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Buccaneers, 49ers Staffs To
Coach 2007 Under Armour Senior Bowl Teams
Head coaches Jon
Gruden and Mike Nolan will lead teams of top NFL draft prospects in the
58th annual Under Armour Senior Bowl, set for January 27
in Mobile’s Ladd-Peebles Stadium.
MOBILE, Ala. (January 5, 2007) --
Coaching staffs from the National Football League’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers
and San Francisco 49ers will coach the two squads of top NFL draft
prospects which will participate in the 58th annual Under Armour Senior
Bowl, game officials announced on Friday.
Buccaneers head coach Jon Gruden and his
entire Bucs staff will coach the Senior Bowl’s North team, while 49ers
head coach Mike Nolan and his staff will handle coaching duties for the
South squad in the January 27, 2007, contest in Mobile’s Ladd-Peebles
Stadium.
Through the Senior Bowl's working
agreement with the National Football League, the NFL office selects
coaching staffs for the contest each year.
“We are extremely excited about the
opportunity to work with and coach the nation’s elite senior players,”
said Buccaneers General Manager Bruce Allen. “The Senior Bowl staff and
city of Mobile do an outstanding job of putting on this premier sporting
event and we are anxious to be a part of it.”
Both Gruden and Nolan have extensive
Senior Bowl coaching experience, with Gruden and his Bucs staff
previously serving as the coaches for the South team in 2005. In 1999,
Gruden and his Oakland Raiders coaching staff coached the Senior Bowl’s
North team.
San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike
Nolan
will coach the South team in the 2007
Under Armour Senior Bowl
Nolan and the 49ers staff will be making
their second straight Senior Bowl coaching appearance, after serving in
that capacity for the South team in last year’s event. Nolan also served
as an assistant coach in the contest on four occasions, most recently
while as defensive coordinator of the Redskins in 1998.
“I think coaching the Senior Bowl is a
great opportunity and a blessing for the entire San Francisco 49ers
organization,” Nolan said. “It’s the best way to evaluate players that
I’ve come to know. I think it’s an exciting game, and it’s an exciting
bunch of players. 95 or 100 percent of the players make a team in the
NFL, so that’s huge.”
In addition to their coaching staffs, both
the Bucs and 49ers will be bringing their training, video and equipment
staffs to Mobile to maximize the many benefits that the players will
receive through their participation in the Senior Bowl.
Nolan recently completed his second season
as head coach of the 49ers, as the team improved from a 4-12 mark in
2005 to a 7-9 record this season and narrowly missed the playoffs in the
NFC.
Named the 15th head coach in team history
on January 19, 2005, he joined the 49ers following a distinguished
17-year career as an NFL assistant, most recently as defensive
coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens.
“For us to have an opportunity to coach
those guys and evaluate them first-hand in meetings, get to know them,
eat with them and do all those things for an entire week puts us one up
in the evaluation process,” Nolan said.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Jon
Gruden
will coach the North team in the 2007
Under Armour Senior Bowl
Named the seventh head coach in Buccaneers
history on February 18, 2002, Gruden led Tampa Bay to its first Super
Bowl title in his first season as head coach later that year. He also
became the youngest head coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl, and
he was the first veteran head coach in the history of the NFL to lead
his team to the Super Bowl in his first season with a new team.
Prior to joining the Bucs, he guided the
Raiders to division titles in each of his final two seasons as head
coach and steered the Raiders to a 40-28 mark in four seasons
(1998-2001). Under Gruden, the Raiders advanced to the AFC title game in
2000 and lost in 2001 in a divisional playoff game to eventual Super
Bowl champion New England.
The Senior Bowl is the nation’s most
unique football game and football’s premier pre-draft event, annually
featuring the country’s best senior collegiate football stars and top
NFL draft prospects on teams representing the North and South which are
coached by the entire coaching staffs from two National Football League
teams.
Senior Bowl practices are also attended by
over 700 general managers, head coaches, assistant coaches, scouts and
other front office personnel from the 32 National Football League teams,
making Mobile and the Senior Bowl the weeklong host to a one-of-a-kind
NFL Coaches Convention.
The 2007 Under Armour Senior Bowl will
kickoff at 3:00 p.m. on January 27, and the game and its practice
sessions will be nationally-televised by the NFL Network.
For more information, access the bowl’s
website at www.seniorbowl.com. |
