P.J. Fleck is a rather successful college football head coach nowadays, but things haven’t always been so easy for the Minnesota Golden Gophers skipper.

In fact, Fleck recently opened up about some mental health struggles he dealt with when he was a middling wide receiver trying to make it in the NFL.

Things weren’t always so rosy. He, like many of us, has experienced his fair share of valleys.

“I struggled with mental health,” Fleck said on his radio show Tuesday, according to the Pioneer Press. “I went through a really tough time in San Francisco.”

Fleck has apparently discussed those struggles of the past with his team this week as they prepare to take on Western Illinois in what is being called the “Mental Health Awareness Game” at Huntington Bank Stadium.

The head coach also shared a book that he’s reading by the author, Chloe Brotheridge. The book is called “The Anxiety Solution: A Calmer Mind, A Calmer You”, and Fleck already has five pages of notes on the book despite being just 25 pages in.

“It’s really good for me,” Fleck said. “If you are always saying that somebody else should be better, but you’re not becoming better at the things you tell them they should be better at, then you lose accountability.”

If you’re going to talk the talk, you’d better figure out how to walk the walk, and there are few things more important a college coach — or anyone who works with young people, for that matter — can make a positive impact on.