DANVILLE — Before leading one of the most successful turnarounds in the Bay Area this fall, Monte Vista’s new head football coach was palling around with Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and more of his former peers in Canton, Ohio, for Hall of Fame weekend.
The following Monday, CJ Anderson addressed his full team for the first time as they opened fall practice. Anderson didn’t receive a scholarship offer out of high school, then went undrafted out of college but built a seven-year NFL career and appeared in three Super Bowls, winning one alongside Manning, who was being inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“I told them, there’s a bunch of NFL guys rooting for you this year,” Anderson said.
The Super Bowl champion is one of two former running backs in their first year running things at local high schools, though at Division I Monte Vista, only two years removed from his last season traveling via charter flights instead of school buses, Anderson is taking a different approach than his predecessor in the Cal backfield, Jahvid Best, at St. Mary’s-Berkeley.
As for any tales Anderson brought back from a booze-filled weekend full of reunions, there were “just a couple” he could share with the new group of adolescents he was about to take charge of leading.
“Day one, when he came in and gave his first talk, I think everyone’s confidence just shot through the roof,” senior running back Rocco Schramm said. “He was talking about … how he was going to change the identity of this program. He’s not going to treat us like a high school program. He’s going to treat us like an NFL team, which has really shown.”
An undeniable impact
A little over three months after Monte Vista made the splash hire official, Anderson has made a more profound impact than anybody could have expected. A team that was winless in six games last spring has won all five of its contests so far this fall, but the hard-nosed coaching style of a former NFL player has turned off many would-be participants in posh Danville, where the average home is valued at $2.2 million.
After games, they do up-downs. After mistakes, they do push-ups. At practice, the worst it’s gotten, players said, was 19 consecutive 110-yard sprints, followed by burpees.
“We had to change the culture,” said defensive coordinator Brandon Edwards, a childhood friend of Anderson’s who is part of an overhauled coaching staff.
Anderson’s NFL and college influences show up in the Mustangs’ playbook but also their approach to practice. From the outside, it’s locked down. No observers allowed, not even parents.
Inside, Anderson teaches players drills he picked up along his playing career that took him from Jesse M. Bethel High School (Vallejo) to Laney College, then Cal and onto the NFL.
“He’s giving us drills … that you pretty much can’t get anywhere else,” Schramm said. “He has been teaching us better than any coach I’ve seen before.”
Anderson has been an underdog the whole way.
It was his work ethic that allowed him to play in the Pac-12 after not receiving any recruiting interest out of high school. Anderson went undrafted out of college (“I remember crying on draft day,” he says) but managed to carve out a seven-year career in the NFL and reached the Super Bowl three times.
His longtime spouse, Raquel, accompanied him throughout his NFL journey, but the couple has been estranged for the past five months, Anderson said. Their relationship spilled into the public eye last week when Anderson posted a remorseful but deeply personal message that left some of his hundreds of thousands of social media followers questioning what he did wrong.
“You post something like that,” Anderson said, “because you never know who can help you.
“There’s a lot of people out there who think I did some adultery things or I hit her. I’ve never done those things. I made a big mistake, but it has to do with faith and God and our relationship.
“We’ve kept the focus on what we’re trying to accomplish: playing well in (league) and trying to win it. … No one knew I was going through that. No one still knows I’m going through that because of the way I approach the daily work when I’m on campus.”
Anderson and his brother, K’Lan, were raised alone by their mother, Neva Craig.
“You try to remind them, pain brings understanding. My momma taught me that a long time ago,” Anderson said of his training techniques.
Anderson and Edwards met through Pop Warner football when they were in elementary school, then Edwards watched his “god brother” ascend to the sport’s highest stage.
Part of Anderson’s pregame ritual, usually the night before, would include calling Edwards and going over the game plan for the next day. Those calls were the early incarnations of the current coaching staff at Monte Vista.
“We’d go over scripts, talk about his game plan, make sure he was locked in,” Edwards recalled. “From there, we knew we were gonna have a coaching staff.”
Anderson retired from the league and returned to Cal, his alma mater, where he helped out with running backs and tight ends for a year while soaking up tips from Justin Wilcox and his staff, particularly offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave, who coached Anderson in Denver.
Anderson interviewed for the job at his high school alma mater, Bethel, but didn’t get the job. (“Shocking, right?” he says.) He agreed to join the staff as the offensive coordinator, but a Cal coach approached him about the Monte Vista job.
There were 108 players in the program between its three levels when Anderson took over.
Another change he implemented has been uniting the varsity, JV and freshman teams in practice together. But there have been players at all three levels who have quit over the demanding hours and practice style.
Those who remain are true believers.
“He’s awesome,” senior receiver Cole Boscia said after the Mustangs ground out a recent 14-0 win over El Cerrito. He utilized an expletive to convey his conviction. “It sucks, but it’s worth it. That’s why we won tonight. We were more conditioned than those guys.”
Moments earlier, Boscia was one of a few dozen victorious players throwing themselves to the ground and lurching back up over and over again, their reward for a hard-fought win.
“When we don’t show class and when we don’t do sound football things,” Anderson said, “we’re gonna put it on ‘em and let them know they can’t act like that.”
A different way
“You need a different ball just for punting?”
Jahvid Best grins as he razzes St. Mary’s junior Alejandro Tejada Gonzalez during special teams drills at the start of a recent practice. The vibe is relaxed, just like Best, now nine years into his second life in football. Best was a top recruit, a track star and an eventual first-round draft pick out of Cal, but his playing career was cut short by concussions.
By his own admission, Best isn’t much of a disciplinarian. The biggest change he’s implemented in his first year has been introducing team dinners the night before each game.
“You see all these coaches here, he has them do the yelling for him,” said senior star Julian Womack, whose parents supplied spaghetti for the first team meal of the season.
Don’t get the impression that Best is going soft. He’s on campus every morning at 6:15 a.m. getting the weight room ready for early morning strength training, another new policy.
Best is almost a decade removed from his playing career but hardly looks a day out of the league. At any given practice, Best can line up as the scout team running back or receiver.
At 32, he still holds a credible claim as the fastest person on the field.
“All the kids want to race me, but I keep telling them I’m like that final boss in a video game,” Best said. “A bunch of people they’ve got to knock off first before they can get to me.”
While Best starred at Salesian under coach Chad Nightingale, he would joke that he was one day coming for the coach’s job. More than a decade later, Nightingale is still at Salesian, and Best has used him as a springboard into the coaching ranks.
“I was sitting there,” Nightingale recalled, “thinking to myself, ‘You could be playing in the National Football League.’ Turns out, that materialized. And I think, had he not had his concussions, he could very well still be playing.”
In the fourth quarter of his 22nd professional game, Oct. 16, 2011, Best took a bruising on a tackle in the backfield by 49ers linebacker Navarro Bowman. He left the game with a concussion, the final blow in a career defined by them, and never played another down in the NFL.
Almost a decade later, Best relies on his previous life less and less. Fewer players recognize his name every passing year.
Kyle Goree was in first grade the last time Best took an NFL handoff, but as the kid taking the majority of the handoffs for the Panthers, he recognizes the unique opportunity in front of him.
“I’m crazy lucky for it,” said Goree, now a high school junior. “You can’t be in a much better situation having a dude who played at the highest level.”
What’s next?
After Monte Vista’s recent home win against El Cerrito, Anderson was quick to compare the Mustangs’ hard-fought victory to the single-possession victories his Broncos enjoyed on their way to winning Super Bowl 50.
“My Super Bowl year,” he said, “we won every game by seven or less, except for two games: Sunday Night Football against the Packers and Super Bowl 50, we won 24-10.”
He’s gained a reputation for referencing his NFL accolades.
Anderson was always a burly, bruising running back. Best, a slippery speedster, with Olympic track credentials to back it up. It’s no surprise the two have taken contrasting approaches to their first exercises in team-building, too.
The two running backs never crossed paths at Cal, but they’re friendly with each other.
Best reached out to Anderson when he got the job at Monte Vista. Anderson said he planned to call Best before the season, but Best said that call never came.
The path to prominence is longer at small St. Mary’s, but the private school of just over 600 students hired away a new athletic director from Holy Names to rebuild its football and basketball programs.
The Panthers have dropped three straight to tough opponents after bursting out to a 2-0 start.
At Monte Vista, the true measuring stick of Anderson’s progress will come soon enough.
The Mustangs are 5-0, but they’ve yet to face their gauntlet of a schedule in the East Bay Athletic League Mountain Division, the same slate of opponents that left them winless.
As for how he measures success, Anderson took a lesson from his experience in Canton.
“Myself and everyone else in Canton put a lot of work in at the high school level,” Anderson said. “But Peyton had six high school buddies there; none of them play in the NFL. All of (the inductees) had high school buddies there. …
“We all played on different teams, some of us against each other, good and bad, but it’s one big fraternity. I think that was the ultimate best part.”