With the Falcons headed into their 50th season this year, the Photo Vault looks back to the beginning of the franchise. On Jan. 26, 1966, Norb Hecker, an assistant coach with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, became the first coach of the Atlanta Falcons.
Some have said the lackluster seasons under Hecker set the tone for future disappointments. Others have said he made it so there was nowhere to go but up.
In the first season, Atlanta’s new professional football franchise would lose its first nine games. Under Hecker, the Falcons won four games, with 26 losses and one tie.
That NFL record stood for nearly a decade. But with expansion came longer seasons and more opportunities to get it wrong.
To date, the losingest season goes to the 2008 Detroit Lions. That team made history with a winless season: 0-16. Before that the 1976 expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-14) were the last NFL team to complete a season without a victory.
Nevertheless, in 1968, Falcons owner Rankin Smith replaced Hecker with Norm Van Brocklin.
After his stint with the Falcons, Hecker was defensive coordinator with the New York Giants and an assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers.
In 1994, Hecker came back to Atlanta in his sixth season as a San Francisco 49ers assistant coach. Unlike many times after a game when he was coach, Hecker’s team left the field winners.
A sports writer at the time pointed out that “It hadn’t occurred to (Hecker) that the 35-17 score was close to the 28-13 margin by which the 49ers defeated the Falcons in the third game of the 1968 season when Hecker was fired.” That game was played in San Francisco and Norm Van Brocklin made his Falcons coaching debut the next week in Atlanta as Green Bay extended the team’s two-year losing streak to 11.
Hecker appeared to enjoy the visit. He laughed as he mentioned owner Rankin Smith and added that he held no animosity toward his old boss. In fact, they were good friends, he said. He told the AJC he was also close to Rankin Smith Jr., the team president, who was the Falcons’ ball boy when Hecker was the coach.
As Hecker departed to board the 49ers’ bus for the airport, he was laughing, which he rarely did when he left the stadium as the first boss of a mystifying franchise.
Hecker died of cancer on March 14, 2004 in Los Altos, Calif. He was 76.
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