RIP Marty Schottenheimer

[MikeO]

He was always one of my favorite coaches, sorry to see him go. He never won a Super Bowl, but his teams were always well coached and played smash mouth football, but also played very disciplined football. As someone who grew up in the NY area watching the Jets look like a Chinese fire drill on any given Sunday, I always hoped they would someday hire Marty (or someone cut from the same cloth), but instead I got to watch the likes of Bruce Coslett and Ritchie Kotite turn what had at least been a pretty good team into the franchise of the damned.

Marty was known for being VERY THOROUGH with his game plan for any given game. There are stories of the weekly handouts to his players being 4-5 times thicker than what the players were used to getting from the other NFL coaches they played for. Marty himself told a story once about how smart Joe Montana was, saying that all of his QB's needed the entire week to learn the game plan, due to the volume. Every QB except for Montana, who took about 2 days to learn it cover to cover, which blew Marty away.

He had been moved into hospice care last week, so hopefully he didn't linger too long once things got really bad for him. I've had some loved ones end up in hospice care and take months before they passed, and it was agonizing for everyone involved to see them go through it week after week for months.

I'd like to think he's somewhere in football heaven hanging out with Bill Walsh, Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi talking about X's and O's over a few beers.

[itchyfingers]

Best Chargers coach of this century - Martyball: run it down their throats and make them stop you. Of course, the GM fired him after he went 14-2 and took them to the AFC Championship.

RIP Marty.

[Diddlybo]

I enjoyed watching Marty's Browns teams in the 80's.

RIP to a fine coach who should be in the HOF. Now that he's dead and can't enjoy it, he'll probably get voted in.