Legendary Bill Arnsparger Passes Away | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

Legendary Bill Arnsparger Passes Away

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Dave Hyde ‏@davehydesports
R.I.P. Bill Arnsparger. He wrote the book on defense (it's on my bookshelf) and was defensive coordinator of every Dolphins Super Bowl team
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RIP Bill
 
RIP Arnsparger. Truly an innovative and defensive genius. Condolences to his family and friends.
 
Former defensive coordinator Bill Arnsparger has passed away at 88.

For the older crowd...

FootballScoop Staff ‏@FootballScoop 55m55 minutes ago
The coaching community lost a good one today as Bill Arnsparger ascended up to heaven. Please keep his wife & family in your prayers.

Sad #Dolphins news to report. Former defensive coordinator Bill Arnsparger has passed away at 88. Was the DC for every Fins SB appearance.@GregLikens
 
One of a handful of guys who belongs in the HOF solely for his work as a coordinator (Arnsparger was a failure as a HC). Norv Turner, Dick LeBeau and Buddy Ryan are the others who come to mind (LeBeau is already in but as a player).
 
One of the true greats. Made a huge difference for Shula and Co.

We were never the same team without Arns.

Man, is it just me, or all those folks (back in the Dolphin glory days) getting really old?

Time marches on in a rather cruel manner.
 
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RIP Bill....wish he would have been our DC during the Marino years, instead of Olivadummy.
 
Albert Romano said:
For the older crowd...

FootballScoop Staff ‏@FootballScoop 55m55 minutes ago
The coaching community lost a good one today as Bill Arnsparger ascended up to heaven. Please keep his wife & family in your prayers.

Sad #Dolphins news to report. Former defensive coordinator Bill Arnsparger has passed away at 88. Was the DC for every Fins SB appearance.@GregLikens
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And for the younger crowd, Arnsparger helped develop the zone blitz and was one of the first DC's to incorporate hybrid players and defensive fronts. We hear the word hybrid all the time now but Bill did so in the 60's and most notably with the Dolphin's no-name defense in the 70's with players such as LB/DE Kim Bokamper.
 
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An article from 2012 on Bokamper discussing Arnsparger

http://www.miamidolphins.com/news/a...209?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

He was just very much an innovator in the game. He was Coach Shula as a defensive coach. He was demanding, he was a perfectionist, he expected you to know your job and be where you were supposed to be when you were supposed to be there. It was somewhat stifling as a defensive player because we had to be so disciplined. He left very little room to freelance. No spin moves, and if you had contain you had contain, and if you had a gap you had that gap, and if you didn’t maintain it you heard about it.

To me the snapshot that really tells you what he’s all about is when we were in New York playing the Jets. We were down to four linebackers in a four-linebacker scheme and A.J. Duhe pulled a groin in pregame warmups. Now we only had three linebackers. Bill immediately left the field during pregame warmups and went into the locker room. By the time we got in the locker room he had kind of reconstituted the whole scheme.

He brought one of our safeties down, Mike Kozlowski, and turned him into a hybrid safety/outside linebacker. He made some other scheme changes along the line and kind of just restructured the whole defense. We ended up shutting them out in the first half. We’re talking 45 minutes or less to kickoff and he made that work.

The thing I remember most about that game is coming in at halftime after shutting the Jets out and seeing him standing there with tears in his eyes. It was really the first time we felt like a real team with him because it was a combination of him scheme-wise and the players picking it up and executing without ever practicing it. We were just kind of throwing it out there on the fly. That to me is the snapshot of Bill Arnsparger.
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The other thing I think about with Bill is he ran the defense. Coach Shula ran the team but he ran the defense. There were times on the sideline where things would be going wrong defensively and Coach Shula would come storming back screaming, “What the heck are you doing?” Bill never said a word. He took his headset off and would say, “If you want to call it, call it. If you don’t, then leave.” And he’d finish the game.
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121213_Bokamper.jpg
 
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