Battering Rams

Two guys named Jack, traveling the same route, are headed for a small town in Ohio named Canton. If they begin in Los Angeles and pass through Anaheim before turning east, how long will it take them to reach the doorstep of the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

Answer: One will take 11 years longer than the other.

This question will never wind up on the NFL’s Wonderlich intelligence test, because no one, not even the Rhodes scholar Ivy League quarterback, would be able to figure it.

Jackie Slater, a quiet man playing an anonymous position, receiving little fanfare while toiling for 20 years as an offensive tackle for the Los Angeles-Anaheim-St. Louis Rams, was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Jack Youngblood, swaggering sackmaster for some of the most dominant defensive teams in professional football history, seven-time Pro Bowl defensive end who played an entire Super Bowl on a broken leg, went 0 for 11 in Hall of Fame elections before finally being given the go-ahead.

They will enter the Hall together Saturday, a pleasant piece of business for old-time Los Angeles Ram fans, but also bittersweet and more than a little perplexing.

If Slater, after two decades of beneath-the-radar run-blocking, can gain the attention of the selection committee in his first year, why did the charismatic and popular Youngblood have to wait a dozen years?

“Nothing surprises me anymore,” says Slater, who broke in with the Rams in 1976, when Youngblood was already established as one of the premier defensive ends in the league. “I saw him wait a long time. Tom Mack waited a long time. And I saw some other guys over the years who I thought would have gone in the Hall and they’re not there at all.

“In my case, and I’m sure with Jack, you let it rest on your body of work and hope that someday it will speak volumes for him.”

Youngblood’s body of work included two NFC defensive-player-of-the-year awards, 201 consecutive games played--broken leg be damned--and nearly 150 “unofficial” quarterback sacks, since most of them came before the NFL recognized sacks as an official statistic in 1983.

“Jack definitely should have gone in on the first [ballot],” says Deacon Jones, the Hall of Famer Youngblood replaced in the early 1970s. “In my opinion, he’s right there behind myself and Reggie White and Gino Marchetti. I’ve got him somewhere in there.

“I think his contributions, besides his sack totals, were just fantastic. I mean, the guy played in pain, he answered every bell, he was always in his position and he always gave 110%. So I don’t know what else you’re looking for.”

Jones, however, believes Youngblood had the distinct disadvantage of playing most of his career before the advent of cable and ESPN. He says Youngblood, who retired in 1985, faded quickly from the national consciousness--as opposed to Slater, who retired after the 1995 season and maintained a high public profile through his work as a football television analyst.

“Sometimes, you’re not visible enough,” Jones says. “The five years that you lay off [before Hall of Fame eligibility], you’ve got to stay visible. Because we forget sometimes that sportswriters change too. The guys that might have seen him play a game may have moved on. And Jack’s not one of those guys into PR, like I am. That could have had something to do with it.

“[Slater] stayed in the public’s eye. You have to stay visible in this business. Because they will forget in five years.”

John Robinson, who coached Youngblood and Slater and will present Slater at Saturday’s induction ceremony, believes Slater had an edge among the voters because of the company he kept. Slater spent much of his career blocking for a Hall of Fame running back, Eric Dickerson. If the camera followed Dickerson up and down the field, chances are that Slater was somewhere in the frame, leveling a defender.

“In the offensive line, so many players are anonymous,” Robinson says. “Jackie Slater seemed to rise above that. And Jackie had the good fortune of Eric Dickerson and he got to be kind of famous with that.”

Youngblood, who has had a while to think about it, has come up with a theory of his own.

“What does my last name start with?” Youngblood says. “The letter Y. I’m the last on the list every year.

“They’ve gone through and there’s 15 [names] there and they’ve already made four selections. I’m done. I’m history before they get to the Ys.”

Youngblood laughs at the notion, but says, “I honestly think that [was] a factor. I [once] told the director, ‘Before the vote next year, would you invert that voting order?’ ”

So if his full name had been Jack Adams, he’d have been in the Hall years ago?

Youngblood says he would have taken his chances.

They are the latest in an ever-growing list that is half honor roll and half indictment: Los Angeles-Anaheim Rams who made it to Canton but never to the winner’s podium at a Super Bowl.

Jones never played in a Super Bowl. Neither did Merlin Olsen, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle who will present Youngblood at Saturday’s induction ceremony. Nor did 1999 honoree Dickerson and Mack.

Youngblood and Slater got as far as the 1980 Super Bowl and a 19-17 lead over the Pittsburgh Steelers before the Rams wilted in the fourth quarter of an eventual 31-19 defeat.

With wide receiver Henry Ellard and guard Dennis Harrah still out there with better-than-average Hall of Fame chances, the 1970-1990 Rams could wind up placing a total of eight players in the Hall--and not one a Super Bowl champion.

“It was said that the Rams of the ‘80s and the late ‘70s were the best team ever assembled to never to win a championship,” Slater says. “And I believe that. Because across the board, we had the personnel that could beat anybody’s personnel. There were times that we didn’t do it--everybody messed up. The coaches didn’t do it when they needed to. The individual players, me included, didn’t do it when they needed to.

“When you put it all together, the results speak for themselves: no championships.”

Slater says he learned early in his Ram career that “there was only so much I could control as an offensive lineman. Once I reconciled that, I was at peace with myself actually going out and doing everything I could do to win.

“I wanted the Rams to win the Super Bowl and every playoff game and every game at the right tackle position. I gave my efforts, my thoughts, everything about me making sure the Rams won every game at right tackle. Now that didn’t happen all the time. But that was what I shot for.

“I reconciled us not winning a lot of championships by saying the body of my work represented where my heart was and what I was trying to accomplish for this team. That was all I could control. In a way, it’s the beauty of being an offensive lineman. You resolve yourself to taking care of the things that you are responsible for.”

And hope the quarterback dropping back behind you takes care of his--not always the case with the pre-Kurt Warner Rams.

“From ’73 forward,” Youngblood says, “we had some great football teams that had all of the ingredients . . . But the adage is, ‘A quarterback makes the difference.’

“This is not to disparage any of the guys we had. I loved Gabe [Roman Gabriel] and I loved John Hadl and Pat [Haden] and James Harris and Ron Jaworski. They were all good quarterbacks. I mean, we had Joe Namath for a while. Good gosh!

“We went through quarterback after quarterback after quarterback trying to find that right ingredient for that football team for that particular time. It was a needle-in-a-haystack type thing. You give us one of the 12s that was playing then, one of the premier quarterbacks that was playing then--[Terry] Bradshaw, [Roger] Staubach. You give me Kenny Stabler in those years, Bob Griese in those years. You give me a young Bert Jones for five, six years. And the power of the NFL changes. Because we already had the basis of the nucleus.”

The postseason failures still eat at Youngblood. The most memorable day in his career--playing Super Bowl XIV with a broken leg--is also the biggest regret of his career.

“The regret,” he says, “is that we finally accomplished the goal that we set out for at the beginning of a season: To make it to the dance. Make it to the big game. And then for me to be impaired and not have the physical ability to make a difference in the ballgame, the one ballgame that you’ve constantly tried to get to, the pinnacle of every player’s season every year.

“If I could change that, I would play a full game [at full strength] in the Super Bowl. . . . I was probably 60-70%. I could still run, I just didn’t have that quickness that I should have had. Didn’t have the ability to make the inside move, because I couldn’t plant my inside leg.”

One other regret: When the Rams had a field goal blocked in the 1976 NFC championship game against Minnesota and returned for a Viking touchdown by Bobby Bryant, Youngblood probably should have gone with his first instinct--run from the Ram sideline and tackle Bryant.

“When they blocked that field goal,” he says, “Larry Brooks and I were standing on the sideline and I looked at Brooksie and Brooksie looked at me and I said, “Think I ought to?’ ”

Bryant was there for the taking, running right in front of the Ram bench. Youngblood figured he had just the right angle.

“Absolutely,” Youngblood says, laughing. “Absolutely. Brooksie looked at me and said, ‘Naaah.’ But it did cross my mind.”

Slater and Youngblood remember the battles, the trench warfare, the teeth-rattling, one-on-one contests that left them bruised, battered and beaten to the point of exhaustion.

And then, after a week of that, they had to go and play a game each Sunday.

For the nine seasons they were Ram teammates, Slater and Youngblood used to pound each other in practice, offensive tackle versus defensive end, future Hall of Famer versus future Hall of Famer.

“They were pretty intense,” Slater says of those confrontations. “In the early going, when I first came to the club, Jack was on top of his game, he worked real hard every day in practice, had a great work ethic. And I had a pretty good work ethic, and we just turned it up.

“They became some real classic cat-and-mouse games, if you will, but they ended up being real physical. I wonder what it would have been like to have gone into games without having to practice against each other. We probably would have been fresher and maybe even more productive. We really got after each other.”

Youngblood believes those duels against Slater “made me become a better player. I had to. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have survived.

“He was willing to go more than the extra mile. He would learn about my [upcoming] opponent’s technique and style and I would do the same for him. We would take turns mimicking the other’s opponent. I’d try to mimic Too Tall Jones and he’d try to mimic Rayfield Wright. Which gave us that many more opportunities to see it, get it into our mind and have a hands-on touch, so to speak, before the game.”

Saturday they will be paired again, amid somewhat less stressful circumstances, dressed in coat and tie and standing on the steps of the Hall of Fame.

Jones, a Hall of Fame member since 1980 and a veteran of many induction ceremonies, says he has advised Slater to prepare a speech and “don’t go up there without something written. Because you will never get it out if you do. His wife threatened him. She told him that if he cries, she’s cuttin’ him loose.

“Jackie probably won’t cry. Youngblood will. Every year, we make bets on who’s going to break down and all the money’s blowing toward Jack right now.

“It’s the hard-nosed guys--the guys who play with broken legs and all that garbage, they’re the first ones to break up, you know. Shed tears. I saw Butkus cry, man. I saw Nitschke cry. I’ve seen some of the hardest men in this game break down and cry.”

Youngblood knows about the who-will-weep-first pool, and he knows who will win. After 12 long years of waiting, Youngblood knows he’s a mortal lock.

“I may start when Coach [Robinson] gets up there,” he says, laughing. “I think Nick [Buoniconti] is the first on the list. As soon as he stands up, I’ll start boo-hooing then.”

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JACK YOUNGBLOOD THUMBNAIL

* Defensive end. . . .1971-1984 Los Angeles Rams. . . . 14 seasons, 202 games. . . . 20th player selected, first round, 1971 draft. . . . Backed up superstar Deacon Jones at defensive left end as rookie, became full-time regular in third season. . . . Rugged, determined, durable. . . . A dominant defender, perennial Ram sack leader. . . . Played 201 consecutive games, a Ram record. . . . Missed only one game in 14 years. . . . Rams’ defensive captain. . . . Had one sack, one forced fumble, one blocked PAT, interception return of 47 yards for touchdown in 1975 playoff game vs. St. Louis. . . . Fractured left fibula in 1979 first-round playoff game, was fitted with plastic brace, played every defensive down in NFC title game, Super Bowl XIV. . . . Played in five NFC championship games. . . . All-pro in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979. . . . Played in seven consecutive Pro Bowls, 1974-1980. . . . Recovered 10 opponents’ fumbles.

JACKIE SLATER THUMBNAIL

* Tackle. . . . 1976-1995 Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams. . . . 20 seasons, 259 games. . . . Tied for third most seasons played in NFL history. . . . His 259 regular-season games played are most by offensive lineman at the time of retirement. . . . Mainstay of Ram offensive line, was first- or second-team all-pro choice five seasons. . . . Known for work ethic and leadership skills, earned seven Pro Bowl berths (1984, 1986-1991). . . . A powerful drive blocker; 24 quarterbacks and 37 running backs played behind Slater during career. . . . Blocked for seven 1,000-yard rushers. . . . Played in 107 games in which runner gained 100-plus yards. . . . Twenty-seven times Ram quarterbacks passed for 300-plus yards in a game with Slater as blocker. . . . In 1983, Ram offensive line allowed league-low 23 sacks while Eric Dickerson also rushed for rookie-record 1,808 yards. . . . Veteran of 18 playoff games.

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HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

Jackie Slater, Jack Youngblood, Lynn Swann, Ron Yary, Mike Munchak, Nick Buoniconti, Marv Levy

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WHEN: Saturday, 8:30 a.m., ESPN2