Indeed, Earl Campbell was like a Sherman tank in cleats and a uniform, a rhinoceros for sure, when it came to being an NFL Running back. What a powerful force he was.
I grew up in St. Louis, and never saw Butkus play, either in person or on TV. What I remember is after he retired he spent an appreciable time on TV, and he always seemed to be a soft-spoken, jovial man. Acted like he wouldn't hurt a flea. I guess he just had one personality for being out in public, and then a second personality for when he was playing football.
The Broncos should have been 2-1 in those first Super Bowls (XXI, XXII). Our problem is that our defense collapsed (like in XLVIII). At the time, I think it was Karl Mecklenburg that said after the 42-10 pasting by the Redskins, "We seem to let the other teams have their season's best game [in the Super Bowl]." That was before the jailbreak in the 55-10 thrashing in XXIV.
‘94 Chargers we’re far worse. The team they beat to get to the Super Bowl (Steelers) were the far superior team but two big plays did them in. They wouldn’t have beaten the 49ers but the score would’ve been a hell of a lot closer than 49-26 and they would not have allowed Steve Young to throw 6 Touchdowns - 5 to Jerry Rice
He does not belong in the HOF. He cared more about partying than he did about football, that's why it took 30 years after his retirement to be enshrined. Flores(who was a better coach than Madden) couldn't wait to get rid of him and he sucked in Houston and New Orleans.
Who cares about partying. Players partied. Mickey Mantel was a boozer, Billy Martin boozer, 86 mets were all doing coke and drinking and screwing broads, Lawrence Taylor partied and was snorting coke going to clubs but never took a play off and was a complete beast, Babe Ruth drank....so many players drank and banged broads so what?????
I played high school ball in the 80s. Had a poster of Campbell on my wall. I was a strong running back and decided to play like Earl. I ran angry. By my junior year I was noticed and recruited by division 1 schools. My body was taking a beating, though and I ended up going div 2. Now, I walk like Earl does - haha! Love the man, though. Would love to meet him and I wish him well. I hurt tacklers - ribs, brain, etc. It was a blast but I'm torn all these years later about how hard the sport is on the bodies of the young men who play it.
I find these stories more sad than impressive as many of these players could have lasted longer and had better post-football health had the game not treated them like crash dummies.
In high school, all of his buddies would pile in one of those huge steel monsters of a car, and Butkus would push them around the neighborhood while they were partying.
During oj Simpson’s first season they played the bears in preseason, someone on the team told him if he sees number 51 coming at to get out of bounds, Simpson said on one play he was running down the sideline and he saw number 52 coming so he ran out of bounds, he said Butkus nailed him anyway
Elway, Marino, Favre, Vick and overlooked is Warren Moon. Moon got the tail-end of his prime in the NFL as his youth prime was in the CFL on a much larger field. Receivers consistently have said he had the most velocity on his throws, tightest spiral and if you did not wear gloves his throws would rip skin of your hands.
That Rams defense was insanely good. They held the Seahawks to -23 yards passing in a shutout. The Rams were 9-7 in 1979 only because of injuries. The mid to late 70s Rams were absolutely stacked with talent but were woeful underachievers in the playoffs losing in 1974,76, and 77 to Minnesota in games they should’ve won; also losing at home in shocking blowout fashion in 1975 and 78. They were one quarterback away from a dynasty in my opinion. Had the Rams drafted Bradshaw instead of the Steelers, the Rams would’ve won 4 SBs and no one would’ve ever heard of the Steel Curtain. The Rams won regular season games vs Pittsburgh both in 1975 and 1978
My Steel Curtain had to face this bulldozer twice a year, central division. Give me Campbell and Payton, 34 & 34. Make football great again💯 smh. #GoatMeat💪🏿💪🏿 💯💯💯
The worst team to play in a Super Bowl, in my opinion, is the Seattle Seahawks the year when they made it to their first Super Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were so bad that year that they somehow managed to win their division in spite of logging a losing regular season, finishing with a 7 & 9 overall W/L record; but, due to the rest of the NFC West at that time (e.g.: St. Louis Rams; S.F. '49ers; and the Az. Cardinals) being abysmally awful, they flew under-the-radar into the Playoffs on the technicality of being the best team in the worst division in the League that year (and arguably the worst-performing division in the whole history of the post-NFL-AFL-merger Super Bowl era). Not only did no one think that they had a snowball's chance in Hell of making it all of the way to the Super Bowl, they weren't even expected to make it out of the Wildcard round once they punched their ticket for the Playoffs. But, they proved all of their naysayers wrong for writing them off by not just advancing past their Wildcard opponent but also winning both the Divisional round and the Conference Championship games. This Cinderella ending was cut-short, however, by the Ben Roethlisburger-led Steelers who put these upstarts from the Pacific-Northwest in their place and claimed the Lombardi trophy yet again
The 1967 Green Bay Packers had a 9-4-1 regular season record before winning Super Bowl II. They were the first 9 win team to win a SB. The ‘79 Rams were the first team to lose 7 games to win the SB tho.
I first really started to pay attention to the NFL in 1978.......at 10 years old. I've been a dedicated fan ever since. Earl Campbell is my all time favorite running back to this day. He was an absolute beast and no one has been as devastating of a power back since he retired. He was a freakin' bulldozer.
