Coach John Fox Recovering from Heart Surgery, Hoping for Super Bowl
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on UNGUARDED WITH RACHEL NICHOLS, unprecedented. How Coach John Fox led the Broncos to within a game of the Super Bowl just months after major heart surgery.</s>COACH JOHN FOX, BRONCOS: I really thought I was dying.</s>ANNOUNCER: Unusual.</s>BOOMER ESIASON, FORMER NFL MVP: I'm former NFL MVP Boomer Esiason. Tonight, Rachel and I will discuss figure skating? Are you kidding me?</s>ANNOUNCER: Undercover. The great one, Wayne Gretzky, opens up about his life, his kids, and a very interesting recent outing.</s>WAYNE GRETZKY, FORMER NHL SUPERSTAR: I put a hat on, a pair of sunglasses and I told them "keep my head down" and not to call me by my name.</s>RACHEL NICHOLS, HOST: Welcome to UNGUARDED. This weekend, future Hall of Famers Peyton Manning and Tom Brady will face off for the chance to go to the Super Bowl. As much as that match-up has football fans salivating, the man directing Manning from the sideline is drawing nearly as much interest. Broncos' head coach John Fox has done a masterful job leading Denver, especially since he forced to spend nearly a third of the season coaching from 1,400 miles away, recovering from a condition that nearly killed him.</s>NICHOLS (voice-over): John Fox is a football lifer, spending decades chasing a Super Bowl championship. He's taken jobs for it, moved cities for it, missed school plays and family dinners, spent hundreds of thousands of hours watching film.</s>FOX: He's playing pretty good.</s>NICHOLS (on camera): You've probably seen the image of the Lombardi trophy more than the pictures of your children. You've come close to winning it a few times.</s>FOX: Yes.</s>NICHOLS: But you don't actually have a Super Bowl trophy yet.</s>FOX: I've been twice. One as a defensive coordinator, one as a head coach. I don't want that rug burn again, or that rope burn as you walk across the field and you're not the winning team. But some day, you know hopefully this year, we'll be able to be in New York and hoist that trophy.</s>NICHOLS (voice-over): There's not much that Fox wouldn't give to finally win. But this year, he nearly gave his life.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Broncos head coach John Fox hospitalized today after feeling light-headed on a North Carolina golf course.</s>FOX: I'd had this aortic valve problem since birth. It's something you're born with. And, you know, they monitor it the older you get.</s>NICHOLS (on camera): Right. 1997 was when this was diagnosed?</s>FOX: Yes.</s>NICHOLS: That's 17 years ago.</s>FOX: Yes.</s>NICHOLS (voice-over): Doctors fold Fox his aorta was calcifying over time, cutting off blood flow, and that only surgery would correct it. But Fox delayed, season after season. There was always another team to coach, that trophy to chase.</s>FOX: It's open-heart surgery. I mean, it's a major, major surgery to go and actually replace the valves. So it's not a minor surgery. It's not, you know, a little affair by any stretch. So I put it off. I thought I was going to make it to the end of the season.</s>NICHOLS: He didn't. Two and a half months ago, in the midst of the Broncos' bye week, Fox collapsed on the golf course near the house he keeps in Charlotte.</s>FOX: I was literally 200 yards from the backyard of my house, and probably 100 yards to the backyard of one of my better friend's house. I could have very easily been down in Marco Island fishing 60 miles out, and that wouldn't have been, you know, quite the same scenario.</s>NICHOLS (on camera): I imagine when you're an NFL coach, and you're moving these players around like chess pieces, there's that Masters of the Universe feeling, compared to lying on your back in a hospital gown.</s>FOX: Well, it was pretty humbling and it was -- you know, it was a little bit scary. I had an episode to where, you know, I really thought I was dying. Fortunately, I was with friends, and they called 911, got the paramedics there. They were able to get me stabilized. And then two days later I had open-heart surgery.</s>NICHOLS (voice-over): As Fox began the road to recovery, one of his assistants was named the Broncos' interim head coach. But that didn't mean Fox could step away from the game.</s>FOX: Well, with technology today, we have iPads that they can push video over the Internet. So I got all the cut-outs. I had practice tapes, and actually, I was able to set up a Skype and talk to the team in the team room. So, you know, with today's technology...</s>NICHOLS: It was like you weren't even gone.</s>FOX: It definitely was. It was like a virtual coach.</s>NICHOLS: You can watch film on your iPad; you can Skype into team meetings; but there's still someone else standing in for you on sidelines on game day coaching your team. What is that like to watch?</s>FOX: It was -- that was the hardest part. It had been probably about 200 games since I missed a game. So that was very hard.</s>NICHOLS: Were you like a kid on Christmas morning when you got to actually come back here to Denver and coach the team?</s>FOX: Yes, it was neat. I flew back on a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Came out and talked to the team. They couldn't have been better. I mean, everybody, you know, responding and going through an adverse situation, and I think all in all, it's made us better.</s>CHEVY CHASE, ACTOR/COMEDIAN: Oh, come on, guys! It's so simple. Maybe you need a refresher course. Hey, it's all ball bearings nowadays.</s>NICHOLS: I did read that the morning of your first game back, you weren't turning football since you woke up. You actually inaugurated that with -- by watching "Fletch," the movie.</s>FOX: Well, I usually do try to watch all the pregame shows and all that kind of stuff, just kind of tends to hype you up a little bit.</s>NICHOLS: So you can thank the doctor that helped you get back on the field and Chevy Chase?</s>FOX: Exactly. That was great. Happy to be back.</s>NICHOLS: You heart had to work so hard before the surgery, it sounds like. Now that it's not working as hard, do you actually feel better than you did?</s>FOX: A hundred percent, yes. My surgeon told me, basically, my valve was the size of a pinhead. Now it's the size of a 50-cent piece. So I feel a lot better; I have a lot more energy; I feel stronger, healthier. But I feel 150 percent better than I did eight weeks ago.</s>NICHOLS: Amazing to think of the strain Fox's heart had been under all those years. We're going to have much more from John Fox coming up, including some fun revelations about his quarterback, Peyton Manning. And later, the great Wayne Gretzky joins us. Even he's a little shocked about what's happening in his adopted home of Los Angeles.</s>GRETZKY: I've got to be really honest: I didn't see this coming in 1988.