Q&A With Syracuse Wide Receivers Coach & Passing Game Coordinator Ross Douglas
All Syracuse spoke with Syracuse wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator Ross Douglas about how he ended up with the Orange, his relationship with Fran Brown, learning under Bill Belichick, evaluating the wide receivers on the roster and much more.
Q. Why leave the Patriots to come to Syracuse? How did all of that come about?
Douglas: "Me and Fran Brown have a very, very close personal relationship. I was actually a defensive graduate assistant at Rutgers. He's one of my biggest mentors in the industry. I look at him like a big brother. When he got the head coaching job at Syracuse, I wanted to help Fran take Syracuse to big heights. It was kind of a no brainer on my end. There are very few coaches I'd leave the NFL for to come to college. He's one of them though."
Q. How long have you known Fran Brown and how has that relationship developed?
Douglas: "I always knew of him. When I got into coaching in 2018, him being a Northeast guy, I played at Rutgers and when I got done playing I immediately got into coaching. Fran, he's from New Jersey, from Camden, so you kind of always heard about him. I tracked him career from Temple to Baylor, back to Temple. We actually met at a camp in 2019. He was a defensive coach at Temple, and he came to a Rutgers camp. He saw me coaching, we talked a little bit on the field. We kind of developed a relationship from there. Me and him just started talking a lot during the 2019 season. Coach Schiano got hired at Rutgers and he became the DB coach. Coach Schiano came in and he got rid of a lot of the guys I was working with. A lot of the support staff. My relationship with Fran, he vouched for me and coach Schiano ended up keeping me around. That's how we grew our relationship and we coached together in 2020 during the Covid season. I left and became the DBs coach at the University of Richmond. We just stayed in touch constantly throughout the years. Things came full circle when he became the head coach. I wanted to be on the staff."
Q. How did you go from being a defensive backs coach to a wide receivers coach.
Douglas: "Coach Belichick likes to cross train a lot of his coaches. He did the same thing with Josh McDaniels, Brian Daboll. Those guys were actually on the defensive side of the ball in quality control like me. There were some openings on the staff after the 2021 season when we lost to Buffalo in the Wild Card round. Coach McDaniels left to take the job with the Las Vegas Raiders and a couple of our offensive guys went too. Coach Belichick called me into his office, asked if I wanted to coach wide receivers. He said he thought I did a good job and a good football coach is able to coach any position. He thinks I'm a good football coach. He wanted me to coach the wide receivers. That's how it all came about. He made me the wide receivers coach in February of 2022."
Q. What did you learn under Bill Belichick?
Douglas: "Just the amount of details and what it takes to win. Coach Belichick, he's so knowledgable about anything to do with football. You're talking about one guy who ran the Patriots organization for 24 years. He made every single decision in the draft room, he made every personnel decision as far as the roster, he was involved with offense, defense and special teams. You're talking about one person who had such a wealth of knowledge. Coming in as a young coach, it was kind of intimidating. But one thing I learned about Bill Belichick is he really listens to his staff. With the amount of wins and accolades he has under his name, he still wanted to learn and evolve, so he always listened to his staff. He did a good job coaching the coaches. He would listen to what you had to say and if he wanted something different, he would coach you on how he wants it done. The attention to detail, listening to his staff, wanting to be the best at your craft because he was always in early and always there late. He was always watching a ton of film. He just had such great knowledge of the game, not only with x's and o's but personnel. He could pull up any team's roster and he could go through every single player on the roster. Where they went to college, height, weight, speed, strengths and weaknesses. It was like he was a living encyclopedia."
Q: What's the biggest difference coaching at the college level compared to the NFL?
Douglas: "The football is the football. That's kind of the same. There's different rules in the NFL and different rules in college. Like in college you can have unbalanced formations, you can do certain things in the NFL where you can't in college. Other than that, coaching the players is really simple. You've got to be able to develop relationships with them and be able to develop them. If you show them that you care about them, they'll do anything that you ask them to do. The football piece is a little bit the same. What's different is the recruiting aspect of it. In the NFL, 95% of your time is really spent on football. The other 5% is on the draft, free agents and evaluations. In college, 50% of your time is spent on recruiting. Talking to kids, talking to high school coaches, talking to parents. 25% of your time is spent evaluating kids. The other 25% of your time is working on your craft of football. So I would say your time is broken up a lot differently. Then the discipline side of things. In the NFL, if a player is late to a meeting, it really doesn't fall on the position coach. They just get fined and the club handles in. In college, you're involved with every aspect of these kids' lives. So if a kid is late to class or misses a meeting or misses anything like that, it kind of falls on you."
Q. How have things been for you since you arrived at Syracuse a few months ago?
Douglas: "It's been really great. The one downside is my family is in Massachusetts right now. I've got a seventh month old son, I've got a wife, so it's hard being away from them. I'd say that's the hardest thing right now. Other than that, I just love coaching football and being around the players. We were out on the road a lot when I first got here. I got here late December, so my first couple weeks on the job. So I really didn't have much contact with players. I was talking more to recruits than I was my own players. Now that it's a dead period, you get to really get to know these players, get to know their families. Really dig in on some of the schematic things we're going to do. It's been kind of normal for the past three weeks or whatever it's been. But I know here in March, we're going to kick into spring ball. So now, you've got the football and the kids coming on the campus. It felt like when I left college football a few years ago, just getting back into the swing of things. It's been very positive."
Q. How much have you been able to evaluate the wide receivers currently on the roster?
Douglas: "Definitely taking a look at everybody in the room from the scholarship players to the transfers to the walk-ons. Just to get familiar with the personnel and see what the baseline is. But whatever it was or wasn't since I've been here, everyone has a clean slate with me. Coach Belichick taught me that every single year, players and coaches, have to set our level of performance. So whatever a guy did or didn't do last year really doesn't matter. It only matters what you can do for us in 2024. I've assessed everybody. Everybody has a clean slate. There are no starters in the room right now. May the best man win. Whoever the best men are that can help us win football games, come the fall, that's who is going to play."
Q. What have you noticed as far as the buy in with coach Fran Brown's approach?
Douglas: "It's a complete and total buy in. These guys are hungry, they like to work. I think they've completely bought in. A lot of them want to do it, they just need to be led to be shown how to do it. I feel like that's what we've been trying to accomplish over the last couple months that we've been here. Steady progress everyday. We're not a finished product by any means. I like the direction that we're trending."
Q. How will you evaluate the receivers during spring ball?
Douglas: "Very, very simple. Whoever performs the best. Whoever can get open. Whoever can catch the ball. Whoever can make plays with the ball after they catch it. Whoever blocks hard on the perimeter. That's who we're going to play. It's a daily evaluation. Obviously the padded practices and scrimmages will have a little bit more weight than the non-padded practices. Everyone has to establish their level of performance every single day. Those who rise to the occasion and make plays and show they can be dependable, those are the guys we're going to play. It's an every single day evaluation."
Q. Make your pitch to the Syracuse fans on why they should come out to the spring game.
Douglas: "It's a different energy. It's a different feel. We've brought in a lot of good players and a lot of good coaches. I just think this is something you really wouldn't want to miss. Coach Fran is a dynamic coach and a dynamic person. We've been trying to reach and touch the community. Not just by what we put on social media but with boots on the ground. Picking up trash on the side of the road, giving to the community, players are going and reading at elementary schools. We're here in the community. We want Syracuse to support Syracuse. All parts of it. People on the hill, people downtown, we want the whole entire city to come support this team. You have a group of young men who are players, men and women on the staff, who give their all into this every single day. Hopefully we can pack the Dome so we can make it where a lot of opponents don't want to play come Saturday."
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