The Around the NFL Podcast

Can't think of one fullback who was better than John Coos

From the Chris Westling Podcast studio, it's around the NFL. I am Dan Hansen. I got heroes here. Greg Rosenthal, Mark Cessler.

I mean, yes, John Coon was a great fullback for the Packers. But the greatest of all time, Jim Brown, who passed away late last week. Mark Cessler, you had the o-bit up at NFL.com. And obviously you have your browns history and whatnot. So we're going to get to a bunch of stuff today, including we're going to do a little running back.

You can do a little running back draft in honor of Jim Brown, the greatest back of all time. But curious your thoughts on the loss of brown at the age of 87.

I mean, I know I like kind of hold back from mentioning like my own writing and stuff on the show. It's not like the easiest thing for me to do. But it was the one of the few pieces that I wrote.

It was, you know, these opets are written prior to so that they're ready to go. And I spent like three or four long summer days researching like as deeply as I could like all these various elements to Jim Brown, who, you know, it's almost like where do you even begin? Because I think he lived three or four completely different lives that all intersected. But it's funny because I heard Gerald McCoy on Good Morning football talk about the fact that he didn't.

When he was young, he knew Jim Brown as an actor. He didn't and then his dad had to tell him as a young boy like no, this is actually like the greatest football player of all time, who was now an actor, who was also an activist who also did incredible work for the black athlete in general.

And there's just I think Greg there was a biography that we almost purchased once that he wrote and like his own story. And it is filled with incredible anecdotes. I mean, there were ups and downs with Jim Brown. There's no question about it. But the thing I came away with was just that like it's kind of crazy that in sports today just from the sports angle.

That we have better athletes than we've ever had in our lifetime easily and football players are coming out looking like robots and machines. And it's like why haven't we had 25 Jim Browns at this point.

And there's just one there's literally there you'd have to composite other running backs and athletes together to even equal Jim Brown. And I know it's easy if you're younger to look at the black and white cut ups, the tape and forget that we don't have like today's technology where you could see him from the back.

And there's so many different angles in doing things that completely are improbable from a physical angle and that no one ever dominated him. He dominated everyone and it's like he had the complete and utter respect of everyone he ever played against because there's no human like Jim Brown.

No player like Jim Brown. I mean, I guess that's, but that's how you measure in terms of on the field greatness and then everything in terms of how large of a life he lived off the field, but we're just talking on the field like that is how you get the name like go like I think there's not much of an argument that the greatest players in football history are Jerry Rice and Jim Brown.

And I think you put those in some order and you could like get in there with Lawrence Taylor or you can start talking about quarterbacks, but I just think in terms of if you judge it based on the errors that they were in and the domination that they had Jim Brown and Jerry Rice are really the two best answers and Jim Brown to me is the better answer because I'm someone that is more about how truly dominant you were at the time in your peak not about longevity.

And Jerry Rice had all of that too, which is why both answers are great, but there hasn't been another player like him and you remember like he was 30 years old when he retired and so it seems like he left some food on the table there because he was at his absolute peak still when he retired, but he was going to go to the dirty doesn't like like he was going to do a classic movie and any athlete that's ever tried to make that transition like Jim Brown was doing it and he was doing it at a time.

And where he was making a lot more money, not playing football, so it made absolute sense, but just in terms of what he did and we can get into off the field too, but I think I think Bill Bell check said it, you know, just like he hope he wanted and we can get to it like he just hope that people growing up today would understand what a Titanic figure he was on and off the field.

Yeah, I mean, he was such a big in some ways complicated figure and what he did on the field, no one ever approached, he was bigger and stronger than everyone you watch those videos like it is those old NFL films clips of him just dragging people around and how many players you say it's like you don't tackle Jim Brown, you just grab him and hold on until somebody comes to help like he was at that level average over five yards of carrying.

He set so many records and you know, and then it's the same guy that in 1967 organized the Cleveland summit, which was a at the time a huge deal, which was a gathering of the nation's most prominent black athletes Bill Russell was there just watched a documentary on Bill Russell that really dug into that and how important that was when it happened.

The crew of Dol Jibar was there Muhammad Ali was tied into the fight his fight against serving in Vietnam and he worked in Los Angeles to work with you know against gang activities in the inner cities, but he's also the same guy that had domestic violence issues that followed and plagued him and his reputation throughout his life as well.

In addition to all the Hollywood stuff his career as an actor it's it's kind of it's one of those huge lives that crosses over in so many places and you know we when this podcast was just starting out and it's like embryotic form when we were the ATL debate club before Greg and Wes even hit the scene.

We would be tacked on to the back of the Dave damage that football program and Mark I know obviously with your connection to the Browns it was a highlight of your career and it was mine as well because I don't know I still don't know how it happened Mark who so long goes and it was this month 11 years ago is in 2013.

We did a 15 20 minute interview with Jim Brown who came into the old studio 66 in Culver City and I wrote this on Twitter like it didn't feel like we actually even had a podcast until Jim Brown was talking to us and I'll never forget like how you know we were noobs and we're just learning how to even talk into microphones and he treated us with respect and I remember after it was over the day wrapped up and we headed I think we went to Rocco's and we just sat at the table.

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