By John Raffel, NFLHS.com
Darryl Drake was an all-state performer in high school football and the wide receivers coach for the Chicago Bears fondly looks back to his prep days as the foundation for building the success he enjoys now.
Drake, who is heading into his fourth season as Chicago's wide receivers coach, was hired on Feb. 6, 2004. He came in with 21 seasons as a coach in college football. The previous six seasons he was the receivers coach at the University of Texas and was associate head coach to Mack Brown prior to the 2003 season.
In his first two seasons with the Bears, Drake coached four players with multiple years of experience to a career-high in receiving yards, two in each season. When he coached at Texas, Drake directed three different wide receivers to first-team all-Big 12 honors and guided three of the most productive receiving duos in Texas history.
Drake had also been at Baylor as an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach and five seasons at Georgia as wide receiver skipper. He started his coaching career at Western Kentucky as a graduate assistant and stayed with that school for nine years. He had played college football at Western Kentucky. In his playing career, he saw NFL action with the Cincinnati Bengals and Washington Redskins.
"When I finished playing and got a call from the NFL, I went back to get my master's degree," Drake said. "The (Western Kentucky) coach came to me and said 'if you help us coach, I will help you with your graduate school.' That sounded good to me. At that time, I was married, had two children and things were tight.
"Nobody in my opinion has been as fortunate as I have," he said. "I feel good about the opportunities I've had. With the places I've been and the people I've come in contact with, it's been special for me. I have no second thoughts, no regrets."
It didn't take Drake long to figure out that an NFL coach's job is never done.
"[The offseason is] a very critical time for coaches leading into the season," Drake said. "You have to spend time on the little things which is very important. If you don't take care of the little things, they become gigantic."
Drake attended high school at Flaget High in Louisville, Ky., where he was an all-state performer in football and an All-American in both track and field and basketball.
"I got interested in football my senior year," Drake said. "I begged the coach to let me play. Finally, he decided to let me play. They had about seven games left in the regular season. So I played those last seven games. I had the opportunity to purse a career in basketball and track after high school. But I started to play football and liked it so much. And Western Kenutcky offered me a scholarship."
While he was pursuing a sports career, Drake wasn't initially pursuing a coaching career.
"I actually never wanted to be a coach," he said. "It just happened. I could see later where coaching was my calling."
When it came to making that decision, "my high school program was a key," Drake said. "My coach, Steve Reed, took a big interest in me to play football. He peaked that interest in me.
"There's no doubt that in my life, my high school football program was a key."
But for those high school athletes and coaches who may aspire to move to the pro level, Drake provides some valuable advise.
"Work as hard as you can," he said. "A lot of times, that may not be enough. But if you take care of your books you should do fine. You never know what may happen.
"You could run into an injury or something else that keeps you from that goal. Guys who have been successful for a long time are those guys who learned at a young age to do all the little things and to worker harder than anyone else. If you have a good work ethic, you can be as good as you want to be for a long time."
Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc.
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