Word: vermeil
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...Sunday, Vermeil and Davis will square off for Super Bowl XV in New Orleans. Each brings with him a team that mirrors his own personality. Vermeil's Eagles, this year's N.F.C. champions, are the inheritors of his pay-any-price work ethic, a squad with no well-known stars that has been forged into an efficient football machine. The Oakland Raiders, the A.F.C. champions, are a reflection of Davis and the old A.F.L., a collection of castoffs and young players who manage, with guile and grinding tenacity, to survive in spite of the odds. In a Super...
...first training camp, Vermeil served notice that the Eagles were going back to bedrock, Bednarik style. Practices were suddenly twice as long as usual. Rules were rigid. Shell-shocked rookies and veterans alike crumpled under Vermeil's salt-mine regime. In the first ten days, a dozen players walked out of camp. Vermeil remained unfazed: "They don't take the Marines and train them on the beach with ice cream in their hands and then tell them to fight. We're preparing these guys for eleven individual wars. That's what it amounts...
...Vermeil scoured the draft's late rounds and sifted free-agent and waiver lists for overlooked talent. With a roster of names only their mothers would recognize, Vermeil forged a team as iron-willed as himself. His brother Al Vermeil recalls: "When Dick was in college, he would get up for an 8 o'clock class, be in school until 4 p.m., work from 4 p.m. until midnight in Dad's auto mechanic shop, study from midnight to 3 a.m., then go to bed and get up at 7 a.m. and start over again. He developed...
Slowly, patiently, Vermeil put his team together. Quarterback Ron Jaworski was acquired from the Rams for his strong arm. Running Back Wilbert Montgomery, passed over until the sixth round because of calcium deposits in a thigh, ha emerged as one of the league's flashiest runners. As the team started its comeback, Wide Receiver Harold Carmichael set an N.F.L. record for receptions in 127 straight games, and Kicker Tony Franklin proved that barefoot boys can make it in the N.F.L. The Eagles defense is football's stingiest. In the N.F.C. championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia held...
...Vermeil has made sure his team will be ready for the Raiders. When the Eagles leave Philadelphia this week for New Orleans, Vermeil will set up a rerun of training camp. Super Bowl hoopla leaves him unimpressed: "I don't give a damn for parties, ceremonies, celebrations. To me, there's only one way to enjoy a football game, gentlemen, and that...