After taking over as head coach of the New York Giants, one of the first orders of business for Joe Judge was to hire Freddie Roach as their defensive line coach.
However, that hire fell through as Roach instead decided to return to the college ranks, taking a position on Nick Sabam’s staff at Alabama.
With an important void left to fill, Judge went out and scooped up Sean Spencer from Penn State, and as fate would have it, the Giants may be better off in the long run as a result. After all, Spencer, known as “Coach Chaos,” certainly seems like a better fit than Roach.
Spencer embodies Judge’s intense approach to the game of football, and he embraces the discipline and mental toughness that will become a part of every day life in East Rutherford. However, he may be a little more intense than many current players are used to.
“He’s a little bit of a psychopath in a positive way,” Penn State head coach James Franklin said of Spencer on “Big Blue Kickoff Live.” “He’s all over the place, he’s full of energy. His mind is going in 1,000 different directions, his body is as well. He coaches with passion, he coaches with enthusiasm. This is something that someone said a long time ago – ‘trained in the art of chaos’ – which is what he talks about all the time. It’s just kind of stuck with him. Same thing, he calls his players the wild dogs and shows them crazy videos of wild dogs in Africa hunting animals. He looks for as many different ways to motivate, connect, and have fun with his players as anybody I’ve been around.”
Franklin, who calls Spencer his “best friend,” was sad to see him leave Happy Valley, but believes his chaos has landed in the exact right place at the exact right time.
“This was a job that made sense for him,” Franklin said. “He had other opportunities. He’s had opportunities in the NFL the last couple of years and turned them down. Sean has been with me since my first day as a head coach. He’s been with me for nine years. We’re going to miss him.”
Franklin also expects Spencer’s on-field experience to benefit him well at the NFL level — it’s something that players will be able to relate to.
“You look, a lot of NFL and college coaches, a lot of us are coaching positions we didn’t play. There are a bunch of NFL coaches that never played college football before,” Franklin said. “Sean is a guy that had an opportunity, he coached offense, he coached defense, he coached a bunch of different positions. He had an opportunity at one point to start coaching the line and realized that he could make a heck of a career out of being one of the best d-line coaches in the country and has really embraced that and stuck with that, and has been phenomenal. Sean is a guy that understands schemes and techniques are critical, we get that, but it’s also about morale. It’s about relationships, it’s about connecting with people.
“You guys are going to love Sean. He’s fun to be around, he’s fun at practice, guys are going to love him. He enjoys himself, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s great in the community. You guys are really going to enjoy your time with Sean Spencer. He’s a phenomenal human being, a great friend of mine. I’m going to miss him and I couldn’t be more happy for him and his family.”
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