked Bill Cowher of the Pittsburgh Steelers, 'how do you coach those guys?' And his comment to me was you coach them just like you coach your other guys. I found that to be very true, and that being said, football is a hard game, and the one thing is professional athletes are very prideful. They want to be good, and do what you ask them to do, sometimes I found out is they will question you sometimes, but that's fine. I don't have any problem with that. You are putting players in position where they can be the most successful and obviously, I want to help them get that ring."

Catch Thurn on ESPN 99.1 weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m.