It was in 1987, when Ken Whisenhunt was a tight end for the Atlanta Falcons, that Al Groh took notice.
Whisenhunt had been a walk-on quarterback at Georgia Tech who ended up as an honorable mention all-American at tight end. He was drafted in the 12th round by the Falcons and was in the third of his nine NFL seasons in 1987 when he encountered Groh, who was in his first season as an NFL assistant, coaching the Falcons' tight ends and special teams. What Groh saw in Whisenhunt was someone with savvy. Nearly two decades later, Groh is hardly surprised that Whisenhunt is the offensive coordinator who revived the Pittsburgh Steelers' offense and is the favorite to fill the head-coaching vacancy on the Oakland Raiders.
"He was very determined as a player," Groh, now the head coach at the University of Virginia, said of Whisenhunt in a telephone interview on Thursday. "He wasn't a high recruit but he found a way, and what he's done with the Steelers' offense is he sized up the competition and found a way to gain an edge."
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Whisenhunt, 43, has been the Steelers' coordinator for two seasons. In that span he re-established the Steelers reliance on a powerful ground game, only to switch tactics during the playoffs this season with a pass-first approach that stunned the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos. Whether the Steelers revert to the ground game against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL on Sunday remains to be seen.
But Whisenhunt's surprising game plans have vaulted him into the spotlight and into that rarefied air of head coaches-in-waiting.
Whisenhunt had a telephone interview with St. Louis for its head-coach vacancy, but the Rams opted for Scott Linehan. Only the Oakland job remains open, and the Raiders seem willing to wait until Whisenhunt is finished with the Super Bowl and can interview with them, although it is unclear if Whisenhunt would want what is considered among the most fragile jobs in the NFL.
PHOTO: EPA
Still, no matter what happens with the Raiders, it is clear that Whisenhunt's stock has soared in recent weeks, just as his offense has.
Pittsburgh receiver Cedrick Wilson said that against the Broncos, Whisenhunt singled out about a half-dozen Denver defensive formations and told the offense that if the Broncos lined up in any one of them, the Steelers would call an audible.
Within the Denver 20-yard line, the Broncos lined up three times in such defenses. The Steelers called audibles on all three plays, and two of them ended with Pittsburgh in the end zone. One of the touchdowns was nullified by a penalty, but the other was Wilson's 12-yard reception that put the Steelers ahead by 10 points at the start of the second quarter.
"He demands a lot out of you mentally, more than he demands physically," Wilson said of Whisenhunt. "He feels that if you're aware of everything that's going on around you, you can be pretty successful."
Whisenhunt expects his players to study a game plan to learn to recognize the defensive coverages and blitzes. As a player, Whisenhunt was such a student of game plans, so intent on preparing to make up for his low draft status, that coaches along the way told him he should join their ranks when he retired from playing. But the message did not resonate until after he retired.
"When I was finished after the 1993 season, there was something missing," Whisenhunt said. "After being involved with it for so long, when Saturday and Sunday rolled around and football was going on and you weren't involved, there was a void there."
Vanderbilt offered him a job coaching special teams, tight ends and H-backs in 1995, giving him a chance to determine if that was a way to return to the game.
"Once I got into it, I knew that's what I wanted to do," Whisenhunt said. "It's very exciting to see success for your players as a coach. But I don't think there is anything quite like being a player, physically working so hard and having success on the field."
Whisenhunt joined the Steelers as the tight ends coach in 2001, after spending one season with the Jets, when Groh was the team's head coach.
When Mike Mularkey left the Steelers to become Buffalo's head coach, Whisenhunt succeeded him as coordinator. Last season, the Steelers' rushing game, which had been largely abandoned in recent years in an attempt to win on the arm of the former starting quarterback Tommy Maddox, finished second in the NFL in rushing, compared with 31st in 2003. This season, the Steelers again centered on the run until Whisenhunt surprised everyone with a passing attack that has balanced the offense.
"The ideal scenario is what we have been doing for the past couple of weeks," Whisenhunt said. "For us, we have been so little pass that it seems like when we go 50-50 run and pass, it makes it look like we are really airing it out."
And that, of course, is what has attracted the eye of Al Davis, the offense-happy Raiders owner. There is no guarantee Whisenhunt will leave the stability of the Steelers organization for the Raiders, but he is among a new wave of young coaching candidates who figure to dominate the job pool for years.
"In a lot of ways, coaching provides a medium for us to be who we are," Groh said. "You have to be a bit of a grinder personality to be a coach. He was a grinder as a player, in terms of effort. He finds a way to win. He did that as a player and now he's doing it with the Steelers' offense. He's got a willingness to be a grinder."
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