Local boy Nolan looks to restore 49ers’ luster
As his career in the NFL took him around the country, Mike Nolan always knew there were two things he could put together — a game plan and a Godfather.
As a kid growing up in Redwood City, Cal., the future coach of the San Francisco 49ers worked at the Woodside Deli. There he developed a fondness for a sandwich called the Godfather.
Toscano salami, coppa, prosciutto, mortadella and provolone. Lettuce, onion, artichoke hearts, pepperoncini. A splash of olive oil, a sprinkling of oregano. Deli owner Dan Golanetti sent him sandwiches by overnight mail — all the ingredients packed separately in dry ice — for him to reconstitute and enjoy when his career took him far from the Bay area.
Now Nolan, 47, is much closer to his roots, and to the deli. He’s in his second season coaching the 49ers and Golanetti, 69, is only too happy to feed his former clerk.
“I felt bad when he left,” Golanetti says. “I had a lot of fun with him.”
It’s one thing to build a Godfather and another to build a team. The task Nolan faces now is assembling a program that can approach the outer orbit of what the 49ers once were.
He grew up around this team, which his father, Dick Nolan, coached from 1968-75, three times winning the NFC West. The days of the 49ers teams that won five Super Bowls are past. The club’s record over the last three seasons: 13- 35.
So the hometown kid with the deep roots, who so well understands the franchise’s legacy, tries to look to the future while re-establishing the tradition.
“Often guys get jobs in places where they have to learn the history, or at least they should. It’s part of the process. I came on board here and I know an awful lot of the history of the 49ers,” Nolan says.
“When it comes to interacting with the people in this area that are 49ers fans, there’s not too many conversations where we’re not talking about past players and games that I don’t have some familiarity with and that does help me. Sometimes as a coach you let that go by the wayside because there’s not time to learn it, because you’ve got to win games if you want to keep that job long enough to be part of the history.”
Nolan’s first season produced a 4-12 record. Nothing special, but the Niners did win twice as many games as they had the year before. They also began to form the attitudes conducive to success.
“Strong character, integrity, accountability. Hard work. All the great intangibles that you don’t always have in guys in the NFL,” linebacker Derek Smith says, listing the characteristics Nolan demands. “I’d say on the whole he’s gone to get guys like that to build the team around. It gave guys something to look at: Am I that, or am I not that? And if they weren’t that, they were going to change and become that type of guy or they’re out or on their way out.”
Nolan began absorbing the nuances of coaching and player development as a kid.
“He went to training camp with me and he was a ball boy. He would go into the night meetings and pay attention and listen. He wanted to take a look at things and he learned at a young age,” his father says. “I never dreamed he would be the head football coach of a team I coached.”
Those lessons and tours of duty with five NFL teams helped him get the 49ers job. It is far more complex than reassembling a Godfather.
The 49ers hope they found their quarterback of the future in Alex Smith, the first pick of the 2005 draft. They brought in Norv Turner, under whom Nolan toiled with the Washington Redskins, to be offensive coordinator. They signed Pro Bowl guard Larry Allen, traded for receiver Antonio Bryant and, with their two first-round draft picks, selected play making tight end Vernon Davis and pass rusher Manny Lawson. With left tackle Jonas Jennings, out all but three games last season, returning from shoulder surgery, Nolan hopes to see the talent and the methodology meld.
“We’ve got to build our personnel base on top of this foundation,” he says, as the players gathered for the start of Tuesday’s organized team activities. “I think it’s important that guys come in and understand how we do things, the tempo at which we practice, all the things that go with being a good organization. You have to build those things up in the process until the players arrive. It would be nice to get all the players first and then put it all in place but it just doesn’t work that way.”
How do they measure progress?
“We’re far enough into our planning that free agents want to come here,” says Scot McCloughan, the 49ers vice president of player personnel. “The talk on the street is that we’re doing it right. We won four games last year and so we have a long way to go, but the idea that people want to come here is huge.
Smith could have gone somewhere but he signed before free agency started.
“You can draft all the great players you want but if players want to stay and play there, you’ve really got something positive started,” Smith says.
The past and the present meet in Nolan’s office at the club’s complex in Santa Clara. Pictures of his mentors — Dan Reeves, Bill Arnsparger, Bill Parcells — adorn the walls and his desk. One he will use to tease McCloughan. In it, Gene Washington is catching a touchdown pass in the 1971 victory against the Oakland Raiders that clinched the NFC West for the 49ers. The closest defensive back to Washington: Oakland cornerback Kent McCloughan, Scot’s dad (and a current Raiders scout).
Nolan did not attend that game played in a downpour.
“I was at home, listening to it on the radio,” he says. “I remember everything about it. I remember my folks coming home as happy as could be and they bought us some Round Table pizza and told us kids to stay there at the house, that they were going out for the evening. And they did. It was an exciting time. I remember it very well.”
Making memories now means making victories. Franchises fall faster than they rise and the hometown kid gets no slack.
“I don’t think that because this was home at one time the pressure is any greater. If it is, I don’t feel it,” Nolan says. “I want to do everything I can to be successful and that’s enough pressure for me.”
