Ron Wolf

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Ron Wolf
Positions:
General Manager,
Football Official
born December 30, 1938 in New Freedom , Pennsylvania
Career information
Active : 1963 - 2001
College : Maryville
Teams
Career statistics
Career highlights and awards
Pro Football Hall of Fame

Ron Wolf (* thirtieth December 1938 in New Freedom , Pennsylvania ) is a former American American football -Funktionär and general manager , mainly for the Oakland / Los Angeles Raiders and the Green Bay Packers worked. One of his greatest achievements was to bring the sporting success back to Green Bay after the Packers had hardly won any games two decades before Wolf's engagement. He also played a major role in the personnel decisions of the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders from 1963 to 1974 and again from 1979 to 1989 .

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August 2015 for his accomplishments .

Career

Oakland / Los Angeles Raiders

Ron Wolf's career as a football official began in 1963 with the Raiders as a scout . He quickly developed into a close confidante of Al Davis . During the first years with the Raiders Wolf built through the draft , a team with u. a. Art Shell , Gene Upshaw , Ken Stabler and Jack Tatum , all of whom later won Super Bowl XI .

Short stopover at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Due to his success with the Raiders, he was offered the position of vice-president for the new expansion team of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1975 , which he also took over. The Buccaneers, who joined the NFL with the newly formed Seattle Seahawks in 1976 , ended their first season with a 0-14 record. The following season they started with 12 defeats before they could celebrate the franchise's first win against the New Orleans Saints . After another unsuccessful season and a negative balance of 5-11, Wolf left the Buccaneers for Oakland . One reason for Wolf's departure is believed to be that he found it difficult to work with the then owner, Hugh Culverhouse , as Culverhouse interfered too much in personnel decisions and thus lost Wolf's trust. Since there was still no free agency and no salary cap was in the NFL, it was then much more difficult to build with the available players a successful team. However, Wolf's work with the Buccaneers was not unsuccessful, as they reached the play-offs in 1979 with the team, which was partly composed by Wolf , and took part in the NFC Championship Game . In addition, Lee Roy Selmon was the best drafted player in Wolf's career and thus a player of the Buccaneers.

Again with the Raiders

Back at the Raiders in Oakland, or after moving to Los Angeles , Wolf was able to successfully continue his work and, with his discoveries around Howie Long , Marcus Allen and Matt Millen , put together a team that u. a. won Super Bowl XVIII . After 23 years with Davis and the Raiders, 10 division titles, 17 seasons with positive balances, three Super Bowl -Teilnahmen ( II , XV , XVIII ), were what won two ( XV , XVIII ) and nine subsequent Hall of Famern Wolf left in 1989 , the Team.

Short stopover at the New York Jets

In 1990 Wolf joined the New York Jets and spent 17 months there. During this time, Wolf's probably greatest failure in terms of personnel decisions occurred. In the 1991 NFL Draft , Brett Favre , quarterback for the Southern Miss , was Wolf's best player in the draft. For this reason, Wolf and Dick Steinberg , general managers of the Jets from 1990 to 1994, did everything they could to draft Favre. However, the Jets did not have a first-round pick that year and could only select 34th in the second round. Steinberg had already started a deal with the Cardinals , who could choose in 32nd place. However, the Cardinals dropped this and instead chose the defensive end Mike Jones . With the next pick, the Atlanta Falcons finally selected Favre and the Jets had to settle for quarterback Browning Nagle .

Green Bay Packers

After the 1991 draft, the Green Bay Packers contacted Wolf. They offered him the position of general manager and guaranteed him complete freedom of action in football decisions without the board of directors interfering. After his experience in Tampa, he agreed to "do his thing". One of his first acts with the Packers was the sacking of Head Coach Lindy Infante and the hiring of Mike Holmgren . Holmgren had been offensive coordinator for the 49ers up to this point , working and studying under Bill Walsh and George Seifert . In addition, the offense of the 49ers made the team the most successful team of this era. Wolf's next move was to pay a first-round pick to the Falcons in exchange for Brett Favre to bring him to Green Bay. With these two actions, the foundation stone was laid for an almost 30 year long success story. With the engagement of Reggie White on April 6, 1993, arguably the best defensive player and most sought-after free agent at the time, Wolf also added a leader to the defense. With the decisions Wolf made, the Packers, who had only four positive seasons 23 years before Wolf's work, became a team that had a 92-52 record in nine years, six times in a row in the play-offs played, took part in the Super Bowl twice and won one of them ( Super Bowl XXXI ). One of Wolf's recipes for success was to be very aggressive in the Free Agency and to trade a lot. In his nine years with the Packers, he made 89 changes, 67 more than any other team. In June 2001, Ron Wolf officially retired as General Manager of the Packers.

Legacy and Awards

Wolf subsequently remained active as a consultant and helped several teams to find new general managers or head coaches. The way of working lives on in his former employees. For example, Ted Thompson (Packers), John Schneider (Seahawks), John Dorsey (Chiefs, Browns), Reggie McKenzie (Raiders) and Scot McCloughan (49ers, Redskins) were or are former employees of Wolf General Manager in other NFL teams . For his achievements he was finally inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on August 8, 2015 as a member of the so-called contributor class .

Private

Ron Wolf's son, Eliot , like his father before, worked in the Packers' front office from 2004 to 2017 . Since January 2018, Eliot has been Assistant General Manager at the Cleveland Browns .

Works

  • Ron Wolf, Paul Attner: The Packer Way: Nine Stepping Stones to Building a Winning Organization . St Martins Pr., 1998, ISBN 978-0-312-19312-6 .

Web links

  • Ron Wolf of the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association
  • Ron Wolf at pro-football-reference.com

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e Danny Kelly: Forget coaching trees, Ron Wolf's scouting tree made today's NFL. In: sbnation.com. August 4, 2015, accessed January 14, 2018 .
  2. Doug Farrar: Ron Wolf talks Al Davis, Brett Favre and his Hall of Fame football life. Sports Illustrated , November 13, 2015, accessed January 14, 2018 : “The difference was, there wasn't free agency. You didn't have a salary cap to concern yourself with, but the player pool was atrocious. "
  3. Doug Farrar: Ron Wolf talks Al Davis, Brett Favre and his Hall of Fame football life. Sports Illustrated , November 13, 2015, accessed on January 14, 2018 : "Without a doubt, throughout my career, the best player I ever drafted was Lee Roy Selmon."
  4. a b Stefan Feldmann: Legends - Others: Ron Wolf. bigplay.ch, June 27, 2015, accessed on March 25, 2018 .
  5. a b c d e f g h Zach Kruse: Remembering Ron Wolf's Hall of Fame Career. In: bleacherreport.com. August 4, 2015, accessed March 25, 2018 .
  6. ^ A b Doug Farrar: Ron Wolf talks Al Davis, Brett Favre and his Hall of Fame football life. Sports Illustrated , November 13, 2015; accessed January 14, 2018 .
  7. Rob Demovsky: Browns hire Eliot Wolf as assistant GM. ESPN , January 10, 2018, accessed March 25, 2018 .