Bengals president Mike Brown once called the late Dick Jauron the closest thing Yale ever had to the fictional sports great Frank Merriwell.
Reggie Williams, his Bengals teammate who shared his Ivy League pedigree, remembers how Jauron filled the Pro Bowl vacuum of safety Tommy Casanova's retirement.
Dave Lapham, who chased him on a Massachusetts high school basketball court and 30 years later turned down a chance to coach his offensive line in Chicago, recalls towering athletic accolades dwarfed by Jauron's decision to leave coaching and take care of his ill wife Gail.
"Everybody's All-American," Lapham says. "He wasn't going to get beat by making a mental mistake and his teammates knew it. All-State in football, basketball, baseball. This guy was a freak. That said, an even better human being. Very humble. Put everyone else first."
Jauron's sudden death this past Saturday at 74 after a brief illness rocked Bengaldom, where the two-time NFL head coach and 2001 Coach of the Year got his start in the profession.
Brown called it "a jolt." Williams, attending the Ivy Football Association dinner in New York on Jan. 30, saw his old friend on the dais, and before he could get there to say hello, he heard an announcement that Jauron had taken sick and returned to his hotel.
Nine days later, he was gone, and on Monday Williams found himself summing up Jauron's legacy in a Bengals uniform, which he wore at safety from 1978-80.
A fourth-round pick of the Lions in 1973, Jauron played his first five seasons in Detroit, where he was runner-up to Bears defensive tackle Wally Chambers for NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year and a Pro Bowler in 1974. Casanova, the Bengals' three-time Pro Bowl safety, retired after his last one in 1977 and the Bengals picked up Jauron.
"He basically replaced Tommy Casanova, an iconic presence in the huddle," Williams says. "He had such big shoes to fill and he was able to come in and immediately fill them."
Falcons quarterback Steve Bartkowski's "duck," thrown over Williams' blitzing arms, turned into one of Jauron's 25 career interceptions and a 24-yard pick-six late in the 1978 season.
"People would call him a Johhny on the spot," Williams says, "but he was that intellectual kind of player who used his space on the field to his advantage."
Much like Jauron used losing a season to his advantage. He didn't play on the 1981 Super Bowl team after injuring his knee returning a punt late in the previous season, but it spawned super things.
Defensive coordinator Hank Bullough and secondary coach Dick LeBeau convinced him to stick around. They talked him into going into the press box on game days, a move Williams now calls cutting-edge for a league that back then didn't quite know how to use all its assets.
"He had a lot of different roles that an assistant coach would," Lapham says. "He wasn't in the meetings, but he was an extra set of eyes. Hank told him, 'You're going up top.' And Dick told him, too, 'Tell me what you see. Tell me what you're thinking.'"
It turns out that long before that, the two North Shore Mass boys, Lapham and Jauron, were already thinking about getting into coaching. Jauron told him, "Don't forget me when you get a head job or a coordinator job." And Lapham told him, 'You too.'"
After serving as the most versatile offensive lineman in Bengals history, Lapham went on to become their celebrated radio analyst. As he begins his 40th year in the booth, Lapham recalls how Jauron tried to get him out of it in 1999 when Jauron became the head coach of the Bears.
By then, Lapham was already "Mr. Bengal," and had been off the field for 15 years. But Jauron didn't forget the vows of the late '70s. "What do you think? It will be good. You'll be great," is how Jauron broached the job.
"He was serious," Lapham says. "But when I made a joke about it, he did too."
What is no joke is Jauron's athletic prowess. The Boston Globe named him one of Massachusetts' top ten football players of the 20th century, but Lapham goes even further. He puts him in a class with "The Golden Greek," Harry Agganis, the first-round pick of Paul Brown's Browns who opted to play for the hometown Red Sox as one of the state's top five athletes.
Lapham was a sophomore at Wakefield High School when Jauron rolled in with Swampscott for a scrimmage and racked up 200 yards or so. That winter, Lapham was in the Wakefield post as Jauron ran the Swampscott point. That spring, the Cardinals drafted him in the 25th round, but Jauron chose to also play baseball at Yale.
"He could run all day. You couldn't fatigue Dick Jauron," Lapham says. "They put on a 1-2-2 press and Dick was on the ball and it was an accomplishment to get the ball to half court."
Mike Brown saw what the Bengals had in a young coach after that '81 season and tried to get him to go full court.
"Dick is a very bright guy and you could tell just by the way he handled himself on the field that he would be an excellent coach," Mike Brown told Bengals.com in 2001. "My father and I had high regard for him, not only as a player, but as a person, and we thought he'd be a good addition."
But Jauron wanted to try other things. Which was no surprise to another teammate, cornerback Louis Breeden. Jauron, Breeden noticed, liked to ask questions.
(Jauron is the guy who asked Lapham coming off the field after the 1980 Opening Day loss to the Buccaneers what made future Hall of Fame Tampa Bay defensive end Lee Roy Selmon so good.)
Breeden enjoyed that Jauron would ask questions about anything. Whether it was football, race, culture.
"That's why I found him so likeable," Breeden says.
Breeden, born in the segregated south who came into the NFL via the historically black college North Carolina Central, and the white New Englander Jauron weren't put off by their differences. They were interested in them, and they became friends.
"I enjoyed our conversations," Breeden says. "He had a certain amount of curiosity about certain things. So we talked about my upbringing, his upbringing, and how all of those things intertwined."
Jauron and former Bengals tight end Jim Corbett opened a health and fitness center in Cincinnati after the Super Bowl, sold it two years later, and Jauron went to work for Nautilus before Bullough lured him into coaching in 1985 when Bullough was the head coach in Buffalo.
He stayed in the rough-and-tumble game for 30 years, walking away a dozen years ago at age 62 to become a full-time caretaker for his ailing wife.
"To me, that sums up Dick Jauron," Lapham says. "I'm giving up something I love, my passion in life, to take care of my wife every day, 24-7. Because my family is that important."
Lapham says he's heard from a slew of people since Saturday. Jauron's death has sent ripples that have hit his old teammates far and wide.
"I know he's already made more friends," Lapham says.
Breeden seemed to think it was a good time to remember Jauron's face.
"He always had a smile on his face," Breeden says. "Like, 'It's going to be OK.' He was approachable and approached everyone."
