CHARLOTTE — Tyrone Poole has played with and against the best during a 12-year NFL career, during which he was the first defensive player the Panthers ever drafted, and the first HBCU product to come to Charlotte.
And he's coached some of the best in the league during his trip to the Pro Bowl Games, when the emphasis shifted to flag football.
Now, he's taking all of those experiences and applying them to a whole new game.
Poole is the head coach of the Alabama State women's flag football team, which was the first Division I program to offer the sport.
"I've been fortunate to be a part of a lot of firsts," Poole said.
The 1995 first-rounder, who had a pick-six in the first-ever Panthers game when he took one back in the Hall of Fame Game (another first), got his start in coaching in retirement, when he was coaching his daughter Tyra and son Tyson's youth sports teams. And even then, he thought this could be something he could do in the future.
"So I've been coaching flag football for a long time, so I just said, hey, God has given me this opportunity," Poole said. "I've gained wisdom, knowledge, from a high level of pro football, and now these young ladies are wanting to become great in a sport where they probably saw their brother or their dad talk about how they played. So now they have an opportunity to be great, and I felt like there were not a lot of quality teachers out there.
"Most of the coaches were teachers coaching flag football. So I'm like, hey, how can I give back and give back the wisdom, the knowledge of the mental and the physical, maximization that these young ladies want. It started with my daughter, but then I look at the fact of where flag football is going, and all these young ladies want to be great."
Last weekend's Fanatics Flag Football Challenge, when Team USA worked a collection of current and former NFL stars, including Luke Kuechly, brought the sport even more attention, but it has steadily grown throughout the years. The sport has been added to the 2028 Summer Olympics, and flag football was named an Emerging Sports for Women program by the NCAA, which meant at least 40 schools were sponsoring it last year, and as many as 60 were expected this year.
"Flag football has changed my life in ways I never imagined. This sport has led me to a college scholarship and a future in the game I love," said Ki'Lolo Westerlund, a flag football student-athlete at Alabama State. "The NCAA's decision to include women's flag football in its Emerging Sport for Women program is incredibly meaningful because it shows that our hard work, dedication, and passion are being recognized."
And because he's proud of his HBCU legacy — Poole starred at Fort Valley State before the Panthers took him 22nd overall in 1995 — the opportunity to coach at Alabama State was one he was eager to continue to build as well.
He had coached at NAIA Reinhardt College in Georgia last year, so the chance to make the jump to Division I Southwestern Athletic Conference appealed to him immediately.
"When the opportunity here at Alabama State happened, I, being an HBCU product, understand the landscape," Poole said. "I understand a whole lot of dimensions here, and Alabama State is such a great Division I program. I learned a lot at Reinhardt. That was my first outing as a head coach. So I learned a lot of things, kind of like Dom Capers did in 1995, right? I'm pretty sure Dom would say that he learned a lot in his first year that helped him throughout his career."
And after adjusting to the differences in the sport (and Kuechly learned in a hurry that a 235-pound linebacker, even one of the best ever, isn't at an athletic advantage), Poole recognized during his stint as a coach during the Pro Bowl Games (alongside Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice) that having players go both ways created another coaching point.
"I had some of the guys coming over from offense playing defense like CeeDee Lamb, he said, 'Hey, coach, I could play safety for you now,'" Poole recalled. "And George Pickens wanted to go over there, so he could get an interception. The offensive guys want to play defense, and the defensive guys, everybody was athletic and could play, and that's the great thing about flag football. It's just all about athletic ability, right? You don't have to worry about trying to tackle anybody; you don't have to weigh 250 pounds. It's all about, can you move linearly? Can you move laterally, and can you go vertically?"
And once you get past learning to pull flags instead of tackling, Poole said the principles he picked up during his long career held fast.
"Now it's schemes, it's how can we create high-low situations offensively, checkdowns, throwing the deep balls," Poole said. "Defensively, it's, how do we play curl flats, how do we play Cover 1, Cover 2, Cover 3? So, really, the schematics of the game of flag is tackle football.
"It's still physical, but it's all about bodies in motion."
Poole often references the lessons he learned from Capers, and the parallels to his first Division I coaching job are something he talks about every day as they build together.
"Being my first year, we're creating a system, and the ladies are learning a system, and we're not just out there playing flag football, we actually have a system, we have an identity," he said. "Everything that I learned from the NFL principle-wise, I'm bringing it to Alabama State, everything that I've learned, everywhere that I played, bits and pieces are here at Alabama State. There are a lot of things that I learned from Dom Capers that I'm doing here. I learned that everybody has to fit their gap. Everybody has a responsibility, and if you're supposed to be on the inside, be on the inside and trust that your buddy is going to be on the outside.
"So that's the same way I teach the ladies here, defensively, offensively, we have to be where we're supposed to be, and if we're not where we're supposed to be, and if we're in somebody else's zone or a spot, then the defense breaks down. So I've learned so many things from different coaches that I played with that I utilize here.
"And the ladies have done a great job in grasping the concept of what I'm trying to do defensively and offensively, and we're moving full steam ahead, and I believe the best is yet to come. They are very smart, very intelligent, kind of like those players in the NFL, the Pro Bowl, these ladies are very smart, very, very smart."
Poole's loving this job, but he also sees the growth of the sports, and can't help but think about a future in which the NFL is sponsoring a league. And when that happens, he's hoping his resume will get him a foot in the door.
"So hopefully one day when the NFL starts that professional league that they say they're going to have, then hopefully I'll be recommended as a head coach," he said. "And who knows, there may be a professional team in Carolina, and I have an opportunity to come back and be a head coach in the city where it all started."
