For this Chiefs great, it’s back to the football field. The high school football field

The football players were exhausted. That’s to be expected during the first two weeks of summer-conditioning workouts at Rockhurst High.

As new head coach Kelly Donohoe scanned the field and looked toward the sideline, he noticed one of his volunteer assistant coaches working with a struggling player — and couldn’t believe his eyes.

There, alongside the player, on the field doing the same drills, was 1965 Heisman Trophy winner and former Kansas City Chiefs star Mike Garrett.

“He’s like 76 years old!” exclaimed Donohoe, the former longtime Blue Springs coach who this year made the jump to succeed retired Rockhurst coach Tony Severino with the Hawklets. “I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

“I told our guys on several occasions, ‘Look, Coach Garrett’s over there doing this, you guys can do this.’ ... Our kids obviously have tremendous respect for him.”

After an illustrious football and post-football career, Garrett, indeed 76 years of age now, is embarking on his third season as a volunteer assistant at Rockhurst. Donohoe said Garrett comes to every practice, providing energy and imparting some of his vast football knowledge on anyone smart enough to listen.

While neither of them play football, Garrett’s two youngest sons, Michael and John, are both juniors at Rockhurst. Coaching football there gives the former NFL running back an opportunity to see his sons more often and be just as involved with another family — the Rockhurst football family.

“The experience coaching the team has been wonderful,” Garrett said. “Coach Severino, now with Kelly Donohoe ... It’s such a fun experience to be touching young people and working with real good coaches.”

Coach Garrett

In 2018, Garrett and Severino were inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. On the night of the ceremony, Severino asked Garrett if he had ever considered coaching. When Garrett said no, Severino told him he’d love to have him on staff.

The two had immeasurable football experience between them. Severino had coached Rockhurst for 35 years at the time; Garrett won the Heisman at Southern Cal and played for eight years in the NFL before becoming the athletic director at USC and Langston University.

After thinking it over with his family, Garrett decided to take Severino up on his offer.

In his first two seasons, Garrett primarily worked with Rock’s running backs and receivers. When Donohoe took the top football job at Rockhurst after last season following Severino’s 37-year run, Severino told Donohoe that Garrett was one of his assistants. But Donohoe didn’t know if Garrett was interested in continuing in that role.

If he wanted to come back, Garrett knew a red-carpet welcome awaited. And Donohoe knew the team enjoyed having him around.

What Donohoe didn’t expect was how fiery Garrett would be on the field.

If he sees something wrong from across the field during a defensive backs drill, Garrett runs over and corrects it. If a quarterback’s mechanics are off, he helps him fix it. If he has to go into a huddle, he’ll do that, too.

“When he talks, they listen,” Donohoe said simply. “He’s not a guy that says a lot. But when he says something, he has seen something in the kid that he wants to see corrected, or he’s praising the kid for the effort he just gave. And that means a lot to those kids.”

Garrett has his fair share of good coaches to emulate from his many years as a player. He said he learned a lot from his high school coach, Ray McLean, who also mentored him during his time at USC. And he played for Hall of Fame coaches John McKay at USC and Hank Stram in Kansas City.

As a coach now himself, Garrett said one of the most important things he can do is get young people to believe in themselves. He knows that some of the high schoolers on the team will have the opportunity to play in college, so he said he tries to help them establish good work habits now that will continue to pay off down the road.

When he gives 100 percent effort during practices, he expects the same from those on the team.

“One of the things I teach is, in football, you’re either the attacker or the attackee,” Garrett said. “I only coach people who want to be attackers.”

Garrett’s advice also extends beyond the field. He said he is just as interested in the players’ futures after football.

“You want to play football like you want to live the rest of your life,” Garrett said. “And that’s being assertive, direct and always prepared. If you do that, it’s not very often you’re gonna lose.”

The Mahomes Effect

The Rockhurst football team will practice for a total of seven weeks in preparation for the 2020 season.

Despite all the uncertainties wrought by the pandemic, Garrett said the team and its coaches are taking the situation in stride. Players and staff alike observe proper social distancing, he said, in order to protect themselves.

But at the end of the day, those kids just want to play football, he said.

Garrett believes part of their excitement stems from the seamless transition Rockhurst has made from Severino to Donohoe. Donohoe said mixing coaching staffs — some assistants he brought with him from Blue Springs, some held over from the Severino era — has been easy because the two head coaches had similar philosophies.

Garrett also credits their eagerness to the success enjoyed recently by his old team, the Super Bowl-champion Chiefs.

“I think because the Chiefs did so well last year, and Patrick Mahomes and company have gotten such great publicity, football is popular again,” Garrett said. “Before, we were fighting concussions and all that. Well, in Kansas City, kids are just coming out in droves because they love the Chiefs.”

Mahomes made some memorable plays on the way to, and during, Super Bowl LIV — not the least of which came on “2-3 Jet Chip Wasp” early in the fourth quarter of the title game against the San Francisco 49ers.

Garrett, meanwhile, is well-known by Chiefs fans for his part in “65 Toss Power Trap,” one of the most iconic plays in Kansas City history.

Now, more than 50 years after that legendary run, Garrett is still on the football field. And when he looks back on that signature play, he remembers it being about more than just himself.

It was about the same thing that drew him to Rockhurst as an unpaid assistant and keeps him there to this day.

Family.

“I think more about my teammates,” Garrett said. “Otis Taylor is one of my favorite players of all time. I think about he and I and the whole team being in that game. ... It was more like a family, and that’s why we succeeded so well.”