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Paul Zimmerman (Dr. Z) Dies at 86; Chronicled Football’s Complexity

The pro football writer Paul Zimmerman in 1997. He charted virtually everything that occurred on a football field, including the length of the national anthem.Credit...Heinz Kluetmeier/Sports Illustrated, via Getty Images

Paul Zimmerman, a pro football writer whose deep understanding of the game informed his work at Sports Illustrated and influenced the way other reporters covered the sport, died on Thursday in Noblesville, Ind. Also known as Dr. Z, he was 86.

His wife, Linda Bailey Zimmerman, confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.

Mr. Zimmerman’s tenure at Sports Illustrated ended in 2008, when he had three strokes that left him unable to write and read and almost unable to speak.

Over nearly 30 years at the magazine, his sharp writing and sophisticated dissection of the complexities of football gave him a national voice. He could tell the story of a Super Bowl with a mastery of play-calling or write revealing profiles of players and coaches.

“He made people understand how difficult the game was to understand and taught us not to try to oversimplify it,” Peter King, a former longtime Sports Illustrated pro football writer, said in a telephone interview. “He never wanted to take the easy way out.”

Reconstructing the San Francisco 49ers’ winning drive in the 1981 National Football Conference championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, Mr. Zimmerman wrote about the spectacular touchdown pass from the 49er quarterback, Joe Montana, to Dwight Clark.

“It was the play that had given the 49ers their first touchdown, Solomon slotted inside Clark on the right side and breaking to the corner after Clark had cleared out underneath in a semi-pick,” he wrote in Sports Illustrated. But if Solomon was covered, he added, Clark would cut across the end zone, “right to left, doing an about-face and breaking back right.”

“Montana, rolling to his right, had to find him.”

Montana found a leaping Clark (“who climbed the sky wire”) in the back of the end zone for the game-tying score with 51 seconds left. The 49ers won, 28-27, on an extra point, then defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl.

Before there was an internet, before websites detailed the minutiae of each game, Mr. Zimmerman produced his own charts, filled with game specifics, large and small, that helped him tell his stories. In “The Franchise” (1997), a book about the history of Sports Illustrated, Michael MacCambridge wrote that Mr. Zimmerman charted games with “different squiggles denoting pass, run or punt, his tiny script indicating the ball carrier or receiver.”

Mr. Zimmerman charted virtually everything else that occurred on a football field as well, including the length of the national anthem.

Paul Lionel Zimmerman was born on Oct. 23, 1932, in Philadelphia and soon moved with his parents to Manhattan. His father, Charles, was a garment industry union leader and co-chairman of the Socialist Party-Democratic Socialist Federation. His mother, Rose (Prepstein) Zimmerman, was a dressmaker.

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Mr. Zimmerman’s 1970 book, revised in 1984, displayed “clear and skeptical eye and the rare gift of being interesting and technical at the same time.” the Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte wrote.

Paul played football at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx and then at Stanford and Columbia. As an offensive lineman, he understood the importance of the trench battles between offensive and defensive players, a view later reflected in his writings.

He earned a master’s degree in journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism before starting a newspaper career with The Sacramento Bee, and later worked for The New York Journal-American, The New York World-Telegram and Sun and The New York Post.

At The Post, he covered the New York Jets and chronicled their rise to the Super Bowl championship in 1969, led by Joe Namath.

Gerald Eskenazi, the Jets beat reporter for The New York Times in those days, recalled Mr. Zimmerman in an email as “the rival reporter I feared the most.”

“On Mondays after a Jets game,” he wrote, “I would reluctantly pick up The New York Post to see what angle I missed in the game, what quote he got.”

Mr. Zimmerman burnished his football-expert credentials with the publication of “A Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football” (1970), which he revised in 1984. In his review of the original version, the Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte praised Mr. Zimmerman for having a “clear and skeptical eye and the rare gift of being interesting and technical at the same time.”

At Sports Illustrated, Mr. Zimmerman became known for his mock N.F.L. drafts, for answering letters about football and various other subjects, including wine (about which he had a column in The Post) and for picking winners each week.

Leading off his bettor’s guide to Week 12 of the 2008 football season — one of the last things he wrote before his first stroke — he advised readers: “You’re going to see a parade of underdogs that will blow your head off. So wear a hat.”

Before his illness, he had completed an autobiography, “Dr. Z: The Lost Memoirs of an Irreverent Football Writer.” But it took until last year for it to be published, with help from Mr. King, who now works for NBC Sports.

In addition to his wife, Linda, Mr. Zimmerman is survived by his daughter, Sarah Zimmerman; his son, Michael; a stepson, Nathan Bailey; a stepdaughter, Heather Snopek; and a granddaughter.

In 2014, six years into his stroke-imposed silence, Mr. Zimmerman starred in a nine-minute video, “Yours Truly, Dr. Z,” produced by NFL Films. In the video, the actor Tom Wopat narrates a script by Ken Rodgers based largely on what Mr. Zimmerman had written in the past. The collaboration earned Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Zimmerman a Sports Emmy for outstanding writing.

“Ken did his homework,” Ms. Bailey Zimmerman said in a telephone interview, “and could do the dialogue as if Paul was talking.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 30 of the New York edition with the headline: Paul Zimmerman (Dr. Z), 86, Dies; Dissected Football. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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