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A
new morning in Detroit
Montana
QB now an NFL head coach
In
the early '80s chances were pretty good a person could go
to The Oxford bar in downtown Missoula and spot this tough
kid with a chew in his lip playing cards. He looked more
like a farm kid from eastern Montana than the quarterback
of the Montana Grizzlies. And he probably didn't look like
a future NFL head coach whose hand is now heavy with a Super
Bowl ring.But, as Marty Mornhinweg would agree, looks can
be deceiving.
Mornhinweg
was a four-year starter for UM from 1980 to 1984. He set
15 passing records during his tenure as the Griz signal
caller, guiding Montana to a Big Sky championship in 1982.
At 5 feet 9 inches tall and 185 pounds he didn't have the
prototype quarterback body, but what he lacked in height
he made up for with an athletic, scrambling style of play
that befuddled opponents.
That
was then, this is now. Mornhinweg, 40, now owns a bad knee
and the head coaching job for the Detroit Lions. His first
season was challenging -- the Lions were 2-14 in 2001 --
but he has four years left on his contract and plenty of
experience turning teams around.
Mornhinweg
has led a life steeped in football. An Oklahoma native,
he moved with his family a lot when he was growing up before
settling in San Jose, Calif. One of his high school coaches
was Mike Holmgren, who later coached the Green Bay Packers
to a Super Bowl win. As a prep standout at Oak Grove High
School, Mornhinweg guided his team to a championship and
was named Northern California Player of the Year his senior
year.
A
lot of I-A college recruiters took a look at Mornhinweg,
but interest waned when they saw his size.
Pretty
soon he realized he was fifth or sixth on a lot of I-A lists,
and interest was dropping off. But quite a few I-AA schools
were calling.
"Then
Mike Holmgren called me while I was working at a gas station,"
Mornhinweg said. "He said, 'I think Montana wants to
offer you a full scholarship.' I said, 'You know what, I'm
sick of all of it. I don't even know where that school is.'
But then the head coach (Larry Donovan) called and said
I should go where I'm wanted rather than where I want to
go. I said, 'You know, that sounds pretty good. I'm coming.'"
Mornhinweg
said his first impression of Missoula wasn't so good: He
expected green mountains and everything was brown when he
arrived. But he soon fell in love with the community and
found he fit right in, especially when it came time to unwind
downtown.
"I
have some special feelings for coach Donovan, because he
was one of the few who would take a chance on a 5 foot 9
guy," he said. "And I found Missoula to be one
of the best places to go to college."
When
he played, the Griz faced several Big Sky teams that have
since moved up to I-A, like Reno and Idaho, and he struggled
through some losing seasons. He also split his four games
against Montana State. "Heck, they won the national
championship in 1984," he said, "but I hear (UM)
has a pretty good win streak going now."
He
won the Grizzlies' Carlson Most-Valuable Player Award in
1982 and 1984. He said his best memory as a Griz was winning
the 1982 Big Sky championship.
Mornhinweg
graduated from UM in December 1985, earning a degree in
health and physical education with a coaching emphasis.
By that time he knew he wanted to make football his life's
work. His first coaching job was as an assistant at his
former high school, helping Oak Grove win a conference title.
Then in 1985 he was a wide receivers assistant coach at
UM.
"When
I was coaching in Montana, that really wasn't a coaching
job," he said. "I got a check for like $22 every
two weeks. I was just trying to get in at that point, and
it's experience that counts. Every day I'd cross that little
bridge by campus and get two hotdogs and a soda for 99 cents.
That's about all I could afford for lunch."
Mornhinweg
also hadn't given up the idea of playing in the pros, and
in 1986 he landed the quarterback job for the Denver Dynamite
Arena Football League. He'd always been fairly healthy at
UM, but a few plays into his first game he suffered a career-ending
injury.
"I
thought I'd found a league built perfectly for my skills,"
he said. "Then I blew out my knee, my ACL. It was a
bad one."
Mornhinweg
tried to come back from the injury, but his knee started
locking up when he worked it hard. Since that time he's
had another five surgeries on the knee, and it isn't anywhere
near normal to this day. The coach delights in horrifying
people with the weird crackling noises made by the joint.
With
his playing days ended, Mornhinweg concentrated on his coaching
career. During 1986-94 he worked various college assistant
coaching jobs at Texas El-Paso (UTEP), Northern Arizona
University, Southeast Missouri State and Northern Arizona
University. In 1994, when he was offensive coordinator for
Northern Arizona, his Lumberjacks played in Washington-Grizzly
Stadium. (They lost 24-34.) He earned a master's degree
in physical education with a sports administration emphasis
from UTEP.
Then
he got a big break. Holmgren, his former high school coach,
hired him as offensive assistant/quality control coach for
the Green Bay Packers in 1995. After one season he was promoted
to quarterbacks coach, tutoring Brett Favre as the team
went on to win Super Bowl XXXI. With Mornhinweg and Favre
working together, the star quarterback won his second MVP
award. Both earned shiny new Super Bowl rings in 1997, and
the former Griz had earned a reputation as an NFL quarterback
guru.
Mornhinweg
then served as offensive coordinator for the San Francisco
49ers from 1997-00, working with weapons such as quarterback
Steve Young and the NFL's all-time-leading receiver, Jerry
Rice. Then late in his 49er tenure, Mornhinweg helped groom
Jeff Garcia, an import from the Canadian Football League,
into one of the NFL's top passing threats.
With
his NFL r‚sum‚ well established, Mornhinweg got
a shot at coaching his own team on Jan. 25, 2001, when he
was named head coach in Detroit. Terms of his five-year
deal were not disclosed, but it can be assumed that he doesn't
have to worry about buying 99-cent lunches anymore. He's
the first UM graduate to become an NFL head coach. When
he was hired, he was the second youngest coach in the league,
behind Oakland's John Gruden.
His
Lions went 2-14 during his grueling first year. The team
was in danger of going winless until a Dec. 16 victory over
the Minnesota Vikings, 27-24. The Lions then beat the Dallas
Cowboys 15-10 during the final game of the season.
"In
the long run, what happened to this point might be the very
best thing," he said. "Because it makes you stronger
and it makes you tougher in the end for the long run. I've
always known this: With good teams, when you are playing
well, all the balls bounce with you. And when you are not
playing quite at the level you have to play at, it's all
going against you. That's part of the game. So we don't
complain, we don't take condolences, we don't say 'Why us?'
or 'Why me?' We just keep going to clear that hurdle."
As
an NFL head coach Mornhinweg lives and breathes football.
Twenty-hour workdays during the season are filled with endless
game films, team meetings and practice, practice, practice.
"As
a football coach in the NFL, there are no holidays,"
he said. "And my wife understands that. If you are
able to be home for Christmas, that's a bonus. All of us
love to win and hate to lose, and sometimes I take it overboard
a little bit. For instance, my in-laws won't play Monopoly
with me anymore."
Mornhinweg
tried to lure current Montana head coach Joe Glenn to the
Lions as an assistant coach before the 2001 NFL season.
Glenn had been a UM assistant when Mornhinweg played, and
the two coached together under Larry Donovan in 1985.
"I
called Joe because I have the utmost respect for Joe,"
Mornhinweg said. "I would love my son to play for the
guy, and I think that's one of the highest compliments you
can give somebody. We discussed him joining us a little
bit. And right at first I got the feeling that it was going
to be hard for him to leave because he'd only been at Montana
that one year and had already had great, great success.
I got the inclination that it wasn't the right time, and
we left it at maybe next time."
As
for Mornhinweg, he's already been extremely busy in Detroit
trying to put together a contender through the NFL draft,
trades and free-agent acquisitions. The team recently signed
receiver Az-Zahir Hakim, formerly one of the St. Louis Rams'
many offensive weapons, to a five-year, $16 million deal.
Mornhinweg
said he still follows the Griz as much as he can. Sometimes
he catches a game via satellite television. "I remember
when I was in Green Bay and Montana was in the playoffs,"
he said. "We were in pregame, and we had all these
guys that had played in Montana, so there were like 15 people
glued to the TV right before we went out. We were all rooting
for them. The whole Packer team was."
He
said football is football, no matter what level you are
playing at.
"I
have some special memories about Montana -- the state, the
school, the team I played on," he said. "You feel
the same things that you did in high school and college
when playing a championship game in the NFL. It's on a little
bigger scale, of course, but it's all a very special feeling."
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