Tom Clements

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This article is about the Canadian quaterback. For the fictional character from EastEnders see Tom Clements (EastEnders).

Tom Clements (born June 18, 1953, in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania) is a legendary Canadian Football League quarterback. Currently, he is the quarterbacks coach of the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers.

Clements was the starting quarterback for the Notre Dame football team from 1972 to 1974 and led the team to a national championship in 1973. In 1974, Clements finished fourth in the voting for the Heisman Trophy and was voted a first-team All-American.

Upon graduation, Clements began a career in the Canadian Football League, quarterbacking the Ottawa Rough Riders for four seasons and winning the league’s Rookie of the Year award in his inaugural campaign. Clements continued his career with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1979, but finished the season with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, for whom he would also play in 1981 and 1982; in 1980, Clements was briefly on the roster of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs but saw no playing time in the regular season. In 1983 Clements was traded from Hamilton to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for long-time Blue Bomber quarterback Dieter Brock. (Clements would play with Winnipeg until 1987, in which year he won the CFL Most Outstanding Player award). The next year those two teams, Hamilton and Winnipeg, faced each other in the Grey Cup. Clements led the Bombers to their first Grey Cup victory since 1962. Clements finished his career in Winnipeg and was elected in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. His career also saw him win two Grey Cups—with Ottawa in 1976 and with Winnipeg in 1984—after each of which he was named the championship’s “Outstanding Offensive Player”. He finished his CFL career with over 39,000 passing yards, 252 passing touchdowns and a 60.35 completion percentage. In 2005, for the 75th anniversary of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Clements was selected one of the Bombers 20 all-time great players.

While still in the CFL, Clements pursued a Juris Doctor degree, finally graduating magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame School of Law in 1986, and, upon the completion of his playing career, he practiced law in Chicago for five years. In 1992, Clements was hired as quarterbacks coach for Notre Dame, where he served until 1995 under head coach Lou Holtz. After again practicing law in 1996, Clements took his first NFL job, working as the quarterbacks coach for the New Orleans Saints from 1997 to 1999. Clements would hold the same job in 2000 with the Kansas City Chiefs and between 2001 and 2003 with the Pittsburgh Steelers; under Clements’s tutelage, the Chiefs’ Elvis Grbac (in 2000) and the Steelers’ Kordell Stewart (in 2001) and Tommy Maddox (in 2002) each reached the Pro Bowl.

In 2004 and 2005, Clements served as offensive coordinator for the Buffalo Bills, but was released by the team after a front-office shakeup in which Marv Levy assumed the position of general manager and ultimately installed Dick Jauron as the team’s new head coach. Upon the hiring of Mike McCarthy to be the head coach of the Packers on January 11, 2006, the Packers parted ways with several assistant coaches, and McCarthy later interviewed NFL Europe head coach Steve Logan and Clements before settling on Clements on January 28, 2006.