Mike Heimerdinger Dead at 58

[EmpireWF]

RIP

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/s...lped-to-coach-super-bowl-winners-is-dead.html

Mike Heimerdinger, who coached offensive units for the Denver Broncos, the Jets and the Tennessee Titans, helped mold players like Steve McNair, Vince Young and Jay Cutler, and continued to work while undergoing chemotherapy, died Friday while in Mexico to receive experimental cancer treatments. He was 58.

In November 2010, Heimerdinger learned he had a rare, fast-moving type of cancer that attacked his lymphatic system. He never identified it publicly, saying, “I can’t pronounce it.”

During chemotherapy sessions, he kept coaching and calling plays for the Titans without missing a game, working from the coaches’ box rather than the sidelines.

“I know people think it’s a big deal that I’m going to work,” he told The Boston Globe. “I just happen to have a disease, but I’m not dying and I’m not going down the drain and I don’t feel special.”

Heimerdinger was creative with the passing game. He was instrumental in the development of quarterbacks McNair, Young (both in Tennessee) and Cutler (in Denver) and receivers like Derrick Mason (Tennessee) and Rod Smith (Denver).

“I didn’t know how to run routes,” Smith said in 2004. “He showed me how to read defenses. He really instilled in me that I could make it.” Smith went on to become a standout receiver for the Broncos, surpassing the 10,000-yard plateau.

Heimerdinger was a coach in the National Football League for more than 15 years, sometimes leaving a team and then rejoining it. He coached wide receivers for the Broncos from 1995 to 1999, a period when the team won two Super Bowls, and returned to Denver as assistant head coach in 2006-7.

In between he was offensive coordinator for the Titans (2000-4), when the team went to the playoffs three times, and the Jets (2005), who passed him over as a head-coach candidate after Herm Edwards was let go. (Eric Mangini got the job.) He returned to the Titans as offensive coordinator from 2008 to 2010.

In 2008, with Kerry Collins as quarterback, the Titans had the best record in the N.F.L. (13-3) and allowed only 12 quarterback sacks. (They were defeated in the divisional playoff round by the Baltimore Ravens.)

In 2009, Chris Johnson, their running back, set an N.F.L. record with 2,509 yards gained from scrimmage in 16 games. But in 2010, the Titans’ offense was ineffective, and the team finished at 6-10.

After that season, the Titans fired Jeff Fisher, their head coach the last 14 seasons. The four candidates for the job included Heimerdinger and Mike Munchak, their offensive line coach for 14 seasons. Munchak got the job, and the next day he fired Heimerdinger, who had been his boss, saying the team needed to go in a new direction.

“I am disappointed,” Heimerdinger said. “I know it is part of the business.”

Heimerdinger did not coach again.

Before moving to the N.F.L. in 1994, Heimerdinger spent 10 years as a well-traveled college assistant at the University of Florida, the Air Force Academy, North Texas State, California State Fullerton, Rice and Duke.

Michael Heimerdinger was born Oct. 13, 1952, in DeKalb, Ill. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s in administration from Northern Illinois.

He played wide receiver at Eastern Illinois, where his roommate and teammate was Mike Shanahan, now the head coach of the Washington Redskins. One day during a college spring practice, Shanahan was hit hard and returned to their room coughing up blood, he recalled in an interview with The Washington Post in 2010. Heimerdinger quickly called for an ambulance, and doctors in the hospital found that one of Shanahan’s kidneys had split in two.

“He saved my life,” Shanahan said.

Heimerdinger’s survivors include his wife, Kathie; a son, Brian, an intern in the Houston Texans’ scouting department; a daughter, Alicia; and his parents.

Heimerdinger never achieved his dream of being an N.F.L. head coach. Before the 2010 season, he told the TitanInsider Web site:

“One year, there were 10 openings and we were in the A.F.C. championship game and I had the M.V.P. and couldn’t get an interview. The next year we didn’t win a lot of games and there were 10 openings and they said you weren’t winning. So you have to be in the right spot and the right situation.”

 

[shag773]

RIP

 

[Woy]

Awful, awful news.

He did so much for this Tennessee organization and his decision to continue coaching while battling cancer was a powerful and motivating one. Prayers go out to his family and friends.

RIP Dinger.