It's 8 a.m. at the Jets' facility in Hempstead, N.Y., and as the players shuffle into the meeting room some of them look half asleep. It only takes a minute on this late December morning for Edwards to bring them to life.

"In the beginning of the season, we were just trying to find ourselves," he intones. "Had a bunch of new guys on the team, bunch of good players, but good players don't win. Teams win. Doesn't matter how many all-stars you have, you gotta be able to eat some humble pie. It's gotta be a team."

	Edwards

Today's lesson is the Los Angeles Lakers. This was back when the three-time NBA champions were struggling. Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant were not meshing and making the playoffs seemed out of the question.

"They haven't changed one guy," Edwards says. "Same guys, but they're not playing that way. They have got to play together as a team. That's very, very important."

Next up, Sunday's opponent, the Green Bay Packers. Edwards, working on an overhead projector, breaks it down.

"They're 12-3, OK?" he says. "This is why: they're plus-18 (in turnovers). So what does that mean? Don't turn the ball over, men. Do not turn the ball over."

Edwards, who played defensive back in the NFL for 10 seasons, is easy to listen to. He has a rhythm and an earnestness that is hard to resist.

"I think motivation is part of a skill that the Good Lord blesses you with," Edwards said that same December week. "I was never taught it, it was just something that I had. It was given. It was a gift."

Curtis Martin, the Jets' talented running back, says that Edwards has that rare ability to connect with an audience -- from one to 55.

"It is like when you are in church," Martin said. "Everybody comes out of church feeling that the pastor was speaking exactly to them."

Even though the Jets players have been listening to coaches for the majority of their lives, Edwards seems to consistently pull something from within them.

The Jets were idling along, but finished the season strong with Edwards pushing them along. They had just surprised the Super Bowl-champion Patriots on Sunday night before Edwards focused on the Packers. Sure enough, the Jets dismantled Green Bay 42-17 to make the playoffs. They destroyed the Indianapolis Colts 41-0 in a wild-card game before falling to the Super Bowl-bound Oakland Raiders 30-10 in the divisional playoffs.

"How do you motivate them?" Edwards asked. "How do you get them to understand things? You just boil it down to basic fundamentals of life and how you live."

Greg Garber is a senior writer at ESPN.com.