[Hacksaw]

''61 to '71, DE, David "Deacon" Jones

[Hacksaw]

[Hacksaw]

'94 to '00, DT, DeMarco Farr

[maxxx power]

2 underrated o-linemen of days gone by....

JOHN WILLIAMS






IRV PANKEY

[Elvis]

Irv Pankey was great. (BTW: According to Google, Irv Eatman also wore 75 for the Rams, i gues it's an Irv thing.)

Hard to believe so many wore 75 after Deacon:

http://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.s ... nd_to.html

Rams finally getting around to retiring Deacon Jones' jersey

Print Email McClatchy-Tribune News Service By McClatchy-Tribune News Service
on September 27, 2009 at 4:00 AM
Bryan Burwell

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Columnist

ANAHEIM HILLS, Calif. -- The baddest man to ever rush the quarterback lives quietly on an immaculate cul de sac in an upscale gated community in the shadows of Disneyland.

His Sundays -- and most other days as well -- begin with relaxing morning walks now on a nearby rambling golf course, and afternoons where he slowly moves around his yard watering plants and flowers. On this one afternoon, he sits on the couch in his comfortable living room, no longer looking quite so fierce as he did when the world knew him best as the primary star of the NFL's first true celebrity defense. He is 70 years old now, his close-cropped hair speckled with gray. Every once in a while his conversation is interrupted by a raspy cough, a staccato wheeze and a short tug on an oxygen hose.

"Football never laid a glove on me," he says, laughing through that gruff cough. "Never was hurt in 14 years in the NFL. But Father Time is kicking my [butt]. Last May, I had major pieces of my lung removed and I had a pacemaker put into my chest a few days earlier."

One distant bout with prostate cancer, followed by that wicked combination of a heart attack and lung cancer surely have taken their toll on his once powerful body. But don't be fooled by outward physical appearances.

Even at 70 years old, make no mistake about it, David "Deacon" Jones talks like he still is the meanest man to ever roam a football field.

"The only way to play this game is by whippin' [butt]," he says. "You can't just win. You have to beat him up."

His laughter fills the room with a deliciously sinister cackle.

"You have to beat him up to such a state that it can't be denied who's the better man."

The more he talks, the more you are convinced that maybe, just maybe, he still is.

If you don't know, you better ask somebody.

This is a history lesson for some of you who never knew, saw or heard of Deacon Jones, and wonder why a man who retired in 1974 and never played a single game for the St. Louis Rams is having his jersey retired on Sunday morning at the Edward Jones Dome.

Ask Steve Sabol, the legendary filmmaker and greatest historian of NFL history. "He was like an Old Testament warrior. He relished revenge. He craved payback. He loved the 'I told you so.' He exulted in triumph."

Sabol, the president of NFL Films, is on the phone and he can't believe that after all these years, the Rams have just gotten around to retiring the Hall of Fame defensive end's jersey.

"How'd that happen?" Sabol asks.

Apparently, it just slipped through the cracks.

"Wow, that might be the greatest 'slipped through the cracks' move in the history of the NFL," says Sabol.

So why does Deacon Jones deserve to have his jersey retired?

"Well simply because Deacon, to me, meets every requirement of legendary stature," Sabol says. "He had the stats, he had the reputation. He was responsible more than anyone else in NFL history for glamorizing the faceless men in the pits. We have interviewed any number of great players whose stature grew because of the single fact that they played against Deacon Jones. The only other defensive player I heard offensive guys say that about was [Dick] Butkus."

Don't bother looking at the NFL record book. Jones' name isn't there. He is not listed among the single-season sack leaders. He is not on any list that chronicles the career sack leaders, either.

The NFL didn't begin keeping quarterback sacks as a meaningful statistic until after Jones retired, even though he is the man who not only coined the phrase "sack," but also went out and perfected it as a craft.

The book says Bruce Smith owns the career sack total record of 200. That same book proclaims Michael Strahan owns the single-season mark of 22.5 sacks. "The damned book lies," says Jones, spitting out each word.

"You have to question the veracity of that statistic when you don't see his name up there," says Sabol. "To folks of our generations, he was a force of unmanageable proportions."

NFL researcher John Turney documented the sacks from the 1950s, 60s and 70s in the era when the league failed to officially recognize sacks, and he's certain that Jones' sack total should be 1731/2, which would rank him third on the career list. Jones thinks that career total is wrong. He and many others, such as Sabol and Dick Vermeil, are certain that for the better part of Jones' career, he may have averaged nearly 20 sacks per season.

"Come with me," Jones says. "I got proof that I have the record."

We walk into his den, which is an elaborate bar and sports memorabilia showcase. He reaches onto the bookshelf and pulls out a blue bound book the size of a large dictionary. On the cover are the embossed letters "Los Angeles Rams Playbook: 1967."

On the book's spine, the name "George Allen" is embossed in gold quarter-inch high lettering. The late coach, who is also a Pro Football Hall of Famer, was the Rams' coach in 1967.

"Look at this," Jones says, his voice rising to an angry pitch. "This is how the team kept track of our stats back then. They put them in the playbook after every game. At the end of the year, they gave us these bound volumes, and you could go through every page to see what your statistics were. I got $500 for every sack, and you know damned well they didn't let me count 'em. The team kept track of 'em, and this was George's book."

We count the sacks. Twenty-six in 14 games. Six more in the playoffs.

He picks up a trophy that was given to him when he was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary team.

"What does the trophy say?" Jones asks. "Read the inscription."

"Deacon Jones . . . had 26 sacks in 1967."

"And I had 24 the next year, too," Jones growls. "See. I told you that damned record book lies."

If you don't know, you better ask somebody.

"He was special," says Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen, the former Washington Redskins quarterback who was one of Jones' many victims. "He had that head slap move, the constant energy, the incredible speed and the non-stop will. I remember playing against him one year in RFK [Stadium], and it was late in the game, and [the Rams] were up by 11 points. He comes in on a pass rush and fell down. And you know what he does? He starts crawling on all fours trying to get to me. Seriously, he's crawling in the dirt like it was the most important play in the world, and I just looked at him and said, 'Jeezzz-us, Deacon, it ain't the Super Bowl.' But that's how much he cared."

Jurgensen is sitting in the radio broadcast booth at FedEx Field, smoking a giant cigar and laughing at the memory of the meanest man in football. "He didn't just intimidate the quarterbacks he faced," Jurgensen says. "He intimidated the guys who had to block him. Lots of guys didn't want to play when Deacon came to town."

When men like Jurgensen and Jones played, the game was grittier, not so much like the show business carnival it can be today. There were no demonstrative gyrations after tackling the quarterback. The cameras did not do slow-motion isolations on the men in the trenches, and NFL Films didn't have the technology to mike up players during games just yet ("My greatest regret is that we couldn't mike up Deacon," Sabol says).

What a shame, because the Deacon had plenty to say.

"He was constantly talking trash, and it was funny, too," says Jurgensen. "I'd come up to the line and get under the center, and above all the noise in the stadium, you'd hear Deacon's voice. It was this phrase that he repeated all game long ...

" 'Sometimes two [blockers] . . . Sometimes three [blockers] . . . That's how many you need and you still couldn't handle me.' "

Jurgensen takes a long toke on his big cigar, then lets out a slow billow of smoke.

"And you know what?" says Jurgensen. "He was right."

Jones has waited 35 years for this to happen. He waited while they played in Los Angeles. Waited while they played in Anaheim, waited while they moved to St. Louis.

He waited while his old teammate Merlin Olsen had his No. 74 retired. He waited while Jack Youngblood's 85 was retired. He waited while he saw them retire Eric Dickerson's 29, Jackie Slater's 78 and last year Marshall Faulk's 28.

He wondered why they forgot about him, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he got.

"I'm not angry anymore," says Jones. "But I was pissed off for a long time that it happened because I knew my jersey should have been retired before all of 'em. But I don't have time to allow myself to [have regrets] anymore because I have already lived in that vein of thinking for too long."

So what took so long for the Rams to retire his No. 75?

"A lot of things," he says with a gentle smile. "This is something only the owner grants. It's not something you run for and someone votes. For a long time, I never knew. But I knew it never had anything to do with the Rosenblooms not liking me. Georgia [Frontiere] and I had a great relationship and so did [her husband] Carroll and I. We used to play tennis together. It just didn't come up as a priority. Now maybe if the team had stayed here, it would have been more of a priority."

The longer he talked, the more comfortable Jones got with discussing the more uncomfortable truth.

"I think it was all politics," he says, "And I just got stuck in the middle of them. Those [Los Angeles area politicians] didn't treat Georgia very well when she was here or after she left. They said a lot of mean things about her. So I think when she left here, she was done with everything about California. [Los Angeles Rams] history stopped when she left to go to St. Louis. She stopped it, and I got caught in that. She was angry with Los Angeles. People said a lot of mean and nasty things about her, and it hurt her deeply, and I don't blame her. But I just got caught in the middle of the whole thing."

He almost didn't make it here.

The EKG machine was going wild. It was the morning of May 14, and the electrical impulses in his heart were shutting down, and the baddest man to ever rush the quarterback was having a cardiac emergency. His heart was shutting down, and the only thing Deacon Jones could think about was, "Damned, it's a good thing I wasn't on the golf course when this happened."

As part of the checkup, they had done a full-body scan and during that test, the doctors found a small cancerous nodule on his left lung. "So by 4 o'clock on the 14th, I had a pacemaker, and on the 22nd of May I had a lung operation," Jones says. "I went in for a preventative exam and the next thing I know, I'm in for two operations. Damned, do you know how lucky I am?"

There were stories in the papers in Los Angeles after the operations, and Carroll and Georgia's son, the current Rams owner Chip Rosenbloom, read them. Two days after Jones came home from the hospital, the phone rang and the new Rams owner was on the other end. "The call came out of nowhere," Jones recalled. "And it couldn't have happened at a better time because I was having a real bad day."

Rosenbloom had, to his disbelief, discovered that the greatest player in the history of the franchise never had his jersey retired. "No one knew why," Rosenbloom said. "So I said, 'OK, let's get this done.' "

Four months later, Jones has worked on his rehabilitation like he used to work at training camp. "I hate the rehabilitation man, but I gotta do it," he says. "I am out there every morning at 8 o'clock for a therapy class, getting my lungs together. I'm on a bicycle or a treadmill, but it's hard."

In early August, he was struggling to get up to 15 minutes of cardio work. He cursed that he struggled to get up the short flight of stairs from his living room to his second floor. But he says that Sunday, he will walk out onto the middle of the Edward Jones Dome under his own power.

"Hell, I just might put on a damned uniform and play again," he says, filling the air with that delicious and sinister cackle.

Even at 70 years old, make no mistake about it, David "Deacon" Jones talks like he still is the meanest man to ever roam a football field. "It's the Packers, dammit, and you know how much I hate the Packers," he says. "I just might want to get me some quarterback."

The more he talks, the more you are convinced that maybe, just maybe, he still can.

[Hacksaw]

Even at 70 years old, make no mistake about it, David "Deacon" Jones talks like he still is the meanest man to ever roam a football field. "It's the Packers, dammit, and you know how much I hate the Packers," he says. "I just might want to get me some quarterback."

The more he talks, the more you are convinced that maybe, just maybe, he still can.

Dude had a giant heart and an assassins directive.

[haroldjackson29]

[Hacksaw]

'62 to '76, DT, Merlin Olsen aka max

[Hacksaw]

[maxxx power]

Wondering why so few 74s to choose from?

He wore it from 62-76 and no one has worn it since.

Some great game images of maybe the greatest Ram of all-time. (I said MAYBE )