Hawks Hire Erickson Former Idaho, Washington State Coach To Leave Miami For 4-Year Deal With Seattle

Dennis Erickson is coming home.

According to sources in the Seattle Seahawks front office, Erickson will be named head coach of the NFL team today. A press conference has been scheduled for 2:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Rickeys hotel in Palo Alto, Calif.

The 47-year-old Everett native will fill the post vacated when Tom Flores was fired Dec. 29.

Erickson, considered a master at the spreadpassing attack, won two national championships and compiled a 63-9 record in six seasons at the University of Miami.

The announcement will be made in Palo Alto because Erickson is coaching the East team scheduled to play in the East-West Shrine game at Stanford on Saturday.

Because of his ties to the Seattle area, the Seahawks’ job was the only position that could lure him into the NFL, Erickson said as several teams sought interviews in the past week.

Erickson signed a four-year contract with a base salary of $800,000 per year, The Tacoma NewsTribune reported. Adding a television and radio package and incentives, Erickson could make more than $1 million per season, sources said.

He earned $700,000 a season in salary and ancillary income at Miami.

A two-time All-Big Sky Conference quarterback at Montana State, Erickson’s first head coaching job came at Idaho, where he took a chronic losing program and put together a 32-15 record between 1982-1985 - twice reaching the Division I-AA playoffs, three times winning at least eight games.

After a 6-6 season at Wyoming in 1986, Erickson took over at Washington State for two years, leading the Cougars to a 9-3 record, an Aloha Bowl win and a No. 16 national ranking in 1988. His teams at Miami were never rated lower than No. 15 in the polls, with a national championship captured in 1989 and shared with Washington in 1991.

Former Seahawks defensive coordinator Rusty Tillman is the only other candidate known to have interviewed for the Seattle position. He is also in consideration for the defensive coordinator positions at Buffalo and New Orleans.

All of Flores’ assistants were fired, allowing Erickson to bring most of his Miami staff to Seattle. Hawks receivers coach Bob Bratkowski, formerly an assistant to Erickson at Miami, will apparently be a hold-over. Offensive line coach Howard Mudd, sought by several NFL teams since being dismissed as part of Flores’ staff, agreed to a two-year contract with Seattle, the team announced Wednesday.

One close Erickson associate who will not join the Hawks is University of California head coach Keith Gilbertson. Suggested as a candidate as Erickson’s offensive coordinator, Gilbertson said this week that he “worked too hard to get the Cal job to give it up right now.”

Flores won only 14 games in three seasons, and the Hawks have not been to the playoffs since the 1988 season. During that time, a season-ticket waiting list of 30,000 has evaporated and Kingdome crowds have dipped below 40,000 several times.

Flores was paid $1 million per year to serve as head coach and general manager.

David Behring, team president and son of majority owner Ken Behring, said earlier in the search that the new coach would not also be general manager. Those responsibilities, he said, would likely be absorbed by current front-office personnel.