Heart, Mind, Fist: A Study of Jeff Ulbrich's Coaching Philosophy

Jeff Ulbrich sat in his New York office immediately following his first season as the Jets' defensive coordinator in January 2022. A new offseason was upon him, his first as a defensive coordinator and one that was vitally important.

The pre-draft process was just beginning. The NFL Scouting Combine loomed a few short weeks away.

The Jets' scouting department had asked him to define what he was looking for in defensive players. They needed measurables, weight classes, position profiles, character makeup — the works. But as Ulbrich sifted through his own thoughts, data and film, something felt incomplete.

There had to be more.

"The game for me is so much deeper than just the money I make or the status this creates for me or anybody else. It's so much deeper than that," Ulbrich said. "So, it's like, how do I put what I believe in — in my soul — into a very digestible way. Something that I can articulate to get everybody in this building to see what I am trying to create; coaches, front office and players alike."

As he ruminated, Michael Ghobrial, who was the New York special teams assistant at the time, strolled into Ulbrich's office, as he was wont to do. Ghobrial and Ulbrich's friendship dates back to the days when both men were getting their coaching starts at UCLA in the early 2010s. Ulbrich was fresh off his decade in the league and was the Bruins' linebackers coach and special teams coordinator. Ghobrial was a graduate assistant assigned to work alongside Ulbrich.

They'd meet often in Ulbrich's old rental in Manhattan Beach, California, spending long nights hunched over their special teams playbook. As the bright west coast sun slipped below the pacific ocean evening and evening, Ulbrich and Ghobrial weren't just developing that playbook. They were shaping a style of play and, more importantly, trying to define what their unit truly stood for.

Their conversations went beyond X's and O's. They talked about coaching philosophy — about the kind of leaders they wanted to become, what really mattered to them about the game and how to inspire players to believe in something bigger.

Early on, they landed on a guiding question that would shape their approach for years to come.

"What does the casual fan who doesn't know a thing about football, what does he leave our game saying about us?" Ulbrich recalls he and Ghobrial asking themselves as they sat across from each other on a sofa in Manhattan Beach. "What impression did we make on him?"

The duo found themselves still asking those same questions a decade later, perhaps in some ways, even a lifetime later. This time they were doing so on a completely different coast, in a new time zone and with a slate of players that make up 1% of the world's greatest athletes. The stakes had changed, but Ulbrich's need to define his philosophy had not.

He didn't want a slogan — a marketing line to slap on a T-shirt — or a rotating list of clichés to toss out in team meetings. Those approaches frustrated him.

"That is just not real. It isn't," he said. "In the heat of a moment in a game, are you really going to reflect on that slogan? It's going to mean shit to you, and it's going to decide whether we win or lose this game? I don't think so."

So if not slogans, what would define Ulbrich's defense? What words could express his identity as a coach, and the soul of his approach to the game?

After some time, experimentation and discussion, he and Ghobrial finally landed on three words. Three words that took decades to develop. Three words that mean everything to Ulbrich. Three words that cleanly articulate what Ulbrich wants the lifeblood of a defense to be.

Heart. Mind. Fist.

"It's a lifestyle," Falcons ILB Josh Woods said. "It's not something you can do someday and sometime. It's what men are made of."

And don't get it twisted.

"It's not a t-shirt," Ulbrich said. "It's real. It's tangible. It's measurable. And you can apply it to everything from style of play to building the defensive roster to identifying guys who can play in this defense and guys who can't."

It applies to how Ulbrich game plans. How he teaches. How he leads.

But what does each pillar mean? What do they represent individually as well as together?

Through exclusive interviews with Ulbrich about his coaching philosophy and Falcons players who live it out each day, the AtlantaFalcons.com editorial team takes you through the building blocks of a coaching foundation, one forged over Ulbrich's 25 years as a player and coach in this league. One born out of his very being.

"It will forever be a part of everything that I do," Ulbrich said. "It will because I absolutely believe in it. It's not just words. There's a true essence behind it that I am connected to."

Here is a look into Ulbrich's heart-mind-fist philosophy for the very first time.