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We seem to be on a run of legendary coaches in our latest NFL 100 posts, and this week is no exception as we feature a coach who many consider to be the father of the modern passing game, Hall of Fame legend Sid Gillman. Gillman cut his teeth as a coach in college as an assistant at Denison, Ohio State and Army before landing  head coaching jobs at Miami of Ohio and the University of Cincinnati. An 81-19-2 record as a college head coach got him noticed by the pros and in 1955 he was hired to guide the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. The club was known for wide open offense and Gillman enhanced that reputation during his tenure there. They reached the league championship game in his first season but lost to the Cleveland Browns. It was a roller coaster ride for the coach for the remainder of his Ram career, although the offense was always capable. After finishing 2-10 in 1959, he was released but landed on his feet by being hired as the head coach of the new team in town, the American Football League’s Los Angeles Chargers. The Chargers, with their new coach roaming the sidelines wearing his trademark bow tie, were an immediate success and the type of team the new league was looking for – featuring an exciting wide open offense that stretched the field with a vertical passing game. The Chargers, who moved to San Diego in 1961 after a single season in L.A., won the Western Division title 5 times in the AFL’s first 6 seasons and captured the league title in 1963 with a rousing 51-10 rout of the Boston Patriots. Al Davis, a football icon who began his pro football career as an assistant on Gillman’s early Charger teams, once said “Sid Gillman brought class to the AFL. Being part of Sid’s organization was like going to a laboratory for the highly developed science of professional football.” Another Hall of Fame coach, Chuck Noll, was also on Gillman’s Charger staff in the AFL’s early years. Gillman left the Chargers when the AFL and NFL officially merged into one league in 1970, but returned for a short stint with the Houston Oilers in 1973 and ’74. His Oiler teams didn’t qualify for the postseason but he lifted the franchise out of the doldrums they had been in before leaving.

Besides Davis and Noll, many coaches either learned from Gillman or copied his offensive philosophies, including Bill Walsh, Bum Phillips, Don Coryell and Dick Vermeil. Coryell was head coach at San Diego State during Gillman’s Charger era and used to bring his team to Charger practices to observe. Vermeil actually hired Gillman as a consultant when he was coach of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1980. Another tribute to Gillman’s genius is the players he developed. His reputation as a quarterback guru played out when 2 of his Ram QBs of the 1950s, Billy Wade and Frank Ryan, won NFL championships, Wade with the 1963 Chicago Bears and Ryan with the 1964 Cleveland Browns. His resume also includes coaching all kinds of Hall of Famers, players like Norm Van Brocklin, Tom Fears, Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch, Les Richter, Ollie Matson, Lance Alworth and Ron Mix, as well as some Hall-worthy players in Ernie Ladd, Earl Faison, Keith Lincoln, Paul Lowe, John Hadl, Tank Younger, Andy Robustelli, Lamar Lundy and Jon Arnett. Gillman may have been a product of pro football of the 1950s and ’60s, but his legacy lives on in the way the modern game is played today.

Coach Gillman, Lance Alworth (19), John Hadl (21)

On this week’s NFL schedule, there’s a game to be played between 2 historic franchises who are struggling mightily this season – the Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins. For this week’s Throwback Thursday feature, we’ll harken back to a time when both teams were winning, and one in fact, achieved what was thought to be impossible, perfection. The game we’re featuring is Super Bowl VII, played on January 14, 1973 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Dolphins, under coach Don Shula, entered the game undefeated and their opponent was coach George Allen’s “Over The Hill Gang”, a collection of grisly veterans molded into a competitive team by Allen ,who despised playing rookies and young players because of their penchant for making mistakes. Coming into the big game without a loss in either the regular season or playoffs was an amazing achievement for Miami, especially since they had lost their starting quarterback, future Hall of Famer Bob Griese, for a large portion of the year. The man who came to the rescue and kept the team’s record unblemished was old veteran Earl Morrall, who along with Shula had been subjected to ridicule just a few seasons prior when their Baltimore Colts’ juggernaut was shocked by the New York Jets in Super Bowl III.

Shula revived his reputation by building an instant winner in Miami and for the Super Bowl, even got his starting QB back as Griese, who had seen limited playing time in the AFC Championship against Pittsburgh 2 weeks earlier, was deemed ready to play full time. Griese was hardly needed in this game, as he threw only 11 passes all day, completing 8 of them, with the biggest being a 28 yard touchdown throw to Howard Twilley to open the scoring in the first quarter.  The rest of the game was dominated by the Dolphins’ “No Name” defense and the hard running of fullback Larry Csonka, who racked up 112 yards on 15 carries. Miami’s defense harassed Redskin quarterback Bill Kilmer, the ageless wonder who resurrected his career in Washington, all day, sacking him twice and picking off 3 of his passes. Two of the interceptions were by Dolphin safety Jake Scott, who would be named the game’s Most Valuable Player. The Redskins never seemed to pick up any momentum on offense and when Csonka’s backfield mate, Jim Kiick, scored on a one yard touchdown plunge in the second quarter to boost Miami’s lead to 14-0, the game appeared to be already out of reach. Then, in the fourth quarter, Washington gained some unexpected momentum on a play that is one of the most memorable in Super Bowl history. On a botched field goal attempt, Miami kicker Garo Yepremian picked up the ball and attempted to throw a pass. It wobbled straight up out of his hand for a fumble and ‘Skins cornerback Mike Bass snatched it up and returned it 49 yards for a touchdown to cut the lead in half. Shula was incensed but he didn’t need to worry. Washington stopped the Dolphins on the ensuing possession but when they got the ball back for one last try to tie the game, the “No Names” rose to the occasion and snuffed out Kilmer and the Redskins’ offense in a quick three and out to seal the victory and immortality as the only team in NFL history to achieve an undefeated season.

Years later, Shula and Yepremian joke about “The Pass”

One of last week’s NFL 100 posts featured one of pro football greatest but under the radar head coaches in Chuck Noll, architect of the great Pittsburgh Steeler dynasty of the 1970s. This week, we’ll feature the winningest head coach of all time in the NFL, the great Don Shula. Noll and Shula both played for Paul Brown in Cleveland, but prior to Noll’s rookie season, Shula was traded to the Baltimore Colts. He played there for 4 seasons and played a year in Washington before retiring. His playing days didn’t amount to much but in 1960 he would embark on a coaching career that would take him to the top of the mountain in the NFL. He signed on as the head defensive coach of the Detroit Lions (they didn’t designate them as “coordinators” at the time). After doing an impressive job there, he returned to the Colts as their head coach in 1963 and quickly made the team into a force in the league. They reached the title game in 1964 and 1968, losing to Cleveland in ’64 and then beating the Browns in ’68. They finished with an identical 10-3-1 record with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers in 1965 and because of injuries were forced to use halfback Tom Matte at QB in a playoff game against the Packers to decide the Western Conference champion. The teams were tied 10-10 when Green Bay’s Don Chandler kicked a controversial field goal to win the contest 13-10. Replays appeared to show that the kick was actually no good, and it resulted in the NFL raising the goalposts to their current height. In the 1967 season, the Colts entered the regular season’s final week undefeated but a loss to the Rams, who also hadn’t lost a game, cost them the Coastal Division crown and a place in the playoffs despite finishing 11-1-2. Despite fielding competitive teams in all of his 7 seasons in Baltimore, it was a huge upset loss, to Joe Namath’s New York Jets in Super Bowl III, that ultimately got the coach the heave-ho there. He coached one more season after the loss but the Colts finished 8-5-1 and he was fired.

That turned out to be a major blessing for Shula. He moved on to take the reins of the Miami Dolphins, a foundering expansion franchise in the AFL, and built them into a powerhouse of the early 1970s that won back-to-back Super Bowls in 1972 and ’73. The ’72 season was remarkable in that the Dolphins finished 17-0 to become the only team in NFL history to go undefeated, a mark still unmatched today. His teams won with a pounding running game and a stingy defense dubbed the “No Name” defense because it lacked any big stars. Although the Steelers and Noll stole a bit of their thunder when they won 4 Super Bowl titles the rest of the decade of the ’70s, Shula kept his team competitive through 2 more decades until he retired as pro football’s winningest coach in 1995. Overall his teams reached 6 Super Bowls and won a pair, and while accumulating his record 347 victories he coached different styles of play, going from a star QB in Baltimore, John Unitas, to the bruising run game, stingy defense of his ’70s teams to a wide open passing offense with Dan Marino. He is a coaching legend indeed in NFL football lore – the winningest coach in the league’s 100 year history that is being celebrated this season.

Triumphant coach Shula carried off the field after Super Bowl VII

It’s Throwback Thursday time again as week 5 of the NFL schedule approaches, and the game on this week’s slate that we’ll match up with is a battle between the New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings. It’s the second week in a row we highlight a game involving the G-Men, and this one harkens back to September 21, 1969, when the Giants played at Yankee Stadium. It’s important because it’s a Viking contest involving one of the icons of that franchise, quarterback Fran Tarkenton. The thing is, on this day, Tarkenton was the quarterback for the Giants. After being the face of the franchise from the beginning, in 1961, until 1966, he had been traded to the Giants prior to the 1967 season. This game wasn’t the first time he got the chance to face his old club. The two teams met in Minnesota in ’67 and although Tarkenton did yeoman’s work by throwing for 3 touchdowns, the Vikings prevailed 27-24. This time the game looked like it might go the same way. The scrambling Tarkenton threw a 54 yard scoring pass to Homer Jones and led a drive to a field goal, but the Vikings’ QB, Gary Cuozzo, bested that by hooking up with his wide receivers, John Henderson and Gene Washington, on long touchdown passes as the Vikings pulled ahead in the fourth quarter 23-10. Washington had a big day with 7 receptions for 152 yards and the TD.

The determined Tarkenton was never one to give up, though, and on this day, he hunkered down and engineered a pair of scoring drives late in the game. Using his patented scrambling style, some tough running from Tucker Frederickson and pinpoint passing, he hit flanker Don Hermann twice for touchdowns, from 16 and 10 yards out, to pull out a 24-23 win for New York. It was a gratifying season-opening victory for Fran and his team, but wasn’t a harbinger of things to come for either team in the 1969 season. The Giants wound up 6-8 while Minnesota lost only one other game all season on their way to the NFL title, before being upset by the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. However, they were a strong team for sure. The 24 points they gave up to Tarkenton and the Giants on this day was the most they would surrender in a single game all season. Tarkenton, incidentally, would be traded back to the Vikings after spending 5 seasons in New York and lead them to the Super Bowl 3 times, losing all three.

Fran Tarkenton with the Giants in 1969, the NFL’s 50th season