Darren Rizzi, now NFL coach, honors his North Jersey roots and memories of his brother

EMERSON − Darren Rizzi isn’t shy about his Bergen County roots. He is still bummed The Fireplace closed. He prefers Callahan's for his hot dogs (but Johnny and Hanges is good too). He texts his 82-year-old mom in Emerson every day that he loves her.

And it’s where he and his brother Danny grew up.

“I would be lying if I told you that I don’t think about him all the time,” said Rizzi, who has a 2-0 record as interim coach of the New Orleans Saints entering Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams.

“I have his memorial here on my desk with his obituary. I keep it here as a reminder.”

Daniel Rizzi died in 2017 from complications of Crohns Disease. He was just 47. Daniel was two years older than Darren, but you can’t tell the story of Darren, his passion, his outlook and his energy without talking about Daniel.

“Danny just came out playing sports, even as a 2-year old, he was running around in the park near our apartment with a ball and bat,” said the boys' mother, Phylis Rizzi-Rooney. “Darren wouldn’t even have to talk. He would just point at something and Danny would go get it for him. That’s how they were.”

“When I say that we came home from school every day, every day, the first thing on our mind was sports,” Darren said. “What are we doing, whether we’re playing Wiffle ball, or football, or kickball, it was always something and it was always together.”

Rizzi was a standout youth football player for the Hillsdale Hawks and remembers his eighth-grade championship game against rival Rivervale like it was yesterday. He said coaches from Pascack Valley were in the house trying to get him to stay and play there (Danny attended Pascack Valley), but Phylis had other ideas.

It’s a famous Rizzi family story, but they tell it differently. Darren remembers kids in church wearing Bergen Catholic jackets like ‘it was free advertising,’ Phylis remembers a neighbor, Peter O’Rourke, walking past the house each day in a Bergen Catholic coat.

“Darren was 5-6-years old and said, ‘Mom, someday I want to wear that jacket,' it’s a true story,” Phylis said.

“My mom and step-father (James Rooney) was adamant about sending me to Bergen Catholic,” Rizzi said. "I’m not going to lie, I fought it in the beginning, but ultimately it was a great decision by her at the time and I don’t regret it."

Rooney − ‘Roons’ to everyone who knew him − was a huge Crusaders booster. As the legend goes, he helped arrange for the actual pregame horse ‘jousting’ of two costumed horses (one in red, one in green) before Bergen Catholic’s state championship game against St. Joseph in 1987.

That was Rizzi's senior year, which ended with a 7-0 loss.

Should we bring that up? Rizzi is ready.

“If that game was played on a regular field, we would have won,” he said, voice rising with emotion. “We played in a mud bowl. When I was finishing up at Bergen Catholic, we didn’t have turf yet. We had beaten Joe's in the regular season, and our coach, Bill Roca, who I love and still stay in touch with to this day, didn’t want to play on a neutral site. He wanted to play at home. The field was so bad. It neutralized the game. We were the better team.”

Darren Rizzi's journey from North Jersey to New Orleans

Rizzi went on from Bergen Catholic to play at Rhode Island. He then started his coaching odyssey: Colgate, New Haven, Northeastern, three years as a head coach back at New Haven, then at Rutgers working for Greg Schiano.

All that time in college, he recruited North Jersey. Time for more hot dogs.

“I made all the stops through Bergen and Passaic county,” Rizzi said. “It’s funny, when you’re at Bergen Catholic, you hate all those schools, now you’re recruiting them. Mike Sheridan, when he was at St. Mary, would always have Johnny and Hanges waiting for me when I came.”

After a year as head coach at Rhode Island, Darren got the call to join the Miami Dolphins in the NFL as special teams coach in 2009. At one point, he was strongly considered for the head coaching job there. He left Miami after the 2018 season and joined the staff with the Saints in the same role.

Rizzi was integral in helping create the new NFL kickoff style, and achieved a level of national fame in doing so.

When the Saints lost seven in a row following a 2-0 start this season, they let go of head coach Dennis Allen and promoted Rizzi to the job. He had won over the locker room with his straight-talk style, and the Saints' effort noticeably picked up in two straight wins.

Phylis, a fantastic football mom, has her fall weekends set. Saturday, she follows Notre Dame (her father played there), Delaware, Penn State, Texas, Miami and Rutgers.

“I try to go to mass on Saturday after the games, or go to early mass on Sunday depending on who plays when,” she said.

On Sundays, incredibly, Phylis doesn’t have the NFL Sunday Ticket, just the RedZone channel. Sometimes she watches the Saints game at her friend's house. She made her first trip to New Orleans for the Saints' 35-14 win over the Cleveland Browns on Nov. 17.

Mostly she just prays.

“I get very nervous, I pray constantly; my friends make fun of me, they say, 'Phylis, you don’t pray for football…'

"I do. He is a very special son… they both were.”

It comes back to Danny, the way he could sing, the way he could light up a room with his sarcasm and jokes, the way he endured his illness with a positive attitude.

“My whole block tells me can you imagine what Roon and Danny would be doing right now,” Phylis laughs. “I thought of that sitting there Sunday [at the Saints-Browns game], oh Danny and Jimmy, I hope you somehow know. I believe in that. I get signs and I know they are watching, but it’s a shame they couldn’t be here. Danny is jumping for joy, because he always believed that Darren would go far in football. He always believed it.”

Darren Rizzi is more proof that North Jersey is the cradle of football coaches at every level. He gets excited talking about Bergen-Bosco, and all of the coaches here he knows like Greg Schiano at Rutgers, Dan Sabella at Don Bosco, Rich Hansen at St. Peter’s Prep, and all the Campanile brothers. They helped shape him and his coaching style, and so did Danny.

“As we grew older, he would come to Rutgers games when I was there, and it was funny, he was my biggest fan, but he was also my biggest critic, like any brother,” Darren said. “I knew I could always get the truth from him, even if I didn’t want to hear it.

"To be honest, that’s kind of the way I approach coaching, because with all these players, the relationship aspect is a huge part and you have to give criticism at the same time and make sure the players know that it comes from a place of love.”