JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football
Rich Hanley, Associate Professor
Lecture Twenty

Review
• The NFL continued to soar in
popularity as the last decade of the
20th century deepened.
• The Giants and Bills played in an epic
Super Bowl in 1991 that showcased
the enduring appeal of the aging run-
first, defense-wins approach versus
the spread.

Review
• Innovation continued as coaches in
both the NFL and college
experimented with coach Bill Walsh’s
West Coast offense and Mouse
Davis’s run-and-shoot formation that
increased the tempo of the game and
made it seem more like basketball.

Review
• “All you need is the courage to use
it," one observer said. "The principle
is so sound that it will work anywhere,
but it's been slow to catch on
everywhere because people make
fun of it. They call you a basketball
coach. They say it's basketball on
cleats."

Colleges, Cowboys & Patriots
• As the NFL continued to control
Sundays and Monday nights and
pinned almost half the nation to its
couches on Super Bowl Sunday,
Saturday’s America in the last two
decades of the 20th century was
rocked by scandals and the
emergence of a new power.

• Change in college football with its
roots deep in the 19th century began
to accelerate as the 20th century
neared its end.
• The SEC became fully integrated in
1972, embracing a new generation of
players.

• Rule changes worked to change
game play, too, as they had in the
NFL.
• In 1972, freshmen were allowed to
play varsity.
• Substitution rules were relaxed.

• Scholarship rules, first instituted in
1956 to end the under-the-table,
informal process of offering financial
aid to prospects, were modified to
function as one-year contracts rather
than four-year commitments.

• College football re-organized itself in
1973, with teams categorized
according to stadium size and
scholarship availability into Division I,
II and III, and in 1978 it further split
Division I teams into Division I-A at
the top (now FBS), followed by
Division I-AA (now FCS).

• Division II and Division III schools
competed for true national
championships in a playoff structure
devised in 1973.
• Division I-AA playoffs began in 1978.

• By the end of the 1990s, the long-
sought goal among many Division I
college football coaches and fans for
a true national championship
structure outside the polls took root
but even that would evolve over time
to become a playoff system.

• The most dramatic impact in terms of
the convergence of these rules and
cultural changes occurred at Miami
(Florida) in the 1980s under coach
Howard Schnellenberger, who was
born in the southern tip of the football
crescent, in Indiana.

• Schnellenberger played at Kentucky
in the 1950s and worked there as an
assistant coach with Don Shula under
Blanton Collier, who had worked with
Paul Brown at the Great Lakes Naval
Station in World War II and later
coached the Browns to a NFL title in
1964.

• Schnellenberger also worked as an
assistant to Bear Bryant at Alabama
and Shula with the Dolphins, making
him part of the coaching tree of some
of the legends of the game: Brown
(through Collier); Bryant and Shula.

• In 1979, Miami (Florida) hired
Schnellenberger to revive a program
so dismal that the school considered
cutting it.
• Schnellenberger saved the program -
and revolutionized the college game.

• Schnellenberger composed a
recruiting strategy that would focus
on players from south Florida who
had been widely overlooked by all
colleges including Miami.

• Schnellenberger declared that Miami
would dominate recruiting in the area,
vowing to “build a fence” around it to
make sure the best players wanted to
compete for their neighborhood
college.

• The athletes, mostly African-
American players from the Overton
and Liberty City areas of Miami that
had been the scene of riots in 1980,
thrived under Schnellenberger’s
system.

• Schnellenberger took what he
learned from Collier, Bryant and
Shula and created a pro-style,
spread-offense at Miami.
• He recruited quarterbacks from the
football crescent, including Bernie
Kosar from Ohio.

• He also tapped into the deep well of
talent in western Pennsylvania to
recruit Jim Kelly.

• At Miami, Kelly learned a
sophisticated offense under
Schnellenberger and Earl Morrall, a
veteran pro quarterback and coach at
the school who started in place of the
injured Johnny Unitas for the Colts in
the 1969 Super Bowl loss the Jets.

• Miami adopted a new logo – a U
affixed to the sides of the helmet –
that became its informal nickname.

• The Hurricanes would go on play a
prominent role in college football for
years, winning the team’s first
national championship in 1983 by
beating top-ranked and undefeated
Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl.

• Miami entered the game with a loss,
needing a win to earn the No. 1 spot
in the AP poll. The team took a 31-17
in the third quarter.
• Nebraska rallied but lost when a two-
point conversion to win failed, giving
Miami the victory and the national
championship.

• The freshman quarterback Kosar
threw for 300 yards and two
touchdowns in the victory.

• The game also marked the first piece
of firm evidence of a shift in football
primacy from the football crescent to
south Florida.

• Schnellenberger left Miami to join the
new USFL and was replaced by
Jimmy Johnson for the 1984 season.

• Johnson was a defensive lineman on
the 1964 Arkansas national
championship (FWAA) team and later
worked as an assistant coach at
Louisiana Tech where he recruited
Terry Bradshaw.

• Johnson served as an assistant
coach at Arkansas and Pittsburgh
before landing the top coaching
position at Oklahoma State in 1979.

• At Oklahoma State, Johnson built a
4-3 defense predicated on speed to
stop the wishbone. He didn’t have the
five-star recruits to match opposing
offenses, so he did what he could do
with defensive schemes and attitude.

• That attitude? “Attack on defense,”
Johnson said.

• At Miami, Johnson recruited players
from the crescent but continued to
focus on attracting players from
Florida, including Fort Lauderdale
where he landed wide receiver
Michael Irvin who exemplified players
who expressed confidence with a
distinct attitude.

• As he had at Oklahoma State,
Johnson built his defense on speed,
particularly in the line where he
created a four-man front supported
by tall cornerbacks and fast
linebackers and safeties to cover the
field.

• Johnson’s first season, however, was
marked by a loss in a game against
Doug Flutie and Boston College.
• Flutie’s touchdown pass on the last
play gave BC the win at the Orange
Bowl in November 1984.

• Yet even in defeat, Johnson retained
his confidence and would secure
lasting fame as coach of Miami by
adopting a style that was more similar
to John Madden than to Bryant of
Alabama.

• With players such as Irvin (who would
be drafted by the Cowboys under
Tom Landry), the Hurricanes
dominated college football and did so
with exuberant celebrations, taunting
and other displays.

• The NCAA was so shocked by the
antics of the team that it passed rules
barring each of the displays pursued
by Miami players.

• On Jan. 2, 1987, No. 1 Miami faced
No. 2 Penn State in a battle of
unbeaten teams in the Fiesta Bowl,
which invited the two independent
teams who did not have conference
affiliations tying them to specific bowl
games. More than 70 million would
watch on television.

• Quarterback Vinny Testaverde from
Long Island and running back Alonzo
Highsmith led the Hurricanes.
• Miami players arrived in Arizona
dressed in battle fatigues with their
usual swagger.

• Penn State featured Sports
Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year in
coach Joe Paterno and his old-style
approach in demeanor, dress and
play.
• The team had a first-rate defense
headed by linebacker Shane Conlan.

• Penn State intercepted five passes
en route to a 14-10 upset victory, a
loss that Johnson regretted for years.
• But the game showed that the nation
wanted a true national championship
between No. 1 and No. 2.

• Miami won the national championship
in 1987 when it went 11-0 in the
regular season. It beat No. 2
Oklahoma, 20-14. in the Orange Bowl
on Jan. 1, 1988.
• Earlier in the year, the Hurricanes
defeated Notre Dame 24-0 in setting
up a 1988 rematch.

• In October 1988, undefeated Miami
and undefeated Notre Dame
amplified an intensifying rivalry with
the so-called Catholics vs. Convicts
game, so named by a Notre Dame
student who wanted to sell t-shirts
bearing that expression.

• For Notre Dame and coach Lou
Holtz, the game meant a chance to
reclaim the glory it earned in the
1920s with Rockne, in the 1940s with
its rivalry against Army and in the
1960s under coach Ara Parseghian.
It last won a championship in 1977
with Joe Montana as quarterback.

• The teams scuffled at the start at
Notre Dame Stadium but settled in to
play a game befitting two teams at
the top of the college game.
• Notre Dame held a 31-24 lead late,
but Miami pulled within a point with
45 seconds left.

• Johnson – as Nebraska had against
Miami in the 1984 Orange Bowl –
went for two.
• Irish defensive back Pat Terrell broke
up a pass from quarterback Steve
Walsh, and Notre Dame went on to a
12-0 record and won the national
championship.

• Even though Johnson would leave
Miami after the 1988 season and join
the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, he
along with Schnellenberger had
launched a new dynasty in college
football, one that would last into the
next century.

• The U would win national
championships in 1989 and 1991
under Dennis Erickson, and again in
2001 under Larry Coker.

• Meanwhile, at the University of
Houston, the offense pioneered by
the Ohio high school coach Glenn
“Tiger” Ellison and the USFL
Gamblers’ assistant coach Mouse
Davis startled opponents and served
notice that the offensive game would
change.

• John Jenkins worked with Davis, who
coached Jim Kelly in the intricacies of
the run-and-shoot offense as the
Gamblers’ offensive coordinator
before moving on to the Denver Gold.

• After the USFL folded, Jenkins
followed Gamblers’ head coach Jack
Pardee to the University of Houston
in 1987.
• Houston, known for its innovative
offenses in the 1960s, still ran the
veer in 1987, more than 20 years
after it emerged.

• Jenkins worked with quarterback
Andre Ware to install the run-and-
shoot.
• Under Jenkins, Houston shocked the
Southwest Conference by beating
Texas 60–40 in 1987, 66–15 in 1988,
and 47–9 in 1989.

• Also in 1989, Houston beat SMU 95-
21, with Ware throwing for 517 yards
in the first half.
• Ware became the first African-
American quarterback to win the
Heisman Trophy when he received
the honor in 1989.

• Jenkins became head coach in 1990
and taught the run-and-shoot to
quarterback David Klingler.
• Klingler averaged 474.6 passing
yards per game in 1990. In a game
against Arizona State, Klingler threw
for 716 yards.

• Oddly, Jenkins did not receive any
college job offers when he left
Houston in 1993.
• He would later install a run-and-shoot
offense for the Toronto Argonauts
and their quarterback Doug Flutie in
the mid 1990s. The team won the
Grey Cup.

• The run-and-shoot offense was
derided as a high school offense, but
it worked for teams that pursued a
pass-first, no-tight-end offensive
formation.

• More than anything, it accelerated
development of the no-huddle,
spread offenses that became the
base formation in college and a key
element of NFL offenses.

• “It’s more fun for everyone,” said
Davis. “For the spectators, for the
offense, even for the defense. It’s the
way the game should be played.
There are some people who say, ‘Aw,
that’s bullshit’, but there aren’t as
much of them saying it anymore.”

• Jenkins might not have been offered
a college job because of the scandals
enveloping college football in Texas
in the 1980s.
• The NCAA placed Houston on
probation for infractions committed
before Jenkins joined the team.

• But no scandal topped that of SMU in
the 1980s.
• And college football scandals such as
this one focused on recruiting
violations.

• First, it’s important to see why high
school athletes select a college to
attend.

1. To play for tradition-rich
football programs that
consistently compete for and win
conference and national
championships.
2. To have access to premium
training facilities.

3. To play for university
football programs and/or
coaches that place a large
percentage of players in the
NFL.
4. The opportunity to earn
immediate playing time.

5. To attend a university that
will provide a valuable education.
6. To play nationally-
televised games in front
of large crowds.

7. And beginning in 2021, for
name, image and likeness cash
provided by companies and
booster collectives.

• Before NIL, there was money secretly
paid to players and/or families by
boosters.
• That’s what happened at SMU in
1979 when coach Ron Meyer
assembled what many thought to be
the best recruiting class.

• The top recruits were Craig James
and Eric Dickerson, who would later
be called Pony Express.
• SMU went 49 -9 from 1980–83 and
finished No. 2 in the nation in 1982.

• The team’s winning percentage
during that period was 37 points
higher than its historical average.

• SMU’s rise to prominence raised
questions about recruiting. Dallas
sportswriters thought SMU’s record to
be such an outlier that it had to be the
result of something more than good
coaching.
• They were right.

• In 1986, a player named David
Stanley told a reporter that he been
paid to play for SMU.
• That opened a NCAA probe that led
to several findings of recruiting
violations, including payments to
players.

• The coach (Bobby Collins, who
replaced Meyer in 1982 when Meyer
left to coach the Patriots), the athletic
director and the university president
all resigned.
• The NCAA levied the death penalty
on SMU, the first and only time it has
done so.

• SMU has not recovered from the ban
that covered the 1987 and 1988
seasons.
• The school would move home games
from the massive Cotton Bowl to a
23,000-seat stadium that needed to
be upgraded to meet Division I
standards.

• Despite the NCAA threat of the death
penalty, recruiting scandals rocked
schools such as Miami and traditional
powers such as USC and Ohio State
from the mid 1980s to 2021.

• The pro game, meanwhile, absorbed
a scandal of its own making: the 1987
strike by players and the decision of
the owners to use replacement
players.

• The decision by the owners to use
replacement players was driven by
one element: television.
• The owners sought to preserve the
TV revenue and by playing games,
compelled the networks to provide
coverage.

• That gave the owners leverage over
the players that effectively meant the
union would eventually lose.
• First, the owners encouraged the
networks to describe the games as
“replacement games.”

• Some fans sided with the players, but
it turns out that more identified with
the replacement players living the
dream life of football.

• The players eventually capitulated,
and the strike ended after three
weeks of replacement games.

• Through all the turmoil in Dallas with
SMU and in the NFL with the
replacement players, one man plotted
a way to buy his way into the pro
league.

• Jerry Jones, who played on the 1964
Arkansas team with University of
Miami coach Jimmy Johnson, made a
fortune in oil but his passion was
football.

• Now, he wanted to buy a team in the
NFL.
• And he found a willing seller in Bum
Bright, the owner of the Dallas
Cowboys.

• In 1989, Jones bought the Cowboys
and lured Johnson from Miami to
coach the team, dismissing the fabled
Tom Landry in the process.
• A new era had opened for pro football
and America’s team.

• Landry’s departure marked a
generational shift in coaches.
• He coached Dallas for 29 years,
invented the 4-3 defense, installed
the now-common shotgun offense
and won two Super Bowls.

• Chuck Noll of the Pittsburgh Steeler
retired in 1991, with four Super Bowl
victories and a career mark of 193-
148-1.
• Noll played for Paul Brown in
Cleveland and coached under him
before becoming the head coach for
the Steelers in 1969.

• Don Shula retired in 1995 as the
winningest coach in NFL history, with
a record of 347-163-5 and two Super
Bowl wins, including one that capped
the historic undefeated season. He
also coached the great QBs Johnny
Unitas and Dan Marino.

• Johnson represented the new breed
of coaches who understood modern
players and knew the techniques to
motivate them.
• Importantly, he was not a NFL lifer
and followed a non-traditional
approach.

• “Not since Vince Lombardi was
molding the Green Bay Packers into
his own granite image in the sixties
has the NFL had a coach as focused
or as single-minded—or as
egotistical—as Jimmy Johnson,”
wrote Gary Cartwright in a 1992
feature on Johnson.

• The Cowboys retained some players
drafted by Landry such as wide
receiver Michael Irvin but built the
team largely with draft choices who fit
the Johnson model from the U: fast,
physical football players.

• Johnson’s first pick in the 1989 NFL
Draft was Troy Aikman, a
quarterback from UCLA.

• Johnson and Aikman knew each
other from years earlier, when the
quarterback attended one of the
coach’s camps.

• Later that year, the Cowboys pulled
off the greatest steal in NFL history,
receiving five players and eight draft
choices from Minnesota for aging
running back Herschel Walker, a
former Heisman winner from Georgia.

• In 1990, the Cowboys drafted Florida
running back Emmitt Smith, giving
the team a potent ground game.

• Irvin, Aikman and Smith would form
the triplets who created the
foundation of the Cowboys’ dynasty
in the first half of the 1990s.

• Smith would finish his career as the
leading rusher of all-time in the NFL,
with 18,355 yards, surpassing the
great Walter Payton.

• The Cowboys would win three Super
Bowls (1992, 1993 and 1995), two
under Johnson and one under former
Oklahoma coach and Jones’
Arkansas teammate Barry Switzer,
with the future Hall of Famers
Aikman, Smith and Irvin on each
team.

• Dallas beat the luckless Bills of Jim
Kelly twice and the Pittsburgh
Steelers once in their four-year run of
three Super Bowl titles.

• One development that helped to
reshape the NFL occurred in 1993
when Reggie White settled a lawsuit
he filed against the NFL to loosen
restrictions on free agency (among
other things, the settlement changed
the draft from 12 to seven rounds).

• In 1994, the 49ers provided the
template on how to effectively use
free agency to strengthen a team on
the cusp of a championship.

• San Francisco signed Ken Norton Jr.,
Richard Dent, Charles Mann, Gary
Plummer and the best player
available, future Hall of Fame
cornerback and college coach Deion
Sanders, one of the few athletes to
play pro baseball and football.

• “We had come to the realization that
this was a team destined to win now,
but we were missing a couple
pieces,” recalled Carmen Policy,
former 49ers president.

• “So, we had to deal with a
proposition: Do we push all our chips
into the middle of the table and do
whatever we have to do and get
those extra pieces to overcome this
burgeoning dynasty called Dallas?
The decision was yes.”

• The Niners would go on to win the
Super Bowl over the Chargers, with
Steve Young throwing five touchdown
passes.
• Free agency worked, at least for the
Niners whose plan the Los Angeles
Rams would copy in 2021.

• As the 20th century raced to a close,
the NFL’s focus on quarterbacks
deepened.
• Green Bay returned to its past glory
with another quarterback from the
South, Brett Favre of Southern
Mississippi.

• Favre led the Packers over the New
England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI,
35-21.

• Favre played in the NFL from 1991-
2010, winning three Most Valuable
Player awards.
• The Hall of Fame quarterback played
in a record 299 straight games and
threw for 71,838 yards and 508
touchdowns.

• Payton Manning tossed a then-
record 539 touchdowns in his career
from 1998-2015 and accelerated the
move toward a spread offense in the
NFL with his capacity to run a no-
huddle offense.

• Manning won the NFL’s Most
Valuable Player Award a record five
times.
• He won two of the four Super Bowls
in which he played for the Colts and
Denver Broncos.

• John Elway of the Broncos played in
five Super Bowls, winning two in the
late 1990s.

• That confirmed the move by teams in
1983 and before that by Paul Brown
when he selected Greg Cook to seek
strong-armed quarterbacks able to
run wide-open offenses.

• Drew Brees won a Super Bowl for
New Orleans and compiled 80,358
regular-season passing yards and
571 touchdowns. That’s more than
Peyton Manning (71,940), Brett Favre
(71,838), Ben Roethlisberger
(64,088) and Phillip Rivers (63,440).

• Only Tom Brady with 89,214 regular-
season yards topped Brees. Add the
playoffs (13,400) and he has more
than 100,000 yards passing.

• Consider those yardage totals when
examining the passing statistics of
the great west coast offense
quarterback Joe Montana.
• In his 13 seasons, Montana totaled
40,551 for the 49ers and Chiefs, less
than half of Brady’s.

• Yet it would be an unheralded
quarterback who would lead an
offense that profoundly changed the
NFL.
• It even had a colorful nickname: The
Greatest Show on Turf.

• Oddly, the St. Louis Rams were
coached by Dick Vermeil who had
retired from the Eagles in 1982 but
returned to the NFL in 1997.
• After two bad seasons, he hired NFL
lifer Mike Martz to serve as offensive
coordinator.

• “I saw the evolution,” Vermeil said. “It
was slow. Every year teams threw a
little more, scoring went up a little
more. When you have 32 teams, they
don’t all transcend to a new
philosophy at the same time.”

• “I can't think, in my history of
coaching, of any assistant who came
into an NFL franchise and made the
immediate impact that Mike Martz
did,” said Vermeil.

• Martz’s offense was based on what
he saw watching San Diego State
under coach Don Coryell in the
1960s.
• “It all began with Don, to be honest
with you,” he said.

• “It’s impossible to tell the story of the
NFL without spending at least several
chapters on Coryell,” wrote The
Athletic’s Daniel Popper in August
2023 in a story on the coach’s
posthumous induction into the Pro
Football Hall of Fame.

• As Popper points out in his story,
Coryell’s teams led the NFL in total
offense five times.
• Between 1979 and 1981, Fouts
through for more than 4,000 yards.

• Coryell’s offensive coordinator? Joe
Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls
with three different quarterbacks for
Washington.
• John Madden also coached under
Coryell at San Diego State.

• “I’m sitting down there in front on the
corner and next to me is Joe Gibbs
and next to him is Dan Fouts, and the
three of us are in the Hall of Fame
because of Don Coryell,” said
Madden at a 2010 memorial service
for the coach.

• Coryell’s offense featured a vertical
passing game that eliminated the pro
set that dated from the 1940s and
focused on a spread offense of the
kind Ellison had advocated.

• In the 1970s-80s, Coryell brought that
offense to first the St. Louis Cardinals
(now Arizona) and then the San
Diego (now Los Angeles) Chargers
with Fouts.

• Coryell’s offense – known as Air
Coryell - didn’t spread throughout the
NFL simply because his teams in St.
Louis and San Diego never won the
Super Bowl.

• Following Coryell, Martz designed an
offense that would pass the football
first and only focus on the run to
protect a lead and burn the clock.
• “Why wait till third down” to call
favored pass plays?” Martz asked.

• Martz would call plays designed for
third-and-long situations on first and
second downs.
• The Rams signed free-agent
quarterback Trent Green from
Washington to operate the offense
and traded for all-around back
Marshall Faulk.

• Moreover, they drafted Torry Holt to
go along with veteran end Isaac
Bruce to give the Rams speed on the
outside and in the backfield.

• When Green suffered an injury in the
third game of the year, it seemed
Martz’s offense would sputter but it
turned out the perfect quarterback for
it was on the bench.

• Kurt Warner, who had played in the
indoor arena league, among other
stops, stepped in and startled the
league with his precision and
uncanny ability to see open receivers
running Martz’s fast-paced spread
offense.

• Mike Silver of Sports Illustrated wrote
that the offense “seems to violate all
the tenets of traditional football.”

• The site Five Thirty-Eight found that:

1. St. Louis passed a league-high 59
percent of the time, gained 7.6 yards per
attempt on those throws (11 percent
more than the NFL average
on all attempts that year) and scored a
touchdown on 7.4 percent of them
(almost twice the league average across
all attempts).

2. The NFL’s average passer rating - a
formula that encompasses passing
attempts, completions, yards,
touchdowns, and interceptions on a
scale of 0 to 158.3 - in 1999 was 75.1 —
essentially the same as it had been for a
decade — and Warner’s 109.2 rate led
the league by a wide margin.

On Oct. 1, 1999, against the Bengals,
Warner hit the perfect 158.3 quarterback
rating mark, with 17 completions in 21
attempts for 310 yards and 3
touchdowns.

• In 1999, Warner’s yards-per-pass
attempt stood at 8.7.
• In 2000, it jumped to 9.9, a Super
Bowl-era record (Sid Luckman holds
the record at 10.9 yards per pass
attempt in 1943).

• The Rams’ offense used the pass to
set up the run, and teams took notice
when St. Louis won the Super Bowl
over Tennessee on Jan 30, 2000,
when the Titans’ last-second effort
fell short.

• By 2005, what the Rams had wrought
had become standard stuff.
• The NFL average passer rating had
surpassed 80.0 for the first time ever,
with players consistently achieving a
higher rating than Warner.

• Patrick Mahomes of Kansas City is
the all-time leader with a career
passer rating of 104.5 (as of Nov. 26,
2023).
• Brady is 10th at 97.2 and Warner is
now 17th at 93.7.

• Steve Young of Tampa Bay and San
Francisco is the only quarterback
who did not play in the 21st century to
crack the career passer rating top 15,
standing 13th with a mark of 96.8.

• [To underscore the misleading nature
of statistics in football, though,
Johnny Unitas has a career passer
rating mark of 78.2, tied for 106th all-
time with Bert Jones (Colts) and Jim
McMahon (Bears & Vikings). Bubby
Brister (157th) is ranked higher than
Sammy Baugh. (150th).]

• (The latter-day triumph of the air
game is evident in that only one
quarterback from the 1960s-1970s is
in the top 20 in career passing yards
as of 2023: Fran Tarkenton, who
compiled 47,003 yards from 1961 to
1978. He is 14th on the list of all-time
passers. The great Unitas is 22nd.)

• It is thus not surprising that the
dominant NFL team of the 21st
century – New England - turned out
to be the one commanded by the
leading passer in yards of all-time in
Brady.

• In 1994, Robert Kraft bought the
Patriots and hired former Giants’
coach Bill Parcells. That year, the
Patriots qualified for the playoffs for
the first time since 1986. Two years
later, the Patriots went to the Super
Bowl but lost to Green Bay.

• Parcells left and was replaced by
Pete Carroll who departed after three
seasons.
• In 2000, Kraft hired former Giants
assistant Bill Belichick who had
served as head coach of the Browns
but was fired before the team moved
to Baltimore.

• Under Belichick, the Patriots
assembled a formidable team that
would coalesce around a star
quarterback in Brady and a stout
defense that reminded observers of
the defense deployed by Belichick
with the Super Bowl-winning Giants.

• Over 20 years, Belichick and Brady
establish one of the classic coach-
quarterback relationships in football,
joining, among others, all-time
winning combinations such as Brown
– Graham (Browns); Lombardi – Starr
(Packers) and Walsh – Montana
(49ers).

• Belichick’s approach reflected that of
his self-identified coaching hero, Paul
Brown.
• Belichick controlled and measured
everything, landing on a formula of
speed and versatility to give the
Patriots an edge.

• Belichick isn’t known for any single
innovation on offense or defense, but
he refined existing approaches such
as the spread.
• He defined the slot position with
small, fast players such as Wes
Welker, Julian Edelman and Danny
Amendola.

• In 2007, the Patriots became the first
modern NFL team to run more than
50 percent of their plays from the
shotgun, underscoring Belichick’s
adoption of the spread offense.

• Led by Randy Moss, the Patriots’
spread baffled defenses who could
not devise schemes to eliminate both
the vertical and horizontal elements
of the offense. They went undefeated
but lost to the Giants in the Super
Bowl.

• In 2010, Belichick reached out to
then-Oregon coach Chip Kelly to
learn how to quicken the pace of
offensive play, showing that he
viewed football as a lifelong learning
project that he linked to history (see
his talk on long snappers in Course
Materials).

• The results? In 2012, the Patriots ran
1,191 offensive plays in the regular
season, the second-most ever at the
time.
• The team also led the league with
557 points even as they cutback on
shotgun plays to 48.2 percent.

• On defense, Belichick adapted
schemes to optimize the capacity to
beat an opponent instead of relying
on a consistent plan.
• The Patriots could run a 4-3, 3-4, or
variants as required.

• In addition, the team was superbly
conditioned, allowing it to overcome
adversity in most cases to win games
that lesser teams would not. For
example, Belichick, unlike other
modern coaches, ordered his team to
run wind sprints, up hill, at the end of
practices. It paid off.

• The Patriots upset the heavily
favored Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI
and won Super Bowls XXXVIII and
XXXIX.
• In 2007, the Patriots finished the
regular season 16-0, first team since
the 1972 Dolphins to go unbeaten in
the regular season.

• New England swept the AFC playoffs
to enter Super Bowl XLII as favorites
over the Giants and stood ready as
only the second team to finished the
regular season and playoffs with an
undefeated record. But the Giants
won, 17-14.

• The Patriots would again meet the
Giants in Super Bowl XLVI. New York
won that one, too.
• Yet the dynasty deepened as New
England beat Seattle and then
Atlanta after an epic comeback in
February 2017 to become only the
2nd team to win five Super Bowls.

• After losing to the Philadelphia
Eagles in Super Bowl LII, the Patriots
bounced back and beat the Los
Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII for
their sixth Super Bowl victory.

• The Patriots’ dynasty did not occur
without controversy.
• The Rams’ offensive coordinator
Martz remains convinced that New
England videotaped his team’s
practices ahead of Super Bowl
XXXVI.

• The Indianapolis Colts charged Brady
with deflating game balls prior to the
AFC Championship game on Jan. 18,
2015.
• Brady eventually served a four-game
suspension in 2016 after numerous
court challenges to the NFL’s original
punishment.

• Regardless of the controversies,
Brady had firmly established himself
as the greatest quarterback in NFL
history.

• Brady holds five Super Bowl MVP
trophies and three NFL MVP awards.

• Brady’s career tracked the football
mythmaking arc.
• An underdog, drafted in the sixth of
seven rounds, gets to play when the
starter is hurt, Brady goes on to win
titles – and the girl.

• Yet eventually, all empires crumble.
• Brady and his supermodel wife
Gisele Bundchen split in 2022.

• The Patriots, meanwhile, struggled
after 2019 under Belichick, who was
ridiculed in a Nov. 27, 2023, Wall
Street Journal headline after the team
lost a day earlier to the Giants, 10-7,
to fall to 2-9.

• The 2023 season pointed to a painful
exit for Belichick.
• He had won 331 regular-season and
playoff games by November 2023,
trailing only Don Shula’s record of
347 wins.

• But as F. Scott Fitzgerald –
remember him – wrote at the end of
Gatsby …

• But as F. Scott Fitzgerald –
remember him – wrote at the end of
Gatsby, the game’s past violence
haunted it.
• “And so we beat on, boats against
the current, borne back ceaselessly
into the past."

• As the 2023 neared its end in both
college and the NFL, the overall story
of football as one of ecstasy could not
be separated from the violence that
accompanied it within America’s
dream life.

JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty

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JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty