From California Kid to Philadelphia Icon, Dick Vermeil's Local Legacy is Connection
Dick Vermeil only spent seven seasons as the coach of the Eagles and he hasn't roamed the sidelines in South Philadelphia for 40 years but the soon-to-be Hall-Of-Fame mentor has left an indelible mark on the Delaware Valley among what might be the toughest fan base in professional sports.
Andy Reid will go down as one of the best coaches in NFL history whenever he decides to call it a career and while Big Red is remembered fondly by many in Philly he's not Vermeil.
Doug Pederson gave Philadelphia what it wanted more than anything else to the point the joke after Super Bowl LII was that the affable ex-quarterback earned a lifetime dispensation card after winning the Lombardi Trophy. That "lifetime" ended up being defined as three seasons in a city often defined by unrealistic expectations.
Somehow Vermeil is the one who actually got that card despite growing up in Napa Valley, in many ways antithetical to everything about the lunch-pail nature of Philadelphia.
When Vermeil is officially inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame next month, fan bases in three cities will feel a sense of pride, but his Eagles stint will be the headliner despite the coach winning his only Super Bowl ring in St. Louis with the greatest show on turf in the late 1990s.
What they really identified with was Vermeil's vaunted work ethic.
The coach was ground zero for the sleep-on-the-couch mentality that became a staple of NFL coaching expectations over the ensuing generations.
That's still prevalent today even though Vermeil learned from the burnout he suffered in Philadelphia when he came back 15 years later to coach the St. Louis Rams.
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A wiser and craftier Vermeil worked smarter and not harder, ending up delegating more to his assistants and winning Super Bowl XXXIV over the Tennessee Titans.
“They liked my work-ethic approach,” Vermeil said of the Philly fans during a virtual media availability on Tuesday. “At that time we were pretty structured, pretty disciplined, pretty demanding."
Vermeil arrived in Philadelphia fresh off a successful stint as the head coach at UCLA capped off by a Rose Bowl win in 1976. His no-nonsense approach with the Eagles wouldn't have mattered much if it had not been accompanied by winning after almost two decades of the opposite, however.
It had been since the 1960 NFL Championship that Philadelphia could be proud of its Eagles until Vermeil turned things around culminating in the 1980 NFC Championship Game win over the hated Dallas Cowboys at Veterans Stadium.
The Eagles couldn't quite seal the deal - losing in Super Bowl XV to the Oakland Raiders - but just getting to the big stage for the first time in the modern era was enough to turn Vermeil into a made man.
“When I came [to the Eagles] in 1976, they hadn’t been in the playoffs in I think 16 years,” Vermeil said. “When we went in ‘78, that was the 18th year that we’ve finally been in the playoffs.
"I think that helped people identify with what we do and why we do it.”
The very work ethic that fueled Vermeil's success was ultimately his downfall as the coach cited burnout before his first retirement in 1983.
Vermeil became a star in the television booth on the college level before returning over a decade later to St. Louis.
His home remained in Chester County, however, and his familiar billboard on I-95 as the spokesperson for an insurance company became a running joke as coaches came and went, some even popular but never as popular as Vermeil.
“I invested a lot of time in the community and different charities and different clubs and different companies, and got to know a lot of people that I didn’t know while I was coaching," Vermeil said. "I was introduced to all the different levels of how people make a living in Philadelphia, other than going to NFL games. I think that helped me establish credibility.
"It takes a long time to establish credibility, maybe only a few minutes to lose it, but to establish that it takes time.”
Vermeil could have returned to Napa Valley after his final retirement or settled in the Midwest forever basked in Super Bowl glory. The decision wasn't difficult, however.
“I belong here. This is my community,” Vermeil said of the Deleware Valley. “They respect me, they care about me. They appreciate the job that my staff and I did with their Eagles football team, and they want me to stay in the community."
-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Sports. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talker Jody McDonald, every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube.com and JAKIBSports.com. You can reach John at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen
