ATLANTA — When Michael Pitre was coaching high-school football in southern California at the start of his career, the idea that someday he would be in the NFL as a position coach responsible for a top-10 draft pick was not so much a distant dream as a non-possibility.
Then a recent graduate of UCLA, where he played fullback and was a team captain, Pitre planned to be a high-school coach and to teach special education, a wholly worthy pursuit.
“I think he would have been successful no matter where he was at,” said Troy Thomas, who had Pitre on his coaching staff at Servite High in Anaheim, Calif., from 2009-11.
However, something altered Pitre’s plans, namely his surpassing quality as a coach and his ambition to chase his dreams. The Falcons — and running back Bijan Robinson, the diamond of the club’s draft class — are the beneficiaries of a running backs coach with an unlikely path to the NFL and the high esteem of his employer.
“He’s a fantastic football coach, certainly (has) a bright future,” Falcons coach Arthur Smith said of Pitre (pronounced PEA-tree) Wednesday. “He can do a lot of different jobs. Mike does a fantastic job.”
Following his career at UCLA, Pitre’s first coaching job was in 2008 at Santa Margarita Catholic High (the alma mater of former Falcons wide receiver and 680 the Fan show host Brian Finneran). He jumped to Servite a year later.
“I was coaching the backs and linebackers, coaching freshmen, varsity,” he said. “I was just kind of doing it all.”
And while he was teaching and coaching, he also began to pursue a master’s degree in special education. Pitre previously had worked in therapy with autistic students and found the work motivating. The experience led him to special education.
“Honestly, the reason I chose special ed was because that demographic of students, their appreciation for even the slightest victory is really rewarding as a teacher,” he said.
However, Servite’s success — a state championship in Pitre’s first year (2009) and a runner-up finish the next — pushed him to expand his coaching ambition. He took a graduate assistant job at Colorado in 2012, which led to him becoming running backs coach at Montana State, an FCS program, in 2014.
Though he was committed to coaching at the college level at that point, he finished work on his master’s, completing an 80-page thesis that he wasn’t able to finish while at Colorado. On nights before road games, Pitre said, he stayed up from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. to write. He is extremely proud of the accomplishment, which helped change the way he looked at himself.
“Being able to push through that and attack something that I didn’t normally attack was really good just for self-pride, to say, ‘You can do this. You can go there and be a high-achieving student, as well,’ ” Pitre said.
It also provided him with an example for his two daughters and the players he coaches of the value of pushing yourself.
“It was a long path, but it was well worth it,” he said.
It’s a nice story, but what does it mean for the Falcons? First, that the coach assigned to the ridiculously talented first-round pick isn’t merely some former NFL player who knows some drills and pep talks.
Asked his greatest attributes as a coach, this was Pitre’s response.
“Honestly, I’m a teacher,” he said. “Like, my daughter asked me the other day, ‘Dad, did you go to school for what you’re doing?’ I said, ‘I did. I got my master’s in teaching. I’m a teacher.’ We teach the game of football, coach the game of football, but at the end of the day, you need to be an elite teacher to be able to communicate clearly with those guys so they can go out there and do their best. And so, like I said, Yeah, I’m a coach by title, but I look at myself as, I want to be a master teacher.”
Second-year running back Tyler Allgeier deserves the credit for his superior rookie season, but he didn’t do it alone. One reason that the club rookie rushing record that he broke last season stood for 43 years is that it’s clearly not easy to rush for 1,000 yards as a rookie. Particularly for a player who lasted until the fifth round, some help is required.
In words that would probably make any teacher’s heart sing, Allgeier said that, in teaching the language of the Falcons offense, Pitre “always tries to make it the easiest way” to learn.
“That’s always great, having him teach all the little details,” Allgeier said. “He’s able to nitpick every one of them and then have just practice it on the field. It’s great having a coach like that.”
Another Pitre success story with a newcomer: When Falcons linebacker Troy Andersen won Big Sky freshman of the year at Montana State as a two-way player in 2017, Pitre was his running backs coach.
Robinson appears to be making the transition to the NFL with understanding of what a capable position coach can mean. At Texas, he had one of the best, former Georgia Tech and Dallas Cowboys running back Tashard Choice. When Robinson won the Doak Walker Award in December as the nation’s top collegiate running back, he called Choice a blessing and thanked him “for just always getting me prepared every single week to understand the defenders and how they tackle and the angles that they’re coming from.”
(Choice, unsurprisingly, is high on Robinson, telling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in April after the draft that Robinson is “the hardest dude I’ve ever seen to tackle” and that the Falcons are “getting the best dude in the world.”)
Pitre said his new pupil is a capable learner with an ability “to grasp a new offense, a new language completely different than what he’s done in the past.”
Robinson’s absorption rate is probably, at least to some degree, a reflection on his teacher and also bodes well for Robinson’s potential as a rookie. The sooner he can understand the offense, play without having to think through his assignment and execute multiple facets of the scheme, the sooner he can put his extraordinary gifts to use.
“I think the most important thing is understanding he’s a young guy, and it’s going to be a process to get him to where we want to get him by the time we get to September,” Pitre said. “So truly having a clear, thought-out plan of how we’re going to bring him along – and that was, again, not just me – but that’s talking with (Smith), talking, obviously, with ‘Rags’ (offensive coordinator Dave Ragone), so all of us just really putting our heads together and what’s the plan of attack, how do we want to bring this guy along?”
It’s a long way from coaching high school defensive linemen in many respects, but not so far in others.
“He got the defensive line to play at a very high level, and they did their job,” said Thomas, the former Servite head coach. “They were very sound, technical football players. I think there’s a ton of people that have a lot of knowledge, and at that point, I don’t think Mike had a ton. It wasn’t like he was an expert at D-line. But what he did know, he communicated well and those kids executed that. To me, that’s a sign of a great teacher and coach.”
Pitre, 38, is on an express ride up the coaching ladder. Consider that only six years ago, he was a position coach at an FCS school. For him to reach the NFL as a running backs coach four years later (2021, when he was hired by the Chicago Bears from Oregon State) is extremely unusual.
I looked up the whereabouts of his fellow Montana State coaches from the 2017 season and those of four other staffs in the Big Sky Conference. (Side note: I do not recommend this as an activity.) As far as I could tell, none of the other 49 coaches have made it to the NFL as a position coach (one is an offensive assistant) and only a handful had even gotten as far as an FBS power-conference school. Pitre’s ascent speaks well of him.
“It’s been awesome to see him go from the college ranks to the NFL,” Thomas said. “It doesn’t surprise me.”
Pitre said that every day he can come to work with the Falcons is a blessing and acknowledged having some “wow” moments. After having to reestablish career goals from coaching in high school to coaching in college and now the NFL, he admitted to none save helping the Falcons this fall.
“To me, if we do what we’re supposed to do, everyone’s going to achieve the goals that they want to achieve,” he said.
Spoken like a master teacher.
