Is Rams cornerbacks coach Aubrey Pleasant that fired up all the time? YES!

His dad, Garner Pleasant and a long-time high school coach in Flint, had to talk him into it. The Rams are glad he did https://t.co/csdf7hk2jM

— Vincent Bonsignore (@VinnyBonsignore) September 15, 2018

==

Is Rams cornerbacks coach Aubrey Pleasant that fired up all the time? YES!

Vincent Bonsignore

https://theathletic.com/525986/2018/09/15/is-rams-defensive-backs-coach-aubrey-pleasant-that-fired-up-all-the-time-yes/

THOUSAND​ OAKS, Calif. —​ The loud, distinctive​ voice​ can be​ heard​ from all​ points​ of​ the​ Rams practice field.​ It rises​​ above the din of 60 some-odd football players and a full coaching staff, sometimes erupting out of nowhere like the roll and roar of nearby thunder.
At times, it arrives pointedly. Not quite angry. But certainly not content.
More often than not, though, it’s delivered with encouragement. Usually while sharing some wisdom or a lesson or an example of the finer points of playing defensive back in the NFL.
“I see you 22!” Rams cornerbacks coach Aubrey Pleasant shouted to Marcus Peters during a recent practice.
“Need a better angle 47! Need a better angle!” he bellowed to practice squad cornerback Ramon Richards.
“Get there J.J. Get there J.J. YES! That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about!” he screamed to second-year safety John Johnson III.
To the occasional observer, all the yelling might seem like an act or a put-on. No one can be that excitable and that fired up all the time. Pleasant is literally in constant motion. Whether it’s working with his group individually or while pacing the defensive sidelines during 11-on11 drills, it’s nonstop — and loud — coaching and teaching and howling and laughing and instructing.
“If you want to be great, that’s what you need,” Johnson III said. “You can’t be complacent. You can’t be content. There’s always room for improvement. And he’s always on top of that with us.”
Before games, you’ll find Pleasant running stadium steps two hours before kickoff sneaking in a workout.
“None of this is free!” he shouted, smiling, when someone spotted him getting a cardio workout in at the Coliseum before a preseason game. It was at least 90 degrees. But Pleasant was pushing himself like he was preparing for the Olympics.
“Coach is an energy bug,” marveled Nickell Robey-Coleman.
But 24/7?
Come on.
No one is that wired all the time.
“Last year was my rookie year, so I thought, well maybe he’s just being hard on the rookies,” Johnson III remembered. “But here he is, still the same way. He’s the same way in the meetings and behind the scenes. So yeah, it’s real.”
“I was like, ‘Wow, is this how it’s gonna be every day?’ ” Robey-Coleman recalled. “And he answered that question very quickly and very loudly. He said, ‘I’m not going anywhere! I’ll be here every day!’ And I was like, ‘Wow, OK, this is what I’ve got every day.’ Now, at this point, we laugh about it and joke about it, but at the same time we kind of look forward to it.”
Maybe Peters put it best: “You know (it’s not an act) because he’s bringing it every day. You got some shit like that and you faking it? Man, I need to figure out what you’re taking. Cause that’s hard to fake it, you feel me?”
When The Athletic brought up his boundless enthusiasm, Pleasant smiled and nodded knowingly.
“You have to be comfortable in your own skin. And I realize that, when people come out here and they watch me coach, they think something about me, which is perfectly fine because I’m the complete opposite off the field, as a person,” he said. “But ultimately, if I don’t take care of my job and if I’m worried about what everyone else thinks, then I won’t be in the NFL very long.”

Without question, the faces of the Rams secondary are Peters, Johnson III, Aqib Talib, Lamarcus Joyner, Robey-Coleman, Sam Shields, Troy Hill, Blake Countess, Isaiah Johnson and Marqui Christian.
But its heartbeat and conscience? That belongs to Pleasant, their emotionally wound 31-year-old coach who mixes equal parts passion, motivation, encouragement and even some hip-hop references to connect, push, guide and challenge one of the best defensive backfields in the league.
And teaching. Always teaching. Whether it’s drawing up a play on a whiteboard. Demonstrating it step-by-step on the field. Or verbally explaining it over and over and over.
It’s the basis for everything. And if the players don’t get it, well, that’s on him — not the players.
“I joke with coaches all the time: It doesn’t matter what we know. We can go up on the whiteboard and be a wiz, a savant on the board and just go all day. But if your players don’t get it, it doesn’t matter. It does not matter,” Pleasant explains, his voice rising.
“You can know everything in the world. You can know how to execute. You can know a play is coming before it does. But if your players don’t know, it doesn’t matter. So what I try to do is establish a form of learning where they can know just as much football as I can. And what you have to do as a coach is learn each player individually and see how they all individually learn. And if it’s honest, and if it’s open and they know you care, then they’ll ask those questions that normally they might not ask because they’re too embarrassed.”
His players can’t get enough.
“Foot on the gas, no brakes,” is how Johnson III describes his coach.
“Just a phenomenal teacher,” Robey-Coleman added. “And when I say phenomenal, I mean he’s a professor. He’s really a professor of the game. Before he was a coach, he was a teacher. And now we have a teacher as a coach.”
Said Peters: “You gotta see his preparation for the week. It’s outta this world.”
Not bad for a guy who had to be pulled into coaching by his father.
A renowned high school football coach, Garner Pleasant noticed a certain something special in his only son and practically dragged him out to the practice field with him.
Aubrey Pleasant had just finished up his college football career at Wisconsin and returned home to Michigan to put his Sociology degree to use as a teacher.
Aubrey wanted to coach about as much as he’d want to go to the dentist to get a root canal.
Looking back, even he doesn’t know why he resisted as much as he did. All the signs were there. He’s a naturally high-energy person. He’s the older brother to two much younger sisters, and as the quasi leader of his siblings he carried significant responsibility and doled out a good amount of advice and lessons. He was also the oldest, by far, among all of his cousins. To them, he was the natural go-to resource to lean on. And he enjoyed serving that role to them.
In football, he was the classic student of the game, an intuitive devotion that helped him rise above a so-so recruiting ranking to become a three-year letterman at Wisconsin.

Most of all, he grew up a coach’s son to one of the most respected mentors in Flint, Mich. And in many ways, he embodied everything Garner Pleasant hoped to impart on the hundreds of local kids he helped shape over the years.
“See, I grew up seeing a lot of coach and player interaction,” Aubrey Pleasant said. “I grew up watching my father be a father to a lot of young men that didn’t have one. And I’ve always felt since I was younger that I was a little bit of a leader. Trying to get people to learn.”
Nevertheless, when his playing career finished up and a clear path to coaching opened up at Grand Blanc High School, he inexplicably resisted.
“For weeks,” Garner Pleasant said.
The elder Pleasant finally made a deal with his son. He needed help during a seven-on-seven tournament, so he laid it out to Aubrey like this: Come coach the defensive backs just this one time. If you like it, cool. If you don’t, so be it.
Maybe it was being back on a football field. Or the comfortable fit he felt as a teacher to a bunch of kids that, for all intents and purposes, were standing in the same cleats he did six or seven years before with their eyes wide open and attention piqued. And sharing the same singular goal of just wanting to get better and maybe, just maybe, moving on to the next level.
When he looked into the eyes of those young players, he saw himself. It’s a feeling that immediately grabbed him. And one that sticks with him to this day. The only difference being it’s Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib he’s coaching rather than a bunch of high school players.
Which might not be much of a difference at all.
“One thing I really, really believe: All players want to be coached,” Aubrey Pleasant said. “Now, maybe not all of them want to be coached the same way, but they all want to be coached and they all want to be held accountable. And if they know you care, they’ll run through a wall for you. “
Whatever it was on that day back in 2009, Pleasant was immediately hooked.
A year later, he was at Michigan as an assistant coach. He spent two years in Ann Arbor under Brady Hoke before moving onto the Cleveland Browns to be an offensive intern in 2013. That lasted all of a month-and-a-half, or until Mike Shanahan, the Washington Redskins head coach at the time, called to offer him a job as an offensive assistant. Pleasant accepted and then transitioned to defensive backs in 2014, a job he held through the 2016 season.

It was in Washington that Pleasant met another young, up-and-coming coach by the name of Sean McVay. And when McVay became the head coach of the Rams last year, he brought Pleasant with him to coach his cornerbacks while Ejiro Evero focused on the safeties.
Last year, the Rams defense came up with 18 interceptions, sixth-best in the NFL. Of the 28 turnovers created in all, the Rams produced 126 points, the second-most in football.
The Pleasant Effect in Wade Phillips’ defense was obvious.
“The things he teaches me and Lamarcus and now Aqib and Marcus, all the stuff he teaches, I know at other places they aren’t teaching it,” Robey-Coleman said. “I know, because I’ve been in other places. And we weren’t learning those things.”
At every stop, from his high school and college playing days to his rapid rise in the coaching ranks, Pleasant has taken a little bit of something and included it into his own coaching style.
The foundation is very simple. Honesty. Teaching. Communication. Consistency.
And be the same with everyone.
“If you don’t coach the best players in your room the same way you do the fourth or fifth guy, the players aren’t going to say anything … but they know,” Pleasant said. “I sat in the back of a lot of meeting rooms seeing people coach people differently. And I saw guys lose rooms. I saw people hold one guy accountable but not another guy accountable. And nobody said anything in the room, but everybody’s watching the same thing.
“I promised myself no matter how good players were, that I’d be the same every day and I would be consistent. And there would be zero gray area.”
It’s an approach his players appreciate. Especially when it’s wrapped up in the kind supportive environment Pleasant typically operates.
“When there’s positive energy in a room, it’s always that much better in terms of constructive criticism,” Joyner said. “You understand it comes from a good place.”
Added Peters: “You gotta respect it, because he loves what he does. And I appreciate being in his room.”