Colts OC Saw Rees' Rise Years Ago
Nick Sirianni didn’t mind the workload, but injuries necessitated the then-San Diego Chargers wide receivers’ coach get some help.
Enter Tommy Rees, recently promoted to the Notre Dame offensive coordinator position after leading the Irish tour de force in their 33-9 systematic dissection of Iowa State in the Camping World Bowl.
The former Notre Dame quarterback, barely old enough to need daily shaves, had spent a year at Northwestern as a graduate assistant before the Chargers were tabbing him to a quality control position helping with the wideouts.
Rees’ impact went beyond that of an entry-level performer. Even the Chargers’ general manager took notice, according to Sirianni --- an NFL high-riser now serving as the Indianapolis Colts’ offensive coordinator.
“Tommy had sat in on all of our wide receiver meetings, all of our install meetings, and I just said, ‘I need you to get this guy ready to play,’” Sirianni told IrishSportsDaily. “There was one receiver that came to the team because of injuries, and to do this before a game, you don’t just give that task to anybody who can’t get it done, but also my job was on the line to come up with a plan to get the right passes in the game plan for our guys. I knew it was a hard task, but he did it.”
So well, in fact, that Tom Telesco initially sang the praises of Sirianni. He politely corrected his general manager.
“Our G.M. came up and said, ‘How did you get Jeremy Butler ready to play in such a short time?’,” Sirianni said, adding with a laugh, “I started to say, ‘Well,’ but I said, ‘You know what, it wasn’t me, Tom, it was Tommy Rees.’ Tommy Rees got Jeremy Butler ready to play in such a short amount of time. There were actually two guys because Butler got hurt, and we signed Geremy Davis, and he got Geremy Davis ready to play.
“It wasn’t just grunt work; he got an NFL football player to learn an NFL system in a matter of days by teaching technique and communicating as a teacher. I thought that was amazing. That blew me away. Tommy was a stud. He was a stud, did his job, and he did it to a high level.”
The Chargers in 2016, with perennial Pro Bowl quarterback Philip Rivers helming the offense, finished fourth in the NFL in passing touchdowns (33), Rivers finished fifth in passing yardage (4,386) and they closed ninth-best in scoring offense (25.6 points-per-game).
Rees was expected to do his part helping the wideouts --- mentally and physically --- on the field.
“Tommy will tell you that during my drills, you do a lot of running in my wideout drills, and I had him running around a lot,” Sirianni said. “I looked at him one time and it was a press-man series, trying to run with the wide receivers as they slapped them by at the top of the route, and he was wheezing for air, and I just said, ‘Hey, reach down a little deeper’ and he did. He mentally did stuff for me, physically did stuff for me. I’m not surprised by any success Tommy has.”
In Rees, Sirianni sees an attention to detail that facilitates success already --- and lends a foundation for even more gains as Rees clasps the gearstick of the Irish offense.
“Ton of detail, just a ton of detail,” Sirianni said. “Not a guy who ever made the same mistake twice. I would get after a guy if it was another coach if their info in the computer was wrong and no doubt Tommy would go through some times where he would take some chewings, but you knew he was destined for really great things because every time he made a correction, that mistake never got made again.
“He was a guy, at the beginning part of the year, this is what really separated him, it was a different type of work, grunt-work, and he did a phenomenal job with that. Like I said, we had to bring in two guys off the street to play for us, and Tommy was a big part of that while I’m game-planning. He was extremely sharp and proved us right.”