49ers’ Hall of Fame pass rusher Fred Dean dies at 68 after coronavirus infection

Hall of Fame pass rusher Fred Dean, whose acquisition in a trade by the 49ers during the 1981 season served as the springboard to their first Super Bowl title, died Wednesday night of coronavirus complications. He was 68.

Dean finished his 11-year career with the 49ers, winning two Super Bowls (1981, 1984 seasons), earning the NFC Defensive Player of the Year award in 1981 and posting a career-high 17.5 sacks in 1983. The four-time Pro Bowl selection played his final season in 1985. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2008.

Dean, a native of small-town Arcadia, La., who was known for dominating despite smoking Kools and eschewing the weight room, had a near-mythical blend of speed, power and toughness.

Former 49ers running back Earl Cooper laughed Thursday when he recalled how Dean’s arrival in 1981 made him consider his NFL exit.

“You know as a running back the league is catching up with you when a defensive lineman is just as fast as you are,” Cooper said. “I was like, ‘Maybe it’s time to get out of this league?’ Some of these guys now are coming out with freaky size and speed combined. And Fred Dean was way ahead of his time.”

In 1981, the 49ers, coming off a 6-10 season, acquired Dean in a trade from San Diego when they were 3-2. They proceeded to win 13 of their last 14 games, including the Super Bowl.

“Fred was the biggest catalyst by far,” defensive tackle Jim Stuckey told The Chronicle last year. “Until we got Fred — I mean, he elevated everyone else’s game and could just destroy people. It changed up an offensive game plan. For us to be able to get him, it set us apart. He was a game changer.”

Dean’s impact in 1981 was immediate and awe-inspiring.

In his 49ers debut, he terrorized quarterback Danny White throughout a 45-14 win over the Cowboys, a team that had beaten the 49ers 59-14 a year earlier.

The game was played a season before sacks became an official NFL statistic, but Dean had 2.5 sacks, nine quarterback pressures (seven hits) and drew two holding penalties in 31 snaps based on a review of the game last year.

“He might have had (more) sacks, but the fellow blocking him kept grabbing his face mask,” 49ers head coach Bill Walsh said the day after the game. “That was the only way they could block him.”

In the 1980 win over the 49ers, White threw four touchdown passes and posted the highest passer rating (147.5) of his 92-start career. In 1981, when Dean had two sacks and a quarterback hit on one three-play sequence, White posted the lowest passer rating of his career (19.8).

“Wow, I saw (Hall of Famer) Alan Page against Detroit in a game up in Minnesota one time … dominate something like this,” CBS play-by-play man Pat Summerall said during the telecast. “But other than that, I can’t remember seeing it done.”

Dean was listed at 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds, light even by his era’s standards, but flourished with explosiveness and strength that didn’t come from weight lifting.

Cooper, laughing, recalled Dean warming up with 75-pound dumbbells, dismissing the 100-pounders and settling on 125s.

“He’d do reps of 10 on each arm with 125-pound dumbbells and he’d put em’ back up and say, ‘That’s enough. I’m through,’” Cooper said. “And everyone’s jaw would just drop: ‘How can any man curl 125-pound dumbbells?’”

Dean left behind larger-than-life stories at each stop in his football journey.

In 2008, before his Hall of Fame induction, he spoke to The Chronicle and recalled the morning he spent cleaning his .22 hunting rifle before a practice at Louisiana Tech. Dean, not realizing a bullet was still in the chamber, dropped the rifle on his toe and it fired. The bullet went right through him, going underneath his left rib cage and exiting his back on the right side.

Dean was sent to the hospital — after he arrived for practice.

“I was afraid my mom and the coaches would get on me,” Dean said, “so I put some gauze on it.”

In high school in Ruston, La., Dean flung a running back toward the sideline with such force that the game was delayed. There was a chain-link fence beyond the bench and Dean’s victim ended up pinned underneath it.

“They had to get wire cutters and everything to get this kid out,” said Buddy Davis, the longtime sports editor of the Ruston Daily Leader, in 2008.

Dean did his share of smoking and drinking during his career, but he settled into a quiet life back in Louisiana with his wife, Pam, after he left the NFL and became an ordained minister. Dean invoked his faith throughout his Hall of Fame speech and said he viewed himself as the “prodigal son” who had returned after going astray.

“He was a great teammate,” Cooper said, “but Fred was a better person and a better friend.”

Dean’s trade to the 49ers led to a title and helped launch a dynasty, but he didn’t spend his first season with the franchise surrounded by the trappings of a future Hall of Famer who could change a franchise’s fortunes.

Dean lived in a spartan apartment after he arrived. Stuckey recalled visiting and seeing it furnished with a mattress and television on the floor, a card table with two chairs and 67 game balls on the living-room floor.

“Just a very humble, quiet guy,” Stuckey said. “But, Lord, he was a bad man.”