Lessons in Loyalty

He cried at the drop of a pass.

He slept on a cot in his office three days a week, allowing his eyes, bleary from watching game tape, to close for a few hours when he wasn’t on the phone with assistant coaches or players.

His stomach was in knots on the eve of big games.

Dick Vermeil wasn’t preparing for games. He was preparing for war.

He wasn’t a coach, he was a general.

It wasn’t training camp to him, it was boot camp.

“I was a mess,” he acknowledged.

And so in 1982, after 24 years of coaching at every level and after having taken the Philadelphia Eagles to Super Bowl XV in 1981, where they lost to the Oakland Raiders, Vermeil quit coaching.

“What bothered me the most at the end,” he said, “was that the thrill of winning lasted about five minutes. Then I’d already be into preparation for next week. When I lost, I couldn’t get over it. I couldn’t turn it off. I was blinded by my temperament. I let the game consume me.”

Vermeil left a sport that had been his life since he was a star at Calistoga High in Northern California. He was finished at age 45, he insisted.

He would become a football analyst on television, enjoy his family, spend some time in his beloved Napa Valley, maybe get involved in the wine industry and allow his intensity level to drop.

Fast-forward 18 years.

At the center of Super Bowl hysteria sits a calm, smiling grandfather of 11, a voice of reason and sanity amid the insanity that precedes the game.

Introducing the new Vermeil, the wiser Vermeil, the more mature Vermeil, the man who will lead the St. Louis Rams into the Super Bowl today against the Tennessee Titans at the Georgia Dome.

“I’m a different person,” he said. “I’m older. . . . Hopefully, I’m more aware of things . . . not quite as blind. I know I’m a lot more understanding. I’ve invested a lot more time thinking about the leadership role rather than the quarterback’s first step on his pivot and the first read when they go double zone. I’m different that way.”

Sweet story. Happy ending.

But it’s not exactly true.

When Vermeil was lured back into coaching two seasons ago by the Rams, he wasn’t any different. He still ran a boot camp. He still burned with the need to win. His methods left his players ready to mutiny and his front office ready to cut him loose at the end of last season.

Club President John Shaw had ignored those who ridiculed him for hiring a 61-year-old who had burned out 15 years earlier. You’ll see, he was told, the game has passed Vermeil by.

But soon, the words of Shaw’s critics were being echoed by his own players.

“His practices would drain you physically,” one player said. “His meetings would drain you mentally. By Sunday, you’d be whipped.”

The results showed on the field. The same old Vermeil was leading the same old Rams. They were 5-11 and 4-12 in his first two seasons back.

The media believed he wasn’t always honest with them, about the fines levied against running back Lawrence Phillips to the circumstances surrounding a missed plane flight by quarterback Tony Banks.

Some players didn’t even attend the team’s final meeting at the end of last season.

Something had to be done, and Vermeil seemed to be out of solutions.

A crucial meeting was held last January, involving Shaw, Vice President Jay Zygmunt and Vermeil.

Shaw didn’t want to let Vermeil go, sensitive because he had fired Vermeil’s predecessor, Rich Brooks, after only two seasons and concerned because cutting loose Vermeil and his staff would cost $10 million in salaries.

But the Ram brass wanted changes, beginning with the removal of offensive coordinator Jerry Rhome.

Vermeil went along with all the moves, which included Rhome’s departure, the hiring of Mike Martz as offensive coordinator and a series of player moves that included the acquisition of quarterback Kurt Warner and running back Marshall Faulk.

And Vermeil loosened the reins a bit.

Yeah, he changed. It was either that or go back into retirement.

“Boot camp eventually ends,” Vermeil said. “You have to refine your tactics at some point and start again.”

Said safety Keith Lyle: “He shortened the practices, he let up on the pads, he shortened the meetings. He compromised.”

Vermeil even decided to let his players have Saturday nights off before Sunday games, a policy that would have horrified the old Vermeil.

When starting quarterback Trent Green went down with a season-ending knee injury in the exhibition season, it was Vermeil who rallied his troops, telling them Warner could do the job.

And Vermeil brought in a wheelbarrow for his players to see and a story to go along with it.

The story: A man decides to push a wheelbarrow on a tightrope between two skyscrapers. Everybody laughs at him, except for one spectator who says he believes in the man. The man thanks the spectator, but asks him if he would really show his faith in the man. What more can he do, the spectator asks. You could get into the wheelbarrow, says the man.

As Warner began to do the job and the wins mounted, more and more players jumped into Vermeil’s wheelbarrow.

Defensive tackle D’Marco Farr had been a Vermeil believer all along, seeing a method to Vermeil’s madness in the 1998 season.

“I couldn’t wait for Sundays,” Farr said of last season. “Sunday was the easy day. The practices were unbelievable, three hours in the heat in full pads.

“But [Vermeil] was doing it that way for a purpose. He was sacrificing a respectable year to have a great year. He wanted to weed out all the people who didn’t want to sacrifice. And he did.”

Said defensive lineman Kevin Carter: “He’s really good. He’s not easy to play for because he puts the responsibility on you to be a man, to be true to yourself. It’s a challenge to play for a coach like that, but he doesn’t ask you to do anything he wouldn’t do.”

Even now that he shows the world a kindler, gentler face, even now that he has allowed Martz to install the most explosive offense in football, Vermeil remains the competitor he has always been.

“The game has changed, but he hasn’t,” said Ron Jaworski, who was Vermeil’s quarterback in Philadelphia when the Eagles went to the Super Bowl. “His intensity, his desire, his passion to be successful burn as brightly as ever.”

Jaworski laughs at those who doubted Vermeil’s ability to return after a decade and a half away from the game.

“That was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” Jaworski said. “While he was being a television analyst, he would go to a city where the game was being played on Wednesday or Thursday, talk to the coaches and players and see what they were doing. He was learning and setting up a network in case he ever became a coach again.

“The 15 years away didn’t put him behind. It put him on the cutting edge.”

Perhaps, but if Vermeil hadn’t been forced to change, if Warner hadn’t been able to replace Green, if the Rams hadn’t put it all together, Vermeil would have undoubtedly been shoved over the edge after this season by Shaw.

Fifteen years ago, he was, by his own account, a mess. A year ago, his team was a mess.

And now, Dick Vermeil is back on top, back in the spotlight, back in the Super Bowl with a team nobody else wants to mess with.

It’s all about as logical as trying to push a wheelbarrow between two skyscrapers.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Vermeil’s Record

Ram Coach Dick Vermeil’s career includes loss to Oakland Raiders in 1981 Super Bowl:

REGULAR SEASON

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Year Team W L .Pct 1976 Philadelphia 4 10 .286 1977 Philadelphia 5 9 .357 1978 Philadelphia 9 7 .563 1979 Philadelphia 11 5 .688 1980 Philadelphia 12 4 .750 1981 Philadelphia 10 6 .625 1982 Philadelphia 3 6 .333 1997 St. Louis 5 11 .313 1998 St. Louis 4 12 .250 1999 St. Louis 13 3 .813 Totals 77 73 .513

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PLAYOFFS

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1978 Philadelphia 0 1 .000 1979 Philadelphia 1 1 .500 1980 Philadelphia 2 1 .667 1981 Philadelphia 0 1 .000 1999 St. Louis 2 0 1.000 Totals 5 4 .556

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