Former Miami Dolphin Sam Madison’s coaching career overcomes a life-and-death derailment | Opinion
Sam Madison is talking about his coaching career and the 12 years it took him to become an overnight success when he mentions in passing how the effort “got derailed there for a couple of years.”
He mentions this with about the same urgency and concern as the rest of us drive over a speed bump. But the backstory to this seemingly unremarkable bump in the road includes the life-and-death crisis the Madison family — Sam, his wife Saskia, their sons Kellen and Kaden, and daughter Kennedy — overcame in 2015 and through 2017.
It brushes aside the rejection Madison endured from his hometown Miami Dolphins.
And it doesn’t fully speak to the grand opportunity Madison now has as the cornerbacks coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, a team days away from a chance at an NFL championship in Super Bowl 54.
Yeah, that’s a lot to unpack so let’s start at the beginning:
After Madison’s nine-year career as a Dolphins cornerback ended after the 2005 season, he signed with the New York Giants. And it’s easy to point to the Giants winning Super Bowl 42 with Madison as a starter as his crowing achievement with that team.
Except that in that very season Madison won that Super Bowl ring, he caught the coaching bug that positioned him for this opportunity at this Super Bowl’s ring.
Madison tore his abdominal muscle that season and missed the wildc ard team’s first two playoff games. During that time Madison typically got treatment in the morning then went out to practice in the afternoon to help his teammates, even though he wasn’t participating.
“Nobody asked me to do it,” Madison said. “We had a young football team, and a lot of the guys were either rookies or second-year players and I knew they needed support and inspiration.”
Giants coach Tom Coughlin noticed. And despite an unwritten policy that injured players could not travel, Coughlin asked Madison to accompany the team through the early playoff games he missed. That’s where Madison began to think coaching was in his future.
When his playing career ended after 2008, Madison took coaching internships to learn and hone his craft. He served three years as an intern with the St. Louis Rams. He worked as an intern and then a guest coach with the Dolphins, then interned with the Baltimore Ravens and took another internship with the Seattle Seahawks.
But in December 2015 the journey to a coaching career got, well, “derailed.”
Kennedy, 11 years old at the time, was felled when both her kidneys began to fail.
At first the little girl’s feet were swelling. Then her legs. Then her stomach. A Dolphins trainer who visited Madison’s Davie home told him to go to an urgent care facility for a check.
The urgent care visit made it clear to Madison his daughter was in trouble.
“I take her to urgent care and they’re taking her blood pressure,” Madison recalled. “160. 130. 185. 115. And the nurse was looking around and she said, ‘I urge you to go to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital before you go home.’ Now I’m really freaking out. My wife is a pharmacist and has all the little details on fevers, colds, she was always up on those things but this was different.
“Something attacked her. We still don’t know what attacked her. For a little girl that’s 11-12, and plays football with boys and plays basketball and is a phenomenal athlete, she was really in a bad place. It also put a lot of stress on everybody in the family.”
Kennedy was immediately placed into a transplant portal for family and friends and began dialysis treatments. But that was not an answer because early in 2016 she suffered a blood clot. And it was dangerously near her heart.
Not only was that suddenly the biggest medical issue facing Kennedy, but it also dropped her off donor lists.
“By the time she was healthy again, all these other people went by her,” Madison said. “So they said, ‘Sam, why don’t you donate?’ And I was a perfect match. So it was a no-brainer.
“I was like, ‘When do we do it?’ I had over 13 surgeries in my NFL career, one more wasn’t going to hurt.”
Madison donated a kidney to his daughter two days before her September 11 birthday in 2016.
“She’s doing phenomenal now,” Madison said of Kennedy. “She’s a freshman in high school at St. Thomas Aquinas [in Fort Lauderdale].”
With his daughter back to health, Madison felt he could return to his coaching passion. He had been coaching at St. Thomas Aquinas when Brian Flores was hired as Dolphins coach in February of 2019. Flores then asked Madison to interview for a spot on the Dolphins staff.
Madison didn’t get the job. He was expecting to coach at St. Thomas Aquinas again in 2019 when the Chiefs called.
“I thank Chris Grier and the coach for asking me to come in and interview with five other guys before I went to Kansas City,” Madison said. “It just didn’t work in Miami. And it worked out for me with coach Andy Reid in Kansas City.
“But I still love this franchise down here. I’d go leaps and bounds for anything they need. This is always home and will always be home, and I’ll always have a special place in my heart for this franchise.”
This is how much love Madison has for Miami, the Dolphins and their fans: He has one Super Bowl ring and might win another Sunday. But he is careful not to flaunt that success when he’s in South Florida.
“In Miami, I really only wear it on certain occasions because I don’t want anyone to feel bad,” Madison said. “Out of Miami I wear it more than I wear it here.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 2:37 PM.
