TheSteve Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Wannstedt wasn't born to win By Skip Bayless Page 2 At first glance, he looked so rough-and-tough imposing, so tall and strong and handsome. Not pretty-boy handsome. Steel-town handsome with black, combed-back hair and a mustache that said "I wouldn't try that." Dave Wannstedt is a Pittsburgh guy with a Pittsburgh brogue; and at first glance, he appeared to be a mix of Ditka's volatility and Marino's smoldering cool. Here, I'd heard, was Jimmy Johnson's Most Valuable Assistant. Here was The Next Great NFL Head Coach. It was a long, long half a season for Dave Wannstedt in Miami. Looks can be so deceiving. Only now am I sorting out what I always wanted Dave to be, and what he really was. As I got to know him that first summer at Dallas Cowboys camp in 1989, his interior was so surprisingly different than his exterior. He was so approachable and likable -- so down-to-earth, unassuming, good-hearted -- that I ignored the truth. Dave Wannstedt was never cut out to be a head coach. Now, I'm not even convinced he was anything special as a defensive coordinator. The tough truth: He was an overachieving offensive lineman from Pitt who was no more than a meat-and-potatoes thinker as a head coach. All he really had going for him was that he looked the part and, more important, that he was Jimmy Johnson's best friend. You wanted to believe in Dave because Jimmy always seemed to. You kept waiting for Dave to turn into Jimmy as a head coach -- well, Jimmy with a heart. Maybe that was the problem: Dave was just too nice a guy to command a pro football team. He was more follower than leader -- something of a sheep in wolf's clothing. More Bayless Skip Bayless chatted with fans about Dave Wannstedt and more on Friday morning -- check out the chat transcript. How Dave Wannstedt became head coach of the Chicago Bears and kept that job for six years, then became head coach of the Miami Dolphins and kept that job for four and a half seasons -- until he stepped down this week -- is a testimony to the trap into which I fell. Apparently, so did many, many others. In Chicago, the McCaskeys, who own the team, kept waiting for Dave to live up to what they badly wanted him to be -- the next great tough-guy coach of the Bears. Oh, how Virginia and Ed McCaskey loved Dave -- like a son. In Miami, owner Wayne Huizenga grew fond of Dave while he served as Jimmy's assistant head coach. Huizenga, who usually is no more patient than Donald Trump, surely defended Dave far longer than he would have any other head coach. It wasn't that Dave was a bad coach. But he definitely was a bad-luck coach. Jimmy is one of the luckiest people I've known. Without Jimmy, Dave was one of the unluckiest. It was as if he was always stuck with Murphy at quarterback, and Murphy's Law always prevailed. What could go wrong invariably did. You're kidding: Ricky Williams quit football on the eve of training camp and turned this season into one long 1-8 hurricane? Jimmy was a born winner. Dave had some born loser in him. Really, what Dave did best was soothe the savage beast in Jimmy. What Dave did best was shrug off Jimmy's dark, abusive moods and stick with him from Pitt to Oklahoma State to the University of Miami to Dallas and finally to Pasadena for the Super Bowl the Cowboys won following the 1992 season. What Dave did best was jog with Jimmy and drink beer and eat nachos with Jimmy and sympathize with Jimmy and keep Jimmy from strangling Cowboys owner Jerry Jones when Jerry led the media to believe he and Jimmy were "best friends." Jimmy and Dave made a great team in Dallas -- but they both suffered without each other. If Johnson has a friend, it's Wannstedt. If only Dave hadn't left his side after that first Super Bowl. I wrote a book about the '92 Cowboys and covered the '93 team, which again beat Buffalo in the Super Bowl. I remain convinced that if Dave had still been around, Jimmy wouldn't have insulted Jerry so often that Jerry finally fired him following the '93 season. Dave was the buffer -- Jimmy's Bufferin. With Dave, Jimmy might have won a couple more Super Bowls with Jerry. But what a crazy-hot property Dave became just before that first "How 'Bout Them Cowboys" Super Bowl. Of course, it's often that way with the coordinators of Super Bowl teams. Other owners fire their coaches and want to hire a piece of the championship magic -- or at least pry away a key chunk of it if they're in the same division. Yet if the coordinator's head coach gives him a rave recommendation, other general managers or owners often have little idea how much the coordinator actually contributed or whether he can lead a franchise instead of just a unit. Jimmy raved about Dave. Part of Jimmy knew he needed Dave. Part of Jimmy wanted to prove he could win without the man I called his "conscience." And part of Jimmy wanted Dave to get his shot at proving himself and making some real money for his family. Part of Jimmy knew that Dave had always been a much better husband and father than Jimmy had been. Yet Dave occasionally seemed dumbfounded that he had fallen into a bidding war between the Bears and the New York Giants. He had so much leverage that the Bears offered him final say on personnel moves. He later told me that wasn't exactly the case, but Bears sources said he was granted major input into draft and free-agent decisions. Quite an achievement for a guy who had never been a head coach and who didn't even have final say over the Cowboys' defense. Jimmy's expertise was defense. Jimmy created and refined a scheme based on the defense he learned as an assistant at Oklahoma. Jimmy let Dave call defenses from play to play, but they were working from Jimmy's game plan; and sometimes, the calls followed Jimmy's gut-feeling orders. Jimmy provided the brains, Dave the heart. In the locker room, Jimmy was the bad cop who motivated by fear. Dave was the good one who calmed everyone down and told them it would be OK. How that defense loved Dave. They won for him, and to spite Jimmy. What a great team Jimmy and Dave made. What a great team they coached. What a not-so-great decision the Bears made hiring Dave in early '93. With some of the stalwarts left over from the Ditka regime, Dave's second-year team slipped into the playoffs at 9-7 and upset the Vikings in Minnesota in a wild-card game. But the next week, the Bears were blown out 44-15 in San Francisco by the eventual Super Bowl champions. That was Dave's final playoff game as Bears coach. His team went 9-7 the next season, then 7-9, then 4-12 and 4-12. Along the way, he participated in one disastrous personnel decision after another, culminating in the first-round pick he traded for Rick Mirer in '97. Soon, Mirer's name might as well have been Murphy. What could be incomplete, was. As a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, I closely followed Dave's final two Bears teams. Nearly every conversation I had with him began with, "Geez, we can't get a break." His creativity began and ended with, "This week, we've just got to run the ball and play defense." My lasting memory is Dave pacing the sideline and running his hand back through his hair -- the tormented look of a loser. The bottom line? He looks like a head coach, but that's not what matters most. Chicago fans and media called him "Wanny," which sounded an awful lot like "wienie." Players began to accuse him of lying to them. Dave told each of them what they wanted to hear, even if he had other plans. Good cops can't be bad cops. So how in the name of Don Shula did Dave wind up as head coach of the Dolphins? In '99, he rejoined Jimmy, who was coaching what turned out to be Dan Marino's final Dolphins season. That team won a playoff game in Seattle before suffering an all-time embarrassment in Jacksonville. The Jaguars won 62-7. Jimmy went careening over the edge and quit. I can't help suspecting he recommended Dave to Huizenga in part because Jimmy didn't want his successor to succeed where he couldn't. And it was pretty much Chicago all over. With the defense Jimmy built, Dave immediately went 11-5 and beat Indianapolis in a playoff game. Then the Dolphins were shut out by Oakland. The following season, Miami again went 11-5, but lost 20-3 to Baltimore in the playoffs. The Dolphins went 9-7 in 2002 and 10-6 in '03, but Dave again began juggling quarterbacks as if they were chainsaws. Again, he desperately reached for high-risk, low-character stars in Ricky Williams and David Boston. Boston got hurt -- just Dave's luck. But betting on Williams is like running on quicksand. Williams' heart has never quite been in playing a high-contact sport. I am so relieved he and Huizenga finally agreed that enough was enough. I'd also be shocked if Dave gets another head-coaching shot. Ditto for Jimmy's offensive coordinator in Dallas, Norv Turner, a fine play-caller masquerading as a head coach. Turner predictably failed in Washington just as he'll fail in Oakland. Who knows? Maybe Jimmy will return to coach again next season and the three of them can be reunited. Jimmy can run the show, Norv can run the offense and Dave can run interference for Jimmy. Those were the days. If only they could have lasted. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=bayless/041112 I agree with this guy 100%! Both of those star Dallas co-ordinators are mirror images of each other in terms of success and even personalities. They can be good assistants but will never succeed as NFL head men. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skin_finatic Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barefoot Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Jimmie Johnson quit when the going got tough, at least Dave tried to stick it out to fix it before his so called "resignation". Skip Bayliss is a tool anyway. Total lack of class kicking a guy when he's down like that. Wonder how he'd feel if someone wrote an article the next time he was fired and called him a sorry a$$ looser. I always thought that DW was a class act throughout this years whole personell debacle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denverdan Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 I stopped reading half way, brutal. Bayless is a tool, what do you expect from a guy who wrote a history of the stinkin' cowboys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bulldog Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 Wannstedt should never have had control over personnel in Miami, not after what he did in Chicago with Mirer. Turner is another guy that is overrated. You want to see the best offensive coordinators in the game? How about Tom Moore in Indy and Charlie Weis in New England? Al Saunders in Kansas City? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The extremist Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 bayless is worthless...i still never got over his cracks and whoring for Stanford during the last college bball season... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimster Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 a lot of shots at Jimmy Johnson too. I also think Wannstedt is a class guy, and hope he catches on with a team next year as DC, or maybe get a head coaching gig in college. Originally posted by bulldog You want to see the best offensive coordinators in the game? How about Tom Moore in Indy and Charlie Weis in New England? Al Saunders in Kansas City? ...and Saunders is running a version of Gibb's offense. - Boy, Trent Green would be nice to have right about now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bengalsown Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Originally posted by denverdan I stopped reading half way, brutal. Bayless is a tool, what do you expect from a guy who wrote a history of the stinkin' cowboys. Same here. The Dolphins had a great record when he was their coach, but there's not much you can do when your entire roster falls apart, and your QB's suck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wsgully Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Bayless, however amusing his columns might be is an unabashed and unrepentant jerk. He was the genius that came up with the argument that Lance Armstrong wasn't one of the great athletes of our time because cycling didn't require the type of hand-eye coordination like those finely tuned fat baseball players and the like. To make things worse, he cited his own experience running a few marathons as an argument that it at least required foot speed making it somehow better than cycling. Whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redman Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Even tools can get it right once in a while, and he got this column right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Punani2 Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Wow, that's a little too personal and harsh. Skip Bayless deserves to get his jaw rocked... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skip to my lou Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 There went a few minutes of my life that I won't be getting back. Bayless is :bsflag: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyinO Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Bayless is a dumba$$. Wanndstedt was a winner, his record proves it. In typical tool fashion, skip writes this article to justify dolphin ownership nudging wanny out the door. I hate journalists that kiss a$$ for future scoops, etc......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.