Vermeil Exit No Crying Shame

Dick Vermeil made a teary exit from pro football 17 years ago. Those were tears of frustration and agony from a man suffering from broken dreams and an obsession with winning.

On Tuesday, Vermeil made another teary exit from the game that has been his life. But this time, the tears were of joy and exhilaration from a man made whole by the realization of his dream.

Two days after leading the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl triumph, Vermeil resigned as coach, although he still has two years left on a five-year, $9-million deal.

Vermeil’s successor will be offensive coordinator Mike Martz.

Vermeil first set his sights on reaching the top of the pro football world a quarter-century ago when he became coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. But after spending only 40 hours at the summit of his sport, soaking in the heady atmosphere, Vermeil decided to come down.

“I think the time is right,” he said. “Very few people in this profession get this opportunity. Some great people, way more talented than Dick Vermeil, have experienced tremendous success and then followed with a very depressing way of leaving coaching.”

Vermeil is the fifth coach to depart after winning a Super Bowl, following Vince Lombardi (Green Bay Packers, 1967), Bill Walsh (San Francisco 49ers, 1988), Bill Parcells (New York Giants, 1990) and Jimmy Johnson (Dallas Cowboys, 1993). All of the others returned to coaching, three at the pro level and Walsh at Stanford.

But at 63, Vermeil won’t be back, said Terry Donahue, a close friend who followed Vermeil as head coach at UCLA and is now in the front office of the 49ers.

“What better time for him?” Donahue said. “I think he thought that, if he came back, he would have a chance to repeat, but, even if he did, the repeat would not be as good as the original. It couldn’t be. This was a Cinderella season for him.”

Especially since a year ago, Vermeil was in danger of leaving involuntarily, fired for losing control of his team.

Eyebrows were raised three years ago when he first was hired by the Rams. He certainly had known success in a coaching career that stretched back to 1959 and included stints at the high school, junior college, college and pro levels. Vermeil took the Eagles to Super Bowl XV in 1981 where they lost to the Oakland Raiders.

But he walked away from coaching in 1982, a victim of burnout, and spent the next 15 years in broadcasting booths as a football analyst.

His hiring by the Rams in 1997 seemed like just another wacky move by an organization that could be counted on to do the wrong thing.

And indeed, by the end of the 1998 season, all the claims that the game had passed Vermeil by seemed right on the mark. After 5-11 and 4-12 seasons, some of Vermeil’s players were so disgusted that they refused to attend an end-of-the-season meeting.

Vermeil had described that boycott as “a shot in the back.”

He was getting plenty of flak from the front as well. A crucial meeting last January was called by team President John Shaw. Out of that meeting came the decision to hire Martz, who designed the offense that led the NFL in total offense and spearheaded the Rams to a 13-3 regular-season record and a run through the postseason that culminated in Sunday’s 23-16 victory over the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV.

After the game, Vermeil said he would “probably” be back and even began talking Monday in a press conference about a check list of things to do in next season’s training camp.

It was known that Carol Vermeil, his wife of 44 years, wanted him to retire.

“What else do you have to prove?” she had asked him.

But Vermeil emphasized at Tuesday’s farewell that his wife had not been the deciding factor.

“I am certainly not being pressured into doing it,” he said. “I make decisions quickly . . . I talked to my wife about the decision for 20 minutes [Monday night] and another 20 minutes [Tuesday morning]. So help me God, that’s the truth . . . I probably spent 15 minutes longer making the decision to leave than I did in making the decision to come here. It’s not that complicated. You go do something and you make it right.”

Although Vermeil leaves the Rams with a relatively full cupboard, sixth among NFL teams in terms of salary-cap flexibility with only three unrestricted free agents, there will be off-season decisions to be made, as there always are, and he admitted that, if he was going to leave anyway, he wanted out before the ax fell on some players.

“I don’t want to participate in that,” Vermeil said. “I don’t want to cut the squad. These are my guys.”

In Donahue’s eyes, Vermeil’s timing was impeccable.

“The way he left the first time,” Donahue said, “coming back and winning the Super Bowl gave him a sense of self-satisfaction that everybody who coaches would like to have.”

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