How substitute teaching helped Wisconsin football's new cornerbacks coach
More from a discussion with one of the Badgers' newest assistants.
Robert Steeples thought he’d go into the business, but his post-NFL career’s taken him to coaching route and now the University of Wisconsin football program.
Steeples, Wisconsin’s new cornerbacks coach, called himself a journeyman as he sat and spoke with beat reporters Friday inside the team’s facilities. He played for the Minnesota Vikings during the 2013 season, and the Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys later signed him to their practice squads. His bachelor degree is in business administration from Missouri, and he later earned a master’s in business and social development at Memphis.
He wanted to be home, stable, work a job and coach on the side, just as his father did. Yet when he was between teams, he found himself going back to coach and realized his experiences weren’t meant to be kept for himself but to share with others.
“I did that my last two years with the (Dallas) Cowboys, I substitute taught,” Steeples said. “And then I was like, these kids ain’t that bad, and then that’s when it got me into the idea of coaching.
“And then it just really went from pouring in into these young people, but realizing they were also influencing me, and it kind of made it a more purpose-driven field and just trying to base it off of what I thought my expertise was.”
Steeples is now mentoring the Badgers’ cornerbacks, but he’s coached at multiple levels of football. He led his high school alma mater, Creve Coeur De Smet Jesuit in Missouri, went back to the Vikings as an assistant special teams coach, and worked as cornerbacks coach at LSU.
His time as a teacher taught him he needed to learn to listen more than speak. He created environments for learning at the start of class as a substitute, whether that’d be playing a video or having someone speaking to give them a voice.
“So they’re already coming in there with their minds revved up, and that’s how I try to do my meeting rooms,” Steeples said. “It’s starting off in a certain way, to where the first five minutes isn’t just us waking up and getting our minds in order, but boom, I already know when I come in here, like we backpedaling the room. When we come in here, we’re in a different place. We’re already ready to learn, our minds are rolling. We know exactly where we’re at.
“We define this space, and so that’s what I said I probably learned from a teacher is when you get to know them, you know their bottom line. You can feed that when they see that growth, that growth to create excitement, and that’s when you start getting passion in a healthy learning environment.”
A group of local reporters spoke with Steeples and fellow new assistants Jayden Everett (running backs) and Ari Confesor (wide receivers) Friday. Here are some more takeaways from the chat with Steeples.
Steeples collaborating with Wisconsin assistants in the defensive backfield
Wisconsin’s provided plenty of assistants to coach the secondary heading into spring practices starting next week. Paul Haynes moved from cornerbacks to now overlooking the entire defensive backfield as secondary coach, and Jack Cooper returns for his second season as safeties coach.
