NFL coach in Tyrol

Superbowl champ: “The boys love football here”

Superbowl champion Jim Herrmann wants to rock the Tivoli Stadium with the Raiders.

(Bild: Angelo Sarabia/Raiders Tirol)

It's the football sensation of the year. NFL coach Jim Herrmann is set to cause a sensation with the Raiders in the European League. One week before the start of the season with the away game in Milan, the "Krone" spoke to the Superbowl champion about his work and goals in Innsbruck.

Krone: Twelve years in the NFL, Superbowl winner with the New York Giants in 2012. Jim Herrmann, what does a coach do with their career with the Raiders?
Jim Herrmann: It's still football. What I like about Innsbruck is that most of the players have been with the club since they were nine or ten years old. That's unusual in Europe. That gives us an advantage, the guys know football.
The NFL is a billion-dollar business, almost all the players earn millions in salaries. In the European League of Football (ELF), you now even work with amateurs in some cases ... 
 Young people love football here, that's why they do it. It's not money that motivates them, it's their love for the sport. As a coach, I want players who simply love football. That's what makes the European League so unique, the majority of the players in the squad just love the game.
Can the ELF be a springboard for an NFL career in the future?
I am convinced that the ELF is developing in that direction. In the next five to ten years, you will see more and more young Europeans in the USA. The more people who play football here, the more players the NFL will find.
The new assistant coaches Charlie Eger, Jeff Jagodzinski and Mike Waufle have all worked for NFL teams. That's a record-breaking amount of NFL experience for the ELF ... 
 Our staff has a lot of experience. The NFL knowledge helps us to train people well here. But at the end of the day, it's just football. For a coach, it makes no difference whether you're coaching an NFL player or a young Austrian.
What kind of football can Raiders fans expect to see under head coach Jim Herrmann?
For me, discipline is the most important thing. No penalties before the ball is in play, no penalties after the referee's whistle. We should be the smartest team. But for me, football is still a brutal and physical game. I want to be the physically strongest team on the field.

After a disappointing ELF 2023 season, Raiders manager Ulz Däuber hired an absolute top coach in Jim Herrmann.

(Bild: Oliveira/Raiders Tirol)

The previous ELF season was a disappointment for the Raiders, who missed out on the play-offs ... 
 I don't know, I wasn't here.
The Raiders have won the Austrian title eight times. They've never reached the final of the ELF. What are their goals?
History means nothing to me. I explained to the guys at the beginning that we have to get better as a team every day. I want every single player to get better. I want the offense, defense and special teams to get better. If we can do that, the rest is easy.