Charlie Baggett .. Meet the Coaches

[MauiRam]

By Nick Wagoner
Senior Writer

For as much as Charlie Baggett loved playing football growing up and all the way through college, he never envisioned a scenario in which he would coach it.

In fact, the thought of coaching was so far from his mind that when he completed his college career at Michigan State, he decided to go directly to the working world.

“I didn’t think I wanted to coach because I knew all the hours they put in and what coaching would take,” Baggett said. “I thought at that point I wanted no part of it.”

Baggett took a job in the corporate world right out of college, accepting a position with IBM. He quickly headed to New York to begin IBM’s grueling training program and become acclimated with the company.

It took all of a year for Baggett to realize that IBM or any other company wasn’t going to be able to provide him with the challenges needed to fan the flames of his competitive fire.

“It was the fact that I didn’t have a job and I was like a lot of people at that age, you just don’t know what you want,” Baggett said. “I tried the IBM deal and did it and just didn’t like it. (Football) is like a lot of things in life, you just get addicted to it. Like golf or whatever it might be. It’s just something you fall in love with.”

Baggett’s love for football made him re-focus his career aspirations on the game he loved growing up. The decision would turn out to be a good one as he would grow to become one of the most accomplished wide receivers coaches in the league, a position he was hired to handle for the Rams by coach Steve Spagnuolo earlier in the offseason.

Growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Baggett quickly took to the game and was one of the most highly touted quarterback prospects in the country out of E.E. Smith High.

Baggett surpassed offers from a variety of schools before accepting an offer to stay close to home and play the University of North Carolina in 1971. His one season there didn’t go as planned though and Baggett opted to transfer to Michigan State.

As a Spartan, Baggett quickly became a key cog. He started at quarterback for three seasons for the Spartans and went to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League, where he was cut.

After he tried the IBM route, Baggett returned to North Carolina for a couple of months. Seemingly out of nowhere, Baggett got a call from Denny Stolz, his coach at Michigan State and the new head coach at Bowling Green.

Stolz offered Baggett the receivers and running backs coach, giving Baggett the rare opportunity to be a full time position coach without ever working in high school or in a graduate assistant type of position.

As a former quarterback, a position where it’s imperative to know what every player on the field is going to do; Baggett took quickly to coaching receivers.

“Anytime you are under center and in that pocket, if you haven’t been there you can’t imagine what it’s like,” Baggett said. “For me having been there, I have a feel for it and I understand what the guy is looking at and what the receivers are looking at.”

Baggett stayed at Bowling Green until 1980 when he took the opportunity to go back to the Big 10 Conference as receivers coach at Minnesota. After two seasons there, Baggett went home to East Lansing, returning to his alma mater as receivers coach a position he alternated with coaching running backs from 1983 until 1992.

Baggett was happy to be back with the Spartans, working for coach George Perles and helping build the Spartans program. Along the way, he worked with coaching luminaries such as Perles, Nick Saban and Ty Willingham.

One of the first recruits Michigan State landed with Baggett on the staff was a young offensive lineman named Pat Shurmur. Little did Baggett know at the time that that relationship would eventually come full circle.

Baggett tutored some top picks with the Spartans including Plaxico Burress, Andre Rison, Mark Ingram, Muhsin Muhammad and Derrick Mason.

Finally, in 1993, Baggett got his first NFL opportunity, taking the receivers coach position with the Houston Oilers. From then until last year, Baggett spent the majority of his time in the NFL with stops in Green Bay, Minnesota and Miami.

In that time, Baggett coached nine 1,000-yard receivers in 10 seasons of NFL coaching. Among the names Baggett helped develop were Randy Moss, Cris Carter, Chris Chambers and Antonio Freeman.

The humble Baggett won’t took too much of the credit for the success of those players but there’s no denying the results he helped them obtain.

“I am pretty proud of that,” Baggett said. “All of the guys I have had, I’ve had guys to the Pro Bowl and the thing is most of those guys make my job easy. To have Cris Carter and Randy Moss on the same team made me look pretty good and I could learn from them too. That’s invaluable.”

Baggett spent the past two seasons with Willingham at the University of Washington in his familiar receivers coach position. There, he held out hope that he would get the call at some point to return to the NFL.
When Spagnuolo took over as head coach of the Rams in January, he moved quickly to hire Shurmur as his offensive coordinator. Soon after, Shurmur made it clear he’d like to recruit the man who once recruited him to the NFL.

Sure enough, Baggett got the job and is now charged with the task of bringing along the Rams’ plethora of young wide receivers.

In terms of philosophy, Baggett keeps it simple to start before diving into the more complicated parts of playing the position. It’s a philosophy that has worked in the past and one Baggett believes will work again in St. Louis.

“I think the most important thing is what we do: catch the football,” Baggett said. “If you can’t do that you can’t make the next step. I always tell the guys we can get that other stuff fixed. I can teach you how to run routes, I can teach you how to get off the line, I can teach you a lot of things but if you don’t catch the ball we have a problem. You have to be able to get off the ball and then after that with all of the intricacies and route running come into play. I start with the basic philosophy that you have to be technically sound and ready to go off the ball.”

[TekeRam]

Definitely sounds like a real good coach, and one who will drill these guys to the bone to make sure that they come down with everything tossed their way. In an offense that should pride itself on just throwing to the open guy, that'll make a ton of difference in my mind.

I love the fact that he's a former QB turned long time receivers coach, as it seems like a perfect combo platter to go along with all of the great receivers he's coached as well. Great hire Spags and Shurmur.

[laram0]

This guy might have the biggest challenge in front of him with the very young receiving corp that we have.

[MauiRam]

This guy might have the biggest challenge in front of him with the very young receiving corp that we have.

Additionally he'll be replacing Henry Ellard who was both well liked and respected by the players ...

[AvengerRam]

Charlie Baggett is definitely going to be a good coach... yeah, definitely going to be a good coach... uh oh... time for Wapner!

[RAMarkable]

Charlie Baggett is definitely going to be a good coach... yeah, definitely going to be a good coach... uh oh... time for Wapner!

I can see that you trying to do Dustin Hoffman in The Rainman. But who is Wapner? (Definitely been a long time since I saw that movie. Yeah, definitely.)

WHAT SAY YE?