When Andrea Kremer was hired by Amazon in 2018 as part of the first all-female NFL broadcast booth, with Hannah Storm, one of the first calls the veteran broadcaster made was to her friend Dick Jauron.
“He was so excited for me,” Kremer said from New Orleans, where she covered the Super Bowl for the NFL Network.
An Emmy-winning broadcaster who in addition to the NFL has covered the NBA, MLB, NHL and NCAA basketball for a variety of networks, had an ulterior motive for calling Jauron, with whom she developed a professional and personal relationship over the years.
“I said to him, ‘Let’s get to work.’ I asked if we could watch film together,” she said. “I told him he had forgotten more about football than most people know.”
The first time Kremer walked into Jauron’s basement, he had laid out game plans and play sheets from his 28 years as an NFL coach, including 10 as the head coach of the Bears, Bills and Lions. “He pulled out the clicker and we started breaking down film. We spent hours talking football,” she said.
Because she considered Jauron a friend first, then a coach, Kremer was deeply saddened when she got the news Saturday that Jauron had died after a brief illness.
“It’s shocking, tragic,” said Kremer, who lives on the North Shore. “There are no words. I know what he meant to me personally and professionally. You talk about breaking the mold. Dick was the epitome of the smartest guy in the room who never let you know it.”
Kremer, who covered her 32nd Super Bowl on Sunday, said she often watched football with Jauron. Between that and having him coach her up on film review, she is pleased that he was able to reconnect with the sport that was such a focal point in his life.
“Keeping football part of his life was important,” said Kremer, referring to Jauron’s stepping away from coaching in 2013 to care for his wife, Gail, as her health started to decline. He was the head coach of a team of dedicated caregivers for the last 12 years. His daughter Amy died in 2014 at the age of 28.
“With all the tragedy he suffered, he could have been bitter,” Kremer said, “but you would have never known it.”
Of all the plaudits you will hear about Dick Jauron as an athlete – not only perhaps Swampscott’s greatest, but one of the best ever on the North Shore; an All-American running back at Yale (and standout shortstop) who made the Pro Bowl as a defensive back; a 28-year coaching career in the NFL and Coach of the Year in 2001 – he was unequivocally more accomplished as a human being. His unyielding devotion to his wife over the last dozen years is Exhibit A.
“Dick was probably the finest human being I’ve ever met,” said Tom Coughlin, who hired Jauron as his defensive coordinator when he coached Jacksonville in its inaugural season in 1995. “He was a man of principle. He respected all and did it in a dignified fashion.”
Coughlin and Jauron were assistants in Green Bay under Forrest Gregg in 1986 and ’87, Coughlin handling the wide receivers and Jauron working with the defensive backs.
“We spent a lot of time together and our families got to know each other,” said Coughlin, who won two Super Bowls as head coach of the New York Giants and was head coach at Boston College from 1991-93.
When Coughlin was hired in 1994 to build the Jaguars from the ground up, he knew who he wanted to run his defense.
“I went to the East-West (Shrine) game and talked to Dick about coming with us to Jacksonville,” Coughlin said. “He did a great job. He was an excellent communicator. He thoroughly introduced what he was talking about then shifted the responsibility to the players to understand what was necessary to be in a position to execute.”
Like Kremer, Coughlin considered Jauron a friend as well as colleague.
“His virtues never changed. Everything you saw in the first 15 minutes with Dick Jauron is who he was. He was a great family man. He left the game to be the main caregiver for Gail,” said Coughlin, whose wife, Judy, died in 2022 after a 7-year illness.
Dick LeBeau, considered one of the greatest defensive minds in NFL history, coached Jauron one year, 1980, with the Cincinnati Bengals, yet he remained close friends with him for 4½ decades.
“He was the best,” said LeBeau, a Hall of Fame player who coached in the NFL for 50 years, all but two as an assistant. “It was an honor coaching him. That’s where our relationship began.”
LeBeau said it took him only a few weeks to figure out Jauron would one day make a great coach.
“He had instinctive intelligence,” LeBeau said. “You’ll never talk to anyone he coached or worked with him or for him who won’t say what a great man he was. He was a very positive man, a glass-is-half-full person. I don’t think he had an enemy. You coach so many different athletes and you try to connect with every one of them. I never enjoyed a coaching experience any more than I did with Dick Jauron.”
Mike Lynch, longtime WCVB sports anchor who graduated from Swampscott High in 1971, two years after Jauron, may have said it best when it comes to the three-sport letterman (football, basketball, baseball).
“Every mother in Swampscott wanted their son to grow up like Dick Jauron, including my mom,” he said.
After home football games, Lynch remembers when Big Blue players would run to the parking lot “because the cheerleaders would clap for you and say your name.”
Well, almost every player.
“Dick would be inside helping Vinny Estabrooks clean up the locker room,” said Lynch, who referred to Jauron as a true Superman. “The tape, the mud in the locker room, and pick up the towels.”
Bill Adams, a Swampscott teammate of Jauron and lineman who suited up in 46 games for the Buffalo Bills, said he was blown away by how fast and strong Jauron was, considering “he wasn’t that big of a guy.”
But when you worked out how Jauron did, results tended to follow.
“I remember when we were in high school, walking by his house, and he’s working out with sandbags in his backyard. Back then, there wasn’t much weightlifting or anything,” said Adams, who remembers when Jauron once won the award for best blocker on the team. “I ended up joining in with him, but those were his sandbags and his yard. I just joined in once or twice to do it with him.”
Another gridiron teammate of Jauron’s, Randy Werner, a ‘71 Swampscott graduate, watched football at Jauron’s house nearly every Sunday and heard from him at least twice a week.
“He is the finest human being I’ve ever met,” Werner said. “Dick was such a wonderful husband, father, and brother.”
Dean Boylan, former college hockey player at Yale and Jauron’s four-year college roommate, still recalls meeting his friend of 56 years.
“We met in 1969 at the old Lynn Arena while I was playing a summer hockey game,” Boylan said. “John Kane interviewed both of us for college and suggested we be roommates.”
After Jauron finished his coaching career, he and Boylan would speak “almost daily.
“Summer of 1969 and 56 years later, we remained best friends,” Boylan said. “I wish more people had the chance to meet him.”
