The football community lost a titan in the sport yesterday with the passing of Howard Mudd ('64) due to injuries suffered in a tragic motorcycle accident.
He was 78 years old.
Mudd was best known for his 11-plus years as an offensive line coach with the Indianapolis Colts, a tenure where he helped guide the line that protected legendary NFL quarterback Peyton Manning and was an important part of the team's 2007 Super Bowl victory, the franchise's first NFL title in 36 years.
That tenure was part of a 40-year career as a coach, 38 of those in the NFL, where he put together a resume that marks him as arguably the greatest offensive line coach in the sport's history.
"I would put (Howard) on that pedestal any day of the week," Manning told Colts.com yesterday upon hearing news of Mudd's passing. "He will be missed by many. I know so many like me are grateful to have played for him."
Home at Hillsdale
A 1964 graduate of Hillsdale College, Mudd also had an outsized impact on the Charger football program that lasted long after his playing days ended.
A native of Midland, Michigan and a graduate of Midland High School, Mudd was a high profile recruit for Big 10 power Michigan State University and legendary coach Hugh (Duffy) Daugherty in 1960, and quickly worked his way into the starting lineup for the Spartans. But success on the field didn't lead to peace off of it. "I felt lost," Mudd told Hillsdale College Director of Marketing and Content Monica VanderWeide in an interview last year. "I was miserable."
The summer after his freshman year, 1957 Hillsdale graduate and football All-American Warren Spragg made an unannounced visit to Mudd's house, inviting him to play football at Hillsdale. Although Mudd declined and returned to MSU in the fall, Spragg didn't give up. He called on Mudd again that fall, and this time, Mudd agreed to come watch a game in Hillsdale.
It wasn't love at first sight for Mudd and Hillsdale, as the small town and campus put him off initially. But when he met Charger head coach Frank "Muddy" Waters after the game, Mudd immediately felt like he had found someone he wanted to play for. "He was such a benevolent guy," Mudd recalled. "I felt like he was another father figure to me." Dean of Men Bob Hendee also took Mudd under his wing, helping him with the transfer process to Hillsdale and securing a part-time job for Mudd as an orderly at Hillsdale Hospital.
Over the next two years at Hillsdale, Mudd found the balance between football and academics that he'd struggled with at MSU, and excelled in both. Playing at tackle and guard, he was an NAIA All-American, a two-time Associated Press All-State player for winning teams at Hillsdale, and a co-captain as a senior.
Off the field, he majored in biology and was an exemplary student, with aspirations of attending medical school and becoming a doctor. "I didn't come to Hillsdale to make athletics my life," Mudd told VanderWeide "It was a chance to start over, to become a legitimate student-athlete."
An All-Time Great
But word of Mudd's football acumen reached the ears of NFL scouts, and changed his plans once again. He was drafted in the ninth round of the 1964 NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers, and chose to pursue a pro career.
In the NFL, Mudd was a standout, just as he was at Hillsdale College. He played seven seasons on the line for the 49ers and Chicago Bears from 1964-1970, making the Pro Bowl for three consecutive years and earning All-NFL honors in 1967 and 1968. Later, he would be recognized as a part of the NFL All-Decade team for the 1960s, and also a member of the San Francisco 49ers Golden Era team.
A knee injury in 1971 ended his playing career at 29, but opened the door to a new career path. During NFL offseasons, Mudd had served as a volunteer coach at Stanford under Cardinal offensive line coach Mike White. When White got the head coaching job at nearby University of California, Berkley, in 1972, he brought Mudd on as an assistant offensive line coach. After a year with the Golden Bears, Mudd jumped to the NFL ranks with the San Diego Chargers, beginning an NFL coaching legacy that spanned four decades and seven NFL teams.
"Being a teacher," Mudd told VanderWeide when asked about what drew him to coaching. "When I volunteer-coached at Stanford, I felt like I belonged.
"(After that), I knew I wanted to try (coaching) as a profession. I had great teachers and coaches and thrived as a player because of their efforts. Teaching someone how to do something and then watching them perform is so rewarding."
A Continuing Legacy
Even as his coaching career took off, Mudd continued to make time for his alma mater. He was inducted into the Hillsdale College Athletic Hall of Fame as a part of its inaugural class in 1997, along with his College coach, "Muddy" Waters, and also received Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007, following the Colts' Super Bowl victory that year.
Behind the scenes, he also had a substantial impact on the Hillsdale College football program. In the spring of 2007, when the Colts were at the height of their powers, Mudd spent a day with the Hillsdale College coaching staff and passed on many of the inner workings of Indianapolis' vaunted no-huddle offense that had set NFL records year after year.
"The things that struck you about Howard when you met him were his passion for the game and his intellect," Hillsdale College head coach Keith Otterbein said. "Here's someone who's spent nearly 50 years in the game at the highest levels, and yet even after all that grind it's obvious every time he talks about football how much he loves the sport. That's inspiring.
"He was such a cerebral coach, too. In this sport, you get a lot of coaches who just teach things the way they were taught because that's how it's always been done. Howard wasn't afraid to look critically at everything that he did as a coach, come up with his own answers, and go his own way, even if no one else followed along at first. He understood the mental side of the game as well as anyone ever has, and that was a big part of what made him so successful."
Armed with that information, Otterbein and his staff revamped their offense for the 2007 season, leading to the team's first winning record on the field in eight seasons and a record-setting campaign from quarterback Mark Nicolet.
"We were very lucky to get a chance to talk football with a guy as knowledgeable as Howard Mudd, and I think the biggest thing we took away from that is to have a strong identity and do a few things well, rather than trying to do everything," Otterbein said. "That really helped us simplify our playbook and figure out who we wanted to be as an offensive unit, which paid immediate dividends on the field for us.
"Another thing we really took from that conversation was the use of tempo and how you can control the pace of the game from the no-huddle. The Colts under Tony Dungy and Mudd were really pioneers in that regard and we modeled a lot of our offense off of that. We're still using things today that we learned from Howard that day, including our snap counts and the way we teach our offensive linemen to communicate with each other on the field."
Over the decade and a half since, Hillsdale's offense that draws inspiration from Mudd and the Colts' principles has consistently been at or near the top of the Midwest, leading to conference titles and playoff appearances and helping players like Troy Weatherhead, Andre Holmes, Joe Glendening, Chance Stewart and Trey Brock rewrite the Charger record books.
His reputation continues to burnish Hillsdale's name in the highest levels of football, creating opportunities for current Chargers.
In the summer of 2019, current Hillsdale senior Martin Petersen got the opportunity to intern at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Petersen was alerted to the opportunity after a senior staffer at the Hall of Fame reached out to Career Services to see if anyone from Hillsdale was interested in applying for the internship.
The reason the staffer reached out to Hillsdale? He was the son of NFL Hall of Famer Anthony Munoz, and had heard stories from his father about learning from Howard Mudd, the brilliant coach from Hillsdale College, during NFL offseasons.
"Howard is someone who was proud to be an alumnus of Hillsdale, and he carried that pride everywhere he went," Otterbein said. "Through him, I got to talk to Tony Dungy a few times, and every time Tony told me, 'You know, Howard talks about you guys all the time'.
"When you think about the kind of person Howard was and what he accomplished, you couldn't ask for a better ambassador for Hillsdale College than him, and I certainly know that our coaches and players have gotten opportunities they might not have had over the years because of the way Howard represented our school at the highest levels of football."
Mudd is survived by his wife and children, as well as a large extended family. There are no plans for a funeral at this time, but a celebration of life service will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking those interested to donate to their favorite cause in his honor, or to Mudd's favorite charity: the Indianapolis Great Pyrenees Rescue.