As Inspiration on Rams, Youngblood Was Thicker Than Water
If you threw 10 NFL coaches into a musty laboratory with a hunchback named Igor and told them to construct the perfect professional football player, they’d emerge every time with a clone of Jack Youngblood.
He’d be tall and lean but strong enough to throw a quarterback through the goal posts. He’d show up to work on time, be polite to ladies, chew tobacco, raise cattle and have the best tan in town. His hair would be dirty blond, his face worn and weathered.
His helmet would be cocked high up against his forehead. His elbows would be bloodied, his pants a muddy mess. And there would be sweat. Always the sweat.
But, of course, it isn’t quite that easy. You can’t just go out and duplicate Jack Youngblood.
That’s why it just wasn’t another jock-hangs-’em-up story when Youngblood announced Tuesday that he was retiring after 14 seasons.
For some, like Ram tackle Bill Bain, it was the perfect time to get emotional.
“Yeah, I was crying,” said the 300-pound Bain. “That’s why I was sitting way in the back.”
Coach John Robinson accepted the moment philosophically.
“I don’t think it’s sad,” he said of the occasion. “We’re looking at a man who’s probably got 40 or 45 more years of life, and he’ll probably achieve as much or more as he’s achieved in the past 35 years. He’s the most unique football player I’ve ever been around.
“All of us assume greatness is a gift. But anyone who’s been around greatness on a daily basis knows that’s not true. Jack worked harder to be great in the brief time I’ve been around him than any I’ve ever seen.”
Youngblood’s best friend and former teammate, Larry Brooks, the Ram assistant coach in charge of the defensive line, wasn’t sure how to act.
“I hate to say I’m going to miss him because it sounds like he’s dying,” Brooks said. “But the privilege of watching him play was very gratifying to watch.”
You would be hard pressed to find anyone who would say that Jack Youngblood was not a great football player.
For 14 years, he played left defensive end for the Rams. Seven times he made the Pro Bowl. Twice he was named the defensive player of the year in the National Conference. He never missed a game until last year, when his back injury put him on the bench.
But the Rams will all tell you he was more than a football player. He was legend and lore, too, He was a leader and an inspiration. He had character and class.
Youngblood walked onto the field the way John Wayne swaggered into a bar. You knew someone was going to get hurt, but you knew that Youngblood wasn’t going to be the one.
“He was a great, great football player,” said Coach Chuck Knox of the Seattle Seahawks, who coached Youngblood and the Rams for five years during the 1970s. “He had so many big plays in five years, it was amazing. In my book, he’ll go down as one of the top defensive ends in the history of pro football.”
Youngblood certainly could lead by example.
Brooks, the former left tackle of the Rams, will never forget Super Bowl XIV in 1980, when Youngblood played against the Pittsburgh Steelers with a broken leg.
Youngblood had broken his left fibula, the smaller bone behind the shinbone, against the Cowboys in a division playoff game. He played in the Super Bowl game with a special brace but took no pain-killing injections.
“We were all beat up,” Brooks said of Super Bowl XIV, won by the Steelers, 31-19. “I had messed up my ankle. I just remember watching him get ready to play the most important game ever. A lot of players in his position would have just sat back and not been a part of it.”
But that wasn’t Youngblood’s way.
And that’s how a 35-year-old man can be a hero on his own team.
“He was an inspiration as a football player,” offensive tackle Jackie Slater said. “Jack Youngblood epitomizes what being a pro football player is all about. I’ve looked up to Jack for 10 years. It was just the way he carried himself. It was like, ‘Hey, I’m an L.A. Ram and I’m not a joke. You’re going to have to take me seriously.’
“I’d say 75% of what I’ve learned as a football player has taken place out here against Jack on the practice field.”
Said Brooks: “If a lot of the players that have come through here had played like he did, there would be a lot more (championship) flags hanging around here. I don’t think there will be anyone wearing No. 85 around here for a while.”
