Bobby Beathard, Hall of Fame general manager who helped build Super Bowl winners for the Miami Dolphins and Washington Commanders, died Monday. He was 86 years old.
His son, Casey Beathard, told the Washington Post that his cause of death was complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Beathard spent nearly four decades in the NFL offices, starting with the Kansas City Chiefs as a scout in 1960 and retiring as the Chargers general manager when they were in San Diego. He earned a reputation as one of the NFL’s sharpest negotiators and talent judges in the years since, and the results speak for themselves.
That includes four Super Bowl rings and seven conference championships.
After nearly a decade as a scout for the Atlanta Chiefs and Falcons, Beathard joined the Dolphins as director of player personnel in the fortuitous year of 1972. With head coach Don Shula also leading the team as general manager, Beathard spent his first year as a top executive helping decide the NFL’s only undefeated Super Bowl champion.
His tenure with the Dolphins continued through 1977, a period that saw Miami go 63-21 in the regular season and win another Super Bowl in 1974. That success alongside Shula landed Beathard the job. leader in Washington.
Three years into his tenure at DC, Commanders fired head coach Jack Pardee. Beathard, tasked with finding his successor, decided to hire Chargers offensive coordinator Joe Gibbs but needed a 3.5-hour interview to convince Washington owner Jack Kent Cooke that the assistant relatively obscure was the man for the job.
From the post office :
“Who the hell is Joe Gibbs?” Beathard remembers being asked by Cooke during an interview on NBC. “’If we hire a guy named Joe Gibbs, they’ll never forgive us. You will be fired. I said, ‘No, just stay with that.'”
Sticking to it proved fruitful for all three men. With Beathard drafting Art Monk, Darrell Green, Russ Grimm, Mark May and many others, Gibbs made Washington a powerhouse in the 1980s. in 1983 were free agents signed by Beathard.
Beathard quit in 1989 after two Super Bowl wins and five playoff spots with DC, which would win another ring in 1991 with a similarly constructed team. Beathard then spent a year as an NBC analyst before taking over as general manager of the Chargers.
The previously moribund Chargers won their division in its third season and reached the Super Bowl in the 1994-95 season. Beathard retired in 2000, after demonstrating that you can’t win them all with Ryan Leaf’s draft (he told ESPN, “In my career, I’ve never seen a player who had so much talent to do so little”).
Beathard was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018.
According to the Post, Beathard is survived by his wife, Christine, four children from his first marriage, his brother Pete, 13 grandchildren, including Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback CJ Beathard, and seven great-grandchildren. Another grandson, Clayton Beathard, was murdered in 2019.
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