Don Shula is the winningest coach in NFL history. One reason is he coached Johnny Unitas, Bob Griese and Dan Marino, three of the great quarterbacks in NFL history.
He also played with Otto Graham.
“He was my idol,” Shula said.
Shula grew up near Cleveland and went to college there at John Carroll. The Browns drafted him as a defensive back in 1951.
“My first day at training camp, naturally, I was the first one out at practice,” Shula recalled last week. “Otto was second. He took a ball out of the bag and said, `Warm me up, kid.’ I was shaking in my shoes.”
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To Shula, there was nobody better than Graham, the Waukegan native and former Northwestern tailback who died Wednesday at 82.
“All he did was win championships,” Shula said. “I always thought he might go down among the top two or three of all time.”
Shula is reluctant to rank his quarterbacks.
“I don’t have to rate them and I wouldn’t want to,” he said.
But Shula can reminisce about how fortunate he was to associate with three Hall of Fame quarterbacks, a soon-to-be Hall of Famer in Marino and “my own personal Hall of Famer, Earl Morrall.”
“For sheer numbers, you have to put Marino on top. He has all the records,” Shula said. “Unitas, there was the excitement, strength and courage. Griese was the field general. Then Otto for accomplishment. You have to measure his accomplishment. He was probably one of the great all-around athletes to play the position. He was a tailback at Northwestern. As a drop-back passer, he had great ability to scramble and make big plays.”
It’s safe to say nobody ever will match Automatic Otto’s accomplishment of getting his Browns to 10 championship games in 10 seasons, winning seven.
Player coaches: The Associated Press points out that teams with coaching vacancies might want to ignore candidates with NFL playing experience. The last 17 Super Bowl winners were coached by men who never played in the league. The last time an ex-player coached a team to a Super Bowl championship was Mike Ditka, who led the 1985 Bears.
Since then, ex-players have been bested by Bill Parcells, Joe Gibbs, Jimmy Johnson, George Seifert and Mike Shanahan (two each); Bill Walsh, Barry Switzer, Mike Holmgren, Dick Vermeil, Brian Billick, Bill Belichick and Jon Gruden.
Former players among the losers in the last 17 seasons include Dan Reeves (four times), Sam Wyche, Bill Cowher and Jeff Fisher.
Cool Callahan: Raiders coach Bill Callahan is under fire only one season removed from the Super Bowl, but the son of a Chicago vice squad cop says he doesn’t feel pressure.
“You do the best you can, you know?” Callahan said. “If it’s not good enough, it isn’t good enough. If it is, it is. So be it.
“You know, I’ve come a long way from where I grew up. On the South Side of Chicago to this place here? Believe me. Doesn’t even faze me.”
Second-year linebacker Napoleon Harris, from Thornton High School and Northwestern, said the coach deserves to stay.
“You have a guy who went to the Super Bowl as a rookie coach,” Harris said. “And then you have a bad season. I mean, just to cut a guy’s head off like that, you kind of say, Wow! But this is the NFL. And you never know how things turn out.”
Jaked up: The two free-agent quarterback Jakes have turned out very well so far: Jake Delhomme in Carolina and Jake Plummer in Denver.
Delhomme has led the NFC South champion Carolina Panthers on seven late game-winning drives, six that started in Carolina territory.
“When he walks in that huddle, because we’ve had success in that situation, they expect it,” Panthers coach John Fox said.
Those finishes have helped Carolina tie an NFL record for most victories by three points or fewer in a season, seven.
Broncos coach Mike Shanahan is sold on Plummer even though the team might miss the playoffs.
“There is a big future with that quarterback being in Denver, I’ll guarantee you that,” Shanahan said. “I knew he was good, but I didn’t know he was this good. He can do some things that a lot of quarterbacks can’t do. But the thing I love about him is that he’s a competitor. He loves to play. He loves game day. He loves pressure situations.
“You can see during the game that he’s excited about playing. You take that, combined with his preparation, his ability to do things off the cuff, scrambling, making some plays–he has been a lot of fun.”
Double dip: The Redskins, Cardinals, Lions, Texans and Jaguars are the only teams to post losing records the last two seasons. There is only one other team that could join them: the Bears.
Giant search: By firing Jim Fassel, the Giants joined the Falcons in the early coaching search. Former Jacksonville coach Tom Coughlin, a former Giants assistant, is believed to be at the top of the list, and an interview reportedly is being set up.
St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator Lovie Smith, New England Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, Patriots defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel and Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz also apparently are in the running, a familiar list.
Fassel, who will coach the final two games of his seventh season, said: “The parity is probably great for the league, but it puts more pressure on coaches. . . . I’ve been in New York and we’ve had our good years and we’ve been to the Super Bowl. They only remember the down years and the tough losses. All of that mounts on coaches. Bill Parcells was saying a while ago that a good shelf life, a long one used to be 10 years. Now it’s four. It’s hard to stay on top and hard to consistently please people.”
Finishing slowly: If Barry Sanders left too soon, Emmitt Smith stayed too long. The NFL’s career rushing leader has 227 yards for Arizona this year, 10 fewer than his 1993 single-game career high.
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Former 49ers coach Bill Walsh coached O.J. Simpson in his final year, 1979, when he gained 460 yards two years removed from his Buffalo career.
“You can look pretty bad moving from one team to another at the end of your career, and it’s too bad when players do that,” Walsh said. “Emmitt has been one of the greatest players in the history of the game. But I don’t think he’s going to be able to play very much anymore. He doesn’t need me to tell him that.”
High praise: San Diego’s LaDainian Tomlinson was snubbed for the Pro Bowl but leads the league in total yardage and impresses his coach, Marty Schottenheimer, who called Tomlinson “a combination, in my view, of Barry Sanders and Walter Payton. I think he’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
Schottenheimer has been around to see Tony Dorsett, Earl Campbell, Eric Dickerson, Marcus Allen, Sanders, Simpson, Payton and many others, so that’s saying a lot.
“For him to say that, it’s an honor,” Tomlinson said. “I’m speechless. I don’t know what to say.”
The teacher: The Cowboys beat the Redskins 27-0 last week, but after quarterback Quincy Carter fumbled near the goal line, Parcells screamed on the sidelines: “You can’t do that.”
“I understand,” Carter said.
“No, you don’t understand,” Parcells screamed.
A couple of seconds later, when a teammate tried to encourage Carter with, “It’s all right, Q,” Parcells screamed again, “No, it’s not all right.”
Parcells is trying to get Carter to quit trying to make something out of nothing.
“It’s like taking the biggest step he has to take as a quarterback,” Parcells said. “It’s the biggest step he has left to take, to reduce the impulse down to nothing. If he’ll do that, he’ll be a good NFL quarterback. If he won’t do that, then he won’t.”