Congratulations-- and Best Wishes

 

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2021 was announced last night, and Peyton Manning, Calvin Johnson, John Lynch, Charles Woodson, Drew Pearson, Alan Faneca, Bill Nunn, and Tom Flores are the eight new enshrinees.  All of them are deserving-- Manning excessively so, as his induction was a foregone conclusion a decade ago. As much as anyone, he defined the modern quarterback position, his teams made the postseason 13 out of 14 years, and he is, as of today, the only quarterback to win the Super Bowl with two different teams. Like Manning, Johnson defined his position-- the oversized yet amazingly athletic receiver who can outrun, outjump, and out-muscle his way to the ball. His type is all over the league now, and he was the prototype. Pearson's game was a whole different thing-- he was a master of the Paul Warfield school of pass-catching: elusive, always getting open at the right time as if he were invisible until the ball arrived. Like his rivals Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, he played his best on the game's biggest stage. 

Fans as we are of defense (and, of course, the 49ers), our man Lynch's selection honors not only him, but one of the greatest defensive teams of our lifetime. Speaking of defense, Charles Woodson played eighteen-- eighteen!-- years in the defensive backfield. He started 251 out of 288 games in those 18 years; in his last season, at age 39, he started all 16. He was a nine-time Pro Bowl selection at a position where even the best players rarely last nine years. And Alan Faneca could, and probably should, have been the first offensive lineman honored as Super Bowl MVP for his tremendous play in Super Bowl XL. If it were up to us, a guard, tackle, or center would be enshrined every year. 

Bill Nunn's honor comes too late for his own satisfaction, though not his family's; and in this era of hyper-awareness of such things, consider it was Bill Nunn who focused on scouting the historically black colleges, such as Grambling and Alcorn State, that brought some of the greatest players in NFL history to the Steelers.  He spent 45 years with the Steelers and now will be honored with them as long as the game is played.

And Tom Flores. He gave 34 years of his life to pro football; like Mike Ditka, he was a Super Bowl player and coach. He led the Oakland Raiders to a world championship and, three years later, the Los Angeles Raiders to another. Same team, essentially, but in between those two championships he somehow maintained a culture of professionalism (shall we say, pride and poise?) while all around the team raged controversy, lawsuits, insults, jokes, and general craziness. In a game where winning is the only thing, Tom Flores' coaching career more than measures up.

        

Q. What do these men have in common?   

Mike Holmgren, on the left, took not one, but two teams with a long and discouraging history of losing, and transformed them into Super Bowl teams. He coached in three Super Bowls, and won one. He also coached three Hall of Fame quarterbacks with great success.

Mike Shanahan, in the center, transformed a proud but struggling franchise, one branded as a perennial Super Bowl "loser,"  and won back-to-back Super Bowls. He also revived the career of one of the greatest quarterbacks to play the game, a first-ballot Hall of Famer. 

Dick Vermeil, on the right, also took not one, but two teams with a long and discouraging history of losing, and transformed them into Super Bowl teams. He took a third underachieving franchise and revived it, too, though he didn't make the 'Bowl. And he, too, launched the storybook career of a Hall of Fame quarterback.   

A. None of these men are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

We were ruminating this morning about Andy Reid, the great coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, who face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV later today. Whether his team wins or loses this game, Andy Reid, we concluded, is going to the Hall of Fame. And that got us to thinking about men of similar accomplishment who ought to be there, but aren't. These three men above. 

Bill Cowher is in the Hall of Fame. Tony Dungy is in the Hall of Fame. George Allen is in the Hall of Fame. They all deserve it, with two, one, and one Super Bowl teams to their names. 

But if the Super Bowl is the ultimate pro football coaching achievement, then winning back-to-back Super Bowls, and coaching two different teams to the Super Bowl a decade apart, surely qualifies a coach among those who've achieved the most. It's time to give these three great coaches their due.

Dick Vermeil is 84. Let's not wait too long.

 

Cleveland Rocks

 

    Back in the day, the Cleveland Browns were football royalty, and the Pittsburgh Steelers were pissants. 

    The best thing you could say about the old Steelers was that at least they were a tough bunch: "Maybe they can't beat you, but they'll beat you up."  The worst you could say varied, but it was said loudly and frequently in Pittsburgh taverns on Sunday afternoons during autumn. Pittsburgh had been in the NFL since 1933. The team had nearly gone under during the war-- not once, but twice. In 1943 they'd had to combine forces with the cross-state Philadelphia Eagles to field a squad unaffectionately known as the "Steagles." The following year they'd merged depleted rosters with the Chicago Cardinals; represented as "Card-Pitt" in the standings, they'd quickly become known as "Carpets" because the rest of the league walked all over them to the tune of an 0-10 record. And while other franchises had their own moments of embarrassment tucked away in the past, they also had conference titles and league championships by their name. The Pittsburgh Steelers, after 36 years in the league, had nothing. 

    And there to remind them, every year, were the Browns, and their legendary coach, and their proud fans, and their 24 consecutive winning seasons and eight league championships.

    Cleveland dominated the All-American Football Conference the year the team and league were founded, and they continued to do so for the AAFC's entire four-year existence. Merged into the NFL in 1950, the Browns promptly won the league championship that year too, and over the next five seasons they won the Eastern Conference each year as well as two more NFL titles. They won another league championship in 1964, and added five more conference titles by 1969. Even when they didn't finish first, they contended. At the time of the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, the Cleveland Browns had never had a single losing season in their quarter-century of operation.

    Who might have expected that all this was about to change? Perhaps only one man-- a burly, quiet, but immensely powerful and intelligent former Browns lineman hired to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969: Chuck Noll.

    The fortunes of the two teams diverged almost precisely at the moment when Noll took over and the Super Bowl became synonymous with the league championship—the 1970 merger. Noll’s Steelers made the postseason for the first time in 1972, which was also the Browns’ last postseason appearance for eight years.

    And so the reversal began. During those eight years the Steelers won four Super Bowls, Pittsburgh became known as the “City of Champions,” and Cleveland Browns fans slowly and grudgingly became used to a completely new experience—losing on a regular basis. How it must have galled those raised on the Cleveland postseason perennials of the 1950s and 1960s to endure seven straight years of finishing third or fourth in a four-team division, not to mention records of 3-11, 4-10, and 6-8. Even when the 1976 team won 9 games, they couldn’t make the playoffs.  In that first Cleveland postseason drought, they won a total of 46 games, while the Steelers won 77—and those four Super Bowls.

    Things got better in the 1980s, somewhat. With Sam Rutigliano and Marty Schottenheimer  coaching the team, Cleveland made the playoffs seven out of ten years, including five in a row from 1985-1989. During those years, the Steelers languished at or near the bottom of the division. But those years were also when the Browns developed their “snakebit” reputation—“The Drive” in 1986, “The Fumble” in 1987, for example. By contrast, Steelers fans could still look back on “The Immaculate Reception” and “John Swearingen’s Call” as evidence their championship team was favored by the football gods.

    The 1970s had been bad for the Browns. But the 1990s ushered in a veritable apocalypse of badness. In the midst of postseason droughts that lasted four, seven, and then seventeen seasons, Art Modell kidnapped the team and took it to Baltimore, the franchise sat in limbo for three years, and the only coach to lead Cleveland to a playoff win in nearly 30 years—Bill Belichick in 1994—went on to unimaginable glory in New England. And—by the way—the Pittsburgh Steelers became the first team to win six Super Bowls during this time. The other team to win six? Belichick’s Patriots, of course.

    It’s sad but generally true that one-sided rivalries tend to lose their bite over time. Sure, “I’m takin’ da Brahns to da Supa Bowl,” remains a running (sorry about that) joke in Steeltown lavatories, but lately it’s the Baltimore Ravens that have become Pittsburgh’s main rival. Considering the Ravens were built from the ashes of the Cleveland Browns, it was yet another Rodney Dangerfield moment for the loyal fans in the city on the lake.

    So as the 2020 Cleveland Browns ran all over Heinz Field last night, scoring four touchdowns in eight minutes and 48 points overall to knock the despised Steelers completely sideways and out of the playoffs, we can’t help but wonder if this presages a second turn of the wheel in one of the NFL’s greatest rivalries. 

Patrick Willis-- MIA

 As if the recent election results weren't bad enough, today we have a real voting scandal.

Somehow, the great Patrick Willis was not included among the 15 finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection process.  Seriously.

He became eligible this year, as did Troy Polamolu and Reggie Wayne, who were included. No slight intended to those excellent players, but Willis' impact on the games and seasons in which he played, and on the teams for which he played, was as great or greater than theirs. He was the captain, leader, and most outstanding player on the league's best defense from 2011-2013. He faced off against the Hall of Famer Ray Lewis in Super Bowl XLVII, a contest between two of the greatest ever at their position, and he more than lived up to the high standard set by his opponent. 

We have no doubt Patrick Willis eventually will be enshrined in Canton. We're just disappointed it won't happen this year, and we're more than disappointed that the voters believed they could find 15 candidates more worthy than he.  In fairness, we believe Polamolu is an excellent comp for Willis; both had an oversized impact on the game and both defined the great defensive teams they represented. Perhaps in a year or two they'll be voted in together. It would fit.

But this, today, is an oversight that needs to be corrected. It reflects badly on the judgment of those who made the choices. Come on, people. You're supposed to be experts. You can do better. Now please, do better next time. The man deserves the honor, and everyone knows it.

TuaTa Time

OUR never-ending search for the catchy title phrase has hit a new low.  But Martin Gramatica needs to give the kid a break. First start, facing Aaron Donald and a good defense, he didn't lose the game, and his teammates won it. Miami, as 49er fans found out already, is an improving team. Let's see what Tua can do over the rest of this year before we make any pronouncements-- and let's remember how many interceptions Peyton Manning threw in 1998. His team went 13-3 the next year.

2020, the year that just keeps on taking, saw George Kittle and Jimmy G execute limpoffs in yesterday's predictable-if-execrable loss at Seattle. A week after running the once-mighty Patriots off their own field, the 49ers reverted to "Miami mode," albeit against a team a lot more powerful than the Dolphins. 8-8 is beginning to look realistic, if not optimistic.

The team with the largest point differential in the NFC is... drumroll please... the Tampa Bay Bradys! If Tom wins a ring with Bruce Arians, will the "system quarterback" critics finally shut up?  We may consider ourselves fortunate that the 49ers will not face the Buccaneers this season. Dallas and Washington-- six weeks away-- look like the only oases in the football Sahara ahead of us.

If the season ended today, Seattle, New Orleans, Green Bay, and Philadelphia would be the NFC division champions. Arizona, Tampa, and the Rams (by tiebreaker) would be the wild-cards, with the 5-3 Bears left out in the Chicago cold. In the AFC, it'd be the undefeated Steelers, defending champions KC, Buffalo, and Tennessee in the divisions, with Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Cleveland the wild-cards and the Raiders and Dolphins on the outside looking in. Of course, the bye weeks skew all this into trivial speculation at the moment. 

Along with Fred Dean and the legendary Don Shula, pro football lost Herb Adderley, Jimmy Orr, and other greats this year.  But baseball's list-- first Al Kaline, then the sudden sad trifecta of Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan, and Whitey Ford-- was an especially harsh reminder of the transience of this life and the mortality of us all.  

We will have more to say about our memories of Fred Dean in a follow-up post that's been especially hard to put together.

And finally, please vote tomorrow. Vote for the President and his allies. Yes, he's an uncouth, boorish, "uncultured" man, a man who speaks before he thinks all too often, a man peculiarly and especially vulnerable to the traps of rampant egotism. He's also a man who set a cushy life of accomplishments aside to volunteer for a thankless job serving his country, and who has persevered through a campaign of personal hatred unseen since the time of Lincoln. His deeds tower over his reckless words like Kilimanjaro over the plain. 

If you must support a Presidential candidate who looks and acts like your favorite cousin, then please vote for Jo Jorgensen (and you might also find she makes a lot of sense).  But please shun the career hack who's sold himself out to the Chinese Communist Party, to the Deep State fixers, and to the radicals who expect to run rampant over and through any thought of a "Biden Administration."  President Trump, the walking contradiction, the orange man of action, "is not the good guy America wants. He's the bad guy America needs. He's Batman!"

Well, not really. But he's the man nonetheless. Vote for the real America first. Thank you.

Bold As Love

 

September 18, 1970 was fifty years ago today, the day Jimi Hendrix died in London at age 27. We were not well acquainted with sudden death at age 14, and the news came as a real shock, a slap in the face; our initial reaction was disbelief: "Not Hendrix. He can't die."  We were still pretty well insulated from the harshness of the adult world, and completely unaware of the dangerous, treacherous "rock star" lifestyle; our naive belief was that these demigods walked on air, immune from mortal risk. But we'd also been studying music for six years and we already knew Jimi Hendrix was touched by musical genius. You couldn't help but hear it; his searing, emotional, and, yes, intensely patriotic deconstruction of the "Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock remains a masterpiece today and was no less so then.  We'd rather listen to the man make music than fix where he stands among the greats, but many call him the greatest of electric guitarists, and we've no reason to dispute it. What makes this moment today especially sad is considering how far, how immeasurably far, he might have taken his genius beyond such considerations if he had had fifty more years to do so. 

Don Shula

All he did was win. Don Shula, who passed away Monday at 90, defined the role of the winning professional football coach over four decades and a record 347 wins. In his 33 years as a NFL head coach, his teams had a total of two losing seasons while reaching the postseason eighteen times. His Baltimore Colts played in the NFL championship game in 1964, his second season; in 1995, his last, his Miami Dolphins qualified for the AFC playoffs.

Don Shula's 1972 Miami Dolphins remain the only undefeated championship team in pro football history. While some are always ready to downgrade that achievement, the fact remains that no other team, whether playing a 10- or 12- or 14- or 16-game schedule, whether facing weak or stiff conference competition,  regardless of rule changes or prevailing style of play, has done it. One team, well aware of its chance to make history or fail in the attempt, did it. Don Shula's team.

He wasn't an innovator, a revolutionary, or a game-changing trail-blazer. What he was was a football coach: a man who, year after year, took the best players he could find and made them into a winning team. In a hundred years of professional football, no one has done it better.   

We're Optimistic...

.., there WILL be a NFL season in  2020. Whether it will start on time and produce a full slate, we can't say, but we'll never hold with the Chicken Littles and doomsayers and Newsomes who seem to get a perverse kick out of national crises like this CCP virus pandemic.

Now, given the enforced idle time and no sports on the tube, we are using this interlude to upload some of our old typed 49er pages from years past. Look to your right and you'll see "Archive:" pages slowly appear, from 1981, from 1988, and from the George Seifert years. Some of them are reportage on playoff games, others are musings on the future of the 49ers, and a few may contain little more than  damned foolishness. But there they are, unedited, and we apologize in advance for some of the irregular sizes and typefaces. These are scanned pages uploaded as jpegs, which is time-consuming enough without purchasing editing software and massaging the text. And editing would produce an irresistible impulse to correct some of our more boneheaded pronouncements (Jim Druckenmiller, the next great 49er QB?) and that would be-- well, it wouldn't be sporting, would it?

So enjoy, or ignore at your pleasure, this window into a world the San Francisco 49ers ruled for almost two decades. And please, stay safe.