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The long road back For coach Meeks, tragedy turns to triumph at Super Bowl
Posted: Friday January 29, 1999 12:24 AM
MIAMI -- There are a million stories in every Super Bowl week. Or maybe there are only four -- done 250,000 different ways. Whatever, Ron Meeks has his story. There's a touch of tragedy. Some questionable life choices. Some hard luck. A whole lot of hard work. And now, finally, there is the happy ending. Hopefully. Because Sunday, Ron Meeks will do something even he thought he never would do. He will be in a Super Bowl. "No," he says, "never did. Never thought it would happen." Ron Meeks is a position coach, so he largely goes unnoticed throughout the year. Even this week, when reporters are interviewing rocks and art deco hotels and -- worse yet -- each other, Meeks has mostly been undisturbed. Meeks coaches the defensive backs for the Atlanta Falcons, a job he took two years ago. He's not a particularly well-known coach, even in a tight-knit NFL coaching family. Dan Reeves had never met him before he hired him. But Meeks works hard, gets the most out of the guys he coaches and, all of a sudden, now he's in the Super Bowl. Except it's never that tidy. Meeks, who played cornerback for five years in the Canadian Football League, started his coaching career with the Dallas Cowboys in 1991. He left the team after that '91 season when he was offered a full-time job as defensive backs coach with the Cincinnati Bengals That was the season the Cowboys won the first of their back-to-back Super Bowls. "A lot of people called me after I left Dallas, saying 'Why did you leave there? You could have been in two Super Bowls,'" Meeks recalls. "All I could say was you got to do what you think is best for you and your career. I think it was for the right reasons. It could have happened [in Cincinnati], too. "But, as it turned out, it wasn't meant to be."
In March of 1996, in what would turn out to be his last year in Cincinnati, Meeks' apartment was destroyed by fire, a fire that took with it years of cherished memorabilia. Childhood photos of his now 18-year-old twins. Photos of him with his parents, photos of him with his fraternity brothers at Arkansas State. Game balls from his playing days and his early college coaching stops. All gone in minutes. All irreplaceable. "I'm still not over it," he says. "But, you know, there are a lot of people worse off than me. There's a lot of tragedy out there a lot worse than what I had to go through." Less than six months after the fire, new Bengals coach Bruce Coslet decided he needed his own coaches as assistants, and he let Meeks go. The Bengals intercepted a league-high 34 passes that year, and Meeks coached the NFL's defensive player of the year, but it didn't matter. He was gone. After he was fired, Meeks had interviews with the New York Giants and the Detroit Lions, and had others set up with the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. But then he met with Reeves, who was taking over a 3-13 team, liked what he saw -- "You knew this guy had a winning formula" -- and decided to move to Georgia, where he also could be close to his family, including his aging father. Meeks' father passed away in that first season in Atlanta, and the Falcons started out 1-7. The Falcons soon turned things around, though, and are making their first appearance in a Super Bowl on Sunday. The Atlanta defense ranked eighth overall in '98, and the Falcons led the NFL with 44 takeaways -- including 19 interceptions. It has been a sweet season for Meeks, who has admitted to a little reflecting over the past couple weeks. "But that was done earlier, as soon as the Minnesota game [the NFC Championship game] was over," he said. "Now we realize, as great as this has been, it won't be nearly as much fun if we lose Sunday." Ron Meeks' story may not be unique. But, whatever happens in Super Bowl XXXIII, he already has started to build some new memories -- some even he thought he'd never have a chance to live. Today's Obscure Statistic : The magic number for Jamal Anderson is 20. This season, when the Falcons give the ball to their bullish back at least 20 times, they are 15-0. A Sign the Super Bowl is Getting Out of Hand : A radio station in Miami plans to give away a pair of tickets to the big game for whoever does the strangest thing. One guy was prepared to let his buddy suck out his glass eye. Quote of the Day : "The kind of receiver that gets open." -- Atlanta cornerback Ray Buchanan, on the type of receiver who gives him the most trouble.
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