Ex-Titans’ assistant loses cancer battle

Posted: Monday, October 3, 2011 7:01 pm

By TERESA M. WALKER
AP Sports Writer
NASHVILLE (AP) — Mike Heimerdinger, a veteran assistant in the NFL who coached players including Steve McNair and Vince Young, has died. He was 58.
The Tennessee Titans confirmed Heimerdinger’s death after talking with his family. He died Friday while in Mexico to receive experimental cancer treatments. He was offensive coordinator for the Titans when he was diagnosed with cancer in November 2010 and began chemotherapy treatment five days after the diagnosis.
At the time, coach Jeff Fisher said Heimerdinger had been very sick for three weeks.
Heimerdinger made a trip to Houston with the team for that Sunday’s game and was greeted on the field before the game by his son, an intern with the Houston Texans at the time.
He maintained his duties for the rest of the season but was fired in February, one day after Mike Munchak succeeded Fisher as Titans’ coach.
Heimerdinger was in his second stint as the Titans’ offensive coordinator. The man called “Dinger” was college roommates with Mike Shanahan and helped coach McNair to co-MVP of the NFL with Peyton Manning in 2003 during his first run in Tennessee.
He also spent 2005 as offensive coordinator of the New York Jets before joining Shanahan in Denver as assistant head coach in 2006 and 2007. Then it was back to Tennessee.
In Denver, he coached dynamic wide-receiving tandem Ed McCaffrey and Rod Smith.
Heimerdinger was born in Dekalb, Ill., and was a wide receiver and centerfielder at Eastern Illinois  where he received a degree in history.
He spent four years as a high school coach in McHenry, Ill., and then was a coach at the University of Florida, the Air Force Academy, North Texas State, Cal State-Fullerton, Rice and Duke.
Heimerdinger then coached for the Denver Broncos, New York Jets and two stints with the Tennessee Titans.
Published in The Messenger 10.3.11