With as many great quarterbacks that have made their way through the Stanford football program, it's no surprise that there's been a number of excellent wide receivers catching their passes. One of the best was Ed McCaffrey, who arrived at Stanford in 1986 and left after the 1990 season as one of the greatest ever to wear the Cardinal and White. Young Stanford fans may only know him as Christian McCaffrey's father, but the old man was a player in his own right. His senior season was legendary, as he caught the last touchdown pass in the miraculous Big Game victory over Cal, was named first-team All-America, and was selected in the third round of the NFL draft by the New York Giants. In 2008 he was inducted into the Stanford University Athletic Hall of Fame.
Earlier this week Ed was nice enough to spend some time talking to me about all this stuff, and the result is a rather interesting conversation. Enjoy...
Go Mighty Card:
I want to start with your high school career. You excelled in both football and basketball at Allentown Central Catholic in Pennsylvania, setting records and getting statewide recognition. At what point did you begin to realize that it would be possible for you to play sports at the collegiate level?
Ed McCaffrey:
Well, I played football, basketball, and baseball in high school, and those were the three sports I played growing up from the time I was eight. But it seemed like once I got to high school, I got a whole lot more attention on the football field than I did on the court or on the baseball diamond. I was provided some opportunities to play basketball in college, and in fact, when I agreed to attend Stanford I thought that I might play both sports, but because we ended up going to the Gator Bowl my freshman year, I ended up opting not to play basketball. But probably around my sophomore year of high school is when I started getting a lot of letters from a bunch of Division I schools. It was shocking at first. My high school team wasn’t that good. But I do remember going to a lot of camps over the summer — Penn State football camp, Michigan football camp, Syracuse football camp — and getting a lot of recognition at those camps, which caused some schools to start following my high school career.
GMC:
College recruiting was very different in the 1980s as compared to today. What was that process like for you?
McCaffrey:
Well, it was interesting. There were no cell phones back then, no laptops, and you really relied on letters being sent to your school, and you just hoped that someone was actually receiving them and giving them to you, because there was no guarantee that would happen. That was really the only means of communication. Schools didn’t go out to watch you play personally, they didn’t send scouts out to watch your games. You had to get recognized by going to various camps. You’d be at one particular school’s camp, and there might be a lot of other coaches from other teams that are helping to coach at those camps. Word would get around pretty fast, but there was no internet, no recruiting websites. It was all word of mouth. There was a group of scouts from the colleges that would scour the country looking for talent. They had to see you in person, and they had a lot of people that spent a lot of time on the road trying to identify future Division I prospects.
GMC:
What was it that drew you to Stanford? How did a Pennsylvania kid turn down Joe Paterno and a team that had fallen just short of a national championship and instead choose a program that hadn’t seen a winning record in five years and was on the other side of the country?
McCaffrey:
I looked at several schools — Penn State, Michigan, Notre Dame — all of them were national championship caliber teams, and they were all great schools. But I took a visit out to Stanford and walked the campus, met with some professors, mingled with the students, and absolutely fell in love with the entire Stanford community. It was just a gut reaction that this was where I should be. From the football recruiting side, there was a guy named Tom Beckett who did most of the recruiting on the East Coast and is now the athletic director at Yale. He was a great guy and an excellent recruiter, and he did a good job of introducing me to some faculty, alumni, and the football coaches. Jack Elway was the football coach. I thought the world of Jack Elway. I obviously knew about John Elway, but Jack was just an intelligent, hard-working, smart guy who really related to players. After meeting Jack, the rest of the coaching staff, and other players on the team, I thought that I’d get along real well out there with like-minded players. And from the school standpoint, Stanford was ranked #1 in U.S. News and World Report that year, and academically the reputation of the school spoke for itself. I wanted to be challenged at the highest level academically as well, and so the combination of academics and athletics, the beautiful weather, the invigorating environment… It was easy to make my decision.
GMC:
Once you got to Stanford, what was that transition like for you? What was life like for a freshman wide receiver under coach Jack Elway?
McCaffrey:
I got along great with the coaches and the players. The receivers on the team, in particular, were very welcoming. I was a freshman who was playing as a freshman, and those guys easily could’ve been bent out of shape and made it hard for me, but they were awesome. Jeff James, Thomas Henley, Spencer Cotten, Henry Green, Carl Morris — all those guys were very supportive of me and helped me out that first year. It was rough, though, because I did travel as a freshman, so it ended up being the longest football season of my life. I remember the opening game we beat Texas in Austin. That was an unbelievable experience. The first time I’d played in front of a college crowd, the first big celebration I got be part of as a Stanford Cardinal football player. It was exciting. We ended up going to the Gator Bowl that year, the first bowl game since the seventies, so it was an exciting experience. It was fun, it was challenging, but it was long and exhausting. I look back and remember all the great friends that I got to hang out with, and the wins that we had were pretty exciting. Some of the players on that team ended up playing in the NFL, in fact a couple of them were my teammates. Dave Wyman and Toi Cook ended up playing in Denver with me for a while. Many lifelong friendships. Academically, I lived in Donner. I remember, you know, doing my own laundry for the first time, the smell of raman in the dorm, and all the things that go into freshman life. Stanford didn’t have the fancy sports dorms like the other schools had, but I think that was a good thing. It allowed me to kind of integrate into the Stanford student body, not just the football team.
GMC:
During your freshman and sophomore years you played with someone who might be the greatest Stanford player that current fans have never heard of, Brad Muster. What are your memories of him, and what was it that made him so great?
McCaffrey:
By the time I got there, Brad was 6’5” 225 and ran a 4.5 forty. But I heard how he came in kind of skinny and just grew into this specimen at running back. He was huge for a running back at the collegiate level. The thing I remember about him, though, was how humble he was. He was a great guy, great teammate, very humble, funny, nice guy. There are some players who have big egos and let their success go to their heads, but he was exactly the opposite. He was an incredible teammate, totally unselfish. He ended up getting drafted in the first round, I think, fifteenth pick to Chicago, and graduated, but he did not carry himself like a prima donna. He carried himself like a hard-working, humble, excellent teammate. He was a fun guy to be around.
GMC:
Denny Green arrived in 1989. How did the program change, and what did that mean for you as a player?
McCaffrey:
Well, I was sorry to see Coach Elway go. I redshirted in 1988, I did not play. I had a quad injury that caused me to redshirt, so I sat on the sidelines. It was a very depressing year. The team didn’t have a lot of success, and Coach Elway was gonna move on. I remember a bunch of guys — Ray Huckstein and Lester Archambeau and Rob Hinkley and myself — were kind of lobbying to keep Coach Elway on board because we loved him as a coach and he had done such a great job, I thought, with what he had, but when Denny Green came in we were very impressed with how professional he was in the job he ended up doing while he was at Stanford. He came from the NFL; he was with the 49ers previously, and he brought some of that 49ers West Coast mentality to Stanford. So the offense I played in under Denny was very similar to what I’d eventually play in in San Francisco and Denver for ten years. It really prepared me well for life in the NFL. A lot of players that Denny had recruited ended up becoming friends of mine and having long NFL careers — Bob Whitfield, who now has a son at Stanford also, and Glyn Milburn and Darien Gordon, another teammate of mine in Denver. So there were great memories from the Denny Green era as well. The team had a little bit of success, and a new wave of teammates and coaches that I have a lot of success for.
GMC:
I want to ask you about the upset of Notre Dame in South Bend in 1990. What was the mood heading into that game? You’re going into South Bend, you’re playing mighty Notre Dame, ranked #1. Did you go in there thinking, hey, we’re gonna win this game? What was the attitude of the team?
McCaffrey:
I remember showing up and walking into the locker room, and Notre Dame’s visitors’ locker room was awful. It was awful. It was small and tiny, they squished you all in there. I think there two bathroom stalls with no doors. I remember thinking, wow, this is pretty crummy for a visiting locker room at Notre Dame. But you kind of got the feel for the intimidation factor that the school had over its opponents. But I didn’t feel like we felt that way at all. I think we felt we had nothing to lose. If everyone plays well and everything goes right, we can beat these guys. We felt very relaxed and energized and free going out on the field, and think we ended up playing that way. Things came together, and we ended up winning. It was a pretty unbelievable day.
GMC:
The second game, of course, is Big Game, probably the greatest Big Game in history. All people remember now is the ending, but it was a great game all the way through. What do you remember about the game prior to that miracle finish?
McCaffrey:
I just remember being a senior and thinking, man, this is my last game. I tried really hard not to get too emotional knowing that it was going to be my last collegiate game, and obviously Big Game is so important to the team and the school. Everyone on the team, especially the seniors, really wanted to go out on a positive note. It was close the entire game. I don’t even remember many of the details throughout the game, I just remember the last series of plays that led to our victory, which was pretty unbelievable. The course of events that had to occur for us to win were definitely not very probable. But we did manage to get a penalty after the crowd rushed the field, for what seemed like an eternity… Were you at that game?
GMC:
I was, I was at the game.
McCaffrey:
Oh, my gosh, so you remember. I don’t know how long it was…
GMC:
Well there were thousands of people on the field.
McCaffrey:
Yeah, and I remember scoring that late touchdown and thinking, okay, what a great way to end this thing, scoring a touchdown. We’re going to either kick an extra point and tie it or go for two…
GMC:
Let me ask you about that really quick. I don’t know if you’ll remember this or not, but after you scored that touchdown to pull within one point, do you remember having an opinion one way or the other — let’s go for two or play for the tie?
McCaffrey:
No, I didn’t have an opinion. As a player, you think of yourself as a soldier, just doing whatever the coaches say to do. There are a lot of games, you remember some of them, you don’t remember all of them. But that game is one that is totally ingrained in my memory. I just remember it was a tough game back and forth. The whole game was pretty mundane for me personally, and then all the sudden I was able to score a touchdown at the end and I’m thinking, what an incredible way to finish this game. But it was so loud after I caught the ball, it was so loud. And things are happening so fast and the coaches are just waving the players back on the field. You don’t really even think. You just run back in the huddle and get lined up. I do remember that play. We ran a sprint right option, or a Q8, which was the famous Dwight Clark play, do you remember that?
GMC:
Yeah, I remember that. I was a Cowboy fan. I remember that.
McCaffrey:
So we had that play called going out to the right, and I thought, oh my gosh, I’m going to totally score just like Dwight Clark did against Dallas. It’ll be perfect! So I run the route, and I’m open. I feel like I’m open. I’m running along the back of the end zone, and the pass is thrown, and the DB cuts under it and picks it off. So it went from what I thought was going to be a replay of the Dwight Clark catch to us seemingly losing the game on the failed two-point conversion and then their crowd rushing the field and I’m sitting on the bench for what seemed like forever. And then — a couple of penalties and an onside kick and we win. And the one thing I remember, Lisa, my wife was in the stands, and the Stanford sideline was completely silent. I mean, everyone was in disbelief. No one was saying a word, and during this long pause in the game created by their fans rushing the field, Lisa stands up and just screams, “Don’t give up the ship!”
GMC:
You heard her from the stands?
McCaffrey:
No, I just knew she said that because for the rest of the year, all the people sitting around her, people who looked back at her like she was crazy because the odds of us winning at that point were minuscule, but for the rest of the year as walked through campus, every other day someone would yell out “Don’t give up the ship!” back to her, which was a constant reminder of that game, which was kind of funny. But it’s almost unbelievable what had to happen for us to end up winning, but I do remember how happy we all were that things happened the way they did.
GMC:
Well, it was definitely an amazing game to be at with that incredible swing of emotions. So following the season you’re named All-American and drafted by the New York Giants in the third round of the NFL draft. What were your expectations for yourself heading into the league?
McCaffrey:
You know, I didn’t know what to expect. My first year in the NFL, and the team I was playing for, the New York Giants, had just won the Super Bowl, and they were one of the older teams in the league. I remember getting there and my locker was between Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks, some legendary linebackers who had just come off a Super Bowl win. These guys are in their thirties, and I just showed up. But my expectations for myself were always to just be the best player that I could be. They really were. I never tried to do more than that. I never set goals in terms of number of catches or playing time. My goal was to be the best player that I could be, and hopefully good things would happen. I played a little bit that first year. Back then rookies still had to kind of earn their way onto the team, and I felt good about my contributions as a rookie.
GMC:
After three years with the Giants and another with the 49ers, you arrived in Denver and enjoyed the best years of your career, winning two Super Bowls and recording three consecutive thousand-yard seasons. You mentioned earlier that you were familiar with this offense. Is that what helped you excel?
McCaffrey:
Yeah, I think it was hard work, opportunity, and a little bit of luck that led me to Denver to play with some great players and for some great coaches and have a little bit of success. I was drafted by the Giants and they had just won a Super Bowl, but then they went through a coaching change. Coach Bill Parcells had some heart trouble and had to step down, and Ray Handley, who was a Stanford alum, came in and was the head coach. He was handed a difficult situation in that we had a couple of mediocre years, and the expectation in New York was to win Super Bowls. So there was a coaching change. I played more my second year in the league than I did in my first. I had a pretty impactful second year, but then with the coaching change Dan Reeves came in. Coaches change offenses, they change personnel, they have different likes and dislikes. I wasn’t drafted by Coach Reeves, and he brought in some of his own receivers who he wanted to play. The following year I was released from the team, and I had to start over again. For me that was in San Francisco, where I got to play for George Seifert, offensive coordinator Mike Shannahan, and quarterback coach Gary Kubiak. As a backup to Jerry Rice, thankfully, I worked really hard and took advantage of the opportunity I was given to catch the eye of Coach Shannahan in practice, and he thought enough of me to bring me to Denver. He’s really the one who gave me my first shot to compete for a starting position in the NFL for the Denver Broncos, and I tried to make the most of it.
GMC:
Okay, I want to fast forward a bit. When your son Christian was being recruited by Stanford, he was always referred to as Ed McCaffrey’s son, but now you’re often referred to as Christian McCaffrey’s father. What’s that transition been like for you? What’s it like for you and your wife to be Stanford football parents?
McCaffrey:
Oh, it’s awesome. I’m really happy for Christian. He loves Stanford. He gets to see all the things that Lisa and I saw that drew us to the school. He’s having a wonderful time as a football player, but also as a student, and is really trying to absorb everything that he can from Stanford and his experience. But as parents, you love your kids so much, you care more about them than you do about yourself. It’s fun, but as every parent knows, you have to give up some control and allow them to have their own experience, and that’s what we’ve tried to do with Christian. We love him and try to support him. He’s made some incredible friends out there, both on the team and at school. So we’re happy for him. He’s having a good time.
GMC:
So football wise, have you been able help guide him through the process — either during recruiting or now after games — or have you made a conscious choice to step back?
McCaffrey:
You know, I have led a football life, so it’s hard for me not to share my thoughts with him at times, but he’s got incredible coaches at Stanford. Lance Taylor, his running back coach, can teach him everything he needs to know. I didn’t play running back, but I can definitely give him tips when I see things that are happening on the field, but really more so advice on how to handle football and school. How to take care of your body and manage your time. But I think he’s got a pretty good grip on it. At this point I’m pretty much just his dad who loves him and supports him. He’s got wonderful people around him — excellent coaches and incredible friends. He’s having his own experience. If he ever needs anything, I’m here for him, but I think he’s got it pretty well taken care of.
GMC:
One last question. When you think back to your time as player at Stanford and compare that to Christian’s experience, did you ever think the program would get from where it was then to where it is now?
McCaffrey:
I always thought the program and potential to be incredibly successful. I think the admissions process at Stanford is very difficult and unparalleled in terms of the strict requirements they have for student athletes to be admitted to the school. That’s always going to be a challenge for a school like Stanford that’s trying to compete with the best teams in the country while maintaining an Ivy League, if you will, status academically. It’s not easy to do. So it takes very rigorous recruiting of the correct student athletes that fit into the program. They have a smaller pool from which to choose. So Stanford football, and sports in general, will always have their challenges, but the school is so unbelievable and the experience is so great that I think it does sell itself. When the talent runs deep in terms of the school’s ability to attract student athletes, they have a chance for real success because of the quality of the people who are there. But it will always be a challenge, year in and year out, to get the type of players who can succeed at the school and also on the football field.
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