Jack Patera, first Seahawks’ coach, dies at age 85. Steve Raible, Jim Zorn remember him fondly

Jack Patera was an original. In so many ways.

He was the Seahawks’ first coach. He was an innovator. He was a father of professional football in the Northwest.

And he was a big believer that you should never be friends with foes.

Not on the field, anyway.

“Jack had a rule, starting in ’76, the (Seahawks’) very first year: game ends, you run to the locker room. You don’t walk. You run to the locker room,” original Seahawks wide receiver Steve Raible said Wednesday.

That was hours after Patera, the Seahawks’ first coach from the 1976 expansion season into 1982, died at age 85.

The team confirmed Patera’s death Wednesday afternoon. He had pancreatic cancer, and had been living in Cle Elum.

“You don’t go across the field to shake your buddy’s hands,” Raible said, continuing to describe Patera’s postgame rule when Raible was a Seahawk from 1976 to ‘81.

“So we are playing the Chargers, at the Kingdome (in the 1978 preseason). And one of my teammates at Georgia Tech, a guy by the name of Billy Shields, big offensive tackle for them for years, the game is over and Billy starts to come across the field to shake hands. And I’m backing away from him. I said, ‘Uh... Billy, I can’t talk right now.’ He said, ‘What? What’s wrong?’ And he comes over and grabs me, shakes my hand, gives me a hug.

“And I said, ‘Oh, God.’ OK, Billy. Thanks.’

“I go off the field,” Raible continued. “The next day in practice, Jack says, ‘OK, everyone gather up.’ Usually we run sprints or something after practice. He said, ‘We don’t have many rules here, but one of them is you go to the locker room when the game is over. (Linebacker) Peter Cronan, (linebacker) Terry Beeson, Steve Raible, come up front.

“Oh, God.

“So he gets us over there, and this is in training camp, in Cheney (at the Seahawks’ old summer home of Eastern Washington University). And I see as far away as you can get on the practice field, there were (staffer) Bruce Scott and (trainer) Jim Whitesel holding a sign that said ‘My friend.’ Oh, boy.

“Jack said, ‘I want you guys to run — no, sprint — to go see ‘your friend,’ since that’s what you did after the game yesterday. And then I want you to sprint back. And we’ll see if we can learn this lesson together.”

Lesson learned. Two and a half football fields of sprinting round trip later.

The rest of the NFL learned Patera wasn’t afraid to try anything while going 35-59, coaching young draft picks plus every other team’s castoffs from the expansion draft for that inaugural season of 1976 through the first two games of the strike-shortened 1982 season.

The Seahawks fired him after they lost the first two games of that season, during the players’ strike that cut the 16-game regular season to nine games. It was an unusual way to go out.

Unusual? Patera?

When I think of Jack Patera I think of watching the Monday night game in 1979 between the Seahawks and Falcons in Atlanta, as a kid at my home in Ohio. Patera had quarterback Jim Zorn, also Seattle’s holder for place kicks, line up with kicker Efren Herrera for a field goal. But Zorn didn’t hold and Herrera didn’t kick. Zorn stood up after receiving the snap. He flipped one of his left-handed passes down the middle of the field to the wide-open Herrera. Yes, a kicker on a go route between the hash marks.

Howard Cosell was roaring on the ABC game telecast as Zorn’s pass landed in Herrera’s mitts. It was the key and most comical/memorable play of the Seahawks’ win that night. And in front of my TV at nearly midnight Eastern Time I wanted to know: Who is this coach who calls a play like that? In what ended up being a three-point game? I like that guy.

Zorn remembered Patera, plus that play and many others like it from his old coach, on his social-media account Wednesday.

Patera was born Aug. 1, 1933, in Bismarck, North Dakota. He graduated in 1951 from Washington High School in Portland. He then played for the University of Oregon, becoming an All-Pacific Coast conference guard as a senior for the Ducks in 1954. He is a member of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame and the University of Oregon Athletics Hall of Fame.

The Baltimore Colts drafted him the fourth round in 1955, then moved him from guard to middle linebacker because of an injury at linebacker. He played three seasons for the Colts, one for the Chicago Cardinals and his final two playing ones in the NFL, 1960 and ‘61, for the Dallas Cowboys. He was Tom Landry’s first starting middle linebacker for the expansion Cowboys, then had what ultimately became a career-ending knee injury.

His coaching career began in 1963 with the Los Angeles Rams, as a defensive line coach. He developed the Rams’ Fearsome Foursome front. After coaching as an assistant with the New York Giants in 1968, Patera became the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive line coach for Bud Grant from 1969-75. Patera’s “Purple People Eaters” played in three Super Bowls while he was those famed defensive linemen’s coach.

The Seahawks hired him as their first head coach in January 1976, for their first season that fall.

Patera never coached again after the Seahawks let him go during the strike in September 1982, to be replaced by Mike McCormack for the rest of that shortened season.

He and his wife Susan divorced later in life. They have four children, nine grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.

This story was originally published October 31, 2018 at 3:21 PM.