Over the next few weeks, Raiders.com is publishing a series of Q&As with the Silver and Black's position coaches.

Next up is quarterback coach Mike Sullivan. The former defensive back at Army is entering his 21st season of coaching in the NFL. His prior stops included the Jacksonville Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants. He won two Super Bowls (XLII, XLVI) with the Giants, the first as their wide receivers coach and the second as their quarterbacks coach.

Read through to learn more about Sullivan's transition from the military to the NFL and how he stays centered in life.

Levi Edwards: As someone who played at West Point (Army), how does your military background shape you as a man and a coach?

Mike Sullivan: "There's so much discipline and structure and you learn early on that in order to be successful it takes collaboration. It takes teamwork in different capacities. What are the ways in which you can be successful in terms of leadership? That's really what the design of the school is. I served in the Army after graduation and was an infantry platoon leader and Airborne Ranger, all that fun stuff.

"You have a cross section of troops that are from all walks of life, all different backgrounds, ethnicities. And in the infantry particularly, it's very physically, emotionally, mentally demanding, and everyone has to work together. You have to find a way to reach those guys so they realize they're only going to be successful if they come together. I think having that as a background, it was really a natural transition into coaching."

LE: What made you want to pursue coaching?

MS: "I got out of the Army and there's this void. I thought the closest thing to that was football. I remember having played at Army for Jim Young and Bob Sutton, who had a long career the New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs as a coordinator. I reached out to all the coaches that were there trying to get my start and I actually got my start at a school that no longer has a football team, Humboldt State University in California. I was coaching, I was taking classes, I was teaching classes, I was keeping scores of basketball games. I doing it all but it was good to get into that profession."

LE: Who are some of the players that you believe pushed you the most as a coach?

MS: "From a quarterback perspective, I worked with Eli Manning all those years. He was a guy that was such a steady and consistent performer and never got caught up in the outside noise. Never got distracted. This was a guy who was at his best when his best was needed. You're going to walk into a quarterback meeting room and I remember taking extra time making sure all my I's dotted and T's crossed because he's going to be on it. He was going to ask a question and I better know the answer.

"I think working with Ben Roethlisberger, just for one year in Pittsburgh, Ben was such a supreme competitor. The mental and physical toughness, the competitiveness he showed, that's something that stayed with me."

LE: Growing up in Santa Maria, California, how much of an impact did it have on you as a man of Hispanic descent to see Tom Flores and Jim Plunkett represent the Raiders?

MS: "My grandparents were both born in Mexico and immigrated here. Mexican culture has been a big part of my life growing up. There's not a large number of Latinos or Mexicans playing or coaching in the NFL, but something about the uniform and John Madden, who at one point coached at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, I became a fan. And then all of a sudden, wow, there's Tom Flores. There's a Mexican American. There's Jim Plunkett and his story. You naturally gravitate towards that because you see someone that comes from a similar background and it made it even more of an incentive to want to root for that team."

LE: Off the field, you practice Japanese jiu-jitsu. How did that come about?

MS: "I started probably about 15 years ago. I had always been drawn to the martial arts and I like the old samurai virtues of Bushidō. I did some research and found out the hand to hand combat form of the samurai was traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu. I got to that point in my 40s and I was like, 'I already jumped out of planes, I don't want to ride a motorcycle.' So I said, 'You know what? Let me do it.'"

LE: Do you feel there's any correlation between jiu-jitsu and football?

MS: "What I found was two things. One, we always talk about being comfortable with being uncomfortable. And putting myself in that position has really helped me try to convey that to players. ... It definitely helps from a coaching standpoint because things can be chaotic, things can be uncomfortable, things can look bad but there's an always an escape. There's always a counter, there's always a way if you just relax and breathe and you don't let your emotions take control. We've talked a lot about the translation and that in coaching, you say trust your training. And that's where I see the parallel. That's where there's crossover that I think helps me as a person, keeps me in shape. Secondly, the parallel between finding a solution and getting the job done even when it doesn't look good – that's jiu-jitsu, that's football."

LE: How excited are you to work with this Raiders quarterback room?

MS: "The four of them are all pros. Even though obviously Kirk [Cousins] has the most experience and has been in the most number of games, in terms of their approach, all of them are just focused on getting better. They all just want, fundamentally, no detail to be to small for them to try and master and get better at. They are all trying to help each other out, but they are all open minded and receptive to all the details, all the fundamentals, all the instruction that we have for them to try to have that position be the best it can possibly be. To see that level of commitment and that professionalism, just very gratifying. Makes it a joy to come to work every day."