Faith Lutheran Head Coach Vernon Fox. (Photo courtesy of Joe Broussard with OneCoach)
Former NFL player Vernon Fox understands the importance a coach has in the lives of their players.
The eight-year NFL veteran traded his cleats for a whistle after his final season with the Denver Broncos in 2009. Four years later, he was named the head football coach at Faith Lutheran High School in Las Vegas, Nev. That season he guided the Crusaders to the state championship with a 17-0 win over Churchill County in the Division I-A State Championship.
“Coaching football is a ministry,” Fox told Sports Spectrum. “When I accepted the job at Faith Lutheran High School, it was with that sole purpose in mind. This is an opportunity to infuse ministry with the game I’d been around for 18 or 19 years, at that time.
“For me, that’s the bigger picture: what we’re putting in them, and not just what we’re giving to them in terms of football skills. Our foundation is to build men of character, integrity, accountability and excellence. That happens through winning, through ‘lessons,’ as we call them, and through experiences the game of football can give you. There are so many spiritual lessons that you can learn. We utilize the Word of God every single day to merge that together.”
One of the best moments of coaching for Fox is when his players come back to the high school years after they graduated.
“Having the opportunity to change the lives of these young men,” he said, when asked about the best part of coaching. “I don’t think you really appreciate it or realize it until they graduate and come back and tell you how you impacted them. One of the most special moments for me was when a family came to me and told me that they had been at the school for four years. They hadn’t really been attending church, but they sent their son to the school because it’s a good school. They told me that the experience they had that one season with my staff and our program – they saw something different in us. They understood that God is real and prayer changes things. Their faith grew in their family. That’s one of the most impactful things that could have happened. Those are moments I live for as a coach.”
Vernon recently shared about the impact a coach makes as a world changer with his or her players in the clip below.
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Ohio State safety Caleb Downs makes a catch during the school's Pro Day in Columbus, Ohio, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)
Ohio State safety Caleb Downs has spent the past two seasons building one of the most decorated résumés in college football. Now, he’s on the verge of hearing his name called early in the NFL Draft — potentially within the first five picks.
He was named the winner of the 2025 Jim Thorpe Award — given annually to the nation’s top defensive back — and a finalist for both the Bronko Nagurski and Chuck Bednarik Awards, each honoring the nation’s best defensive player. Downs was also a two-time consensus first-team All-American and a key member of the Buckeyes’ 2024-25 national championship team and Big Ten runner-up squad in 2025-26. Furthermore, he was given the Big Ten’s Nagurski-Woodson Defensive Player of the Year honor and, for the second straight season, the Tatum-Woodson Defensive Back of the Year award.
His impact extended beyond the field as well, earning the Lott IMPACT Trophy, which recognizes performance, leadership, character and community involvement, and he was nominated as Ohio State’s candidate for the 2025-26 Jackie Robinson Community & Impact Award.
“I have spent 11 years coaching in the NFL and Caleb Downs is the best football player — pro or college — that I have ever coached,” Ohio State co-defensive coordinator and secondary coach Tim Walton said. “He is first-class and exceptional in all areas he touches.”
That combination of production, football IQ and consistency has made Downs one of the most highly regarded prospects in the 2026 NFL Draft. Multiple outlets project him as a top-10 pick, with ESPN and The Athletic placing him as high as No. 5 overall to the New York Giants.
“Downs would be the first safety taken in the top five since Eric Berry went to the Chiefs in 2010, and he’d be worth it,” ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. wrote.
But Downs is more than just a football player. And he’s not shy in talking about what’s most important to him.
“There’s two things that are more important than me, more important than me playing football,” Downs told “The Walk” podcast in August as to why he wears No. 2. “My faith in Jesus Christ and my family. So those two things is what I wear on my chest every game and those are the two most important things in my life.”
His faith has been central not only to his personal life, but also to his platform at Ohio State. In 2024, several football players helped lead a worship gathering on campus that featured worship music, player testimonies and baptisms. When the event returned in 2025 — drawing an estimated 2,000 attendees, nearly double the previous year — Downs was among the players who spoke to the crowd.
“No play we make on the field — no touchdown, no interception — can compare to the Kingdom of God,” Downs said.
Speaking afterward, he emphasized where he believes true credit belongs.
“God is good,” Downs told local television station ABC 6. “I mean, I can’t take credit for it. None of my teammates can take credit for it. At the end of the day, His glory is above anything that we can do, but we know Jesus is real and we know that if you believe in Him, you will be saved.”
That message has also shaped how Downs talks about faith publicly. On “The Walk” podcast, he talked about the hesitation many feel about coming to Christ.
“Some people say, ‘I’m not ready to be baptized. I’m not ready to come to Jesus,'” he said. “But the realization is that Jesus is for the people that are sick. Jesus is for the people that aren’t perfect. You’re never going to be perfect enough to come to Jesus. That’s the point.”
He continued later: “Whenever you surrender to Him, that’s when everything will be washed away and you will be made renewed in Him. The faster that you can come to Him and run to Him and totally surrender your heart and your mind to Him, that’s the better off you’re going to be.
“There’s no amount of good behavior that you can do that will allow you to feel like you’re righteous enough to come to Him, because you never will be. It’s just a realization that He is what makes you righteous. He’s what makes you perfect.”
Downs, after just three collegiate seasons, officially declared for the NFL Draft on Jan. 7 and made sure to point his gratitude to God with a post on Instagram.
“Everything I’ve been able to achieve starts with my faith,” he wrote. “I’m grateful to God for the direction, strength, and purpose He’s given me. And I will continue to glorify, honor, and praise Him throughout this journey.”
The NFL Draft goes from April 23-25 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
THIS IS THE GET IN THE GAME PODCAST
WITH SCOTT LINEBRINK
Our guest today is Fonzo Martinez, the boys basketball head coach at McKinney Christian Academy in Texas.
In 2026, Martinez led his club to the 4A state championship for the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS). He joins host Scott Linebrink to talk about leadership, faith, winning and trusting in the process.
What a season, what a journey, what a team, what a BROTHERHOOD✊🏼🫡 This team was SPECIAL, and has only cemented the standard and CU1TURE of our program. Time to get in the gym, and start working for next season… we’re coming for that 🏆💍💪🏼
Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Nell Redmond)
Heading into the season, some NBA pundits and fans saw this as a “gap year” for the Boston Celtics. Star guard Jayson Tatum was coming off a torn Achilles suffered in last year’s playoffs, while key contributors Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday were dealt in the offseason. Longtime center Al Horford also departed, signing with the Golden State Warriors in free agency.
But as the NBA enters the postseason, there the Celtics are, back in familiar territory as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference after posting a 55-26 regular-season record. It’s the fifth straight season in which Boston has finished in the top two in the East. After missing most of the season recovering, Tatum is back playing, and head coach Joe Mazzulla is looking to lead his team to a second NBA championship under his watch.
The way the Celtics closed out the regular season was perhaps a microcosm of the 2025-26 season. Tatum and fellow star guards Jaylen Brown and Derrick White, along with a host of key reserves, were unavailable for Game No. 82, yet the Celtics beat the Orlando Magic — which was battling for playoff positioning — with just eight available players.
“We said it all year, one through [18], whoever steps on the floor, there’s an expectation to put us in position with an opportunity to win,” Mazzulla said Sunday after the game. “Stick to the process of winning. Today is no different than the other 81 games from the standpoint of we had eight guys, and the expectation is to put us in position to win, to execute, to play hard, to play together.”
For his efforts this season, Mazzulla is on the shortlist for Coach of the Year honors. Should he win, he’ll point the spotlight off himself and instead toward God, as he often does when on the biggest stage.
When the Celtics won the title in 2024, Mazzulla donned a black shirt that read — in all white capital letters — “BUT FIRST…LET ME THANK GOD.” As the head coach for one of the most storied franchises in all of professional sports, he sees his platform as an opportunity to regularly give glory to God.
He remained in that shirt for all of the postgame celebration photos and interviews. He was even pictured holding up the Larry O’Brien Trophy, smiling while proudly wearing the shirt. It marked the 18th world championship for the Celtics — the most of any NBA franchise — and the official photo and video documentation of it will forever include his bold and public statement of faith.
The championship celebration continued into the early hours of the morning, at which time Mazzulla walked around the confetti-filled arena with his wife, Camai, and prayed.
“On the walk we were talking a lot about how this can’t change us,” he told the audience at a Nations of Coaches event in Boston in 2024. “A lot of it was praying for the humility and perspective to not allow this to change who we are.”
The Mazzulla home proudly features a “prayer board” where he, his wife, and their children add prayers throughout the year. The board oscillates between prayers for their immediate family, friends and other loved ones. At one point, it included a prayer for Mazzulla to rise through the coaching ranks and become an NBA coach. But as he was making the grind through the Division-II ranks, coaching in the NBA felt like sort of a pipe dream.
“I almost took the ‘NBA head coach’ one down and then she kind of yelled at me and made me keep it up there,” he said at the event.
Before he was married, he started a “vision board,” where he put up pictures of goals he wanted to “speak into existence.” On it were goals like winning the NBA championship and working for the Celtics, and eventually photos of his wife and kids as well as NBA coaches Brad Stevens, Erik Spoelstra and Steve Kerr. There was also a photo of Jesus.
“The vision board kind of tells your story — like I want to work for the Celtics, I want to win a Larry O’Brien Trophy, I want to be able to learn from these three guys … I want to keep Jesus at the center of it, and I want to have a family,” he said. “So it kind of helps you tell the story about where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.”
As he’s grown older as a man and as a coach, so too has his faith and understanding of Jesus — in particular the concept of grace.
“Over the last maybe five to eight years I’ve really made a commitment to study grace and what real love is and understanding [all that],” Mazzulla said on the Sports Spectrum Podcast in October 2023. “How I’m able to accept God’s grace or how I’m able to accept His love is going to be how I’m able to give it to my kids or my wife or people. So it’s something that I’ve really been focused on the last few years: grace, love, understanding, mercy, those gifts.”
He’s also able to see how God has orchestrated his career to where he’s gone from the lower ranks of college to coaching an NBA champion.
“There’s no coincidence that I’ve had the opportunity to coach a team of the area that I’m from,” he said on the podcast. “I grew up 45 minutes from [Boston] and God has given me this. I try to be as thankful as I can every single day, knowing it might not last forever, but this is where God has us. So I can’t hide that, and I’m just forever grateful for what He’s done for me.”
Mazzulla and the Celtics will begin their 2026 playoff run Sunday against whichever team emerges as the East’s No. 7 seed from the play-in round.
THIS IS THE SPORTS SPECTRUM PODCAST WITH MATT FORTE, FEATURING DAVID POLLACK
David Pollack is a former University of Georgia All-American linebacker, who was a first-round draft pick in 2005 by the Cincinnati Bengals. After his playing career, he spent more than a decade at ESPN as a college football analyst. He is also the co-host of the “Family Goals” podcast and the host of the “See Ball Get Ball” podcast.
Today on Sports Spectrum, we welcome David Pollack back to the show as he provides an update on his wife’s battle with brain cancer, trusting God in the storms of life, his just-released book “Every Day Counts,” and the 2026 NFL Draft.
