The initial introduction unfolded at the combine in February, a five-minute handshake and hello.
Can Lovie Smith mold Jameis Winston into a franchise quarterback?
To turn around the Buccaneers, Lovie Smith must first guide the controversial quarterback’s personal growth on and off the field.
Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
"You only get 15 minutes with a player there and my thinking was, 'What can you really do that I want to do in 15 minutes?'" Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Lovie Smith said about his launch with quarterback Jameis Winston. "So, I met with him outside of the room, in the hallway, for five minutes. I told him it was good to put a face with a name. I told him we would talk later on. Nothing hardcore. We took off from there. And I left thinking, 'I can't wait to get with him the next time.'"
They did a couple of weeks later at Tampa Bay’s facility.
“We started texting each other immediately after that first meeting, and then when he came to Tampa he told me he was a leader and that he knew how to lead,” Smith said. “He convinced me that he was going to help bring Tampa Bay back. When he left I was thinking, ‘This is someone I can see us going forward with.’ I could see him leading us to a lot of wins.”
Smith then traveled to Winston’s hometown of Bessemer, Ala. “I met his mom and dad and grandmother and so many local people who all have stories,” Smith said. “We ate at Korays restaurant, southern cuisine. Jameis was not there because I wanted to visit with people alone. I knew I was speaking to a biased crowd. But you could tell they were genuine in everything, especially in their feelings about him.”
Last Thursday night, Tampa Bay dove all in. Winston became the No. 1 pick. The franchise quarterback. Tampa Bay’s tonic. Smith’s football axis.
“We were going through everything later on draft night and I sent him a text,” Smith said. “I told him the engagement was over. We’re married now.”
Smith and Winston will begin to connect in more layered ways over the next 48 hours. Buccaneers rookies report Thursday to the team’s facility and practice for the first time on Friday.
Smith said growing up in a small town where football was “everything” and where the pressure for him to succeed as a player was enormous and was not easy for him to navigate. He said he has not always been so sound, so mature, so calm. He said people took chances on him, gave him second chances.
There is no perfection in young men, he said.
A former Florida State quarterback who has been as controversial off the field as he has been vibrant on it. An 18-year NFL coach whose combination of integrity and football savvy rank second to none among his peers.
Winston realizes this.
He said at the combine about Smith, “I already have a trust factor in with him, and now all I have to do is accept his trust and gain his trust to help him out. I feel I just gotta get better every day as a player and as a man.”
That is Winston’s confidence, his franchise quarterback makeup. Not yet a Buc, he was already counting on the chance to work with Smith, to “help him out.”
"I had the pleasure of being coached by Lovie when he first got to the league. We grew up in the league together, me as a player (1995-2008) and him as a coach," Hall of Famer and former Bucs and Florida State linebacker Derrick Brooks said. "I expect Jameis will have some of the same experiences. Lovie has seen and done it all. It's a good fit.
“It is a good place for Jameis to be with someone who can help his growth,” Brooks added. “If anyone can do it, Lovie can do it.”
Former NFL head coach Herman Edwards coached with Smith in Tampa Bay from 1996 to 2000.
“Jameis could not have gone to a better place,” Edwards said. “Jameis is going to realize that he is playing for a guy in Lovie who really gets the high ups and the low downs of the National Football League. Lovie will teach the young man how to succeed without putting the pressure of the world on his shoulders. Lovie will want the young man to breathe.
“Lovie will take an active interest in the guy, and he should. There is a lot of pressure on Jameis. There is a lot of pressure on Lovie. But if they relate, if there is a trust factor developed there, it’s a good marriage. We are talking about a relationship that should last 10 years, at least. If you’re going to win, you’re going to be around. Jameis is a franchise quarterback. But there has to be some kind of relationship that clicks to make it work.”
The head coach/quarterback relationship is one of the most spellbinding and complex ones in all sports. NFL history is littered with iconic ones — Lombardi/Starr, Walsh/Montana, Noll/Bradshaw — that were painstakingly built through conflict, trust, tutoring and respect.
"I remember when I was coach in New York I would address the team after a game," Edwards said. "And then [quarterback] Chad Pennington would come in my office and sit down for 15 minutes and ask me about the game and talk about what I believed. And I would tell him this is the direction I'm going. This is what I believe. And he would go out there and meet the media, put it in his own words, but be right on point. There should never be a situation where the quarterback said this and the head coach said that. In today's football world, the quarterback and the head coach are tied to the hip."
Super Bowls championships are colored by those relationships.
“Before you can be a great team, you have to have a leader at quarterback and leaders throughout,” Smith said. “It’s a certain type of man. A certain type of way. Acceptance in the locker room of his role. It’s a big role. Everybody can see Jameis throw a football and the talent that is there. In classes you can see his football knowledge. But one of the big reasons he is our choice as our quarterback is he knows how to build relationships with his teammates. He knows how to lead them. I am willing to work for those relationships. Jameis is, too.
”If you are not talking to the quarterback, something is wrong. It is an important relationship because you two are always in front of the team.
“You have to let him in on your decisions,” Smith continued. “Everybody talks about having a good locker room. You have to have a good relationship with your leaders to have that.”
Head coach and quarterback, mentor and mentee, Bessemer’s Winston and Big Sandy, Texas’s Smith, small-town guys with big-time dreams. Ponder where Tampa Bay has recently been — 2-14 last season, four straight losing seasons, five losing years in the last six. Consider that this franchise has nearly averaged a different starting quarterback each season in its 39-year history.
This Smith/Winston marriage creates craved hope.
“We are not going to ask Jameis to do it all by himself,” Smith said. “We want to build on what Jameis has done in high school, in college with Jimbo Fisher and Florida State and all of his coaches and from how his parents have raised him. The baton has been passed to us. It’s pretty simple — do things the right way. You just can’t be connected only in football. You have to let young men grow up. This relationship with Jameis takes another level now. It’s early in the game. But you build that trust each and every day with respect. That’s the only way I know how to do it.”
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