"As a Patriots season ticket holder, I remember the excitement that was generated by the hiring of Chuck Fairbanks from the University of Oklahoma in 1973. Coach Fairbanks gave the Patriots instant credibility. For Patriots fans of that era, Fairbanks was the Bill Parcells before Bill Parcells. Meaning, he did for the Patriots in the '70s what Bill Parcells did for the team in the '90s. He delivered the franchise’s first 11-win season in 1976 and earned a home playoff game after winning the division in 1978. It was the first time in franchise history that we hosted a playoff game. He introduced the 3-4 defense to the NFL during his Patriots tenure, which remains a part of his NFL legacy. It is a sad day for a generation of Patriots fans who enjoyed his era of coaching. My thoughts and prayers are with the Fairbanks family and all who mourn his loss."
he came here and for six years built this team into one of the best teams in the National Football League and acquired, in my opinion, talent that was…it was really a rare acquisition of talent. I mean, not only did he get it between ’73 and ’78, but then the core of that team was really the core of the Super Bowl team in ’85. And we can rattle off all of the names, but there’s a lot of good football players in that ’73-’78 era. And I’m not even talking about guys like Leon Gray, that he picked up off waivers, and people like that in addition to all of the number one draft choices, the [Russ] Francis’, the [John] Hannahs and the [Darryl] Stingleys, you know, [Raymond] Clayborn and all of those guys, too. It’s pretty remarkable what he did from a talent standpoint here, and he also put together a tremendous coaching staff [from] which all of those guys went on, really, to be head coaches, coordinators and have a lot of success in their own right from Red Miller on offense and Perkins, of course, [Ron] Erhardt, [John] Poloncheck on the defensive side of the ball, Hank Bullough and Rollie Dotsch, Larry Weaver - you know, all of those guys went on to be head coaches or coordinators or both, and were very, very successful.
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