Rich Kotite
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| Personal information | |||
| Date of birth: | October 13, 1942 | ||
| Place of birth: | Brooklyn, New York | ||
| Career information | |||
| High school: | Brooklyn (NY) Poly Prep | ||
| College: | Wagner | ||
| NFL Draft: | 1965 / Round: 18 / Pick: 247 | ||
| Career history | |||
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| Career NFL statistics | |||
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| Head coaching record | |||
| Regular season: | 40–56 | ||
| Postseason: | 1–1 | ||
| Career: | 41–57 | ||
| Coaching stats at PFR | |||
| Player stats at NFL.com |
Richard Edward "Rich" Kotite (born October 13, 1942) is a former National Football League player and coach.
Kotite was born in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School in 1961. He, then, was a tight end who played collegiately at Wagner College on Staten Island before being drafted in the 18th round of the 1965 NFL Draft by the Minnesota Vikings. After playing for his hometown New York Giants in 1967, he went to the Pittsburgh Steelers the next year before returning to the Giants for a four-year stint starting in 1968.
After his professional football career was over, Kotite spent much of the next two decades as an assistant coach in the NFL, including a lengthy stint as offensive coordinator of the New York Jets.
Rich Kotite was hired in 1990 to replace Ted Plumb as offensive coordinator of the Philadelphia Eagles. He was promoted to head coach after the firing of his predecessor, Buddy Ryan, who was controversial but had won the hearts and loyalties of both the fans and the players, something Kotite was never able to do.
Kotite led the Eagles to 10- and 11-win seasons in 1991 and 1992, respectively, despite the loss of Eagle quarterback Randall Cunningham for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament on opening day of 1991, but still with the draft talent that had been selected by Buddy Ryan over the preceding five years. The defense that year under Bud Carson, architect and defensive coordinator of Pittsburgh's famed Steel Curtain of the 1970s, led the league by accomplishing the rare trifecta of being the number one run defense, the number one pass defense, and number one in total defense. The Eagles were a wild card in the 1992 playoffs, finishing 8–0 at home. However, in the spring of 1993, the talent that had been drafted by Buddy Ryan began leaving the Eagles en masse during free agency. Kotite had poor drafts and the level of talent dropped precipitously as his draft picks began replacing the talent that had been drafted by Ryan. In the 1993 season, the Eagles went 8–8. One of the many things for which Kotite was pilloried in Philadelphia was for saying at the conclusion of the season, "Hey, eight and eight is great." Eagles fans responded by saying if he truly believed that then he should "go fly a Kotite." An incident which seemed to encapsulate his sense of befuddlement to Eagles fans occurred the following season, in a Week 7 game against the Cowboys that the Eagles lost 24-13. At the post-game press conference, when asked, he stated that the reason he went for a (failed) two point conversion attempt rather than kick the point after following the second touchdown late in the fourth quarter, was because the "rain made the ink run and blurred the chart, so I couldn't see what was written on it to know what to do." His statement/explanation is one for which he is still pilloried and ridiculed on Philadelphia sports talk radio more than twenty years later.
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