| THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER | FRIDAY, JULY 31, 1998 |
Freeze Frame Immortalizes Immense Talent
BY GEOFF HOBSON
"Oof, oof, oof," exclaims Jim McNally as he explains how No. 78 on the TV screen dominates the strongest men in the NFL.
"Argh, argh, argh," says McNally, nearly spilling his orange soda watching Anthony Munoz stand up Dexter Manley in a beautiful stalemate.
"Boom-boom."
McNally, one of football's most esteemed offensive line coaches, sometimes sounds like a kid crashing toy cars while describing his craft. Offensive line play is all about making big men move other big men where they don't want to go.
The bigger the crash, the better the play.
"Look at him," McNally says. "You've got eyes."
So McNally, now the line coach of the Carolina Panthers, easily slides into the office manned by Bengals offensive line coach Paul Alexander to watch Munoz again, the man he referred to as "the best that ever lived," even while Munoz was playing.
McNally and Munoz jump-started each other's pro careers when they joined the Bengals back in 1980 from the college ranks. McNally's meticulous techniques helped harness Munoz's 6-foot-6, 280 pounds into a diversified package not known before at tackle. Munoz's success became a building block for those Bengals' offensive lines of the mid- and late-1980s that elevated McNally to guru status.
"Bad players get good coaches fired," said Sam Wyche, the head coach who oversaw McNally-Munoz from 1984-91. "Great players make good coaches great. Anthony made it great for everyone. For Jimmy, for me, for the guy in Section 301 at Riverfront."
Now six years after Munoz retired and four years after McNally left the Bengals, the VCR erases a decade and brings us back to Cincinnati's 1988 run to the Super Bowl.
"It's like (a reporter) going over news clippings about World War II and there's some history buff with you going nuts," McNally said. "I was with him every day for 13 years. It's like being married. I didn't take him for granted, but we did this every day."
Yet McNally gets excited when he puts in the first tape, where Munoz is working against Manley, Washington's feared defensive end, in the final game of the '88 regular season, a game the Bengals needed to secure home field advantage in the playoffs.
At 30 years old, Munoz was in his prime, the anchor of the NFL's best offensive line.
"First play of the game. Haven't seen it in years, but I remember we got Anthony so fired up," McNally says. "First play of the game, he knocks him down. Pancakes him. Dexter Manley is one of the strongest men to play football. Not a Bruce Smith, but the next level down."
The play is "19," boss, a run and the 6-foot-3, 252-pound Manley is flat on his back. Also on that first series, Munoz stands up Manley on the pass rush, then slides his shoulders down to take out Manley's legs. A few plays later, Manley tries to rush outside Munoz, and Munoz pushes him harmlessly into the backfield with his hands.
The series is quintessential Munoz. Strength. Technique. Athleticism.
"Anthony really had to gear up and stay low (because of Manley's strength). Look at how he finishes the block," says McNally of the pass where Munoz takes out Manley's legs. "Watch him take Dexter and boom, stay right with him, and takes (Munoz's) momentum to his legs and chopped him."
Now the Bengals are running "16," an off tackle play with running back Ickey Woods cutting back up the middle for a good chunk of yards. Munoz blocks a lineman, then slides off and takes on a linebacker.
"See how flat his back is?" McNally asks. "See how when he hits he drives him, staying low? Leverage."
Now there is another pass and Manley doesn't sniff quarterback Boomer Esiason. Munoz has stiffened into pass protection, his hands balled into fists jackhammering into Manley. The punches keep Manley's hands off Munoz, preventing him from gaining leverage to get by him.
"He jumps out right at him right away," McNally says. "Short, quick punches. Boom. Boom."
McNally pulls out the tape and fast forwards to 1991, when the injuries are creeping up. Munoz is 33 now, getting it on against Jim Jeffcoat in Dallas. Jeffcoat is 30 himself, but tall and slippery, and he puts a few moves on Munoz that Manley didn't do three years ago.
"Maybe a little bit," says McNally, when asked if he can see Munoz slowing down a tad. "Consider he was hurt occasionally (shoulder, knee)."
But here is Esiason dropping back and it might as well be three years before as Munoz pops out of his stance: "Look at him jump out on Jeffcoat (on pass protection). He jumps him short -- bing -- he separates from him, chops him down. He's hustling, throwing his body around. Look, he ran out there. He almost run blocked him on a pass."
Tony Tolbert, the Cowboys' 23-year-old defensive end, gets a taste of the old man.
"Watch this," McNally says "Bing."
The Bengals run around end and Munoz clears out Tolbert with a reach and scramble block. A "reach" is blocking a player on his outside, designed to seal a wide play. He "scrambles," meaning he stays low, almost bear crawling on the ground to gain leverage.
It's rare you see man as big as Munoz get that low, but that's why his athleticism made him two cuts above.
"Early in his career he'd have 10 pancakes already," McNally says, wistfully thinking about the early '80s. "Nobody lined up (players) over him after awhile. Everybody would put a guy in a gap or on his outside shoulder, trying to get an edge."
McNally rewinds to '88 and the AFC championship game. It's as if he wants to settle a score via video. That's the game Buffalo's Bruce Smith, a future Hall of Famer, had two early sacks against Munoz before leaving with an injury in a game the Bengals won.
That's when Smith said he would have had a career game if he hadn't gotten hurt, and the pundits wondered if Smith would have led the Bills to victory by dominating Munoz.
McNally flips through history and gives the first sack to Smith. It was legitimate. He bolted inside on Munoz late in the play and Munoz couldn't recover.
But the second sack. . . . McNally is excited now as he watches Munoz do what he's supposed to do. He takes Smith's 280 pounds like a bullfighter and wards him away to the outside, believing he is sending Smith harmlessly deep into the pocket.
"But look at how deep Boomer is," McNally says. "He's 11 yards deep. It looked like a pretty good play for Anthony, but that's one of the plays they talked about Bruce Smith on Anthony."
Player and coach are on the same page a decade later.
"I don't think he would have had the game of a lifetime," Munoz says. "He had plenty of opportunities to do it, but he never did it (in other games). I never saw him get hurt. What happened? One day he was playing and the next he was out."
McNally is packing up. He drains his soda. It's 1998 again, and Munoz is headed to Canton.
"You're seeing he was effective right up until the end. Strong in the legs, excellent technician," McNally says. "You could always count on him doing his job, always count on him to block his man. He might not make a play or two every game, but you could pretty well count on if everybody did their job as well as he did, you'd win every game."
Even though McNally is a man of film and few words, he has just eloquently defined the term "Hall of Famer."
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