An outside-the-box, fun-loving marathon man, champion physique surfer and all-world soccer expertise evaluator, Beathard is being remembered fondly coast to coast this week following his demise Monday at age 86 at his dwelling in Franklin, Tenn., close to Nashville. The trigger was problems from Alzheimer’s illness, his son Casey Beathard stated.
In the Washington space, in addition to South Florida and southern California, Beathard is being celebrated as a person who performed a vital function in constructing seven Super Bowl groups, together with back-to-back titles for the Miami Dolphins in 1972-73, championships in Washington in 1982 and 1987 and the solely Super Bowl look in Chargers historical past following the 1994 season, when the franchise was in San Diego.
Casserly had a front-row seat for Beathard’s 10-year tenure in Washington. In 1981, Beathard employed an unknown assistant on the Chargers workers named Joe Gibbs to be Washington’s coach — however first he had to persuade proprietor Jack Kent Cooke that Gibbs was the proper man for the job.
“’Who in the hell is Joe Gibbs?’ ” Beathard as soon as recalled Cooke asking. “‘ If we hire a guy named Joe Gibbs, they’ll never forgive us. You’re going to be fired.’ I said, ‘No, just stick with it.’ ”
“The truth is, Joe sold himself,” Casserly stated. “They had a 3½-hour interview, and when they finished, Joe Gibbs was the coach.”
Many extra doubts adopted when Washington opened the 1981 season with 5 straight losses. Then got here one other assembly, when Cooke summoned each Beathard and Gibbs to his dwelling in Middleburg, Va. Years later, each males stated they believed they have been going to be fired that day, solely to have the typically mercurial proprietor inform them they nonetheless had his full help to do no matter it took to flip issues round.
Washington completed 8-8 in 1981, and the subsequent season, a strike-shortened marketing campaign, the staff beat the Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII with 17 of twenty-two starters drafted or signed as free brokers by Beathard.
Former Buffalo Bills and Indianapolis Colts basic supervisor Bill Polian, voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015, as soon as described Beathard as “the single-greatest evaluator I ever came across.”
“The guy just had an eye for talent,” Casserly stated. “One of his great strengths was his absolute fearlessness. He didn’t care what people thought. And if he made a mistake, he would just move on and forget about it. He also listened. To everybody. Everything was done out front. Our draft room was always open. Anyone in the organization could walk in. He wanted the scouts in there; he wanted the coaches. And we all appreciated the fact that he respected what we thought and gave us a chance to say it. He made the final decision, of course, and we respected that, too.”
In the ultimate few years of their partnership, Beathard and Gibbs disagreed more and more on a few of these choices, and Beathard left the group after the 1988 season. But neither man allowed it to have any long-term unfavourable impact on their relationship. When Beathard was chosen as a contributor to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018, he selected Gibbs as his presenter at the induction ceremony in Canton, Ohio.
Beathard’s first yr in Washington additionally was my final yr as The Post’s full-time beat author on the franchise. Compared with the earlier six years masking George Allen, a person we in the media known as “Nixon With a Whistle,” Beathard was Barack Obama-like, a completely refreshing delight.
In coaching camp in Carlisle, Pa., that first summer season, he satisfied me to take up operating, providing a newbie’s coaching routine that finally led me to a number of marathons, together with the 1979 Marine Corps occasion he additionally ran along with his 13-year-old son, Casey.
For Beathard, it was all the time about household, mates and soccer. And a type of mates, Chargers proprietor Dean Spanos, might effectively have described him finest.
“Bobby was who we all aspire to be: a friendly, caring, giving, thoughtful human being who brought people from all walks of life together,” Spanos stated in a press release launched by the staff. “He was the best GM in football, but he was also the guy sitting on the surfboard in the ocean that you caught waves with, jogged trails alongside and chatted up in the checkout line of the local market.”
And insisted his scouts come dwelling on the weekends.