Some Rams OL history, from the old years

wv wrote:

In that vid he talks about the fearsome foursome
at the nine min mark.

When he was traded to the Raiders
from the Rams he played on an Oline
with — FOUR hall of famers: Art Schell,
Jim Otto, Gene Upshaw.

w
v

Brown was traded by the Rams to the Oakland Raiders, along with two draft picks, in exchange for offensive tackle Harry Schuh and cornerback Kent McCloughan on June 23, 1971

Bob Brown’s enormous impact / Oakland’s outspoken former lineman Hall of Fame-bound

Ira Miller

http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Bob-Brown-s-enormous-impact-Oakland-s-outspoken-2703931.php

Bob Brown is hard to miss, but in the NFL today, he might hardly get noticed.

It was different when Brown, an offensive tackle, played in the 1960s and ’70s. Back then, NFL players were supposed to play football only. They generally kept their mouths shut. They certainly did not have dance routines or other shticks, and they didn’t keep popping up on ESPN or the Internet.

In that era, it didn’t take much for players to stand out and get a label, and Brown got one. He was different. He was smart, maybe too smart. Some people thought he was a clubhouse lawyer. He was a 300-pounder when that size was unusual. He was one of the best offensive linemen in NFL history, but he was traded twice in his prime. He ended his career in Oakland, where more than 30 years later, he still lives in the same building, but he was that rare Raiders player who wouldn’t kiss Al Davis’ ring.

We’ll never know if that personality was responsible for the long wait that ensued, but it finally will end Sunday when Brown is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at Canton, Ohio, along with John Elway, Barry Sanders and Carl Eller.

“If I needed a song that would kind of background me as I was making my (induction) speech,” Brown said the other day, “I would play, ‘My Way.’ ”

Which is exactly how he did it.

And in his day, that made him different.

“Athletes at that point weren’t supposed to be outspoken, and I was always a pretty outspoken guy,” Brown said.

Yet, measured against today’s players, Brown said, “I’d be Little Miss Muffet, sitting somewhere in the corner.”

Said John Madden, Brown’s coach with the Raiders: “He’d be like a choir boy.”

Stories get embellished through the years, but the stories about Brown really happened.

Such as his first day with the Raiders in training camp at Santa Rosa in 1971, when he emerged from the locker room and, with his new teammates trying to figure out what to make of this huge man, stalked the length of the field like a big bear, got down in his stance and, with one mighty thwack of his forearm, knocked down the wooden goalposts. Sheered them off right at field level.

“Then he walked back in the locker room, and that was it (for the day),” Madden said.

Quite an intimidating debut.

“His biceps and forearm were bigger than your leg,” said Willie Brown, a Hall of Fame cornerback teammate who is now on the Raiders’ coaching staff.

Defensive end Deacon Jones, another Hall of Famer, was known for his vicious head slaps against offensive tackles before the head slap was legislated out of the game. Jones could whack an opponent so that he’d still hear ringing in his ears on Monday.

Brown had a plan to prevent that.

Before a game between the Eagles, his team at the time, and Jones’ Rams, Brown took the face mask off his helmet and re-attached it, reversing the screws and sharpening the ends so that there was a sharp point on the outside.

Jones used the head slap and let out a howl. His hand met the sharpened screw on top of Brown’s helmet. Tore a hole clear through his left hand.

“He ran like a girl to the refs,” Brown said. “Ripped his hand to shreds. I loved it.”

No dummy, Brown had squirreled away a backup helmet on the sideline to show the officials when they checked. But that was the last time Jones head- slapped him so viciously, and later they actually became pals as teammates with the Rams. Today, Jones says that Brown was the “fiercest” tackle he faced.

Brown played his first five years with the Eagles, then played two years with the Rams before finishing with three seasons in Oakland. He asked to be traded the first time to protest the firing of coach Joe Kuharich and the second time he was dealt over contract issues. But there was not a hint of a problem between Brown and Madden.

“I guess he wasn’t the easiest guy to get along with, for coaches, although I don’t know what he did because I never saw it,” Madden said.

It wasn’t that way with Brown and Boss Raider, and today, Brown says that any issues he had with Davis were largely his own fault.

“I probably could have done more and said less to have effected a better relationship between Al and myself,” Brown said. “In that instance, I shot my mouth off about a couple of things that I was out of line about, and I shouldn’t have.”

We know the game today is different. Money rules. Team is out, individuality is in. That doesn’t mean it’s good, but that’s the way it is in many places. And that’s not Brown’s kind of thing. He also says he never smoked or took a drink or an illicit drug. Aside from a pronounced limp and assorted other ailments, he still looks fit enough to play at 62.

Madden credits Brown’s influence on Gene Upshaw and Art Shell with making the Raiders’ offensive line one of the most aggressive in the league, a style that was passed through generations of the team’s players, most recently to retired guard Steve Wisniewski, once labeled the NFL’s dirtiest player.

“I was so aggressive and attack-oriented, I was really trying to physically hurt (my opponents),” Brown said. “I was never cute about how I did what I did.”

He did it well enough to earn six Pro Bowl selections in a 10-year career cut short by a knee problem. Today, Brown has three titanium plates in his left leg and a pacemaker. But he says he would not have changed a thing about his career.

“The tank was dry,” he said. “I never felt like I could have done more. I just did it in a way that I felt like, if I was paying my money to watch somebody do this, I’d pay to watch (me).”