The highlight capture some of it; when seen in the flow of a game it was different, and there's so much these highlights don't catch.
One thing the video brought out was the way players took care of cheap shots back in the day... the players knew where the line was drawn - within it, hard-hitting and sometimes brutal football was the norm. But there were certain things that didn't go unpunished.
I remember a pre-season game in George Allen's first year with the Rams. The opposing team (I forget which one) started out a little chippy, then a litle more, and when that cheal-shot line was crossed Allen emptied his bench and a gang-fight took place. Fists flew and the opposing dirty players were bloodied up pretty bad. Stadium officials and even the police eventually had a hard time breaking it up.
When asked by the press for a statement afterward, in place of the expected words like "unfortunate" and lame excuses, Allen simply said "We don't take that kind of s#]+ from anybody," and walked off. Message sent, received, and understood.
Another thing I enjoyed about that era was that the cameras didn't cut away from the extra-cirricular activities. We got to see the shoving matches, occasional fist fights, all of it. Nobody was miked up in those days, but you could easily guess what was being said - and some of it got reported. Today it would be called taunting and penalized. And overall, I think there were fewer deliberately inflicted injuries then. There was a rough, crude accountability in that early era that worked better than turning the players loose without it.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2024 01:50PM by mtramfan.
