Matt Marcinkowski
Jeremy Maclin left the NFL battered and broken at age 30, after eight years in the league. When the Baltimore Ravens released him in March 2018, one leg had a nagging, shooting pain that he just couldn’t shake. A former Pro Bowl receiver, Maclin had wanted to continue playing, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. “I didn’t get to leave the game on my own terms,” Maclin says. “There was a little period where I was lost.” To find himself again, the Kirkwood native returned home with his growing young family and volunteered on the coaching staff at Kirkwood High School, which he once attended. After two years of working with the Pioneers’ offense, Maclin was named head coach in February. If playing is about production, then coaching is about impact and influence—and Maclin is eager to give back to the town and the game that gave him so much.
Even though you’ve played at the highest level, did you have to work to learn how to coach high school football? Yes. My most recent playing experience was the National Football League, and I came in with this mindset of how things are supposed to be. One of the things I had to learn and understand at the high school level is offensive line play. Once I understood that, I feel like everything else came easy.
Which of your coaches influenced your approach to leading a program? First and foremost, I think I had probably the best experience from a player standpoint because I come from one of the best coaching trees with Coach Andy Reid. Ron Rivera is from that coaching tree, John Harbaugh, Doug Pederson, Matt Nagy—the list goes on and on. I’ve learned from the whole tree.
Is there a common philosophy that your former coaches share? The biggest thing they taught me is to be yourself. You’re not just here to coach football. You’re here to learn personalities. You’re here to learn about your players’ lives. You’re here to be in tune with what’s going on in the community.
Most people will respond when they know someone cares, right? Exactly. But you have to genuinely care. If it’s just a front, they can see right through that. It’s easy for me to care about what’s going on, because I legitimately do. I’ve been there. I come from the same place—in some cases, the same neighborhood. Some of these guys, they don’t want to play college football, and that’s fine. I tell them each and every day, “I’m here to help you grow, mature, and achieve the things you want.” [Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy] Reid was all about that. Coach Gary Pinkel at Mizzou was all about that.
Most of these kids probably knew you from TV—or from playing as you in the Madden video games. What has been their response to having a former NFL star as their coach? I hope it’s encouraging. I want to give them hope. I want them to understand, like, “Hey, Coach Maclin comes from where we come from, and this is what he’s been able to do.” But I also want them to know I’m approachable.
Have you thought about how far you want to go with coaching? I just want to be present. I like to tell myself: Be where your feet are. Right now, I’m a high school football coach. I’m super excited about it, and I plan on being at Kirkwood for a long time, if they let me. More than anything, it’s important to me to be a dad. Mine was absent from my life. I have two beautiful daughters, and I want to be there for my girls. I believe I have the best opportunity to be involved in football and make a difference in the lives of these young men and to be a father to my daughters.
