Gabe Jackson looked back at Tony Sparano, a puzzled expression of confusion and slight terror on his face.
"Get in at right guard," Sparano barked at the then-Raiders rookie ahead of a two-minute drill in training camp.
Jackson, who was drafted by Oakland 81st overall in 2014, was an All-American left guard at Mississippi State. Up until that moment, he had never taken a snap right of center. The first defender he was set to battle? Pro Bowl defensive end Justin Tuck.
"He threw me out there into the fire to see how I was going to survive," Jackson told ESPN. "He told me 'You're going to have to be able to play everything, because the more you can do, the more valuable you are.' That always stuck with me."
Jackson quickly won a starting job as a rookie, appearing in 13 games with 12 starts. After playing his first two seasons at left guard, Jackson eventually slid over to his current position at right guard.
Though they only spent that one 2014 season together, Sparano's decision to force Jackson out of his comfort zone played a major role in setting him up for the rest of his career. Last summer, Jackson signed a five-year, $56 million extension with Oakland, making him the sixth-highest-paid guard in the NFL.
In the week after Sparano's unexpected death from arteriosclerotic heart disease at age 56, stories about his impact on former players have highlighted the tough-love leadership that brought out the best in those he coached.
"I didn't understand at the time why he was doing that," Jackson said of the Minnesota Vikings offensive line coach. "But he had a good philosophy and a reason behind everything that he did."
With the entire Vikings team on hand Friday, Sparano was laid to rest, his offensive line starters from the 2017 season -- Riley Reiff, Nick Easton, Pat Elflein, Joe Berger, Mike Remmers and Rashod Hill -- serving as pallbearers at his funeral in Wayzata, Minnesota.
Coaches and players he worked with throughout his 19-year NFL career were on hand for the celebration of Sparano's life. Many of them -- Mike Zimmer, Sean Payton, Dan Campbell, Rex Ryan -- connected through the same individual: Bill Parcells, whose cantankerous yet benevolent personality Sparano personified.
"Every part of him was Parcells," said Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, who first coached with Sparano in Dallas from 2003 to 2006. "Half the sayings he would come in and say, ‘Hey the old man would come in and tell me this.' Or, ‘He called me this morning -- have you talked to the old man lately?'"
Sparano's East Coast Italian roots showed often, characterized in his brutally honest speech laced with colorful language and no-nonsense attitude.
Upon being named the interim head coach in Oakland after Dennis Allen was fired four games into the 2014 season, Sparano held an all-team meeting after the Raiders got back from a disappointing loss to the Dolphins in London.
Sparano, Jackson recalled, came into the room and immediately told everyone to sit down, including coaches. There was no mincing of words.
"His main thing was he wanted to demand the respect of everybody, and if the operation wasn't going to work, it wasn't going to be because we weren't organized and because everybody was listening to different people," Jackson said.
Ahead of his first game as head coach in Oakland, Sparano and the team metaphorically started over, burying a football on the Raiders' practice field as a way to put the past behind them.
A video surfaced Sunday hours after Sparano's death from a nationally televised Thursday night game in October 2014 when Oakland beat Kansas City at home for its first win of the season.
Sparano delivered an impassioned postgame speech in the locker room, urging players to remember the elation they felt upon snapping a 10-game losing streak.
As the camera focused on Sparano in the center of his players, a young quarterbacks coach can be spotted in the background, his attention zeroed in on a man who grew into a mentor.
John DeFilippo formed his relationship with Sparano during two trying seasons in Oakland before being reunited with his close confidant in February. Sparano's persistent approach and the ways in which it yielded success that season is a source of comfort for the Vikings offensive coordinator, one he'll carry with him as he navigates a difficult stretch without a close friend by his side.
"Tony was always steady," DeFilippo said. "We started the year off 0-10 and Tony was the same guy every day, and it taught me a lot that in the length of the NFL season how tough it is week in and week out to just be yourself. Tony was himself everyday; never changed. As you saw, we won three of our last six games, and I think a lot of that was because of Tony."
Among the long list of memories shared about Sparano is the passion he poured into his players.
Where a player was drafted didn't matter to him. Super Bowl champion guard Shaun O'Hara, who went undrafted, said he owes his career to Sparano, who groomed him to start as a rookie in Cleveland. Sparano gave tackle Jake Long, who was the first overall pick in 2008, that same opportunity in Miami.
Realizing his homesick rookie guard was struggling to adjust after arriving in Oakland in the spring of 2014, Sparano used to drive Jackson to the facility on weekends to go over film, play concepts and technique.
"He knew I had more in me and told me last year [in 2013] they cut a fourth-rounder and don't think we won't do the same for you," Jackson said. "For me, I didn't know if I'd get cut or not. He told me afterwards that wasn't in the plan, but he wanted to see how I would handle pressure and get better from that."
That's an approach familiar to Elflein, who became just the second rookie center in Vikings franchise history to start Week 1 last season.
"I remember asking him one day -- it was after everybody left and we were going through some things, and he actually answered a question wrong," Sparano told ESPN in January. "I said to him, 'Look, what do you want to do here? You want to be a starter or are you OK being the backup?' And he got really angry with me as if to say, 'No, I want to be the starter. I'm here to be the starter,' he said. I said to him ‘Exactly.' These things are important because these other guys depend on you, and I think he sensed that urgency.
"[He] took me to places that I couldn't go as a player and as a man. It wasn't just football with him."
Over the course of a season, players and their position coaches spend many hours together in meeting rooms, on the field, in the cafeteria and away from football. Sparano constantly checked in on his guys via text, the topics expanding far beyond football.
A devoted husband, father of three and a grandfather, Sparano talked so proudly and often about those he loved that his players felt like they knew many of these people they hadn't yet met.
In two short years, Sparano's mentality and the way he wanted things done were ingrained in every member of his meeting room.
"I think even in just a year or two years for the guys that were here with him for two years, kind of how things always have to build," rookie tackle Brian O'Neill said. "Once you fix one thing one day, that has to stay the same for the next day, but you have to get better at the next thing. And for him, it's always stacking those pieces together, and that's something that he was always good at getting on our butts for, to be able to go in and work on something every single day.
"That's something that even the veterans work on every day, whether it's how much weight they're putting on, whatever foot or where they're placing their hands -- whatever it is. It's those little details that he was constantly, constantly, constantly all over us and all over them that now they're going to be all over us [rookies]. Pat's out there, he's all over J.P. Quinn, who got here about 12 hours ago. He's all over me on these little details, details, details because it's the same stuff coach said. So, no matter who the voice is, the message still has to be the same."
As the Vikings try to mend after this sudden and tragic loss, the legacy of Sparano will last. What he instilled in this franchise helped form the foundation of a team with high aspirations for the season. While his physical presence is no longer, his influence is there to stay.
"You can still sense it in the room that Tony's not there, but he is," Elflein said. "His presence is there just because of what we've taken from him from last year. He's still there."