Stories of the '86 Season 3: It's Morning Again in the Rust Belt

To talk about 1986, to move forward, one must look back, at the Monolith of History--1985. There was the Bears' traumas, Marino's first title, Riggs and Quick breaking through 2k rushing and receiving, Payton and McNeil's near 2ks (fall short by 37 and 73 respectively), Eddie Johnson's 33 sacks, four 4,000 yard passers (Marino/Kramer/Fouts/Krieg), Fouts' 52, the Jets and Falcons spectacular collapses, the Patriots, Chargers, and Vikings four game runs to get in, Dickerson's fumble, Hampton's strip, Reed's run, Kosar's four picks, Gault's knockout, Rose's 4th down catch. A new Soviet leader, who's love for our game could mean Peace in Our Time. Nothing can happen for decades and decades can happen in weeks—the one thing to know about The League—and in those accelerated waves the Sea of History coughs out New Great Men. Enter the Wunderkinds.

Marc Keinath coaching Cleveland and Voltaire Harris coaching St. Louis either seemed like failures of the Old Guard or just the revived Creative Destruction and Innovation of the Fun Hell 80s. It was both. The 34- and 32-year-old could really only start with two moribund teams in once great but carved out cities; the Bears, Cowboys, Giants, and Dolphins would not only ever dare, there were Mandates of Heaven to follow for Christ sakes. The Falcons and Saints carrying the burden of a particular type of Football, and their own brutal, historically aristocratic society would’ve kept guys like Keinath and Harris in defensive back and quarterback coaching at least another decade. That New England shared the same aristocratic brutality (admit it, New Hampshire!—ed.) while also relying on built-up fortunes to import talent at the cheapest prices possible meant neither Keinath or Harris would’ve gotten interviews.

It always happens on the fringes first (for everything, Lacan and Bahktin taught at technical colleges); it had to be two Rust Belt towns. The Browns and Cards had cheapskate owners and played in Populist Palaces (even Detroit had the Silver Dome and the Ford family). In September, Kevin Mack and Earl Ferrell ran through warning tracks. To succeed, your front office needed to embody the flexibility and ingenuity of early East German bureaucrats--scour and experiment; if something didn't work, reassess, hang on to what you got but not for too long (Jim Hart). Then maybe, just maybe, you get back-to-back division titles in ‘74 and ‘75; if you were lucky, you got 1980. You also got Red Right 88 and the Purple People Eaters. Porous places.

(But what about Al Davis? Easy to be a Single Man of Vision when you started during the last League War and your team plays in a state with the 6th largest economy in the world and beaches. What about Paul Brown? There was still talk of The Future in Ohio, they just beat Fascism and the Belt was polished.)

Keinath grew up watching the Browns from afar, in the Cold Fork Valley between Cleveland and Columbus. He played college football at Earlham, initially to study religion and theology (he found political economy instead). The only Quaker who looked actually looked like a footballer, he caught the eye of a Montreal Alouette scout when he broke the leg of University of Dayton star quarterback Cleveland Paris ("named after the two best cities in the world") on an option play gone awry. The Flyers rolled 63-3, but Specs (he wore coke-bottom thick lenses) got a 3 year $40,000-per contract. Mostly a reserve, Keinath was on three consecutive Grey Cup teams, and one winner. His greatest personal achievement was running Warren Moon off the field in ‘78. Rather than play in ‘80, Keinath stayed on as a defensive lineman coach. When the Als folded and were replaced by the Concordes in '82, he was offered defensive coordinator. Keinath nearly took the job before getting a call from the Dolphins--he was recommended by Paris, who scouted for the front office—and accepted a line coach job that paid just $25,000 (he got a bump because management was fearful of low level staff joining the players). Defensive coordinator Marty Schottenheimer brought him to Cleveland in 1984; when Schotty became head coach, he promoted Keinath to defensive coordinator. That was the plan, at least until Modell got cheap, again. The fight over a new contract with Schottenheimer got so public and so ugly—there was a fight, purportedly, over access to a Sandusky lake house, cash, and a new Pontiac Fiero—that no deal was made. Keinath was offered the position in March 1985, a month before the draft. The move was promoted as an innovative decision to bring new talent into the fold (Keinath was paid about 60% of what Marty would have made; no lake house, no car) and while that sounded suspicious it turned out to be true. 

Keinath's personality, awareness, and passion for Browns history, and his general populism would endear him to the fans. He cut an imposing figure on the sidelines. Keinath wore a custom orange and brown plaid suit with Paul Brown's fedora; he kept his beard long and large—he resembled a bear from the Black Forest—and put just enough wax in it to keep it groomed but a little messy; he is noted for being the best smelling coach in NFL history—eucalyptus and bergamot and orange peel. His blue tinted glasses—an experimental material co-developed by a Japanese company and a state-owned Soviet optics firm—brought his look together. On particularly freezing December days, he would wear a synthetic fur coat and ditch the hat; he resembled a benevolent Gaul chief. He barely reacted to anything on the field save for a pat on the helmet and a big smile for a big play. It was when talking to the media and fans that his humor and rhetorical eccentricities came out; turbo was a favorite adjective. His big brown eyes either welcomed you in or formed drowning pools when he'd squint at you. Birchers were alarmed by his campaigning for the Black Hammer Party in ‘86 municipal elections; he reportedly set up a fund for victims of police violence (one Bircher, quickly squashed, was that he may have funded the assassinations of the Police Chief in the summer of ‘85 and Art Modell's son, contrary to evidence). Though he was the lowest paid coach in the NFL, he bought out the left end zone for Super Bowl XXI and gave the tickets to Dawg Pound regulars. 

Voltaire Harris stood just 5'5; they called him Little Napoleon in his native Saskatoon. Partly due to ancestry—Corsican and Metis, a dangerous mix in Canadian culture—and his dictatorial, if brilliant, personality. A die-hard fan of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and their star, 5'6 qb Ron Lancaster, his uncle, a member of the Royal Mounted Police, shook down a local MP took him to witness the Riders Grey Cup win back in ’66. He played quarterback in Junior Football but his body wasn't right for it; he had a titanium arm but the rest of him was glass—a succession of broken arms and legs led him to coach his Saskatoon Hilltops at just 23. Four straight Canadian Bowls put him on the radar of the CFL, joining the Edmonton Eskimos as a scout and part-time quarterback coach during their 5-year title run. 

A desperate Bill Bidwell hired him after seeing a late night program profiling Warren Moon. Moon credited Harris with tweaking his throwing motion and better curating the playbook as contributing factors to his 5,000-yard season in ‘82. He didn't go with him to the Oilers because he clashed with Hugh Campbell--Moon's coach in Edmonton who was also hired by Houston. Bidwell brought in Harris as offensive coordinator against Jim Hanifan's wishes in ‘84. The offense loved Harris, particularly Lomax, but Hanifan hated Harris' often "flashy" play calling (a contributing factor to Lomax's career season). Fans and media blamed Hanifan's overruling of Harris down the stretch of their epic Week 16 loss to Washington in ’84, a loss that cost Big Red a division title and playoff berth. Hanifan called him "Little Dick" because he resembled a baby faced Vermeil. "I don't cry that much, though" Harris responded when asked by a caller to his weekend show. By NFL coaching standards, he resembled James Dean but with a darker complexion—his thick raven hair flying in the deep wind of Busch stadium, and his distinct red windbreaker contributed to the aesthetic. Lanky and lithe. Harris became coach in Week 3 of ‘85 after a fight with Hanifan on the sidelines during a 35-10 loss to the Bengals. Jim nearly grabbed him by his jacket collar but switched to a chest poke as he got in closer; Hanifan always had his rayon hat bill tugged low to keep from seeing into Harris' eyes during arguments. Harris knew his blue left eye and brown right eye deeply distracted people, and he took advantage of the opportunity every chance he could get. Bidwell gave Voltaire the job when NBC caught the argument live. They would win 6 straight after that and go 12-2 the rest of the way. Harris got an open-ended contract, the second cheapest, just ahead of Keinath.

He didn't know why his dad named him Voltaire; it never came up. There was talk his father ran a numbers racket out of the back of their little pinball arcade. Harris liked St. Louis for its dinginess and perpetual brownish-yellow hue—it reminded him of Saskatoon. He didn't really care for landscapes; he was a prairie boy, what's the use of them? But he did like the Ozark rock the further you got into the state. He liked people more. He came from nothing, really. His dad died when he was 12 and he played football to get out of the trailer park they all moved to. Typical shit he'd tell everybody. He liked Mao a lot; when a coach told him "but he killed rich people, created disorder," Voltaire was surprised and liked him more. He never read him, just heard about him from a friend of his dad, a drunk like pops, who would talk a lot about the chairman's theory about how people have many contradictions within themselves and some were fine and others had to be worked through. He felt football did that all the time. He also liked the quote about paper tigers—he thought almost every coach and owner was like that, except maybe Keinath and Bill Parcells, the only two to look him in the eyes. Marv Levy was a gentleman but always hovered around the brown one.

He was quiet with fans but they liked him, especially when he seeked their apology from the airport terminal in 1985, after the conference loss to Chicago (35-24). He also did a 2-hour weekly live show with Dick Howler, a Grantland-Rice-in-his-own-head "Sports Proseaist" for the Dispatch called Voltaire Verbatim. Six to eight am every Saturday, just before cartoons on the NBC affiliate; a whole generation of boys grew up with the ritual of watching the last 10 minutes until becoming devotees in puberty. The show had several segments: a detailed breakdown of the previous week, a Howler report on NFL business, a long form segment profiling a player or some aspect of the Cardinals organization, a call-in segment, and a closing opinion piece by Howler. 

The call-in was the highlight; Harris would answer any question:

Q: They said Hanifan called you Little Dick because you cry like Dick Vermeil, is that true?

VH: (see answer above)

Q: Why don't you start Wolfley more over those showboaters Stump (Mitchell) and Earl (Ferrell)?

VH: They’re better than him. I mean, Wolfie is nice and all, though.

Q: Why did it take so long for Warren Moon to come down here?

VH: Read a history book (long pause). I mean I like Jimmy H too (Hart), but wouldn’t it have been nice to see Warren in ’77, ’78? I don’t get it, it’s the one thing you guys don’t think about profit and growth on.

Q: If you could be a dog, what type of dog would you be?

VH: I love Jack Russells but man, I’d be too tired. Probably one of those Hungarian dogs, with the yarn hair (Komodor). I hear they pace all the time in the house and I do that already.

Q: Is it true the Soviets plan every aspect of their people's lives, cradle to grave?

VH: No clue, but maybe they'll know when I will love again, but I doubt it. Can't plan for stuff like that.

Bircher claims that he was a KGB plant, part of an Andropov program to infiltrate all aspects of American cultural life by training agents in perfect, accent-less English and just “drop” them into the middle of America, was typical postmodern reactionary flattening (a liberal tendency too—ed.). The guy had a hard, unusual life and found meaning and value in the game. One of the few ways out of a brutal system for most players. And this postmodern tendency—to react to everything, to mock, to destroy everything and then patch together something vaguely nostalgic—worked to their benefit, too. The jovial weirdos from a weird world.

They were called a bunch of things through ‘85—Voltaire and The Fatman for their size disparities (though Keinath more resembled the muscle-for-strength barrel chest of a lineman), The Canucks (Keinath was American but they both cut their teeth in the CFL), Whiz Kids (in their early 30s for god's sake), Napoleon and Hebert (Axthelm's initial branding but it didn't land and he switched to the Fatman line instead).

But Wunderkinds, NFL Films’ designation, became the moniker. Keinath got the Browns to 14-2 on an already promising defense in ‘85. Harris got Big Red to 12-4 on a high powered offense. They tried to make up for deficiencies: Kosar had no one to throw to beyond Ozzie, so they platooned the rest of the receivers, leaned on Mack, and emphasized special teams (the only 4 kick returns for touchdowns in ‘85 were the Browns—3 in the regular season, 1 in the playoffs); Nunn and Junior blitzed every play to push qbs and runners into safeties (they set an NFL record with 28 in ‘85), Leonard Smith deployed like a Red Army sniper in Stalingrad. They both lost badly in the Conference title games to better teams (Miami and Chicago) but that was even better—never want to arrive to destiny too early. How are you going to make any money that way?