'I would’ve played for nothing:' Joe DeLamielleure, Bills & Browns HOF'er, relives a charmed football life
He's got stories galore from the 70s & 80s in the NFL and he's maximizing life today. Here's the full transcript of our conversation.
Good morn! Hope you all enjoy this conversation with Pro Football Hall of Fame guard Joe DeLamielleure. It was entertaining. It was insightful.
The Electric Company. O.J. Simpson. Josh Allen. Living with CTE. Gut-busting tales from the sideline. Red Right 88. One promise from Dad that brings a tear to his eye.
“Joe D” has countless stories to share. Much ground is covered.
Audio of our conversation is accessible here, icymi.
The full written transcript is below.
Thanks, all.
Dunne: What an honor. What a pleasure. Always a privilege to talk football with an absolute legend of the game: Joe DeLamielleure. How are you, Joe? You’re down there in beautiful South Carolina watering plants.
DeLamielleure: Oh yeah. It's a drought right now down here. We need water badly. But anyhow, everything's good. I’ve got a bunch of kids that are all good. School's ending. My wife and I are both healthy, so we're good.
Dunne: That's fantastic to hear. I want to say we first met — I was at The Buffalo News at the time, probably 2015 — at the hotel in Canton. Hall of Fame in the lobby. And so everybody knows what kind of human being you are. I plopped myself right by you there in the lobby and we talked football for an hour and a half. You didn’t think twice. I’m just a complete stranger.
DeLamielleure: Well, you're from Buffalo. That means you’re not a stranger. Buffalo is a special, special place.
Dunne: This is the final season at the stadium and you were there at the start. You know what it was like at the stadium when this thing first opened.
DeLamielleure: Joe Ferguson and I were the first two guys to walk in and it was 50 years ago. I go, “Joe, let's get over there real quick.” We were practicing at Niagara and driving to the game. Everybody had to drive individually because it was an exhibition game. And I said, “Joe, let’s be the first guys there.” So we got there at 2:30 and the game was at seven. We were the first two guys to walk into the stadium. Everybody goes, “Damn, you’re the first two guys walk in the stadium.” We’re both still alive. So I hope next year that somebody in Buffalo says “Joe Ferguson and Joe D are still alive. You should let ‘em walk in the first game.” That’s pretty unusual.
Dunne: They’ve got to have both of you back, right?
DeLamielleure: I don’t know what the NFL does now. You played at a certain time. I just saw today that they’re going to have the most valuable offensive linemen award in the league. I told my wife, “This is crazy. This is the first time they think they publicly said this. I got the best lineman.” And I’m not bragging, but I got the Forrest Gregg Award. I can’t think of all the awards. I got three awards where I was named the best offensive lineman in football. But I guess those don’t count. Whatever. Offensive line play has really always been in the back seat, but that's fine.
Dunne: Tip of the cap to Dion Dawkins, Buffalo’s own. He brought up the idea.
DeLamielleure: A great idea.
Dunne: You guys deserve a hell of a lot more credit.
DeLamielleure: God, you got guys like Ron Yary and Larry Little. These guys are legends. To this day. It’s been 30, 40 years since these guys played. They’d still be the best players and they’ve got great players now. The kid from Kansas City — Will Shields. There’s a lot of great players, but they don't get recognized very often. Offensive lineman. It’s just part of the game.
Dunne: Joe, what was it like when you walked into the bowl at Rich Stadium for the first time? Do you remember the sight, the sounds, the feeling?
DeLamielleure: We were there so early, but we were thinking, “How in the heck are they going to fill the stadium?” I mean, 80,000 people is a lot when it's empty. Then when we got out there by game time, it was packed. And we go, “Well, they can do it.” I played at Michigan State, and I played at Michigan when they have 100,000. But it was unique. The Rockpile was a terrible place. I never played in it, but all the guys who played in it were so excited about getting in a brand-new stadium where the showers actually worked. They had towels. Nobody understands what people went through in the beginning of the league when it started — the AFL and all that. So I have a lot of respect for Mr. Wilson and all the hard work that the people in Buffalo did to make it what it is today. It's pretty amazing.
Dunne: Speaking of offensive lines not getting their due, the unit that you had — “The Electric Company.” Your rookie year is when you paved the way for OJ Simpson: 2000 yards. So you’re walking in at 22 years old, starting, you’ve got the nickname, you’re going for 2K, what’s that like right out of the shoot? You ran the ball 605 times that year and threw it 213 times. Everybody knew what was coming and you still were able to produce.
DeLamielleure: Back in those days, the Dolphins were the same way. Nobody could beat ‘em. And they had Little and Kuechenberg and Jim Langer, Csonka, Kiick. So the league was built like that. We almost had the same team. Joe Ferguson, Bob Griese threw the ball very little and we ran the ball and scored a ton of points, which was unbelievable. One game we played them in Buffalo, we lost 35-31, and the game was over in 2 ½ hours because we only threw — between the two teams — like 18 passes. Different league. Different times. They develop quarterbacks a lot more than they did back then. I look at Josh Allen: “Oh my God, what would he have done in our era if he played like he is now?” He’s unstoppable now, but back then I can’t even imagine what he’d do. It’s a different game, but it's still a lot of fun. Everybody would say, “Oh, was it rough?” I enjoyed every minute of it. I really did. I would’ve played for free. Mr. Wilson thought he did. So I never got paid a lot in the beginning, but he took care of me at the end. He wanted everybody to prove themselves. But I’m just proud. We built a good base there in Buffalo. The fan base is great and probably one of the best in the country. I’m just glad to be part of it.
Dunne: You had five plays, right? And you just perfected them. You practiced something again and again — there's a power to simplicity.
DeLamielleure: Yeah, there was. Jim Ringo (Buffalo’s O-Line coach) played for Vince Lombardi and they had the Green Bay Sweep. So he just put in the same plays. The exact same plays. They had Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung. We had Jim Braxton and OJ. So it was similar to Green Bay’s offense. And Joe Ferguson didn’t throw the ball a lot his rookie year. I think he only threw it 159 times, something like that. Fourteen games. So kind of crazy. But it’s a great game now. I love how they are now. It’s wide open. Anybody can win. A lot of guys say, “I like it the old way.” Eh. Boring. A lot of games are 14-12. I like how it is now. The players are good and the fans love it and we’re in a good time for football.
Dunne: That's interesting. I think most, if not all, players from your era would look back and say, “Oh, it was different in our day. That's when men were men.”
DeLamielleure: Men were men and women were glad of it. That’s what I always told my wife: “Men are men and women are glad of it.” She goes, “Ah, take a hike!” But it was just a different time. Times change all the time and basketball is different. I was a Lions fan. I could tell you all the Lions who played in the 50s and 60s and the Pistons and the Tigers. That was our whole life as kids. We weren’t that diverse. You didn't have that many things to do like they do nowadays. They’ve got a lot of different options for kids. But for us it was football and basketball, baseball, that’s it.
Dunne: We all saw you on the “Made In America” doc on OJ. It’s fascinating. What was OJ Simpson like as a teammate at that time in the 70s?
DeLamielleure: The best. He was the best teammate. He was a superstar that didn’t act like a superstar. He was just one of the guys. He didn't do too well until ‘73. He was struggling his first couple of years. And then Lou Saban came and he put an offensive line together with Ringo and Paul Seymour was a tackle at Michigan. We drafted him. We’re the same year. We played in high school against each other. He was a tackle and they moved him tight end. He weighed 260 pounds and he could run. So we basically ran with three tackles. And Jim Braxton was a tight end in college. He weighed like 250 and he was 6-3. So we had like seven blockers. I mean, real blockers. Not guys who were pussyfooting around. All these guys could block. So that’s what they said: “We’re going to do that.” And then Miami did the same thing and a couple other teams copied it, but we did it the best of anybody the first couple of years.
Dunne: The greatest teammate. Really?
DeLamielleure: OJ was a big part of it. He worked his butt off. My wife, we went to first grade together and she knows more about football than most announcers. She goes, “What’s OJ like? What do you think?” I go, “Gerri, he’s tougher than anybody we played against and he’s a running back. He would take hits and not come out.” He carried the ball one time 38 times. That’s unheard of. He was a tough guy. And he was the fastest. He’d still one of the fastest guys in league right now. So that’s the difference between them and the rest of the guys.
Dunne: I can't imagine being Joe D two decades later when everything goes down. What in the hell is running through your mind when you think you know somebody as a player and a person?
DeLamielleure: I hate to say it, but it happened to me two other times. I grew up in Detroit and there was the Michigan murders. A guy from Ann Arbor killed six people. His name was John Norman Collins. He played on St. Clement, our football team. He’s the captain of our team. He’s two years older than me and he killed the girls in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He’s still in prison. And then I recruited a kid to Duke — Clayton Kennedy — and he killed his grandfather. And then, OJ. So everybody goes, “Hey, that's crazy.” I go, “Yeah, it's really crazy. I know three people who’ve killed people.” So, it's strange.
Dunne: Good God. Is it just a numb feeling? You’re watching the trial like the rest of the world.
DeLamielleure: Yeah. And you think about it all. I still go to bed and think, “Man, those guys were really good friends of mine.” I didn’t run with OJ. He was a different guy. I grew up in a bar, so it never fascinated me at all. Nobody in my family drinks. It was just a way to make money for our family. We had 10 kids. But I looked at OJ and I go, “Man, that guy, he was so gifted.” And then people don’t even realize he was an Olympic sprinter. I met Jim Brown and you go, “Oh my god, Jim Brown.” That’s who OJ was chasing and this guy was bigger than OJ and he could run. He could run just as fast. These guys are freaks. So it was fun to play because I’ve always been a sports fan. Just enjoyed watching everything. I like track and I like basketball and I’m amazed at how good athletes are. They’re great now. But they’ve had a lot more things to model after. When we were there, we had lousy equipment and we thought it was good equipment. But the shoes were lousy. It’d rain and we’d have to wear the same shoes for, I don’t know, three or four games. Now, if your shoes are wet, you get a different pair right there on the sidelines. But that’s just the way it was. And I’m glad we made the league what it was, but I wish they would’ve taken care of the older guys. That’s the bad part. Everybody’s got sad stories.
Dunne: I do want to get to a particular equipment malfunction later in your career with the Browns. But while we’re on the Bills, I’m younger. I grew up on 90s football. So maybe it’s a product of not being around live for that era (in the 70s). I don’t feel like that period gets it’s just due in NFL history — what you guys were able to do, like you said, running that Packers offense. You made six Pro Bowls. You’re in the Hall of Fame. Personally, you got all the accolades that you deserve. But do you think that period of time doesn’t really get enough recognition when you look back at what you were able to do on the ground? For the obvious reasons (with OJ).
DeLamielleure: It was different game. If you look at baseball, baseball’s a different game. Basketball, it’s changed. That’s the evolution of sports. But it was just a different game. We only had 43 guys on the team. There was no taxi squad. The equipment guy was like a part-time guy. The trainer? You got hurt, you need a lot of luck. We had Tony Marchetti and Eddie Abramoski. They’re our trainers and equipment guys. They were way advanced for the rest of a lot of the league. You keep OJ running the ball that many times — and healthy? — they’re doing something right. I look back at that time and I think it was the best of times, but I’ve talked to guys who played before me — Joe Schmidt and the guys from the Lions, Lem Barney — and they always say their time was the best. I think football is just the best of times. When you can play and stay healthy, that’s the best time of your life. My wife goes, “Man, you are addicted to it.” I said, “I am.” The part I like about it is it’s over in two hours if you did good or bad. And it’s a pretty good feeling. In business, anything could go wrong. A lot of things are depending on a lot more people than just yourself. And you could play on a losing team and be a good player and say, “Hey, I did the best I could.” I wanted the team to win all the time, but more importantly, I wanted to play better than anybody. Try to. And that’s what helps. All the guys I talked to who I admire, they all thought the same way. You’ve got to take care of yourself first. Not being selfish. But you’ve got to be the best you can be to make the other people around you good. So that’s what I liked about football as a real team sport.
Dunne: Is there a game, a practice, hell, a joke on the sideline, a hit. What memory or two do you hold near and dear to this day from your career on?
DeLamielleure: I got tons of ‘em. One was Tom Dempsey. He kicked for us. Remember Tom? He had half a foot. He had a handicap. So we got him and he was playing in Buffalo against Philly. So it was a huge game for him. And it was a close game — 14-12 or something like that. And Tom missed the winning field goal. The winds were blowing, we were kicking into the tunnel. A lot of things. It would’ve been a great kick, but he missed it by just inches. And so I go in the locker room after the game. Everybody’s all down. I said, “Tom, come here. Don’t feel bad. You missed it by half a foot.” He goes, “You son of a bitch!”
And then another good Dempsey one was we were playing in Houston in the Astrodome, and it’s real humid in there. It’s hard to play back then in the 70s and 80s. And so you sit there and just sweat. Dempsey was at the end of the bench and he liked to dip with tobacco. It was weird. Like the air isn’t the same. I sit next to him — we were friends — I go, “What are you doing, man? You’re drunk!” He goes, “I know.” The dip got to his head, and that time he goes out and kicks the winning field.
Dunne: He hit the game winner when he was feeling a little intoxicated?
DeLamielleure: Well, he was dizzy and stuff. I said, “You look like you’re drunk!” He goes, “Yeah, I feel it.”
Those are good stories. We have great stories. We were playing Oakland out there. They had a guy named Charles Philyaw, and I knew Upshaw, Art Shell and those guys. I said, “Man, he’s a pretty big guy, but he's not the sharpest tool in the shed.” So me and (Joe) Devlin would talk — our tackle — we’d go up to the line of scrimmage and say, “Hey, what's your snap count?” And we’d get his confidence up. If the play was going the other way, we’d tell him our snap count. But when it was third and 4 or third and 5 and we needed first down, I’d go up to the line of scrimmage: “Joe, what’s it on?” He’d say, “Two dammit, listen!” And it’s on three. He jumps offside. He did it three times in the game, and he came up to me after the game and said, “You even said it was on two!” You’ve got to feel out your opponents. A lot of them weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but that was a fun of playing. And when you play long, you play a lot. I played against Mean Joe Greene I think 14 or 15 times, Merlin 10 times. To me, nobody feels comfortable playing against those guys. They can beat you at any time. It was kind of nerve-racking. My wife goes, “God, I hate that when you play against those great players like Merlin and Joe Greene and those guys. I said, “Yeah, it's fun though.” The pressure’s really on an offensive lineman. They’re a different type of guy, too. They’re not as crazy. They kind of play with their brain a little bit more. I just loved to play.
My son played at Duke and he goes, “Man, Dad, we’re lucky.” I said, “I know. I never worked a day in my life. Not in football.” That was fun. I would go to work in Buffalo and I’d be looking at everybody’s faces driving to work — and I’m driving to Rich Stadium. They all had a “Damn, gotta work.” I’m like happy as can be. Like, man, “I’m going to play football.” Practice, I loved it. I know I didn’t ever miss a practice and I didn’t miss any games, and I’ve never had a surgery, which is pretty hard to believe.
Dunne: No surgery?
DeLamielleure: None. Zero. But my wife always says, “No brain, no pain, buddy.”
Dunne: It’s good that you can joke about that because I know that is a concern of yours, right?
DeLamielleure: Yeah, I was diagnosed with CTE and I have CTE. The NFL helps me with being paid. I go to my neurologist. They pay for your neurologist. My neurologist says, “There’s nothing wrong with you, other than you do have CTE. But you have no injuries.” And I never drank. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, never did anything. Never did drugs. So that’s a pretty uncommon person. And then I’ve been married to the same girl forever. And we’ve got six kids. Fourteen grandkids. So my biggest thrill is watching my granddaughters. They’re really good. We live down here in South Carolina. They’re unbelievable soccer players and people come up, “Oh, they got your genes!” I say, “No, they got my daughter-in-law’s genes. She was an All-American at South Carolina and my son was at Duke. I said, “I'm a plug.” These girls can fly.
Dunne: Take us through that process. Was it 2013 when you discovered that you had CTE? Because by and large people think, “Well, we can’t figure this out until a player passes away.” But I know you really took extra steps here.
DeLamielleure: Yeah, I did. Me, Tony Dorsett, Leonard Marshall and Mark Duper, we went to UCLA and they tested us. We went into a tube and all this stuff. Dr. (Bennet) Omalu thought who would hit their head more than an offensive lineman — either a nose tackle or center or a guard who pulls all the time? And then the hits that backs would take. Tony Dorsett. Who’d take more hits? So they got four of us who they thought would hit our heads a lot and me probably more than anybody. And that’s why they tested us. And Dr. Omalu told my wife, “Look, he probably has more hits to his head than anybody who’s played in that time period.” Because I never missed a game or a practice. If you don’t miss a practice or a game, you’re in the mix every day, every play. So I’ve never missed a practice. And he said, “He'll be a good Guinea pig for us.” And I got it. They said, “You're Stage 3.” What’s Stage 3? “It’s bad.” My wife said, “What’s Stage 4?” And the guy said, “Autopsy.” She goes, “Oh my God.” And he says, “Yeah, but that’s just the way it is. But he’s going to react different to it than other people.” I know a lot of guys who had it and died — a lot of centers. Because as soon as they snapped the ball they got their head hit. Hand-slapped. You could look at Mike Webster and all kinds of guys who passed. So many of them are dead. I can name seven or eight guys dead who were centers. As soon as the ball was snapped, they got hit. And then they banned the head slap. So they couldn’t do that anymore after a while. But our careers were all over by the time they banned the head slap where you can’t hit somebody in the head. And it’s no one's fault. That’s just the way it was. I have no, Man, they should have known better. No, they shouldn't. How do we know? This sport evolved into what it is today.
Dunne: How are you not terrified though? At that time, we don’t know much at all about CTE. It’s new. “League of Denial” had just come out.
DeLamielleure: My kids are like, “Dad, are you OK?” And at first you’re getting these symptoms. And then all of a sudden you think, “Wait a second. I’m imagining this stuff.” I work out every day — hard. I work out an hour and a half. Then I take a sauna. I’ve done a lot of reading. I take a hot sauna and then a cold plunge. And my wife and I do it all together. We eat every 12 hours or something. We’re really conscious of it. We don’t do alcohol, don’t do marijuana, don’t do anything. So it’d be a boring life for a lot of people. I don’t think they could do it. We love it. We’re always aware of what’s going on around us.
Dunne: That’s what I’ve heard, too. That really does help. You can keep these symptoms at bay simply through your lifestyle, your habits day to day to day.
DeLamielleure: Yeah. And the other thing I did, in ’78, I was sitting in a meeting and it was boring. I mean, we only had five plays. Coach Ringo goes over the same play over and over. So we had to take notes. On my first page I said, “From this day forward, I’m going to keep a biography of what I do in my life.” Only one page. So I’ve never missed a day. I’ve got to do it tonight when I go in. I’ll give you a typical day. I get up at 5:30, walk for an hour and 15 minutes, go to 8 o’clock mass, come back, eat breakfast. And I do the same thing every day. If somebody wanted to follow me, they could kill me in a minute and jump me. I do the same route.
But we just like it. And at first when they told me that, I go, “Damn, I got this.” She goes, “You may have it, but you haven’t changed at all.” You are who you are. That’s it. And then she’s real tough about it: “Hey, we’ve got to live our lives.” You can’t worry about what’s going to happen down the road three or four years from now — mentally. I don’t remember some of the things like I used to. I used to be good with names and all that. Sometimes I’ve got to sit and think. And sometimes in bed at night, I try to think of as many names as I can. For example, I go, “OK, who’s on the Vikings?” I try to get 10 guys: Krause, Foreman. Any team I could think of where I knew the players. And I did it today. When I wake up: “OK, give me three guys I went to high school with.” And I always try to memorize stuff. And then I write about my kids and I have their first steps, first dates, their marriage. It’s unbelievable. They come over and go, “Hey, Dad, let me look at what I was doing on this day.”
Dunne: What a mental exercise.
DeLamielleure: It’s a real mental exercise. I don’t know what it is, but my wife is really smart, too. She’s a pediatric nurse. So all that stuff blended in to make me OK. I’m 74. So if you lived to 80, you’re an old man. If you lived to 74 in football and can still function, that’s pretty amazing.
Dunne: Not for nothing, too. Back when I was at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, I flew out to Colorado Springs and spent some time with Forrest Gregg. And then down to Alabama to spend some time with Bart Starr. And it was right at the start of some of their cognitive decline. But you and I talked a decade ago, and you seem as sharp now as you were then. So you’re doing something right.
DeLamielleure: I’ll tell you the truth. I pray all the time. I say a rosary every day. Today we were watering the flowers and the hose kinked. I go, “God dang it!” It’s just a normal life. But when I go to church, I always look at the people around me, and when you go daily, it’s old people. And I’ve been doing it (a long time). I go to mass in the morning to get up early, and I’d always think to myself, “Man, these people don’t look like they’re worried at all.” All the people at church are old people. And I just kept going to church, and now I’m one of those old people and people come up to me: “Man, you look great. You act like you’re a young man still.” I said, Mentally I am. Physically I’m pretty good too.” But I think a lot of it is mental.
There’s a God, that’s all. Are you Christian? Yeah, I'm Christian. I'm Catholic. What do you believe? I believe there’s a God, and you’ve got to treat people correctly. You’re not better than they are. We’re all in this thing together. So I watch this politician stuff. I go, “Oh my God, they think they're gods because they’ve been in the public eye for 50 years.” And that's not a real job. They don’t go bust their butt. They don’t dig with a shovel. They just sit in an office and shuffle papers. I like how it turned out for my wife and I. And I’m sorry that guys have CTE and there’s a high divorce rate in the NFL. But I’m glad because I know there’s a solution to this stuff. Believe in God. Believe in yourself. Take care of your family. And everything turns out pretty good. And obviously bad things happen, but it makes it a lot easier. You can accept things better.
Dunne: Words to live by.
DeLamielleure: When I played football, after a bad game, they’d say, “Oh my God, how do you feel?” I felt like crap but now I feel pretty good. I’m walking. Even back then I said, “If we can still walk, still talk, and we’d go to Ilio DiPaolo’s (restaurant)? Life is good. I got paid to play the football game. Are you kidding me? I would’ve played for nothing. I really would.
Dunne: You’d do it all over again. Even…
DeLamielleure: Absolutely. Without question. And I think Mr. Wilson and Mr. Modell, the guys I played for were icons in the NFL. They’re really the cream of the crop of the owners. They started that whole league and kept it afloat. So I was lucky to be part of that.
Dunne: That’s why I love talking to you. We can both acknowledge and try to understand and not take lightly what this game can do to your brain because it's real but also appreciate the virtues of real football. Because at any level — high school, college, pros — this makes you as a human being. It teaches you shit that nothing else can teach you. And that matters.
DeLamielleure: We were watching that Monday night game when the DB for Buffalo went down and they thought he’s going to be dead. Hamlin. My wife said, “Oh my God!” I said, “Gerri, there’s no way he’s dead.” She says, “He’s not even going to be able to walk.” I go, “That kid will walk. They’re making way more out of it.” Yeah, he had a problem. But I was so glad when he came back and he played. I said, “I told you!” She says, “Oh, you told me. You’re an idiot. This is a miracle.” I said, “No! You got to believe. That kid wanted to come back.” Once he got out of the hospital and was up, he was ready to do something. Is he playing still?
Dunne: Yeah, he was a full-time starter last year. The Bills re-signed him. We caught up for a story midway through the year, and he’s fearless. He’s throwing himself into the legs of oncoming traffic.
DeLamielleure: Oh yeah. I watch him. He’s a tough guy. And the Bills really have a good team this year. If they go to the Super Bowl or they don’t, they’re a darn good team. And Josh is an incredible player. He’s one in a million. I think he is. But we’ll see if they can win. They’re really snake bit. I think if they get to one, they’ll win it. I’m praying it’s the Lions and the Bills in the Super Bowl, and I’d want the Bills to win naturally. But I wouldn’t be upset if the Lions won either because I’ve been a Lion fan my whole life.
Dunne: What makes you think of Josh Allen as “one in a million?”
DeLamielleure: He’s big. He’s bigger than everybody. He’s faster than everybody. And I think he makes great decisions when he’s throwing the ball. And I think the guy in Baltimore is fantastic, too. But sometimes I think he’ll just throw it in there somewhere. Josh, his interceptions are few and far between, and I think he’s just better. He’s a bigger guy. When you can throw a 40-yard out in Buffalo with the wind? That’s a special player. And he can do that. He’s got an arm like a cannon. I remember Jim Kelly, too. I asked Jim what he thought of him and he said, “He’s going to really be great.” He worked with him a little when Josh came in there and he said, “No, he’s a different guy.”
Dunne: Yeah, you’d know better than anybody, the way that stadium is positioned off the lake. You better have an arm. And toughness. You played with a tough cookie in Joe Ferguson.
DeLamielleure: Oh my God. And Joe’s a good friend of mine. I always tell him, “Joe, put your calves on. You forgot ‘em!” He had the skinniest calves in the world. I said, “Can they strap two pairs of calves on your legs. It looks like you’ve got polio, bud.” And Joe, what a competitor he was. Holy cow. He could throw, too. He had one of the strongest arms I’ve ever seen. I played with Brian Sipe, and he didn't have a strong arm, but he was accurate. And he could see the field. He had split vision or something. He was the MVP of the league, too. So I played with Ferguson, I played with three MVPs: OJ twice and Brian Sipe once. And then great players like Ozzie Newsome and the Pruitts and Jim Braxton and Tony Greene. Tony Greene was a freak, too. He was like 5-10 and could dunk a football over the goalpost. How about that?
Dunne: I referenced it earlier, but that 1980 Kardiac Kids, Cleveland Browns bunch. You go 11-5. Brian Sipe’s the MVP — 4,000 yards then is what’s the equivalent? Like 6,000 yards now? Thirty touchdowns. We talked about it for the book, but the divisional round against the Raiders. The coldest game since the Ice Bowl. You’ve got to tell the story. I don’t know if many Browns fans even know the reason for the ending of that game. You lose 14-12 — the “Red Right 88” game, the interception into the wind. But there’s a reason you're not kicking the ball. And you knew that reason.
DeLamielleure: Yeah, Cockroft missed a couple, but the guy who was holding the ball — (backup QB) Paul McDonald — wore gloves while he was holding the other two. And he didn’t hold the ball right. So we’re going, “Damn!” After he held the last one and we missed it, it was obvious that it was because he was using gloves.
Dunne: Scuba gloves.
DeLamielleure: Yeah, take ‘em off. Rubber gloves. Like what the hell? It’s 32 below. Everything was slick. We should have won that game. And Cockroft, I don’t think he ever went into a game and kicked and lost it if the kick was to win it. That was like the only time he ever did that. We usually won when he kicked it. So that was my chance to go. But, man, that was a killer.
Dunne: You guys got down to the 13-yard line. A minute left. Down two. You could just burrow into the middle of the hashes to set it up.
DeLamielleure: That’s what we thought. But Coach Rutigliano didn’t have confidence in Cockroft. We missed two. He’s not going to miss three chip shots. I would think that as a head coach: “He'll make this one.” It was close and he didn’t. It was just one of those plays that made football how it is.
Dunne: You told him: “Take the f-ing gloves off! Take ‘em off!”
DeLamielleure: See, now when I think of that, I shouldn't have said “F’ing.” I should have said, “the darn gloves.” I got punished for saying “F’ing.”
Dunne: Those Raiders went on to win the Super Bowl so you’re probably thinking “if we win that game, we’re winning it all.”
DeLamielleure: I think if we played the Raiders 10 times, we'd beat ‘em nine times. If we played them on a good field, we would've beat them. We had Pruitt and Ozzie and Dave Logan. We had an offense that was unreal — the “Kardiac Kids.” There was no games we felt we couldn’t win. I thought for sure we’d kick that field goal and go on to the Super Bowl and that would be it. But anyhow, it didn’t happen.
Dunne: What a career though for Joe DeLamielleure. Peak Bills, Peak Browns for that era. Everybody should do themselves a favor and find these games on YouTube. You can get lost in some of these old clips. It’s just awesome to see you pulling and taking people out like you did.
DeLamielleure: Well, I played for Coach Ringo, who I watched as a kid. He played with Green Bay with Forrest Gregg and Jerry Kramer, and we’d go to games at Tiger Stadium and watch the Thanksgiving Day game. That was the only game we’d go to because my Dad had tickets from a beer company. Because he sold so much Altes beer. So we went to the Thanksgiving game every year, and I went to that game with my Dad. I was sitting by him and my four brothers had to sit up in nosebleeds. It was 1956 or ’57. I was a young kid, like six or seven years old. My Dad said, “You sit with me. The other guys have to go upstairs, way up.” So my brothers come down: “No, we’re taking a seat every other quarter.” And then I go, “No. Dad said no.” They punched me in the arm.
So I sat by him and they beat Green Bay on that day, which was unusual. And I told my dad, “Dad, I swear I’m going to play in this game.” I was only six or seven. And my Dad, if you took the F word out his language, he’d be a mute. He wouldn’t be able to talk. It’s just me and him sitting there with 56,000 people around. He goes, “When you f’ing do, kid, I’ll be there!” So guess what? In 1976, the Bills are playing the Lions on Thanksgiving Day. My Dad says, “When you’re there, I’m going to go.” Well, he had a heart attack like a week or two before that, and he couldn’t go to the game, but it was on TV.
So that’s when OJ broke the record for rushing. We lost the game, but he rushed for 273 yards against the Lions. It was unreal. And I told the announcer, “Hey man, mention my name if I have a couple good blocks, because my Dad is watching this in the hospital.” I had a couple good blocks and everything. I come out after the game, my Dad checked himself out of the hospital. I go, “What?” He’s standing out by the locker room. I go, “Dad, what are you doing?” He looked like Archie Bunker. He goes, “God damnit. I told you I was going to be here. I’m here.”
Dunne: That’s amazing.
DeLamielleure: I get a little teary eyed with that because my Dad only went to third grade and everybody worked in the bar and I was just a kid who had great coaching in high school and college, and I went to the right teams. Or I would've just been a guy too. You’ve got to be right place, right time.
Dunne: You earned every inch, and that’s an amazing story. Thanks so much for taking all this time. That was phenomenal. You are welcome back any time.
DeLamielleure: My wife’s going to say, “What the heck were you doing? That took forever.” I’ll say, “The guy was paying me $100 dollars an hour. Are you out of your mind?”
Dunne: I’ll have the subscribers wire it to you, Joe D. How about that?
DeLamielleure: I’d rather not have money. I'd rather have just enough to get by. Honestly, I don’t know too many rich people I like. They're kind of weird — a lot of them. Anyhow, I’ll let you go. Thank you.
Audio:
GL Pod: The Unrelenting Joy of Joe DeLamielleure
A decade ago, we met in the lobby of a Canton, Ohio hotel ahead of the Pro Football Hall of Fame inductions. I’ll never forget Joe DeLamielleure — NFL great — offering this total stranger a seat. Before we knew it, an hour passed by.
Amazing! Can’t find this stuff anywhere else!