Bob Brown, a hulking offensive lineman who brought an intimidating style to NFL play in the 1960s that turned blocking into a pummeling — with forearm jolts and thumb jabs — seeking to grind down opponents one hit at a time, died June 16 at a health-care facility in Oakland, Calif. He was 81.
The death was announced by the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where Mr. Brown was inducted in 2004. He had a stroke in April.
With bulked-up arms, quick feet and a 6-foot-4 frame that carried up to 300 pounds, Mr. Brown set a standard for size, skills and tactics on the offensive line during his 10 seasons in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Rams and Oakland Raiders.
Advertisement
His job, he said, wasn't just to hold off pass rushers or throw down a block for the running game. He tried to inflict his own brand of demoralizing pain.
Mr. Brown, an offensive tackle, surged into the defense rather than letting them come to him — a technique he developed as an All-American at the University of Nebraska and then honed as a pro from 1964 to 1973.
He used his forearm like a cudgel and his thumbs like a poker, looking for any spot between the pads. A signature move was a thumb thrust right below the shoulder pads. “There’s a lot of meaty, nice parts in that area,” he said in a documentary for NFL Films. “You can get a little bit of the spleen.”
This wasn’t dirty play, he said. He described football as a nonstop duel between the “beaters” and the “beatees,” gaining the nickname “The Boomer.” The harder he hit, the more he could weaken the spirit of his opponents. “If I hurt you enough,” he said. “I can make you quit.”
Advertisement
His attacking style and year-round training gave a new template for offensive linemen, including his weightlifting regime and emphasis on agility. That also helped build the foundations for the dominance of the Oakland Raiders in the 1970s alongside other future Hall of Famers including center Jim Otto, guard Gene Upshaw and tackle Art Shell.
John Madden, the coach of the Raiders from 1969 to 1978, said that Mr. Brown tried to use his forearm swings to “take a quarter of out of you” — meaning that “if he really hit you, you wouldn’t play hard until the next quarter.”
A story that endures in Raiders’ lore was Mr. Brown’s arrival at training camp in 1971 after being traded from the Rams. As Madden retold it, Mr. Brown jogged across the field and then, to get himself “psyched” for practice, swung his forearm at the padded goal post.
“Phoom! Crack! And the whole goal post goes right down. . . . He turned around and walked off the field,” Madden recalled.
Maybe the wooden post was rotted out and ready to go down, Madden wondered. “We’ll never know,” he said. “But it cemented Brown’s tough-guy reputation.”
A defensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, “Mean” Joe Greene, once asked to switch places so he could go head-to-head with Mr. Brown during a game. He said the next thing he remembered was getting up from the turf with one shoe knocked off and his helmet twisted so much that he was looking out the ear hole.
Advertisement
Off the field, however, Mr. Brown was something of a gentle giant. He was soft-spoken and made clear that his aggression was over as soon as the final whistle blew. In college, he took up knitting and “nobody gave him any guff about it,” said former Nebraska teammate Mike Kennedy.
Mr. Brown never made it to the Super Bowl. In the 1969 divisional playoffs, his Rams led 17-14 going into the fourth quarter but couldn’t hold off the Minnesota Vikings, who went on to reach Super Bowl IV but lost to the Kansas City Chiefs. The playoff game was sealed with a rare breakdown by Mr. Brown and the offensive line, which had allowed only 17 sacks all season.
With about eight minutes left in the game, and the Vikings leading 21-20, Minnesota defensive end Carl Eller slipped around a falling Mr. Brown. Rams quarterback Roman Gabriel was near his own goal line. Eller’s tackle dropped Gabriel into the end zone for a safety and the last points of the game. The final score was 23-20.
“Every week to me was a Super Bowl,” Mr. Brown told the Associated Press decades later. “I had to play my own personal Super Bowls. I was not going to take a whipping. I just wasn’t.”
‘That must hurt’
Robert Stanford Brown was born Dec. 8, 1941, in Cleveland. His father ran a neighborhood store, and his mother was a homemaker.
At the University of Nebraska, Mr. Brown became a starter in 1962 under new coach Bob Devaney. That December, he grabbed a crucial final-minute interception in the Cornhuskers’ first bowl victory, a 36-34 win in the Gotham Bowl in New York over the University of Miami.
Advertisement
“He could rank among the Husker all-time greats,” the Omaha World-Herald’s Gregg McBride wrote prophetically in August 1961. “The varsity learned during scrimmages that Brown is agile and mean as well as beefy.” Mr. Brown’s No. 64 was retired by the university in 2004.
Mr. Brown was selected in the 1964 NFL draft by Philadelphia. A knee injury in 1967 ended his string of 50 consecutive starts since his rookie year.
Mr. Brown requested a trade after the 1968 season and landed with the Rams. He played two seasons in Los Angeles before his final years in football with the Raiders from 1971 to 1973. Over his career, Mr. Brown was selected six times to the Pro Bowl.
“I needed for you to walk off the field and look back over at me and think, ‘Boy, I don’t want to see him again,’” he said in an interview for the “Power of Sports” show. “That’s what I needed. That drove me.”
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, the former Cecelia Grier, and their son, Robert Brown Jr.
Among the other players inducted into the Hall of Fame along with Mr. Brown in 2004 was Eller, who slipped by him in the 1969 game. Eller called Mr. Brown his “most feared competitor.”
Mr. Brown liked to be feared. “People look down from the stands and see a guy get hit say to themselves, ‘That must hurt,’” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1998. “Well, it does, friend. It does.”
Advertisement