Meyer one of a kind
Remember ex-Patriots coach as a real winner
He was better than they thought he was and better than he got credit for, frankly. That didn’t prevent Ron Meyer from being fired by the Patriots during one of their zany periods and later by the Indianapolis Colts, but that’s a coach’s fate, and if there’s one thing Ron Meyer always believed he was, it was a coach.
Say what you want about Meyer, who died Tuesday at the age of 76, but don’t leave this out: The man won everywhere he went. In the end, wasn’t that what his job was?
Meyer won at then Division 2 University of Nevada-Las Vegas, inheriting a team that was 1-10 the year before he arrived and going 8-3, 12-1 and 7-4 with the Running Rebels before running off to SMU.
He won at SMU, inheriting a losing program that was in a bowl game within five years and won 18 of his final 21 games and the Southwest Conference title for the first time in 15 years in his last season there, albeit with a little help from some deep-pocketed alumni. The Mustangs later got so out of hand under Meyer’s successor, Bobby Collins, that the school got the death penalty but that didn’t happen on Meyer’s watch. He just got the dollars flowing.
He won with the Patriots, who were 2-14 the year before he arrived in 1982, and never had a losing record here (18-15 overall) while he had the whistle around his neck. Sure he once used a snowplow to beat Miami but who in these parts cared about hurting the Dolphins’ feelings?
He won with the Colts, too, and they hadn’t had a winning season in nine years before he arrived at the end of 1986. They were 0-13 when he walked through the door and won their final three games followed by three straight winning seasons and a division title before it fell apart and he was fired after losing the first five games in 1991. He never returned to either the NFL or big-time college football, although he did do short stints in the XFL and the CFL and served as a studio analyst on CNN and The Score, but he had plenty of hardware to show for his time as a head coach.
Ron Meyer turned losers into winners and he did it with a wry sense of humor and the kind of malapropos that can make a man a legend if he wins enough. He went 61-40-1 in college and 5450 in the NFL, was named Div. 2 Coach of the Year in 1974, Southwest Conference Coach of the Year in 1981 and twice was AFC Coach of the Year, with the Patriots in 1982 and the Colts in ’86.
Not bad for a guy who lost a player rebellion in New England midway through the 1984 season when he fired popular defensive coordinator Rod Rust after a 4424 loss to the Dolphins.
Twenty-four hours to the minute later, then general manager Pat Sullivan fired Meyer, rehired Rust and imported Raymond Berry, who had been let go when Meyer arrived with seven assistants from his SMU staff, to coach. One of those seven assistants was longtime offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia, who remembered Meyer fondly yesterday even though Meyer fired him in Indianapolis after the 1990 season, allowing him to land back in New England for the next quarter of a century.
“He had a great talent of knowing who should play where,” Scarnecchia said. “He acquired good coaches. Ron was a really good coach and a good guy to work for. Even though he let me go we resolved our differences. I saw him at the Super Bowl a few years later (1996) and he said, ‘See, it wasn’t so bad. I fired you and you went to the Super Bowl.’
“That was Ron being Ron. He had a great ability to laugh at himself, which a lot of people don’t have. He could be tough now but he was comfortable having fun with the moment. He knew how to win and he knew what players could help you win.’’
Of the assistants he imported from SMU, five — Scarnecchia, Bill Muir, Steve Sidwell, Tommy Brasher and Steve Walters — had long and successful NFL careers. Yet despite winning and a keen eye for both player and coaching talent it didn’t quite work with the Patriots for Meyer because he was viewed as an interloper by veterans like John Hannah and Stanley Morgan, who, along with others, believed he was a college coach who didn’t understand the NFL.
The first season, for example, he ordered one bus for offensive players and another for the defense on the road. His players felt they could ride to road games with whomever they chose. It was a small thing but it and many other minor incidents began to fester.
To some he just seemed a little too slick. A tad too slippery. No one shared those feelings more than Don Shula, whose Dolphins were the Dec. 12, 1982, victim of the infamous “Snowplow Game.”
Meyer directed a convicted burglar on work release named Mark Henderson to divert his plow from clearing off the yard lines in the midst of a blizzard and sweep out a dry place for John Smith to kick the winning field goal. He did and got a game ball for his efforts. What Shula got was high blood pressure after losing 3-0. He refused to ever say Meyer’s name again.
After it was over Meyer laughed, as he often did. He laughed when he said, “I want my defense to be a rolling ball of butcher knives.” He laughed when he walked into the press room and informed us all it was time to get synchronized by announcing, “It’s time to simonize our watches.’’
When he fired Rust, Meyer consulted no one. He had the authority to hire and fire, as Sullivan conceded, and he felt what he was doing was right. As Meyer put it, “I discussed it with no one because one man with courage is a majority.’’
Sullivan, personnel director Dick Steinberg and GM Bucko Kilroy disagreed. The trio had already decided the situation had grown so dysfunctional that Meyer had to go and formed a short list of candidates to replace him when the season concluded. When Meyer fired Rust without speaking to any of them, Steinberg proclaimed, “It was absolutely the stupidest move I have ever seen made at this point in a season.’’
The next day, Meyer was gone but he couldn’t leave without one last Meyer Moment. With a smirk on his face and a glint in his eye, he said, “The only difference in Ron Meyer now is yesterday (when still employed) I was a Ronald Reagan fan. Today, I’m a Walter Mondale (the Democratic presidential nominee) fan.” That was Ron Meyer.
He left with a winning record and a laugh and the same could be said right to the end. When he died Tuesday of an aneurysm, he was playing golf in Texas, laughing and winning still.