RIP Dick MacPherson

soxfan121

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I remember being jacked and pumped for the Dick MacPherson Era. For about three weeks. RIP, Coach.
 

Phil Plantier

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In the warehouse of bad Patriots coaches, he was my favorite. He seemed to have a positive attitude and players liked to play for him.
 

Ale Xander

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100000000000000 times better than Rod Rust. That 6-10 team gave me hope that the future was bright. Took some time, but boy, the payoff was there. RIP Richard
 

54thMA

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100000000000000 times better than Rod Rust. That 6-10 team gave me hope that the future was bright. Took some time, but boy, the payoff was there. RIP Richard
Hey, don't knock Rod Rust, that team started out like a house of fire, winning their first game and grabbing first place in the AFC East.............it was the next 15 games where the shit hit the fan.

What a disaster he was.
 

bigq

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I remember being jacked and pumped for the Dick MacPherson Era. For about three weeks. RIP, Coach.
I was excited about the MacPherson and Hugh Millen, Leonard Russell, Irving Fryar combination for much of the 1991 season. The team finished 6-10 that season which was a huge improvement from the previous season's 1-15 record. They won 3 of their last 5 and I really thought they were setting themselves up nicely for the 1992 but instead they were not good that year and ended up going 2-14 which led to the coach being shown the door.

Rest in peace Coach Mac.
 

Bernie Carbohydrate

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Defining MacPherson-era memory for me:

We had Mighty Hugh Millen at QB in 1991. It was mid-season, and the Pats were 3-5; the previous week they'd beaten the Vikings in OT and they were officially feisty.

The next week the Pats were playing the Broncos at Foxboro, and that was a Broncos team the Pats had no business beating--Elway in his prime on offense and Steve Atwater leading a good Denver defense.

Broncos were up 9-6 late in the fourth, and Millen -- against all odds -- leads a pretty good two-minute drive, with MacPherson jumping around the sidelines like a 12 year old boy. The Pats were at the Denver 15 with no timeouts left and less than a minute left.

MacPherson tells Millen to take a shot at the end zone for the win. If there is nothing there he is to throw it out of bounds and the Pats will kick for the tie.

Millen takes the snap, drops back, loses his fucking mind, and starts running toward a rapidly-closing hole. Millen then realizes he's trapped, but he panics and can't get out of bounds. The guy gets crushed well short of the end zone.

Time runs out. Pats lose.

The wheels came off and they dropped four in a row. As has been pointed out, they did recover with some garbage-time wins and ended the season 6-10, but MacPherson could only do some much with enthusiasm and high fives. In their last home game they only drew 20,000 fans to the stadium.

Back then there was no Pat the Patriot. We had a guy in a duck suit wearing a revolutionary war outfit. The duck made no sense.
 
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luckiestman

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Sean McDonough was on Bob Ryan's podcast and spoke about MacPherson for a bit at the end. He was really close to him and loved the guy.

I can't find a great link, but it's on iTunes and pocket casts for sure.

Thinking about Hugh Millen brings back some memories. I was pretty young and was tasked with filling my elderly aunt's insulin needles with Humulin (Hugh Millen). Imagine the pre teen jokes to be had
 

MuppetAsteriskTalk

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Back then there was no Pat the Patriot. We had a guy in a duck suit wearing a revolutionary war outfit. The duck made no sense.
Ha ha that's great. I've been a fan since '78 but have no recollection of this duck. (I only ever went to 1 or 2 games per season max, and had to listen to many TV blackouts on the radio.)
 

Bernie Carbohydrate

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Ha ha that's great. I've been a fan since '78 but have no recollection of this duck. (I only ever went to 1 or 2 games per season max, and had to listen to many TV blackouts on the radio.)

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Yay for Pat the Duck or whatever his name was....not surprised nobody remembers him. A big home crowd during the Kiam era was 45k, and you're right about the blackouts. That was also the era that the Pats were not allowed to host night games, so they were rarely on TV.

Back to MacPherson-- I think he was remembered fondly in part because was such an upbeat guy. The Pats were such a sad-sack franchise --the year before they'd had a high-profile sexual harassment case, then they eliminated the cheerleadering squad, and there we many stories about how broke Kiam was. Foxboro was a gloomy place, and the Pats were absolutely uncool, and here was this rah-rah college guy taking about how great it was to be a New England Patriot.

But oh how the Pats broke him.
That 2-14 season he got sick (as was mentioned above), and by the time he got back the Pats were dead in the water.

Funny side note: MacPherson didn't officially go 2-14 his final season. He went 0-9. The two wins (and five more losses) came when MacPherson was absent and are credited to....Interim Head Coach Dante Scarnecchia. Scarnecchia should write a book. He's seen it all.
 

Ralphwiggum

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Defining MacPherson-era memory for me:

We had Mighty Hugh Millen at QB in 1991. It was mid-season, and the Pats were 3-5; the previous week they'd beaten the Vikings in OT and they were officially feisty.

The next week the Pats were playing the Broncos at Foxboro, and that was a Broncos team the Pats had no business beating--Elway in his prime on offense and Steve Atwater leading a good Denver defense.

Broncos were up 9-6 late in the fourth, and Millen -- against all odds -- leads a pretty good two-minute drive, with MacPherson jumping around the sidelines like a 12 year old boy. The Pats were at the Denver 15 with no timeouts left and less than a minute left.

MacPherson tells Millen to take a shot at the end zone for the win. If there is nothing there he is to throw it out of bounds and the Pats will kick for the tie.

Millen takes the snap, drops back, loses his fucking mind, and starts running toward a rapidly-closing hole. Millen then realizes he's trapped, but he panics and can't get out of bounds. The guy gets crushed well short of the end zone.

Time runs out. Pats lose.

The wheels came off and they dropped four in a row. As has been pointed out, they did recover with some garbage-time wins and ended the season 6-10, but MacPherson could only do some much with enthusiasm and high fives. In their last home game they only drew 20,000 fans to the stadium.

Back then there was no Pat the Patriot. We had a guy in a duck suit wearing a revolutionary war outfit. The duck made no sense.
That NFL films link is all kinds of awesome. I remember wanting the Patriots to have a "good" NFL films feature about them. They were always heavily featured in the blooper reel, and had their annual recap film like the one linked where somehow NFL films would make you feel like a 6-10 team was on the brink of a deep playoff run. But they never had one that made me feel like I was rooting for an actual NFL team.
 

mauf

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The Pats weren't top-of-mind for me before I moved to Boston in 1996, so I remember MacPherson as the guy who gave Syracuse its best football teams since Jim Brown. Never got a fair chance to make his bones as a pro coach, but he was terrific college coach. Always seemed like a good guy too. RIP.
 

BuellMiller

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Mar 25, 2015
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Yeah, those were my formative years with the Patriots. Having to listen to the radio for pretty much all the home games, my brothers, dad, and I would play touch football in the yard with the radio on. I remember the highlights of that 6-10 year was those last minute wins against the Oilers and Vikings, and also playing the Bills close in both games (winning the one at home no less, right in the middle of the Bills AFC streak of dominance). Marv Cook was my favorite player on those teams, but you also started to see Ben Coates give a preview of what was to come (Marv Cook was probably washed up in 1994 when he went to the Bears, but I still can't believe Parcells couldn't have run a 2 TE offense with them both. Belichick probably would have.)
The good news was that growing up playing Tecmo Bowl with the Rod Rust team, and early Madden with the McPherson teams, it was definitely like taking a masters course in video game football </video game nerd>
RIP Coach.
 

joe dokes

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Ha ha that's great. I've been a fan since '78 but have no recollection of this duck. (I only ever went to 1 or 2 games per season max, and had to listen to many TV blackouts on the radio.)
Those blacked out home games were almost always shown on the NBC affiliate in White River Junction Vt., which was available for a time on my then cable system. Tthose games were almost literally on only two TV stations in the country....the road team city's primary affiliate, and the Vt station. (occasionally, but not usually, the Maine NBC affiliate would show the Patriots un-soldout home games). As a result, the announcers were the bottom of the bottom of the NBC barrel.
 

Was (Not Wasdin)

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Sam Jankovich should really bear a lot of the blame for that "era". Kiam brought him in to run football operations top to bottom (after his success at the U) and Jankovich wanted a college head coach. Probably not the right approach at that time, given the state of the team.

I would regularly go home for Sunday dinner during that period because the cable system in Worcester that my parents had (Tele-prompter or something like that?) didnt block out channel 22 out of springfield, which was outside the blackout zone.
 

Vinho Tinto

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Tthose games were almost literally on only two TV stations in the country....the road team city's primary affiliate, and the Vt station. (occasionally, but not usually, the Maine NBC affiliate would show the Patriots un-soldout home games). As a result, the announcers were the bottom of the bottom of the NBC barrel.
Living in western Mass, we would still get the Pats home games. I forget if they allowed WWLP to show the games, or if we had to use WVIT in Hartford, but they were on. One of the regulars at my dad's bar would show up with his brother (who lived in the Boston area) for Pats games that season because the games weren't on at the brother's house. It's like an alternate universe when you think back on those days.
 
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joe dokes

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Living in western Mass, we would still get the Pats home games. I forget if they allowed WWLP to show the games, or if we had to use WVIT in Hartford, but they were on. One of the regulars at my dad's bar would show up with his brother (who lived in the Boston area) for Pats games that season because the games weren't on at the brother's house. It's like an alternate universe when you think back on those days.
Of course...I completely spaced on W. Mass. Didn't realize Hartford would show Patriots. They seemed to be more Jets oriented when I was a kid.
 

Ralphwiggum

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Those blacked out home games were almost always shown on the NBC affiliate in White River Junction Vt., which was available for a time on my then cable system. Tthose games were almost literally on only two TV stations in the country....the road team city's primary affiliate, and the Vt station. (occasionally, but not usually, the Maine NBC affiliate would show the Patriots un-soldout home games). As a result, the announcers were the bottom of the bottom of the NBC barrel.
I went to college in Maine in the early 90s, my first three years were Rod Rust, and Coach Mac X2 (Parcells was senior year) so they were pretty terrible and never sold out home games those years. I seem to remember us getting most of the Pats home games in those days, but maybe not all. The Pats were literally a joke. We would sit around the dorm watching the games and laugh our asses off at how bad they were, or how they would manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over and over again. I remember one game where the Pats were punting out of their own endzone and one of the blockers got pushed all the way back in front of the punter (I want to say Tom Tupa maybe) who punted the ball directly into the guy's ass. It was incredible, we laughed so hard.

Anyway, if we didn't get every Pats home game then we got most of them.
 

Al Zarilla

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Defining MacPherson-era memory for me:

We had Mighty Hugh Millen at QB in 1991. It was mid-season, and the Pats were 3-5; the previous week they'd beaten the Vikings in OT and they were officially feisty.

MacPherson tells Millen to take a shot at the end zone for the win. If there is nothing there he is to throw it out of bounds and the Pats will kick for the tie.

Millen takes the snap, drops back, loses his fucking mind, and starts running toward a rapidly-closing hole. Millen then realizes he's trapped, but he panics and can't get out of bounds. The guy gets crushed well short of the end zone.

Time runs out. Pats lose.
Great post. I wish the papers, .coms today could describe à la the bolded.

The one game that stands out for me from that era was a night game from Foxborough. I couldn't find a MNF game from those years on football ref. (The town of Foxborough forbade them because they were afraid of rowdiness? Also, crap teams don't make it to MNF games.) Anyway, it was pouring rain and the way the lights and camera were trained on the artificial surface, it looked red. I thought, what a bizarre look my team/stadium are displaying in a national TV game. What a difference 20 something years make.