Steven M. Sipple: Wondering what “dog mentality” really means? Travis Fisher lays it out well | Column

As in, so-and-so is a “dog,” or so-and-so has a “dog mentality.”

It’s almost always a compliment. Truth be told, the meaning is borderline self-explanatory.

Even so, I asked Nebraska secondary coach Travis Fisher — who uses “dog” frequently — exactly what it means in his world.

His answer was illuminating, and in some ways beautiful.

“It’s whatever separates yourself from somebody else,” says Fisher, 42, who played cornerback in the NFL for eight seasons, essentially six as a full-time starter.

You have to be an absolute “dog” to start at corner in the NFL for six seasons.

“I remember one time he got his teeth knocked back in a game and had to get braces for support — and still played the next week,” former Nebraska corner great DeJuan Groce, who played three seasons (2003-05) with Fisher on the St. Louis Rams, told me a few years ago.

“I learned a ton from him,” Groce says. “Yeah, that joker’s tough. He’s one of the toughest corners I’ve ever seen in my life. He broke his arm one time. He did a lot of stuff like that and kept on playing. Played hurt. Practiced hurt. That tough stuff he talks about, he’s all about that.”

He’s all about the “dog mentality” and obviously tries to get his players to be all about it as well.

“We don’t have to be talking about a physical sport,” Fisher says. “It could be two guys running down a track, and one of them wants to win so badly he literally dives across the line.”

“That’s a dog,” he says in almost a whisper.

“It could be two guys going for a rebound,” he says. “You can tell who wants it more than the other one.”

Now, Fisher didn’t say it, but it’s worth mentioning that Nebraska’s football team lost a slew of close games last season. If we’re being honest, multiple factors contributed to Scott Frost’s squad continually coming up short.

Some of it may well be a deficiency in the “dog mentality” area.

Oh, make no mistake, Nebraska has plenty of “dogs” on its roster. But you can say that about any football team. It probably comes down to who has more of them. 

Who has the most dogs with the most bite? 

Who has more players who want it more than the next guy? 

A tricky part of the discussion is deciding whether a “dog mentality” can be coached.

The answer, best I can tell, is yes.

Fisher says a coach can create an environment that helps foster a “dog mentality.”

“When you have that type of coach, you’re going to have those type of players,” he says. “If you’ve got that laid-back coach who’s not a dog, then those players don’t get a chance to see the coach stretch it.”

He gives an example: A team meeting ends 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. Instead of sending players home early, the “dog” coach uses those 30 minutes to work with players.

“Players see that sort of situation,” Fisher says. “They see a person who cares. A person who really wants to be great is going to try to be great.”

Some players, he says, try to fool people into thinking they’re a dog.

“They’ll be in practice doing a bunch of rah-rah-rah stuff,” he says.

That’s nice, but here’s what being a dog means to Fisher: It’s the defensive back whose assignment on a given play takes him far from the ball carrier. But instead of giving up on the play, the defender somehow chases down the ball carrier at the 1-yard line.

“Then we line up at the 1 and recover a fumble,” he says. “That’s a damned dog.”

Oh, no question, you see the other side of that conversation all the time in film sessions: Defenders giving a half-hearted chase after the ball. It’s painful to watch.

You might hear the real dogs in that film session growl audibly.

“Cam Taylor-Britt was a dog,” Fisher says of Nebraska’s NFL-bound former corner.

“DiCaprio Bootle, he was a damned dog,” the coach says of the former Husker corner who made the 2021 Kansas Chiefs roster as an undrafted free agent.

“Deontai Williams was a damned dog,” Fisher says of Nebraska’s starting safety last season.

“I’ve had a lot of dogs in the secondary here,” the coach adds. “They do the sh– that nobody wants to do. They put their f—ing hard hats on and their boots and they get gritty. It’s not a stat. You don’t look in a stat book and see a dog. Nope. It’s a dad with his last 10 bucks in his pocket making sure his kids get fed. That’s a dog.”

Some dogs, he says, you have to hold back.

“Cam Taylor-Britt, I had to ‘whoa’ him,” the coach says. “Sometimes, you have to pinch a guy and say, ‘Go.’ With other players, you have to say, ‘Whoa.’ With those guys, if you get on their bad side, they’ll snap at you. So, you tell them you love them, then you go back to grinding them. You make them mad, and you do it again and again. 

“Eventually, a dog is going to say, ‘Hey, I’m getting better.’ Then those guys soon will be saying, ‘Thank you so much, Coach, for coaching me the way you did.'”

Dogs love the grind. Fisher loves the grind. He proved it as a player and now as a coach. 

He’s got the dog mentality, and we should all hope we have some of it, too.