COMMENTARY : Just Being a Nice Guy Doesn’t Mean Berry Was a Good Coach

Like most people who live in a fog, former New England Patriots’ Coach Raymond Berry never saw his firing coming.

Bulwarked by faith and blinded to the reality that his last two Patriots teams were only slightly more appetizing than last year’s yogurt, Berry was ready to stay the course, even as it became obvious he had no map or chart to guide him, only a mystical inner compass that he could not or would not explain. Even as he believed he had the Patriots pointed magnetic north, they were headed south.

At his final news conference, Berry said “This all comes as news to me” when asked about “philosophical differences” with General Manager Pat Sullivan. How typical. Berry could sit face-to-face with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev for six hours, and it would be news to him that the guy has a birthmark.

If nothing else, Berry’s career is proof of The Peter Principle, the former No. 1 best seller in which the author argued that sooner or later, given opportunity, most people reach their level of incompetence.

With the Baltimore Colts from 1955 to ‘67, Berry was the greatest pass-catcher in the game. Five years after he retired--the earliest date a player becomes eligible--he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

But as the Patriots’ head coach these last 5 1/2 years, Berry, 56, has been a puzzle, a space cowboy whose ability to speak gobbledygook and ignore reality first confounded the media, then his players, and eventually, the front office.

To the end, many players liked Berry, but that isn’t to say that he was doing a good job. Most players tend to like any coach who doesn’t yell and get on their case constantly.

What did Berry do for the Patriots? At first, very little. Which was exactly what was needed. When the team was at its peak in back-to-back 11-5 seasons, writers shrugged if, in the heat of the postgame dressing room, Berry couldn’t remember the name of the next opponent or answered questions about that day’s game as if he’d been stuck in line at the concessions stand.

So he seemed a bit goofy. So what? The team was winning and the veterans stuck up for him.

Just as the Boston Celtics, relieved to be rid of the iron hand of Bill Fitch, took first-year head Coach K. C. Jones to the NBA championship, so did the 1985 Patriots take Berry to the Super Bowl. Berry succeeded Ron Meyer, who also had ruled with an iron hand. Like K. C., let’s credit Berry for not messing them up.

But who completely messed up the quarterbacking? Who cost the Patriots a playoff spot in 1988 by starting a rusty, surgery-scarred, gun-shy Tony Eason in the final two games when he hadn’t played in the first 14? Who firmly installed Eason as his starter before the 1989 season even began, then yanked him after three games and demoted him all the way to fourth-string, ruining his market value and setting the stage for Eason’s total humiliation when the Patriots waived him at midseason?

The way Berry mishandled the quarterback situation was grounds for firing all by itself.

What about his sophomoric play-calling? Trailing 7-0 in the first quarter against Dan Marino and the Dolphins early this season, Berry called for a fake punt, even though the Patriots were deep in their own territory and in immediate danger of falling behind 14-0 if it failed. Which is exactly what happened, as the Patriots went on to a resounding defeat. Afterward, Berry said that even if the Patriots had been on their 1-yard line, “I would have called it.”

Uncompromising? Yes. And just plain stupid.

As was Berry’s protecting of older players like Stanley Morgan, Steve Grogan and Marc Wilson in the Plan B draft--guys who almost certainly would not have been signed by other teams--and letting younger players go.

Berry said the season-ending injuries to Garin Veris, Ronnie Lippett and Andre Tippett in the final exhibition game against the Green Bay Packers and a general decline in talent--an indirect swipe at the departed (to the New York Jets) Dick Steinberg’s scouting operation--had more to do with the Patriots’ poor season than anything else.

There is some validity to that. But there is less validity in keeping a coach who lives in his own little world, who explains nothing, and who expects people, even his bosses, to trust him while his uninspired team sinks into mediocrity--and below.