Bear Insider Ultimate Insider Podcast E132: Cal Hall of Fame OL Todd Steussie

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Todd Steussie, the Big Boys and What Made the 1991 Bears Special

There are some interviews where you have to work to find common ground.

This was not one of them.

Todd Steussie and I spent a lot of time together more than three decades ago. Mostly with him trying to make sure I remained upright and me trying not to screw things up behind an offensive line that was loaded with future NFL players.

Todd was one of my favorite teammates at Cal, and he remains one of my favorite Cal guys.

He also has one of the more remarkable football stories to come through Berkeley.

He arrived at Cal as a defensive lineman out of Agoura Hills. That was back when Rod Marinelli had a habit of recruiting defensive linemen who somehow ended up becoming very good offensive linemen.

Todd was one of those guys.

He moved to offense during his redshirt freshman season in 1990 because of an injury on the line. A couple of weeks later, he got thrown into the starting lineup.

His first assignment?

Miami.

And, more specifically, Russell Maryland.

Maryland would win the Outland Trophy that year, become the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft and play 10 years in the league.

Welcome to offensive line, kid.

Todd told me he didn't even know he was starting until roughly 30 minutes before kickoff. In fact, when he later watched the television broadcast, they had announced Steve Stafford (a former TE moved to guard) as Cal's starting right guard.

Then Todd ran onto the field.

A defensive lineman who had been practicing offense for a matter of weeks.

Against Miami.

Against Russell Maryland.

Seems reasonable.

Early in the game, Todd gave up a hit on me that wreaked havoc on my left MCL.

Our offensive line coach, Dan Cozetto, was not happy.

Todd said something during our conversation that perfectly described playing for Danny.

After that play, he became more afraid of Cozetto than Russell Maryland.

Problem solved.

Cozetto Time

If you played offensive line for Dan Cozetto, you probably still operate on Cozetto Time.

Todd does.

If you're not five minutes early, you're late.

Danny was intense. Brilliant. Demanding. Funny. Occasionally terrifying.

Usually all four simultaneously.

Todd remembered one of our backup linemen, Andy Gonzalez, coming behind the bench after Todd had given up that hit against Miami and giving him a reassuring pat on the back.

Basically: You're okay, kid.

Cozetto saw it.

He sent Andy into the stands.

No conflicting messages were going to be delivered that afternoon.

That was Danny.

I told Todd one of my favorite Cozetto stories from our senior year against Arizona State.

I threw an interception early. Philippi Sparks baited me on an quick out, jumped it and picked me off.

I came to the sideline.

Danny looked at me and said:

"You gotta calm down."

Fine.

Next series, I throw another ball. It gets tipped at the line and intercepted.

I come off.

"You gotta calm down!" He semi yelled at me.

Coach, I'm calm. The ball got tipped.

Next series, another tipped ball. Another interception.

Now Danny completely loses it and punches through a whiteboard.

"I TOLD YOU, YOU'VE GOT TO CALM DOWN!"

At that point I got on the phone with Steve Mariucci upstairs and essentially said, "Mooch, somebody needs to get Danny a Gatorade or something. He's having a tough afternoon."

That's football.

Those are also the stories you remember 35 years later.

Cozetto passed away last year, and Todd talked about what an enormous influence Danny had on his career.

He believed in Todd before Todd completely believed in himself.

That matters.

Great coaches don't just teach you technique. Sometimes they see the player you can become before you can see him yourself.

Why the 1991 Team Was Different

Thirty-five years later, people still ask me about our 1991 Cal team.

Why was that team so good?

Todd and I have both had plenty of years to think about it.

There wasn't one reason.

We had talent. A lot of it.

We had Sean Dawkins come into the offense, and you could tell almost immediately that he possessed a different level of physical ability. Todd later played with Randy Moss in Minnesota, and he made the comparison between the two in terms of that rare athletic skill set. WE also Had Russell White, Brian Treggs, Brent Woodall, Greg Zomalt, Not to mention a dominating O-Line.

Our defense became opportunistic and aggressive.

We had great coaches.

Bruce Snyder. Steve Mariucci. Dan Cozetto. Rod Marinelli. Phil Snow. Kent Baer. Ollie Wilson.

There were dudes coaching dudes.

But there was something else.

We believed.

And we were tough.

Bruce talked about toughness constantly. I remember him sitting in my house during recruiting and returning over and over to the same word.

Toughness.

He recruited it.

He coached it.

He expected it.

And, in football, toughness usually begins with the offensive line.

If the offensive line isn't physical, confident and nasty, it's difficult for the rest of the team to become those things.

Our line set that tone.

Todd described something Cozetto ingrained in his players that says everything about offensive-line culture.

If the running back was tackled 20 yards downfield, an offensive lineman ran down there and helped him up.

Every time.

Why?

Because he's your guy.

Because you're responsible for him.

Because that's what a team does.

There was an understanding that everybody gets hurt. That's football.

There's a difference between being hurt and being injured.

If you're injured, you need medical attention.

If you're hurt, everybody is hurt.

You play.

You play for your unit. You play for your teammates. You play for the guy next to you.

That creates something Todd described perfectly as a foxhole mentality.

You're fighting for the guy beside you.

Offensive Linemen Are Quintuplets

I've used a line for years that former NFL Lineman Robbie Tobeck once gave me.

If a football team is a band of brothers, the offensive line has to be quintuplets.

Todd loved that because it's absolutely true.

Offensive line play is built around synchronization.

Five people have to see the same thing.

They have to make the same calls.

They have to understand the same adjustment.

They have to step together.

And Todd made an interesting point.

Sometimes all five guys can technically be wrong and the play still has a chance.

If everybody slides the wrong direction together, you can occasionally survive.

If four guys go one direction and one guy goes somewhere else?

Good luck.

That's when quarterbacks get hit.

Trust me on that one.

That communication becomes even more important on the road, where offensive linemen may not hear every call. A center might make an adjustment that never reaches the tackle.

At that point preparation takes over.

You've seen the look.

You've studied it.

You've practiced it.

You know what the guy next to you should be doing.

You react.

That is what elite preparation eventually gives you: the ability to execute when communication breaks down.

Todd also pointed out something most fans don't appreciate about offensive linemen.

They are largely judged by their mistakes.

A receiver catches 10 balls and everybody notices.

A quarterback throws four touchdowns and everybody notices.

A running back breaks a 60-yard run and everybody notices.

An offensive tackle can play 65 nearly perfect snaps and give up two sacks.

Everybody remembers the sacks.

Todd said it simply: you can have five pancake blocks, but if you give up two sacks every week, pretty soon somebody else is playing.

Consistency is the standard.

The Recipe Was Already There

Todd eventually became a first-team All-American and won the Morris Trophy, an award voted on by opposing defensive linemen.

Think about that for a second.

The guys who had to play against him thought he was the best.

Pretty good endorsement.

But Todd didn't arrive at Cal understanding how to become that player.

He learned by watching the older guys.

Troy Auzenne. Steve Gordon. Ernie Rogers. The older players throughout that locker room.

Todd made one of my favorite observations of the entire conversation:

The best locker rooms are the ones where the most talented players are also the hardest workers.

That's culture.

People love to talk about culture like it's a slogan somebody prints on a wall.

It's not.

Culture is what the best players tolerate.

More importantly, it's what the best players demonstrate.

When the most talented player on the team is also the hardest-working player, everybody else loses their excuses.

Todd later saw it in the NFL.

He mentioned Tom Brady.

He saw it with Marshall Faulk.

Some players don't simply perform at an elite level. They demonstrate the standard for everybody around them.

Todd had those people at Cal.

His description was great:

The recipe was already sitting there.

His job was to follow it.

One at a Time

Bruce Snyder's great mantra for our team was simple:

One at a time.

One opponent.

One game.

One play.

Today people call it process-oriented thinking.

Todd said that mentality followed him through his entire career and eventually into the rest of his life.

When something bad happens, you can't spend the next play thinking about the last play.

Where your attention goes matters.

But Todd added another piece that I think is even more important.

You have to learn to love the process.

Everybody loves touchdowns.

Everybody loves winning.

Everybody loves bowl games and trophies and championships.

Can you love Tuesday practice?

Can you love the film study?

Can you love the rep you got wrong and need to repeat?

Can you love doing the same technique over and over until it becomes automatic?

Because if you only love the reward, eventually the work wears you down.

Great players learn to love the work that creates the reward.

One rep at a time.

One practice at a time.

One day at a time.

That lesson never really left either one of us.

Welcome to the NFL

The Minnesota Vikings selected Steuss 19th overall in the first round of the 1994 NFL Draft.

He arrived as a highly decorated tackle.

Then Minnesota decided to ease him into professional football by putting him at second-team right guard.

Smart plan.

Except Minnesota's second-team offense practiced against the first-team defense.

And the Vikings' starting under tackle was John Randle.

You know, Hall of Famer John Randle.

Todd described him as a "rolling ball of butcher knives."

That's probably as accurate a scouting report as anyone has ever written.

For two weeks, Todd said he could barely touch him.

He heard people openly wondering how Minnesota could have possibly spent a first-round pick on him.

Not whispers.

People were using their outdoor voices.

Todd started questioning everything.

Then Minnesota moved him back to left tackle during the preseason.

He played well.

Played well again.

And again.

Soon he was starting against Green Bay at Lambeau Field.

He never looked back.

Fourteen NFL seasons followed.

GMG: Got My Guy

One of Todd's NFL mentors became Hall of Fame guard Randall McDaniel.

Randall was physically special in ways Todd knew he couldn't duplicate.

So instead of trying to become Randall McDaniel physically, Todd learned from the way Randall approached the game.

Randall had a saying:

GMG. Got My Guy.

The game could be out of hand.

The score could be ugly.

It didn't matter.

I'm not giving up the sack.

I'm not abandoning my responsibility.

I got my guy.

That's professionalism.

And as Steuss got older, that idea became even more important.

He couldn't rely forever on being bigger, stronger or quicker than everybody.

Eventually he had to become smarter.

He started studying defensive structures differently.

He learned what safeties could tell him.

He learned when edge defenders had inside freedom and when they were responsible for contain.

He learned where he could cheat his alignment or his set based on what the defense was trying to accomplish.

Late in his career, injuries forced Todd into making the offensive-line calls.

From left tackle.

That's absurd.

Centers usually make those calls because they're standing in the middle of everything.

Todd was standing three bodies away trying to crane his neck toward the nose tackle to determine whether he was shaded or head-up.

In one game, Richie Incognito was playing center and wasn't initially giving Todd the information he needed.

Finally Todd told him, essentially:

"If the nose is head-up, just wave at me."

That's veteran football right there.

Technology had apparently reached its limits.

The 40-Year-Old Cal Student

One of my favorite parts of Todd's story happened after football.

Todd left Cal early for the NFL without finishing his degree.

Years later, after 14 seasons in professional football, he came back.

He graduated from Cal at 40.

His wife, Erika—also a Cal graduate—basically told him there was no chance he was finishing the degree anywhere else.

Cal requires a certain number of final units to be completed on campus, so Todd would fly into the Bay Area on Sunday, live in an apartment during the week, attend classes, and fly home Thursday.

He had two young children.

He showed them his grades.

Dad was accountable too.

Todd admitted that during his first run through Cal, he wasn't exactly threatening to become valedictorian.

Football got most of the attention.

I get that. It was demanding.

Coming back was different.

He went to office hours.

Sat in front.

Studied.

No television in the apartment.

He finished with a 3.8 GPA during his final year.

Then he went to Northwestern's Kellogg School for his MBA.

Then later earned a master's degree in data science.

Today he works in data analytics for a transportation company in St. Louis, building models to improve decisions around pricing, fleet management and customers.

Not a bad second career for a guy Rod Marinelli recruited to chase quarterbacks.

The best story came from Todd's return to Berkeley.

A couple of young students kept looking at this enormous 40-year-old man sitting in the front row.

Finally they approached.

"Did you play football here?" They asked.

"Yeah. Long time ago." Steuss responded 

"Did you use all your eligibility?" They asked.

Todd was understandably confused.

Turns out they wanted him for their intramural football team.

"Sorry, guys." He said. "I used all my eligibility."

And then some.

The 1991 Bears Still Matter

Todd played on some phenomenal NFL teams.

He spent seven seasons in Minnesota, went to the playoffs six times and played in two NFC Championship Games.

The 1998 Vikings went 15-1 and set an NFL scoring record.

He later played in a Super Bowl with Carolina.

Yet when we started talking about teams, his memories kept coming back to relationships.

That's what usually happens.

The games matter.

The championships matter.

But ultimately you remember the people.

That's part of why our 1991 Cal team remains so special to me.

Todd remembers beating USC after tying them the previous season.

He remembers taking eventual national champion Washington to the absolute limit and receiving a standing ovation even after the loss.

And, of course, he remembers the Citrus Bowl.

Clemson showed up wearing all purple.

Only the second time they had done it.

We pretty much retired the uniforms for them.

They had an absurd defense filled with future NFL players.

Chester McGlockton. Levon Kirkland. Brentson Buckner. Eddie McDaniel.

Dudes.

And they thought they were going to beat us.

Then they experienced the way we played.

Get up.

Get down.

Get off.

Get back on the football and do it again.

We believed our tempo would eventually wear people out.

And maybe even more importantly, we believed we had an advantage because of it.

That's powerful.

Football is always about belief.

Todd said something I hadn't thought about in years: even if the system itself didn't magically make us better, our conviction that it made us better absolutely mattered.

We expected teams to eventually wear down.

We expected somebody to tap out.

We expected to still be coming when they did.

And most Saturdays, that's exactly what happened.

Thirty-Five Years Later

This fall marks the 35-year reunion of that Citrus Bowl team.

That seems mathematically impossible.

Todd actually checked.

Unfortunately, math remains undefeated.

It's been 35 years.

A lot of the guys are coming back.

Troy Auzenne will be joining me on the podcast as well. Todd joked that he hoped he hadn't used all of Auz's material.

Impossible.

Nobody could use all of Auz's material.

We could probably create a separate streaming service.

But that's part of what makes these conversations fun.

The older I get, the more I appreciate those teams and those relationships.

We didn't know in 1991 that we were creating stories we'd still be laughing about 35 years later.

We were just trying to beat whoever lined up across from us.

One at a time.

One play at a time.

One opponent at a time.

Todd took that mentality from Cal to 14 NFL seasons, back into the classroom at Berkeley, through graduate school and into an entirely different career.

And that may be the best part of his story.

Football eventually ends.

The lessons don't.

The habits don't.

The relationships definitely don't.

And occasionally, 35 years later, you get to sit down with one of your old offensive linemen and realize that although a lot has changed, some things haven't changed much at all.

Steussie is still Steussie.

Still thoughtful.

Still competitive.

Still one of the big boys.

And still one of my favorite Cal dudes.

Go Bears!

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