Ronald Curry never saw himself in this position. He could foresee himself coaching, but not at this level. Not in the NFL.
“I always saw myself as really wanting to coach in high school,” he said.
MARYLAND NORTH CAROLINA
North Carolina’s Ronald Curry celebrates with linemen Greg Woofter, left, and James Wagstaff after scoring the game-winning touchdown against Maryland on a 25-yard quarterback draw on Nov. 11, 2000, in Chapel Hill, N.C. Curry, a high school All-American in football and basketball, also played point guard for the Tar Heels. Grant Halverson, Associated Press
And for a couple of years, he did. From 2010-12, Curry coached at Mooresville Christian Academy in North Carolina. He was about two hours from where he starred in college, playing both football and basketball at the University of North Carolina.
The quarterback of the football team and a point guard for one of the most distinguished men’s basketball programs in the nation, Curry balanced the two sports as he was molded by his own coaches. Even early on, he knew he wanted to give back.
In Mooresville, Curry worked with a relative of a coach whom Curry already knew from his NFL playing days: Jim Harbaugh.
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“So, Jim Harbaugh basically picked up the phone, called me, asked me, ‘Why not come out and coach?’ ” Curry said. “And I’ve been coaching since.”
Eleven years later, after entering the coaching ranks with the San Francisco 49ers, Curry is not only still employed in the NFL, he has one of the notable tasks around the league: coaching the reigning MVP. Curry is headed into his second season as the Buffalo Bills quarterbacks coach, in charge of a room headlined by Josh Allen.
The Bills have entrusted Curry with this role, and Allen sees Curry as hardworking, caring and a major asset to the group.
“When you feel like you’ve been in the same system for eight years, things can kind of become mundane, and it’s the same things over and over again,” Allen said in April. “But (Curry) keeps it fresh, keeps it light, making sure that we are seeing and looking at new things, new trends around the league of what offenses are doing.”
‘He’s a legend’
Curry’s own versatile background has been a huge factor in his understanding of the game.
When Curry made the jump from college to the NFL in 2002, he moved from quarterback to receiver – and he stuck, playing seven seasons for the Oakland Raiders, gaining a deeper understanding of the game as he learned the nuances of a different position. He gained that understanding in part from those around him – Jerry Rice and Tim Brown, for example. But it wasn’t the first time Curry had played receiver.
“(College was) the only time I’ve only played quarterback, and that’s four years out of my whole life,” Curry said. “Besides that, I pretty much played every position. I never came off the field.”
Ronald Curry, Benny Sapp
Raiders wide receiver Ronald Curry, center, bobbles a pass as Chiefs cornerback Benny Sapp defends during a game Oct. 21, 2007, in Oakland, Calif. Curry played seven seasons with the Raiders from 2002-08. Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press
Growing up in Virginia, Curry was one of the most highly regarded high school athletes the country has ever seen. At Hampton High School, he captured the attention of college scouts while leading his school to four state titles: three consecutive in football and one in basketball.
“Going to watch him in high school, I tell people, it was nuts,” said Jason Capel, a basketball teammate at UNC. “Like, they couldn’t play at their high school. They had to play whatever the big field stadium is. And he’s kissing babies, like, biggest thing outside of Allen Iverson. It was nuts.”
Curry met Capel when the two were 14 years old.
“I just moved to Virginia, thrust into an AAU program where we were both rising ninth graders,” Capel said. “He was the man; I was kind of the other guy, moving into his territory.
“What initially became like a little friendly rivalry, you know, we turned into really good friends – best friends.”
Both Curry and Capel kept their circles tight.
“For me, a kid that moved around a lot with my dad being a coach, (I) didn’t make many friendships, because what was the point?” Capel said.
But in Curry, Capel found a lifelong friend. They spent their summers together playing AAU ball, and eventually, they both committed to UNC. Years later, they were in each other’s weddings.
Curry’s ability to relate – first to his teammates, and now to his players – stood out to Capel.
“When you’re dealing with someone who’s lived his entire life, who comes from a not-so-great side of town in Hampton, Virginia, and has achieved all these different things,” said Capel, himself a former McDonald’s All-American and now an assistant basketball coach at Pitt. “He can relate to anybody. He can relate to anybody with any different background. And the communication component of that is going to hit home, because you’re going to believe it and trust it, because he’s lived it.
“He’s not telling you something that he learned in a book or secondhand. He’s actually lived and experienced everything that you could possibly experience as an athlete, and the good and the bad, obstacles, expectations, the pressures.”
In the Bills locker room, that reputation precedes Curry.
“He’s a legend,” said Mitch Trubisky, the Bills’ backup quarterback and a fellow UNC alum. “So we gas him up; we make sure he remembers that.”
Buffalo Bills OTA
Bills quarterbacks coach Ronald Curry, middle, is a legendary athlete in North Carolina and Virginia. Derek Gee, Buffalo News
‘That’s not normal stuff’
In Granville Towers in Chapel Hill, Curry and Capel were roommates. But the shared space and the shared basketball practices didn’t mean they saw much of each other. For the first few months of every fall semester, Capel basically had a single dorm.
“In college, you go to class, and then they’re at that damn facility all day, like that,” Capel said, referring to the football players. “They’re there, and I wouldn’t see him until like, 9:30 at night.”
Curry recalled playing football in a bowl game on a Saturday, then flying to make shootaround for basketball on a Sunday morning, before playing in another game that night.
“The tough part was, I never had a break,” Curry said.
When other football players had the offseason to work on certain aspects of their games, Curry was diving right into three basketball games a week. Curry’s official bio on the UNC athletics website points out that he “began practicing with the basketball team on November 20th, two days after Carolina’s last football game” in his sophomore year.
Neither Curry nor Capel were thinking about coaching at that point. But Capel can see in retrospect the signs along the way that Curry would thrive in their now-shared profession. One just had to look at all Curry was handling as a player.
“The mental capacity to be able to do all that, to be able to read the defense (in football), know where everybody’s supposed to be, know the routes the guys are supposed to run, know what the blocking assignments are, and then to come and play point guard and know all the secondary breaks, all of the defenses – you knew that if (coaching was) something he decided to do that he would be able to do it,” Capel said. “Because to do the things he did athletically at the level that he’s done it, you have to be incredibly intelligent and have just a superior understanding of the game.”
That was, Capel added, “not normal stuff.”
“And to do it at such a high level – like I said, to be the starting point guard on the team that won the ACC and the starting quarterback – is pretty unreal.”
But throughout all that, in multiple sports, Curry was never flustered.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him stressed at all,” Capel said. “He’s always had this relaxed personality, this quiet confidence. … So no, there was never a time that I saw him, or even up close or from afar, where he was overwhelmed the pressure, because it was pressure.”
The pressure was not only to do well, but to win it all. Conference titles weren’t enough.
“In Carolina ... look, if you don’t win ACC, go to a Final Four and win a championship, it’s a failure in basketball,” Capel said. “And so, to be able to handle that, all of that, I don’t know how any of us did it, but I don’t know how he got it to play two sports, starting at arguably the two most important positions.
“I don’t know how he did it. I really don’t.”
Curry and Allen
There’s a similar pressure these days for Curry’s current protégé.
While Allen is just a few months removed from winning the league’s MVP award, Curry has a bigger goal for him, and he won’t settle until it’s met: a Super Bowl ring.
“I think it’s that simple,” Curry said. “I mean, I think (Allen’s) accomplished a lot, and I think winning the last game means the most to him. So, I feel like that’s my goal for him. I want that more than anything. You can have the records, you can have the MVPs, you can have all of that. And I think most importantly, he wants to win the last game.”
It helps that Curry is in lockstep with Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady. The two shared an office in New Orleans when they were both on the Saints’ coaching staff.
“We think a lot alike,” Curry said of Brady. “We learned a lot from Sean Payton, offensively, to where it carries over to what we’re doing, and kind of been able to blend a little bit of both, both schemes.”
Bills Coaching Hires Football
Ronald Curry, shown as the passing coordinator for the Saints, spent three years as New Orleans’ receivers coach from 2018-20, one year as quarterbacks coach in ’21 and two years as passing game coordinator from 2022-23 before joining the Bills last season. Gerald Herbert, Associated Press
‘We know that he was a dog’
There’s one sport that Curry is still working on: golf. It’s a must-play around Orchard Park – especially, especially in the Bills quarterbacks room. The position group just won the team’s annual tournament.
“He’s working on his golf game as well,” Trubisky said of Curry. “He’s the man.”
Even if the Bills quarterbacks are giving Curry advice in this case, they’re well versed in his résumé.
“It’s cool to see how athletic and how great of an athlete he was today, but also how great of a communicator and coach he is, too,” Trubisky said. “He’s made that transition, and we just make sure that he’s still living out his glory days and that we know that he was a dog.”
There’s a time to be serious, but there’s also plenty of time for inside jokes.
“Coaches have to sometimes toe the line of being one of the guys and being the coach,” Allen said. “And I think (Curry) does such a great job of that.”
Curry, who turned 46 on Wednesday, thinks the opportunity to mentor is the most important part of coaching.
“You talk to these guys, you help them, not only on the field, but off the field, just navigating through life,” Curry said. “So that’s the reason why you kind of – me personally – you get into coaching, just to try to give these guys somebody they can talk to, (to) lean on when you know they know that the chips up against them.
“Because it’s a hard profession to be in. Regardless if you’re the top of the top, or you’re the bottom of the bottom, and everybody struggled with something.”
Curry has had his own struggles. Three Achilles tears between college and the pros stand out. There were coaching changes at North Carolina (he played for two football coaches and two basketball coaches), and there were fumbles in the NFL (three in his first three seasons). But he persisted, and he carved out 32 starts in 76 career games. He was a team captain with the Raiders.
And when it came time to pivot to coaching, he grasped onto the belief that he could catapult his players even further.
“For him to have been at the mountaintop and to now being able to give back, you know, it has to be gratifying for him, because he didn’t get to that point as an athlete, to where he’s the Super Bowl quarterback, he’s the MVP quarterback – and a lot of people tagged him as that when we were young,” Capel said. “Now, he’s been able to help someone else do it.
“Essentially, that’s what life’s all about: It’s helping the next person do something that maybe you did, maybe you wanted to do, and never got there for whatever reason.
“And so just (Curry’s) ability that God’s blessed him with, to be able to give back now and help with Josh Allen and to help other guys achieve things that I know he wanted to and probably expected to achieve himself and get the same gratification out of it, is pretty damn special.”
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