Jim Everett Table Toss: Isiah Robertson’s Demons and Redemption
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Isiah Robertson’s Demons and Redemption
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The following excerpt was taken from Chuck Knox’s book, “Hard Knox.” Knox was head coach of the L.A. Rams from 1973-77 and 1992-94.
Throughout my career, there was one player who brought out the uncommon in me. As in, the uncommonly stupid in me. Because of this player, I am no longer such an easy mark for troubled minds. His name was Isiah Robertson. He was called “Butch.” He was a linebacker, and he was a handful.
Butch was an example of how, as hard as I coach them, a lot of times I flat-out don’t reach them. Let me tell you about one lovely Christmas Eve in Los Angeles. For some reason, Butch was eating at a restaurant this night, eating clam chowder. Bad chowder. It had a bug in it. He wouldn’t pay for it.
The waitress told him he had already taken a couple of bites, and he had to pay. Poor waitress. You don’t tell a guy like Butch that he has to do anything. Even I knew that. He poured the chowder over the cash register, and then went outside and threw a brick through the window.
Have you ever received a phone call from a troubled employee who is in jail on Christmas Eve? My wife loved this one. I was still young and dumb then. I went down and bailed him out, the first of several times.
How I tried to reach Butch. I would sit him down–I had this one special chair in my office just for him–and he would sit there like an angel, very apologetic. Then he would leave my office and two weeks later he’d be back in that special chair. I’m sure he meant well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I later traded for him when I went to Buffalo because I thought he had matured and learned his lesson. Once there, he gets into a bar fight and bites off a piece of teammate Jim Haslett’s finger. (Haslett went on to coach the Saints and even Knox’s Rams for 12 games in 2008.)
Editor: When Robertson retired from the league, crack cocaine unfortunately took over his life, and the six-time Pro Bowler found himself almost beaten to death, staring into the barrel of a shotgun wielded by a drug dealer. He’d lost his career, his family, his cars, and 14 homes. Robertson lived only because the weapon malfunctioned. Robertson eventually cleaned up and worked with recovering addicts at a residential recovery center, House of Isiah, which he founded in 1989 just outside of Dallas.
On December 6, 2018, Robertson sadly died after the limousine he was driving skidded on a rain-slicked curve on a dark Texas highway only hours after giving a motivational speech at a local high school. He was 69.
#HelmetHornsMatter
“Well, the color is good, I like the metallic blue,” Youngblood recently said while laughing, via NFL Journal. “The horn is terrible. It looks like a ‘C.’ When I first saw it on the logo I honestly thought it was a Charger logo.
“Now when I see it on the helmet, it just isn’t a ram horn. There is no distinct curl like a mature ram horn. I don’t know how the Rams could get that wrong. That is your symbol and it has been for what? Seventy years or more? Longer than I have been alive? It’s just not us, it’s not the Rams.”---Mr. Ram Jack Youngblood
link
The following excerpt was taken from Chuck Knox’s book, “Hard Knox.” Knox was head coach of the L.A. Rams from 1973-77 and 1992-94.
Throughout my career, there was one player who brought out the uncommon in me. As in, the uncommonly stupid in me. Because of this player, I am no longer such an easy mark for troubled minds. His name was Isiah Robertson. He was called “Butch.” He was a linebacker, and he was a handful.
Butch was an example of how, as hard as I coach them, a lot of times I flat-out don’t reach them. Let me tell you about one lovely Christmas Eve in Los Angeles. For some reason, Butch was eating at a restaurant this night, eating clam chowder. Bad chowder. It had a bug in it. He wouldn’t pay for it.
The waitress told him he had already taken a couple of bites, and he had to pay. Poor waitress. You don’t tell a guy like Butch that he has to do anything. Even I knew that. He poured the chowder over the cash register, and then went outside and threw a brick through the window.
Have you ever received a phone call from a troubled employee who is in jail on Christmas Eve? My wife loved this one. I was still young and dumb then. I went down and bailed him out, the first of several times.
How I tried to reach Butch. I would sit him down–I had this one special chair in my office just for him–and he would sit there like an angel, very apologetic. Then he would leave my office and two weeks later he’d be back in that special chair. I’m sure he meant well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I later traded for him when I went to Buffalo because I thought he had matured and learned his lesson. Once there, he gets into a bar fight and bites off a piece of teammate Jim Haslett’s finger. (Haslett went on to coach the Saints and even Knox’s Rams for 12 games in 2008.)
Editor: When Robertson retired from the league, crack cocaine unfortunately took over his life, and the six-time Pro Bowler found himself almost beaten to death, staring into the barrel of a shotgun wielded by a drug dealer. He’d lost his career, his family, his cars, and 14 homes. Robertson lived only because the weapon malfunctioned. Robertson eventually cleaned up and worked with recovering addicts at a residential recovery center, House of Isiah, which he founded in 1989 just outside of Dallas.
On December 6, 2018, Robertson sadly died after the limousine he was driving skidded on a rain-slicked curve on a dark Texas highway only hours after giving a motivational speech at a local high school. He was 69.
#HelmetHornsMatter
“Well, the color is good, I like the metallic blue,” Youngblood recently said while laughing, via NFL Journal. “The horn is terrible. It looks like a ‘C.’ When I first saw it on the logo I honestly thought it was a Charger logo.
“Now when I see it on the helmet, it just isn’t a ram horn. There is no distinct curl like a mature ram horn. I don’t know how the Rams could get that wrong. That is your symbol and it has been for what? Seventy years or more? Longer than I have been alive? It’s just not us, it’s not the Rams.”---Mr. Ram Jack Youngblood
