Ray Rhodes

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Ray Rhodes
Date of birth	October 20, 1950 (1950-10-20) (age 57)
Place of birth	Mexia, Texas
Position(s)	Defensive coordinator Head coach
College	Texas Christian Tulsa
NFL Draft	1974 / Round 10 / Pick 236
Career Record	31-33
Playing Stats	DatabaseFootball
Coaching Stats	DatabaseFootball
Team(s) as a player
1974-1979 1980	New York Giants San Francisco 49ers
Team(s) as a coach/administrator
1981-1991 1992-1993 1994 1995-1998 1999 2000 2001-2002 2003-2007 2008-present	San Francisco 49ers Green Bay Packers San Francisco 49ers Philadelphia Eagles Green Bay Packers Washington Redskins Denver Broncos Seattle Seahawks Houston Texans

Raymond Earl Rhodes (born October 20, 1950 in Mexia, Texas) is the former American football head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers. He is the current assistant defensive backs coach of the Houston Texans. He is a graduate of the University of Tulsa. Ray broke into the NFL coaching ranks in 1981 as an assistant secondary coach with the San Francisco 49ers. He remained with the 49ers through 1994, earning five Super Bowl rings.

[edit] High School Years

Rhodes attended Mexia High School in Mexia, Texas and was a letterman in football, basketball, and track & field.

[edit] Playing years

Rhodes joined the NFL after being selected by the New York Giants in the 10th round of the 1974 NFL Draft. He spent his first three years in the NFL as a wide receiver.In 1977, he was switched to defensive back and immediately won a starting job. In 1979, he was traded to the San Francisco 49ers for another future head coach, Tony Dungy. After two years with the 49ers, he retired.

[edit] Assistant Coach Pt. 1

After retiring as a player, Rhodes decided to become a coach. He stayed with the 49ers as an assistant secondary coach before moving up to defensive backs coach. He won two Super Bowls with a group that included Ronnie Lott, Eric Wright, and Dwight Hicks. After serving that position for many years, he was hired by former colleague Mike Holmgren to be the new defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers. However, Rhodes and his family had trouble assimilating to a community that had very few African-Americans^{[citation needed]}, and after two years Rhodes returned to San Francisco as the defensive coordinator of their 1994 Super Bowl Winning team. After that, he was hired by the Philadelphia Eagles as head coach.

[edit] Head coach

On February 2, 1995, five days after the 49ers won Super Bowl XXIX, Ray Rhodes was named head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, becoming the fourth African-American head coach in NFL history behind Fritz Pollard, Art Shell and Dennis Green. Rhodes gained notoriety for his no-nonsense approach and unusual ways of motivating his players. One such tactic was an analogy that compared losing a home game to burglars breaking into a man's house and raping his wife.^{[citation needed]}

In Rhodes's first season, he received the NFL Coach of the Year Award as the Eagles overcame a 1-3 start to finish 10-6 and qualify for the playoffs as a wild card. Despite playing the first round game at home, the Eagles were an underdog to the Detroit Lions, whose starting left tackle, Lomas Brown, guaranteed an easy win. Using this perceived lack of respect as a rallying cry, Philadelphia dismantled Detroit, 58-37, at one point leading the game by a 51-7 score. Rhodes said after the victory that the only things guaranteed in life are "death and taxes." Though the Eagles were eliminated by the Dallas Cowboys the following week, the 1995 season was considered an enormous success.

In 1996, the Eagles again finished 10-6, but struggled down the stretch after an impressive 7-2 start. Once again, Philadelphia reached the playoffs as a wild card, traveling to San Francisco to face the 49ers, Rhodes's former team. At a rain-soaked 3com Park, the Eagles, who boasted the top-ranked offense in the NFC during the regular season, were shut out, 14-0.

During training camp in 1997, Rhodes remarked that season's Eagles team was his most talented one to date. Despite the optimism, Philadelphia started 1-3, and never quite recovered, stumbling to a disappointing 6-9-1 record, including an 0-7-1 mark on the road. As the team struggled through the season, it was widely speculated that players had grown weary of Rhodes's fiery approach and were tuning him out.

The 1998 season proved to be a disaster. A listless Eagles team finished 3-13, setting a franchise record for losses in a season. For the second straight season, Philadelphia did not win a road game, going 0-8 away from home. The offense, which ranked first in the NFC two years earlier, finished dead last in the NFL. The Eagles were shut out three times and scored only 161 total points. On December 28, one day after the season's final game, Rhodes was fired as Philadelphia's head coach. In four seasons as the Eagles' head coach, Rhodes complied a 29-34-1 record in the regular season, 1-2 in the playoffs.

Rhodes was not out of work for long. The Green Bay Packers were looking for a new coach after Mike Holmgren had left to become head coach and general manager of the Seattle Seahawks. Green Bay GM Ron Wolf was a fan of Rhodes's coaching style. On January 11, 1999, Rhodes was hired to coach the Packers after being the only candidate to interview for the position.

Rhodes's tenure as Green Bay's head coach lasted only one season. The Packers finished a disappointing 8-8, their only non-winning season between 1992 and 2004. Green Bay missed the playoffs for the first time since 1992 based on a complicated tiebreaker system (Detroit and Dallas reached the playoffs with 8-8 records, while Green Bay and the Carolina Panthers did not). On January 3, 2000, Rhodes was fired by the Packers, and subsequently replaced by Mike Sherman.

While in Philadelphia, Rhodes spent a lot of time enjoying his favorite hobby, horse racing. He appeared regularly on Courier-Post's "Dusty Nathan's Winner's Circle" radio show. ^[1] Additionally, Rhodes had his own TV and radio shows in the Philadelphia market before moving to the Green Bay Packers in 1999 and deciding to end his foray into on-air media talent.^[2]

[edit] Assistant Coach Pt. 2

Following his dismissal from Green Bay, Rhodes took over as the defensive coordinator for the Washington Redskins and then the Denver Broncos. After the 2002 season, Rhodes was reunited with Holmgren when he became the defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks, where he remained through the 2007 season.

In September 2005, Rhodes was hospitalized for dizziness and tests later revealed that he had suffered from a mild stroke.^[3]

Early Monday October 2, 2006, the Seahawks charter flight had to make an emergency landing in Rapid City, South Dakota to get precautionary medical care for Rhodes. The Seahawks were flying home from a loss at the Chicago Bears.^[4]

On January 28 2008, Ray Rhodes joined his sixth NFL organization when he was hired by the Houston Texans as an assistant defensive backs coach.

[edit] Head Coach record

[edit] References