Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Rams Huddle › talking to Vermeil about Gabriel and others
- This topic has 2 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 1 month ago by
zn.
-
AuthorPosts
-
February 4, 2016 at 4:32 pm #38581
znModeratorfrom off the net
===
The_Bad_Guy
Had a chance to talk to Vermeil about a year ago and we got on the subject of Gabe. As a lot of folks here remember, Vermeil was an assistant in L.A. and overlapped with Gabe’s tenure in 1969, ’71 and ’72. Vermeil told me – direct quote – that Gabriel “was as tough a football player as I’ve ever been around.” He also said, “I really, really admired him,” but added that Gabe was his own worst enemy. Always an extreme personality – one year, he’d be ultra religious; the next he’d be raising hell every night.Vermeil also told me a story about when Bob Brown first got to the Rams. He said, “When he first came with us, Bob used his ‘all-pro’ credentials to move up in line to get his ankles taped. He’d say, ‘I’m a Pro Bowler. I go before you guys.’ The term he used was, ‘I have my credentials.’ I’ll never forget this – during one-on-one pass protection pass rush drills that day, Deacon Jones made sure, when the reps came up, that he always got Bob Brown. Purposely moved ahead to when it was Bob who was taking his reps. Deacon would move up and go against him. I watched him do it … And Deacon, hey – he handled him! Whipped up on Bob pretty good that day. On the final pass rush, he turned to Bob and he says, ‘I have my credentials, too, Bob. So, you get in line just like everybody else.’”
February 4, 2016 at 4:56 pm #38582
wvParticipantwhen the reps came up, that he always got Bob Brown. Purposely moved ahead to when it was Bob who was taking his reps. Deacon would move up and go against him. I watched him do it … And Deacon, hey – he handled him! Whipped up on Bob pretty good that day. On the final pass rush, he turned to Bob and he says, ‘I have my credentials, too, Bob. So, you get in line just like everybody else.’”
Well, maybe that kind of thing is why they
shipped Bob out to Oakland the next year…where
he continued to be a Hall of Fame OLineman.w
vFebruary 4, 2016 at 9:03 pm #38601znModeratorThe rush of Deacon Jones and the rush of watching him
http://blog.pennlive.com/davidjones/2013/06/of_the_rush_of_deacon_jones_an.html
The first time Dick Vermeil got an up-close look at Deacon Jones, he was a fuzzy 32-year-old assistant coach freshly hired from Stanford by George Allen to the newly minted position of “special teams coach” with the Los Angeles Rams. He watched with some fascination during his first NFL training camp in 1969 as immense 290-pound offensive tackle Bob “The Boomer” Brown, newly acquired from the Eagles and smack in the prime of a Hall of Fame career that included six Pro Bowls, squared off against Jones. It was hotly anticipated around camp as something of a showdown of Japanese horror movie monsters. Except, as Vermeil tells it, it would’ve made for a very short film:
“Bob Brown couldn’t block him. Could not block him.”
It’s not hard to imagine the rivalry component of the all-business Brown getting frustrated with the boisterous and easygoing Jones beating him and talking about it afterward.
But then Jones beat everybody. He was the best. He created the term “sack” more than a decade before it even became an official statistic. And then it took historians poring back through NFL Films archives to attempt to count up all the sacks the man who coined the word would have recorded. They came up with 26 in 1967 and 24 in 1968. These in 14-game seasons. Just for comparison’s sake, Michael Strahan holds the official NFL record with 22½ in 2001 over 16 games.
I spoke to Vermeil this afternoon and he still sounds amazed in recall:
“I don’t know what David Jones’ overall top speed was. But his explosive acceleration was his asset. His first step, with his long arms and the long reach that he had. And then his ability to contort his body and run low to the ground and reach. It just made him very, very difficult to block.”
Vermeil is now 76 and semi-retired living in Chester County. He accomplished nearly everything a coach could, named to the profession’s highest honors at the high school, college and pro levels, winning a Rose Bowl and a Super Bowl as a head coach.
Remember that Vermeil won his Lombardi Trophy a mere 13 years ago. He was on the sideline well after the game transitioned to warp speed in open space. It’s a given that most players of the 1960s simply could not keep up with the size and speed of today. But could Jones have?
“Oh, there’s no question.”
There are caveats, Vermeil said:
“It’s not the same game. It’s a much more wide-open game. And the ratio of run to pass is so much more on the pass side than it was in 1969 when Deacon was playing like hell.
“But he played the run extremely well, too. And I’d say if they’d have passed more, he’d have sacked more.
“The thing that would hurt him a little in today’s rules is what’s allowed in pass protection. Now the offensive linemen use the arms and extend the hands where in the old days that was, technically, against the rules.”
As today is the head slap Jones used to such great effect on his first step to make tackles flinch and lose balance. Now, it’ll get you 15 yards or worse.
Which brings us back to an era of football that never can – and should not be – revisited. Not that I can deny its attraction. Seeing quarterbacks sacked from the blind side by speed-rushing defensive ends was one of the visceral dirty pleasures of the 1960s and ’70s. NFL rules were rightly enacted beginning in the ’80s to protect the most important and valuable players in the game and have kept favoring the offense ever since.
Now, it’s just not the same being a defensive lineman. No nicknames for front fours. No 7-step drops and languid pauses taken by pocket quarterbacks.
As Vermeil said, it’s just a different game. Which is why nothing like Deacon Jones can ever quite be seen again.
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
