Gary Plummer, From the USFL to the NFL
A junior college walk-on tackles his way to the Super Bowl
Before racking up over 1,000 tackles and winning Super Bowl XXIX, Gary Plummer was an undrafted nose tackle-turned-linebacker who played in the 1985 USFL Championship Game.
“I wasn’t going to get drafted in the NFL, I was a 6-foot-2, 230-pound nose tackle at Cal,” he recalls.
Plummer was a linebacker in high school and junior college until he walked-on at the University of California, Berkeley in 1981.
He was told to move to nose tackle by then-defensive coordinator Ron Lynn, who believed that the Golden Bears’ linebacker room, led by future Pac-10 Football Defensive Player of the Year, Ron Rivera, was too crowded.
Lynn later became the Oakland Invaders’ defensive coordinator leading up to the 1983 USFL territorial draft, in which players from Cal, Stanford and San Jose State, among others, would be picked by the league’s Bay Area football team.
“I went for a tryout with 600 other guys at Palo Alto just outside of the stadium at Stanford. There must have been 55 linebackers that were trying out, and I was just like, ‘I have no idea if I’m going to make it.’”
It was John Ralston, the Invaders' head coach, who called Plummer after the tryout and notified him that the team was going to sign him for a $25,000 contract (with incentives up to $4,000).
“I was a guy coming out of college that didn’t get a scholarship, so that was a lot of money to me.”
Despite the familiarity with Lynn, Plummer believed he would be cut any day during training camp due to lack of opportunity to showcase his talents and the abundance of players trying to crack the roster.
It was only until one of the last days before the final cuts that Plummer made his mark.
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“There was a goal line drill and there was a short yardage drill, and I got two reps on both of those. I made all four tackles that I was in on, and I’m like, ‘There’s no way they want me, they’re only playing me four plays.’”
Mike Haluchak, who had previously worked with Lynn at Cal and was now the Invaders’ linebackers coach, named Plummer the starter for their upcoming matchup in Sun Devil Stadium against the Arizona Wranglers.
Plummer, surprised and thrilled at the chance, worked tirelessly with ‘Hack’ and the rest of the coaching staff ahead of the Week 1 game.
“He goes, ‘Trust me, I’ll get you ready’. And that guy spent more time with me that week, by myself, studying film, teaching me what I could learn from pre-snap reads – just all of it. I owe those guys a lot of credit and respect for me ending up in the USFL.”
The USFL was a spring league, and temperatures soared above 100 degrees at kickoff in the Arizona heat. Still, the Invaders won big by a score of 24-0 and Plummer led the team in tackles en route to accumulating an estimated 168 stops in his first year as a professional.
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Oakland’s final record of 9-9 was not only good enough for a playoff berth, but for first place in the Pacific Division.
The Invaders opened up the postseason with a Divisional Round game against the Michigan Panthers. A raucous Pontiac Silverdome crowd of 60,000 witnessed the wild affair, which ended up being a 37-21 Panthers victory.
“Michigan had amazing support. I think in Oakland we averaged about 21,000 people a game, but to see 60,000 people, it gave you hope for the next year.”
The Invaders fell to a 7-11 record and missed the playoffs in 1984. It was also the dawn of a potential fall league that would shake up the USFL.
News broke that the aforementioned Panthers would be leaving Michigan and merging with the Invaders for the approaching 1985 campaign.
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Spearheaded by Bobby Hebert, the ‘Cajun Cannon’ who hoisted the USFL trophy two years earlier, future Pro-Bowler Anthony Carter, and the two-headed rushing attacks of Albert Bentley and John Williams, the new-look Invaders dominated opponents, finishing with a 13-4-1 record atop the Southern Division.
“It was great preparation for the NFL. At some positions I felt like we were better in the USFL than the NFL was.”
After gritty wins versus the Tampa Bay Bandits and Memphis Showboats in the Quarterfinals and Semifinals, respectively, the Invaders reached the USFL Championship against the Baltimore Stars, who had played in the two previous title games, winning one.
Nearly 50,000 fans were in attendance for a rainy face-off at the Old Meadowlands in what turned out to be the final game in USFL history.
“That team [the Baltimore Stars] was stacked as well. It was a great game, a lot of battles back and forth.”
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With the Invaders driving deep into the Stars’ zone and trailing 28-24 late in the fourth quarter, a personal foul committed by ex-Jet Tom Newton stripped Oakland of a potential first and goal and pushed them back to the 20-yard line.
“He drove his guy not only out of bounds, but just kept going and it was almost into the wall.”
Hebert then tried to find wide receiver Gordon Banks twice, but the Invaders turned it over on downs and the Stars ran out the clock to win their second league championship.
“Honestly, at that point, I did not know that I was going to keep playing football.”
Plummer’s future was initially bleak after the heartbreaking loss, as he was allotted to the Tampa Bay Bandits at a time when players weren’t being set free from their USFL contracts.
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The San Diego Chargers came calling and were waiting to sign Plummer for their training camp, but he wasn’t allowed to practice with the team because of the contract predicament during the USFL’s messy demise.
“It was absolutely crazy to sit around and wait. They finally let us out of our contracts about nine or 10 days before the NFL season started.”
Meanwhile, players gave Plummer the cold shoulder throughout this whole process, knowing he was an outsider coming for one of their jobs.
“Not one person talked to me for the two weeks that I sat there and watched practice,” he recalls of his ‘welcome to the NFL’ moment.
Though, he used his time wisely, observing and receiving advice from the top quarterbacks of the era."
“Guys like Dan Fouts, Joe Montana, Steve Young – playing against some great ones like Jim Plunkett – they just saw things differently. Steve Young might’ve been the first person that I ever talked to who told me that the difference between college and or the USFL and the NFL was that you can’t wait for a guy to be open, you have to throw him open. It really helped change the way I played defense because knowing that a guy’s going to still throw the ball even though you think you have him covered means you better be really good at punching the ball out.”
While in San Diego, Plummer was not only a steady presence at linebacker but also contributed on special teams and was even the backup goal line fullback for a period of time.
He totaled 792 tackles, eight forced fumbles and five interceptions in his eight years with the Chargers before jumping ship to the San Francisco 49ers in 1994.
The 49ers also added key free agents in Deion Sanders and Ken Norton Jr. that offseason, creating a complete roster around Plummer’s old USFL chum, Steve Young, who had taken over at quarterback for Joe Montana two years earlier.
Young was named the 1992 NFL MVP but in the shadow of Montana, had yet to win over the 49ers faithful after back-to-back NFC Championship Game exits.
“The guy [Young] has unbelievable balance, vision. He is, without a doubt, the smartest quarterback I’ve ever been around in my life. He just knows the game.”
Young and the Niners posted a 13-3 record in the 1994 regular season and cruised through two rounds of the playoffs to reach Super Bowl XXIX.
The 49ers’ opponent in the big game was, ironically, Plummer’s old Chargers squad. If the naturally confident Plummer had any doubts in the locker room beforehand, Jerry Rice eliminated them, personally guaranteeing a victory for him and Hall-of-Famer-to-come, Rickey Jackson.
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“All of a sudden, the guy stands up, puts his hands on each one of our shoulders and says, ‘Don’t worry, tonight I’m going to get you guys your first Super Bowl ring’. All the nerves, everything just went away. So, I knew before the game started, we were going to win.”
San Francisco won handily, 49-26, and Young officially got the proverbial monkey – a Super Bowl win as a starter – off his back.
“It was different for Steve, obviously. The difference was that he was so maligned because he was never going to be Joe Montana. If you’re not Joe Montana, you’re nothing in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
For Plummer, the win was crucial for another reason. “There’s no way I’m going to move back to San Diego and have guys flashing Super Bowl rings in my face.”
Plummer hung up his cleats in 1997, finishing with 1,079 tackles and six interceptions over 180 appearances.
He later served as a color analyst for KNBR 49ers gameday broadcasts from 1998-2011.
Thoughts of football-related risks still linger with Plummer, who claims to have suffered over 2,500 concussions throughout his career.
He believes the suicide of ex-teammate and Chargers legend Junior Seau helped open his eyes on those fears.
“I didn’t know it, but my wife had seen signs in me, and she said, ‘We need to go see a counselor’, and I knew she was right. It truly changed my life.”
Plummer is encouraged by the NFL’s current attempts to prevent concussions – whether it’s through updated helmets, new headgear like Guardian Caps or rule changes to prevent injuries – though he does not foresee a time when football will lose its appeal among young athletes.
“I’m grateful that the game is still around because it’s a great game and fans love it. I see it hanging around for quite some time.”
Mike Damergis is a Professor of Sports Media & Communications at Iona University. Readers can access his podcast series on the USFL at USFLonline.com, or email him directly at madsportsmedia1@gmail.com Robert Hughes is a student and a newspaper reporter for ‘The Ioanian’.
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