Return Trip : After Chasing Dream Around NFL, Raye Makes Second Stop With Rams

Jimmy Raye left the Rams and his position as offensive coordinator eight years ago to chase history. History won.

Now, Raye is back with the Rams, without the title, on the face of it not much closer to becoming an NFL head coach than he was in 1985, when the doors of opportunity swung open for him.

Back then, he was a leading candidate to be named the league’s first black head coach. He was young, he was smart, he had experience.

Jimmy Raye was going to be the first.

“I was in my late-30s, and I had all the gusto and I had the brashness,” said Raye, now 45. “And people were saying good things about me, and I had a sense of confidence that lent itself toward being successful because I had been successful as a player and then all of my coaching career, so I just thought that the next step was inevitable.

“But there were too many other variables that I failed to negotiate when I made some of the decisions that I made, and they turned out to be the things that brought me full circle.”

Those things were losing seasons at Tampa, Atlanta and New England, and they brought him back to the Rams, this time as receivers coach under coordinator Ernie Zampese.

Raye, in his 15th season as a coach, has been in the NFL so long he is seen as a member of the old guard, a veteran of the games they play.

But he wasn’t the first . Art Shell was, with the Raiders. And who knows when the next might come?

After running into a series of bad luck and bad teams since leaving the Rams to try to make a bigger name for himself, Jimmy Raye seems to have fallen off the short list of top head coaching candidates. Right now, there don’t appear to be any black men on that list.

He could be bitter, after watching team after team bypass him for white candidates, but he swears he is not.

He could be angry at the system, now that eight years later the NFL still has hired only one black head coach in modern history, but he insists he is not.

He lives with it.

A lot of seasons, like last year’s 1-15 free-fall in New England, have numbed him. He doesn’t deny his chances have been limited by the color of his skin but manages to accept it.

“I’ve always dealt in reality,” Raye said. “I’ve never been an idealistic person about what I do. I’ve always been a realist, even when I went to Michigan State from a segregated high school in North Carolina as a quarterback.

“If there was a set of rules written down somewhere with some guidelines that said if you accomplish these things, 1 through 10, then you are now a viable guy for a head coaching job, then maybe I would be bitter.

“But see, it’s not an exact science, and there’s no script written. . . .

“And maybe it’s a rationalization, and maybe people will perceive it as a rationalization, but I understand it that way because I’ve worked the profession day in and day out, 15 years in this business and six as a college assistant, so that’s 21 years of coaching. I understand what it’s all about.”

And if Jimmy Raye falls short of the goal, he says he can take it. Being the first was never particularly his goal but one foisted upon him by fate.

Raye, more than any other black man, has stepped into the league’s network . When he was fired, along with the rest of the New England staff, after last season, he had several offers from coaches who trust him. If that means other blacks will have an easier time getting ahead, then Raye has achieved, at least, that.

“I’m in the business and I have a lot of friends in the business,” Raye said. “I have no misgivings. I understand the rules. . . .

“It’s like when I was the quarterback of Michigan State in the middle ‘60s, I was the only black quarterback at a major university, probably in the country. And I got more publicity because of that than how good I was.

“I think it enhanced the opportunities for younger black kids, and I think what has happened with Art Shell will enhance the position of the younger coaches coming around.”

But this is the veteran coach speaking now, not the undeniably sharp young coach he was with the Rams in 1983 and ‘84, John Robinson’s first two years as head coach.

Every now and then, a little of that early drive pops to the surface--especially when he is asked how it felt to be mentioned, along with Tony Dungy and a few others, as the leading black candidates, not leading candidates period.

“That was a little bit disturbing to me, that we were black candidates instead of just candidates,” Raye said. “I would have liked to be in that pot with Mike Ditka and Dan Reeves and Ron Meyer and Al Saunders and Frank Gansz, because those are the guys that were assistant coaches that I started with. . . .”

Instead, as their stars ascended, Raye’s plunged, and he doesn’t disagree that plenty of others have passed him by.

“When I see a person like a Jeff Fisher (the Rams’ 33-year-old defensive coordinator) and some of the coaches that are getting coordinating opportunities and head coaching opportunities,” Raye said, “I remember when I was in that position, and the only difference I guess was that I was black.”

Said Raye’s son, Jimmy, who is in camp as a free-agent receiver with the Rams: “Yeah, we all thought it was going to happen, especially right around the time when Art Shell got his job.”

Raye came closest to a job offer when Tampa considered him before hiring Ray Perkins in 1987, and Raye’s last head coaching interview was with the New York Jets before the 1990 season.

When he’s asked if the league just isn’t ready for more black head coaches, Raye’s son sighs.

“That’s a tough question,” he said. “If there’s only one in the NFL, I guess not. I guess not.”

In ‘85, Raye left the Rams for the offensive coordinator’s job at Tampa, rejoining Leeman Bennett, whom Raye knew from an earlier job in Atlanta.

“I felt that if I went to Tampa--a team that was down after the (John) McKay era--and did a good job and got that team into the playoffs, and they played well offensively, that I would fall into that select group of guys that would be considered for a head coaching job,” Raye said.

“I did it for the wrong reasons as I look back on it now. But at the time, that was my goal.”

Since leaving the Rams, Raye has not been with a winning team, and he recognizes that working for teams with dismal records, however little he was to blame, does not put anyone on the fast track to a head coaching job.

“People hire people from successful programs and winning teams, and Tampa was downtrodden, losing, had been a perennial loser. Coaching wasn’t going to make the difference there.”

Robinson says, regardless of race, that Raye should be considering as a head coaching prospect more than ever because of his varied experience.

“What he’s got to do is put about three or four years of success together. Then I think he’s a leading candidate,” Robinson said.

Robinson doesn’t think there is outward racism involved in the NFL’s failure to hire more than one black head coach.

“I’m convinced that most if not all the owners would hire the man they perceive to be the best . . . regardless of his race,” Robinson said. “Where I think the need is is to have more black coaches who are coordinators, who are in the power structure on the staff. When that happens, that’s the step. The step isn’t as dramatic from coordinator to head coach.”

Raye isn’t even a coordinator anymore, but as he looks back on it now, he says that he believes he wasn’t as equipped to be a head coach then as he is now.

“I’ve learned from being with different head coaches that the function of the head coach is so different than just knowing the X’s and O’s, the technical part of the game,” Raye said.

By the time he got to New England “water had been thrown on the fire that was burning to be a head coach,” Raye said.

But as Raye was maturing as a coach, the losses kept piling up.

“I had come to realize at that time that being employed was the important thing.

“I’m headed into my 15th year in the National Football League, and the thing that’s important to me now is being with people I like, that are good coaches, and getting to the NFC championship game and the Super Bowl.”

Raye says that before he got the Rams’ job this time he had a long talk with Robinson to allay his apprehension about returning to a team in a lesser role and to convince Robinson he would not get in Zampese’s way.

On the field, Zampese runs the pass drills, Robinson takes the run drills and Raye talks quietly to individual players along the way.

“To me, it’s a better job (than his coordinator’s job in New England),” Raye says. “It’s a better job because of the people that are involved.”

Says Robinson: “Football hasn’t been a real fun thing for him recently.”

Raye’s son agrees:

“It’s been hard on him,” Raye’s son said. “Like when I’ve been home for Christmas after the seasons in Tampa and New England, it’s taken a lot out of him. So I think he’s glad to have some of that pressure off of him and just be able to teach again.”

Raye plans to do more than that. He wants to go to law school for the next five off-seasons. It’s all part of life after football.

“If I can get out of law school, pass the bar, go on and become a lawyer and play golf and have 15 years of coaching pension in the NFL,” Raye said, “life’s going to go on for me.”