After serving as the 49ers top pass rusher from 1986 through 1991, with 63 sacks in those six seasons, Charles Haley was traded by the Niners to the Cowboys in late August, 1992, for draft picks. 49er fans will probably remember that he won three Super Bowls with the Cowboys, while the Niners struggled to replace him, and then Haley came back to San Francisco in 1998 and 1999, but that comeback didn’t work out real well. He’d criticized 49er management for letting Ronnie Lott and Roger Craig leave as Plan B free agents after the 1990 season, and reportedly he threw a tantrum after the Niners lost, 12-6, to the Raiders in 1991. Ronnie Lott, now a Raider, had to come over to the locker room to calm Haley down.
In 2006, retired from the game, Haley said: “I had great tutors, Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, Keena Turner. I had a lot of guys while I was with the 49ers that taught me how to be a champion. The older guys taught me how to work. The old guys from the 49ers showed me the legacy of being champions and that’s what’s missing from the NFL today is players don’t know how to be a champion.”
Haley said this too: “George Seifert was the greatest defensive coordinator that ever coached the game and his biggest thing was details. You have to very detail-oriented. I learned from him to look at every aspect of the game. I used to be able to tell the way a guy’s foot was planted, whether his butt was up, his butt was down, where he placed his hand, I could tell what was coming at me before the ball was snapped.”
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