No. 70
West Virginia
"VIOLENT WORLD" FILM STILL AVAILABLE
"It's still not too late to see 'The Violent World of Sam Huff,' the wonderful CBS television documentary which appeared on your screens last season.
Because of the warm response to the story of Huff and the great Giant defensive team, arrangements have been made for all offices of the film's sponsor, The Prudential Insurance Company, to have prints available for public distribution.
If your club or organization would like to see the stirring 30-minute show again, just contact the nearest Prudential office in your neighborhood for details."
-The Official New York Giants Newsletter, February 1961
Born in West Virginia, he will admit that his athletic ability helped him escape from coal mine labor.
One of the sharpest diagnosticians of plays, he's difficult to fool in a critical situation."
-1961 Pro Football Handbook
"'The Violent World of Sam Huff' was the title of a television documentary last Fall and it wrapped up perfectly the way Sam plays football. He more than anyone glamorized the role of the defensive player in pro ball.
An All-American tackle at West Virginia, he was thrown into a middle linebacker role his rookie pro year of 1956. The job was made to order for Sam. All-Pro the last four years, Sam is a natural at diagnosing plays. He roams the entire playing field."
-1961 Fleer No. 74
"Sam can always be counted on to flag down an enemy pass or jar a runner if it is humanly possible. He's a great pro."
-1961 Topps No. 91
HUFF- THE GREATEST
"In his violent world, there's no room for letup. Sam must bear down every minute to retain his rank as the No. 1 glamour boy of pro football's defensive stars- and this West Virginian deserves all the praise he gets.
In the Violent World of Sam Huff, the bad guy has the football and the good guy is trying to knock him down. The nation saw, via a national TV hookup, with a microphone hidden in Sam's shoulder straps, how he reacted to trespassers on his domain.
The Giants were playing the Bears in an exhibition game in Toronto, and in a moment of exuberance, a Chicago end gave Sam a solid whack with an elbow. 'You watch out now,' cautioned Sam. 'You do that one more time, No. 88, and ...' He raised a fist.
In that same game, which was being taped for a half-hour show on Sam's action-filled role as a middle linebacker for New York, Harlon Hill caught him on the sidelines and knocked him on the seat of his pants.
Hill is also a Bear end, but with more seniority than No. 88, so picking up the pieces, he turned and asked plaintively, 'What'd you do that for, Harlon?' 'Aw Sam,' answered Hill sheepishly, 'I was just trying to get on TV, too.'
Robert Lee Huff's five-year career with the Giants has brought him just about every accolade a pro can receive. He has won innumerable watches, been a big factor on three divisional championship teams, made unanimous All-Pro in 1958-59-60, cashed in on the endorsements that come with fame and definitely escaped the specter of the West Virginia coal mines.
Sam comes from a little place called Edna Gas, and the choice for him was either football or a pick and shovel. They played football on a semi-skinned field in the shadow of the mine entrance, and one day Art (Pappy) Lewis came up to the hills and persuaded Sam to enter the state university in Morgantown. Only 16 when he enrolled and 20 when he was graduated, Sam got a fair share of All-America honors and was New York's No. 2 draft choice in 1956.
The problem was what to do with this solidly built 230-pounder. At West Virginia, he played tackle, successfully manhandling such bigger men as present teammate Rosey Grier of Penn State. But playing tackle in the pros was out of the question.
He looked more like an offensive guard, which is where the other member of the West Virginia All-American tackle tandem, Bruce Bosley, wound up. Sam might have, too, if an emergency situation hadn't arisen in his rookie season. Ray Beck, playing middle guard (or middle linebacker), was hurt and the Giants needed a quick fill-in. Huff was the only man with the apparent tools. In this case, it was the job finding the man.
Immediately, the young mountaineer displayed unsuspected speed plus an instinct for this most vital of all defensive jobs, where the responsibility includes defense against both the pass and the run, and where a guy can't afford to wrong. Sam also showed a proclivity for leather-popping that pleased Jim Lee Howell, then the coach.
'I play as hard and vicious as I can,' explained Huff, 'because you've got more chance to get hurt when you're loafing. If you're going all out and you hit a guy, you hurt him instead of him hurting you.'
He learned his lesson early when, against the Forty-Niners one day, he stood serenely next to a pileup and was caught on the blind side by huge Bob St. Clair 'and nearly broke in two.' Since then, Sam has always gotten into the middle of the action.
Some wonder if Huff's fame has made him complacent. Far from it. As the publicity mounted, the Giant brass will tell you, Sam worked harder than ever to master the multiple assignments of a defensive specialist, and 1960 was one of his best seasons, topped by being named the outstanding defensive player in the Pro Bowl- a citation he considers his greatest football honor.
Sam has now moved his family to New York, where he and Mary and the three little Huffs live comfortably on the auxiliary income he gets as a cigarette company representative. But he's not completely divorced from West Virginia, having bought a farm back there for his folks, who raise Shetland ponies. Sam can remember how much he wanted one as a kid."
-Murray Olderman, Sports All-Stars 1961 Pro Football
"Sam Huff (70) has been a unanimous All-Pro selection for the last four of his six years as a Giant. As middle linebacker, the baby-faced West Virginian has been a key spoke in the intractable Giant defense. A hard-hitting 230-pounder who ranges from sideline to sideline, Sam delights in a personal challenge. He has authored classics of containment against Jim Brown and other noted NFL fullbacks."
-1961 Official New York Giants Program
IS SAM HUFF'S WORLD REALLY THAT VIOLENT?
"The most publicized of a new breed of sports' glamour boys, Sam stands out as a symbol of pro football fury. What does he do to deserve the ballyhoo?
For a few startling moments the tranquility of Sunday television was shattered by unrehearsed man-to-man combat that viewers all across the U.S. flinched as one. The amplified whack of padded bodies and helmeted heads resounded across living rooms like an invasion soundtrack from 'Victory at Sea.' In the untangling of arms and legs after the collision a puffing, high-pitched voice said: 'What you doing there, 88? You do that once more, 88, and I'm going to sock you.'
The public never learned whether 88 got socked. The mike, remote control and antenna that the New York Giants' linebacker, Sam Huff, wore during the exhibition game with the Bears was jarred out of service a few plays later. But millions of televiewers had a brief, realistic glimpse into The Violent World Of Sam Huff, as CBS-TV had titled its half-hour documentary on pro football. For Sam it was yet another publicity chore as the game's most publicized defender. His wide face, set with a wide West Virginia grin beneath a ruler-straight crewcut, is as familiar in ads. He was picked by Bobby and Ted Kennedy to introduce the future President of the United States in his hometown in West Virginia during the 1960 nomination campaign. He has gathered more newspaper and magazine credits than most of the passers and ball-carriers in the league. John David Crow of the St. Louis Cardinals, generally regarded by the pros as their best all-around back until he broke an ankle last August, is a virtual nobody compared to Sam. At Yankee Stadium, where even Sam's routine efforts get booming acclaim, the fans ask 'Who'd Sam hit?' instead of 'Who made the tackle?'
Huff's deserving prominence is as much a measure of the change in pro football as the distance he has come from his birthplace in the small mining camp of Edna Gas, West Virginia. Sam's job has grown in importance and complexity with the advance of the defense, which has taken greater strides than the offense in the last half-dozen years in the National Football League. The touchdown heroes in the backfield might as well face up to it: the once slovenly job of breaking up pass plays and making tackles is not only respectable, it's downright glorious. And nowhere down the defensive alignment is the duty more eyecatching than at the post of middle linebacker. If the middle linebacker is a strong one, like Huff, linemen up front may systematically funnel runners to him so that he makes the most noticeable and resounding tackles on the field. With the cooperation of the tackle stationed ahead of him, he often leads the charge as the linebackers shoot across the line in an attempt to smother the quarterback before he gets rid of the ball. Standing in the center and close to the line of scrimmage the middle linebacker even has the advantage of looking innocent of guilt on most completed pass plays. The well-exposed defensive halfbacks take the blame from the crowds when a pass in completed.
Huff, as an individual and as a member of the Giants' renowned defensive squadron, has been much responsible for the ascending popularity of the defense. For three or four seasons he has been one of the league's most virulent and emphatic tacklers. Some say his nose is matchless for its ability to sniff out an enemy strike before it happens, enabling him to be at the right spot at the right time. Sam's nose has another quality that endears him to the Sunday crowds. It is hard. He has a way of walking and talking tough that is recognizable to seatholders stuck in the upper rows of the third deck at Yankee Stadium. Taking a position just off the enemy center, Sam waits in semi-coil, his thick arms that have doomed so many running plays hanging loosely in front of him. If his helmet and face guard are bobbing slightly, Sam is prodding his huge helpmates in the front line of defense: 'C'mon, Rosey. Put it on him this time. Put it on him.' As the middle linebacker, Sam has special license to needle his teammates and jockey the opposition. Sam, a born yakker, takes naturally to the duty. (When asked what are the most important factors in his job as linebacker, Sam says, 'First, you gotta be a leader.') Sam often goes right on yammering after the play has been whistled dead. ('You do that once more, 88 ... '). It is not easy to forget that Huff is in the game.
Sam not only talks and acts tough, he is tough. The growing cult of defense worshippers in the pro cities like to discuss tactics, but they are sustained by the sights and sounds of knifelike tackles in an open field, of frontal assaults that bury the quarterback for desperate losses, of thunderous goal-line stands that pile a couple of tons of beef on the ball. The Giant fans who leap to their feet to greet the defensive team (and thus give the snub to the offense) and have developed their own rhythmic locomative cheer ('Huff-Huff-Huff-Huff-Huff') are in effect saluting the triumph of matter over mind. The tough guys are coming in to take care of the slick ball-handlers. Sam and Andy and Livvy and the others will 'put it on them.'
It is of course time that the defense was given its due. For years the linemen and linebackers took their cleatmarks in sullen silence with barely a ripple of recognition. They were ignored at the stadium, at the pay window, at the winter banquets. Small boys seldom tugged at their sleeves for autographs. Gag writers made jokes about them; song writers left them out of their lines. (Recall the old pop tune 'You've Got To Be A Football Hero.' Didn't it say, 'You've got to be a touchdown-getter, you bet- if you want to get a baby to pet.'?) The defender's lot was a miserable one.
The skilled practitioners of defense today deserve the acclaim they are getting, not only for their importance and spectacular ferocity with which they carry out their jobs but also for the complex methods they have mastered. As we shall see later, Huff's mental responsibilities in a game would have overtaxed the mind of the quarterback 20 years ago. The Violent World of Sam Huff is really the Complicated World of Sam Huff.
In his television hit, Sam introduced himself and his job by saying, 'There's no place for nice guys. I feel good when I hit someone ... We have a saying for it. Kill or be killed.' Huff was stating his case a bit strongly. He admits that the growing complexity of the game has cut down on the space and time for premeditated violence. 'If you want to play dirty football,' Sam says, 'it will cost you. It will cost you a $50 fine from the league. It hurts you and the team. We take and give some pretty good shots. But there isn't much use in slugging it out. With all those pads and masks, a guy could bust a hand.'
There was a period just before Sam got into the business when the 'hatchet men' were cutting a wide swath through the league. Ed Sprinkle, the Chicago Bears' defensive end, was popularly known as The Claw. He had a rude way of upending quarterbacks. It consisted of cupping his left hand under their chin and then tugging it as if to separate head from neck. Y.A. Tittle of the Giants says that it got so a passer kept one eye out for the receiver and the other for Sprinkle. Linebacker Les Richter, still a good defender for the Rams, once provoked Don Joyce to the pitch of fury. Joyce ripped off Richter's helmet and then clobbered him with it. The damage to Richter required 13 stitches. Back in the day when violence was in full flower and the late Commissioner Bert Bell was not too busy denying it, one hatchet job usually led to another. Len Ford of the Cleveland Browns, who had a pulverizing way of completing his assignments as a defensive end, was blitzed by Pat Harder, the appropriately named fullback of the then-Chicago Cardinals. Harder's one-man rush broke Ford's cheekbone and jaw. Coach Paul Brown tried unsuccessfully to get the Cardinals to pay for Ford's hospital bill.
But even if today's pros are inclined to vicious retribution they use more finesse and more restraint. The worst- or at least the most conspicuous- altercation of Huff's pro career was with a coach, not a player. It occurred in the heat of the 1959 championship game with the Baltimore Colts and was one of the most uneven matches ever seen in Yankee Stadium. Fortunately, Sam hurt no one. The Colts' fine end, Raymond Berry, caught a pass on the sideline and was immediately hit around the ankles. Sam came in to finish him off. Coach Weeb Ewbank, a spunky little man, was standing a few feet away and he charged Sam, fists flying. 'Huff kneed my man,' The Baltimore coach said after the game. 'He should have been thrown out.' Said Huff after the game, 'I got up and the first thing, he swung at me.' Only two blows were struck, one per man.
When he first played pro, Huff's huffy attitude seemed certain to get him in trouble. But he is proud of the fact that he has never been thrown out of a game- 'not on high school or college or pro,' he reminds you. He has his own set of teeth, which is more than most of college players could boast a few years ago. He worries less about a well-aimed forearm across the face than he does about a blindside block that knock him rolling- and might cave in a leg. 'The knees and shoulders are what you worry about as a linebacker,' he says. 'Look what happed to Jim (Katcavage) last year. (He fractured his shoulder.) 'The cleat marks and bruises you get from those face guards, they're gone in a couple of days. It's the hard clean shot that comes when you are neither relaxed nor looking that really hurts.'
To prime himself for the fury of the game, Huff begins building up a tough mental attitude early in the summer. 'From the minute practice begins in July until the season ends, you make yourself mean,' he says. 'You get mad. From the minute I come on the field, I say to myself, I'm going be the meanest guy on this field. I'm gonna to give it to anybody I can get a shot at. I'm mad at everyone of them. Hell with them all. Look out for ole Sam Huff. He's mean today.
'It's like that all season. You got to mean. Then- boom- the season's over and I have to change my way of living in ten minutes. If somebody bumps into me, I have to be ready. If I don't think about what I'm doing, I'll bang him as hard as I can. Before I realize what I'm doing. I'll be standing in the grocery store and the town banker will be on the floor.
'You've got to start thinking normal again. I remember after the first year my wife and I went to a dance and there was this guy who kept rubbing his hand over the top of my brush-cut. He did about that about twice and I got ready to give him a bang. But I had to remember where I was. For a few weeks or so it was hard to calm my nerves down. It was harder the next year. It gets easier to be mean and harder to get out of it at the end of the season. Pretty soon, there's no in between. You can be mean all year-round. That can happen when you've been in pro football too long.'
Sam's background served him for the tough profession he has chosen. Born in Edna Gas, which is hard to locate on even the most detailed roadmaps of West Virginia, he was raised and schooled in Farmington (pop. about 800). The town lies just west of the Monongahela River valley in the soft-coal, hard living hills in the northern end of the state. In per capita income and employment statistics, the area ranks well downt he U.S. scale. Automation runs the soft coal mines now. A section which once required 12 men to do the job is mined by machine and couple of operators. But while the economy of the land is uncertain, it maintains a strong fascination for the representatives, both amateur and professional, of the college football departments who hunt for elibigle-sized young males. Give an experienced football scout a drawing compass and a map of the United States, and tell him to make a circle around his most productive territory, chances the line will contain Farmington, West Virginia, as well as a good slice of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Sam was the fourth child of six. His brothers were stocky but his father and mother were of modest size. He weighed ten and one-half pounds and was named Robert Lee. Where did the name Sam come from? Sam says it was the customary thing around his household to ignore people's given names and call them something else. 'My brother Donald was always Buck. My sister Martha Jane was Kooky. My sister Mildred was Mickey. I was called Sambino at first and then Sam.' (Sam likes the name just except when it shows up in the newspaper as 'Smilin' Sam the Hatchet Man.' He says: 'I don't like it because 'Hatchet Man' means dirty player. I'm no dirty player. 'Smilin' Sam' is all right because I smile quite a bit.')
Sam was born in the middle of the Depression- 1934- and there were plenty of reminders of it in Farmington. His father worked irregularly. The townspeople stood in line for flour. The face of a Depression is always dark and gaunt around the coal fields. Sam says he was not made aware of the hard times. He was always adequately clothed and fed. 'It wasn't bad but it wasn't fancy,' he said. 'I was never out of West Virginia until I went to college so I didn't know anything else. I was pretty much satisfied with what I had. I always wanted a pony, I remember. Now I've got seven at my father's place.' (His father still works as a loader in the mines, commuting daily from the small farm Sam bought three years ago.) Life around Farmington was inclined to make the younger generation lean and self-sufficient. 'If you saw someone walking around with a chip on his shoulder you knocked it off,' Sam said. 'It was that kind of place.'
A neighbor remembers Sam was 'a little old skinny boy who had a hot temper and lots of mouth.' But he learned to check his temper and he began to put on weight after his tonsils were removed at the age of 13. One summer between school sessions, he put on more than 30 pounds.
Sam's football playing has nearly blotted out the memory of his other school activities at Farmington. He was considered a better-than-average, an eager participant in activities. He was president of the senior's letterman club. Under Sam's smiling portrait in the 1952 Farmington High School yearbook, The Lincolneer, is this poetic tribute which is full of information, if not iambic pentameter:
'This goodlooking boy is our muscle man,
At football he is great;
Sammy used his brains as well as brawn,
He made first team, Class B, All State.'
Long before Sam made first team, Class B, All State, he was attracting the attention of colleges near and far south. Pittsburgh, always alert to good prospects on the other side of the state line, put in a bid. The University of Florida was eager to land him. West Point sent out a feeler, unaware of the fact that Sam had a mark against his name that would never get him by the admissions board at the academy. He and his best girl, Mary Fletcher, were married their senior year in high school. Although Sam says he was willing to consider the most attractive college offer, he admits that few of the campus football salesmen stood a chance against Art (Pappy) Lewis, the homespun teacher and recruiter of football players at West Virginia University in nearby Morgantown. 'He was the best darn recruiter I ever heard,' Sam says. 'Why Joe Marconi (a fullback from Pennsylvania who became Sam's bosom pal on campus), couldn't get Pappy out of the house until he agreed to go back with him. Pappy just sat in the kitchen, feet up in a chair and talked and talked.'
Lewis had a way of saying, 'You coming up here with me, son?' that melted the stiffest mountaineer resolve. Pappy got most of the 'sons' he went after, including Farmington's young muscleman Robert Lee Huff. Lewis had sent an assistant to line up one of Sam's teammates, Rudy Banick. But Sam's size, speed and the roaring glee with which he chased halfbacks made him Pappy's first target. 'He hunted even then,' Lewis said. Pappy liked 'hunters' and 'walking dogs.' His first question about a backfield prospect was: 'Does the boy like the briar patch (the middle of the line).'
Freshmen were eligible for the varsity at West Virginia in the fall of 1952. Lewis wasted no time in letting Huff hunt college ball-carriers. He played him in the season's opener, a losing game with Furman, and Sam was a starting Mountaineer from then on. Because he was a married man and had a first son, Sammy Lee, while he was on campus, Huff was devoted to his work on the football field and in the classroom. He was a 'C' student in the Physical Education department with a minor concentration in 'industrial arts.' A professor remembers: 'Sam was no genius but he was far from stupid. He took the work seriously.' One he flunked a history course- Sam can't recall whether is was ancient or contemporary- but he dug into the book and got an 'A' in the makeup. When winter closed in on the campus at Morgantown, and it usually did early and hard, Huff kept in trim by playing intramural basketball. He and Bruce Bosley, who was named to more All-America teams in 1955 than Sam, were two of the most fearsome backcourt men ever seen at basketball-crazy West Virginia. 'The other team never took the ball off our boards,' Bosley once boasted. 'It wasn't that Sam and I beat 'em to the ball. We just didn't permit any rebounds.'
With Huff, Bosley, Marconi (each of whom made the pros) and a good split-T quarterback in Fred Wyant, West Virginia enjoyed some of its most prosperous football seasons. The Mountaineers lost only six games in the four years of Sam Huff. There were 31 victories and an invitation to step out of their class and into the Sugar Bowl with Georgia Tech on January 1, 1954. The boys had fun visiting New Orleans but Georgia Tech passed them dizzy. The final score was 42-19.
Sam enjoyed his widening experience at Morgantown and the brief flashes of publicity (after all he was only a lowly lineman). But he was occasionally jolted back to the realities of mining life in Farmington. Sam had not worked in the mines and he was determined he wouldn't get yanked into them as some of his football teammates had. Once when he was returning by plane from a William & Mary game, Pappy Lewis approached him with a grave face and said, 'Son, I want to talk with you. We got word there was an explosion in the mine where your dad works. We don't know how many got out. But we wanted you to know about it before you got back.' Sam raced off the plane at the Pittsburgh airport and put in a call to his home. He learned that his father was all right- he had not been in the mine that day- but the explosion had killed 17 men, including his uncle.
Unknown to undergraduate Huff toiling for West Virginia, he was getting a taste of his post-graduate work when he played against traditional foe Penn State and the strangers from Syracuse. Across the scrimmage line from him in the Penn State was a massive figure in blue and white uniform with the unlikely name of Roosevelt Grier. Sam had been warned about Roosevelt Grier. Roosevelt had been described as the largest and toughest lineman Sam would be asked to face for his board-room-tuition plus. The first time the two met, Sam was outweighed by nearly 30 pounds. He butted against Grier all afternoon without seriously disrupting the man's- or Penn State's- plans. The next time around Sam had been carefully schooled in the art of handling giants. Said Pappy Lewis: 'We really got him ready in the spring for Grier. Our defensive coach, Sam Crane, showed Huff how a little man, around 215, moved a big guy, say 250. You got to hit him low. I don't care how low as long as you hit him low.'
Huff learned the lesson well. He submarined Grier, slicing low on his charge. Sometimes, just to make the play stick, he grabbed an ankle- which is permissable in college ball as long as it is done in the bottom of a scrimmage, far from the prying eyes of the officials. Today Sam and Rosey are a one-two defensive assault for the Giants, a combination that leaves quarterbacks aching with discouragement. They needle one another. They exchange good-natured profane insults. On many of the Giants defensive maneuvers, they work pad-to-pad with each other.
Against Syracuse, Huff was initiated into the I-Was-Run-By-Jimmy-Brown Club, which had members scattered in colleges from New York to Texas. Huff's first glimpse of Brown was a fleeting one. West Virginia was lining up for the kickoff and Huff looked far down the field and saw No. 44 and remembered that he was the guy he was not supposed to kick to. In their preparations for Syracuse the coaches had made a long list of 'don'ts' with Jimmy Brown. Near the top of the list was: 'Don't kick off to Jimmy Brown.' But Huff made his kickoff too square and true. Brown got under it and -whoosh- he ran it back to the West Virginia 30. On the third scrimmage Brown took the ball and when he broke loose, Joe Marconi went after his twinkling feet and Brown ran right over him for a touchdown (which was erased by a penalty). Later Huff took his own first, frustrating shot at the Syracuse halfback. Sam was mighty impressed with what little he saw. Brown's flickering outline was further dimmed by a steady snowstorm. Huff, Bosley, Marconi and the other seniors lost their last game to Syracuse, 20-13. Huff and Jimmy Brown have developed one of the keener personal rivalries in the National Football League, a one o' cat version of the Giants vs. the Browns. It has been dramatized by the Giants' occasional defensive tactic of giving a carte blanche, i.e., letting him devote all of his attention to Brown. Huff has scored well in these man-to-man duels but he has lost little of the respect for Brown that he first acquired in a November snowstorm in 1955.
Huff's last season at West Virginia included the usual accumulation of fringe benefits that go to the top two dozen college football heroes each year. He was invited to the Christmas holiday all-star games; he made a respectable number of the All-America teams, including NEA, NBC-TV, Look and the American People's Encyclopedia All-America, which thoughtfully sent along a set of volumes with the citation. Huff would have had more All-America calls had he not been a teammate of Bruce Bosley. Apparently many selectors, informed of the strong merits of both West Virginia tackles, picked the first one they came across in the alphabetical lineup.
With all the blurbs and requests Sam received from the athletic publicity office, the most important news to him was an AP report on the National Football League player draft. The New York Giants picked him in the third round. Sam is not being immodest when he says he is not surprised. He had had a good year and defensive linemen are coveted by the pros. Frank (Gunner) Gatski, in his hometown, had gone from little Marshall College to play center for the Cleveland Browns- and lasted for years. Sam believed he was up to the job. The Giants, however, made no great fuss over him (this was a period between football wars when teams knew no one was going to beat them to their draftee with a better offer). They didn't contact him until he came to New York to participate in the Look All-America social. A stranger walked up to him and said, 'I'm Wellington Mara of the Giants.'
Sam's actual introduction to the Giants was just as abrupt and far less pleasant. Before reporting to pro camp in the summer of 1956, he had to put in his appearance with the College All-Stars, a mandatory assignment for all NFL rookies who have been tapped for the game. The exhibition is a costly nuisance for the players, who lose precious getting-to-know-you time with their employers. Each year the pros lose good players who show up late because of the All-Star game and are unable to catch up in their abbreviated trial periods. The Giants nearly lost Huff this way.
On a Friday night Sam played with Curly Lambeau's All-Stars in Soldier Field, Chicago, against the champion Cleveland Browns- and took his first pro licks. Don Colo, Cleveland's Ivy League tackle wtih a Big Ten wallop, gave Sam an introductory course in submarine warfare. Sam retaliated, openly and indelicately. By his own account, he was penalized 45 yards for unruly conduct.
The next day Sam and two other All-Star Giant rookies, Jim Katcavage from Dayton and Don Chandler from the University of Florida, reported to St. Michael's College in Winooski Park, Vermont, where the New York team had been sweating out for two weeks. It was as if three Eagle Scouts had been dropped into the middle of boot camp at Parris Island and told they were a little late, soldier, and that they had better shape up, soldier. The new brick dormitory at St. Michael's was familiar enough and Winooski, once a thriving mill town, reminded Sam of his own hometown in West Virginia. But the familiarity ended there. On Sunday, hardly 24 hours after he had removed his All-Star identifications, Sam was a nobody lost in the middle of a rugged scrimmage. Sam was not sure what he was supposed to be doing but he was sure he was making a mess of things. He was surrounded by huge players who obviously knew what it was all about. They were only a blur of white shirts and red shirts to Huff, but fans around the league would have recognized their names: Andy Robustelli, Bill Svoboda, Harland Svare, Dick Modzelewski, Ray Beck.
'It was all pretty strange and impersonal,' Sam said of his first days as a Giant. 'I wasn't used to the treatment. They tried me at guard, then defensive tackle, then offensive tackle. I felt whipped. And I felt homesick.'
In the depths of his discouragement, Sam forgot all about the warning his West Virginia coaches used to throw at the squad from time to time on the practice field at Morgantown: 'If you don't like it you can get yourself a good ole No. 3 shovel,' which meant you can go back home to the mines and dig cole just like your daddy used to do.
Sam and Don Chandler discussed their unhappy lot in their dorm room at night and decided to pack up and leave. Sam told assistant coach Vince Lombardi and got a good bawling out. Then line coach Ed Kolman softened them up some more. He said to forget their disappointing start. The Giants believed they had the stuff of which good pros are made. The boys unpacked.
By the start of the season, Huff had clinched an inglorious job on the suicide squad- the expandables who kickoff, run back kickoffs and give and receive those open-field blocks that draw 'ooohs' and 'wows' all over the Stadium. Sam started right in, yelling and leading, on kickoffs. He made each kickoff run as if it were a personal assault on a pillbox. After three games Ray Beck was forced out with an injury and Sam had a regular job as a linebacker in the Giants' new 4-3 defense. No one has seriously threatened his right to be there ever since.
Huff thinks the best year he has had as a pro may well have been his first one. At least his accomplishments were so spectacular that even the average fan could see and appreciate them. He took the field against Cleveland as the middleman in the Giants' second line of defense between the experienced Harland Svare, who retired this year to become defensive coach, and Bill Svoboda. The Browns' offense strategists picked out Huff right away as the possible weak link they could exploit. They were certainly going to find out. With Ed Modzelewski (brother of the Giants' Dick) at fullback, the Cleveland attack swung to the middle and began to hammer away inside the tackles. Sam began to make the tackles. Every other play- it seemed- riding or driving another ball-carrier to the ground. 'I made the tackles,' he says now, 'because they kept running right at me.' In the Giants' defense of five years ago, the middle linebacker had license to do more roaming than he does now. Huff made tackles all over the field, from sideline to sideline.
Huff admits that the tackles have become harder, the job has become more demanding and complicated. The fullbacks and halfbacks no longer run at him to find out how much he can take. Both Sam and the job have grown up.
The linebacker is now 'the No. 1 enemy of the offense' in the words of the Baltimore Colts' assistant coach, Charley Winner. But it wasn't long ago that the linebacker (and the defense had but one) was simply an extra lineman, picking up the pieces for the guards and tackles or covering their errors. Here is how one of the old football annuals described the responsibilities of the job:
'On running plays directed to his area, the linebacker moves in aggressively and makes the tackle. If there is interference moving through the hole he closes up the area by driving through the blocker. He never goes around a blocker but pursues a collision course with the blocker to get to the ball carrier.' In short, it was simple, grubby duty that took guts, a hard nose and a willingness to throw himself under the cleats of the interference. This was the lot of the linebacker in the days of the classic diamond defense, the 7-1-2-1. Until the boys decided it was easier and quicker to pass than run, the diamond served adequately. As the pass became more frequent the first line of defense became shorter. A guard or center was dropped off to 'back up the line' and keep an eye out for the short pass. The linebacker in the 6-2-2-1 was still a free-lance lineman with great freedom. His responsibility: go where the ball goes (and please don't chase those fancy fakes around end). A good linebacker was there and waiting when the ball-carrier plowed through the line.
Pro defenses, harassed and split by improving passers, evolved to a 5-4. The alignment included a 'middle guard' who was supposed to hit quick and drop back. Les Bingaman, the mammoth guard for the Detroit Lions, was the outsized prototype for this position. But the middle guard was not getting the job done on passes and the defense planners decided to start him out of the line. This led to the 4-3-4, the basic framework for most defenses in the National Football League today. The 4-3-4 has some exacting physical requirements. The first four- two tackles, two ends- should weigh well over a half ton (240 to 280 each). On the Giants, ends Jim Katcavage and Andy Robustelli and insiders Roosevelt Grier and Dick Modzelewski fall just before the weight requirements but make up for it in ability and experience. Linebackers should range around 'a fast 230.' Huff, Tom Scott, Cliff Livingston- the Giants' veteran linebackers- fit the requirement, although Cliff is taller and narrower than the others. The four deep defenders can be lighter but must be faster.
With the new defense arrangements- and physical requirements- there has developed a complex method of procedure that no longer tolerates a linebacker roving at will behind the line. The Giants have 30 different maneuvers from their 4-3-4 and each man has a specific responsibility on each call. The defense, in effect, has become as complicated as the offense. When, with the snap of the ball, Huff and Rosey Grier make a sudden, coordinated thrust and drive hell-bent on the passer, it is no quick inspiration on their part to take advantage of a hole in the offensive line. The rush (blitz or red dog, in defense terminology) was called by Robustelli in that casual-looking little get-together the defense team has while the offense huddles over its affairs.
All NFL teams move their defensive players to meet varying situations and to surprise the offense. Most of them call defensive 'plays' as do the Giants and maneuver units within the team; that is, the middle linebacker and the two tackles may work together on a special job, such as a three-man assault on the passer. The Giants deserve credit for doing much of the pioneering and perfecting that has resulted in the highly complex- and confounding- defense. New York football has meant sound defensive football since coach Steve Owen made it a sacred duty with the Giants in the 1930s and 1940s. When Jim Lee Howell took charge in 1954, he turned the defense over to deep-thinking assistants, including Tom Landry. It was Landry who rigged the Giants'present defense to the good personnel and produced the most efficient, aggressive goal-tending outfit the league has ever seen. One envious coach in the league said: 'Sure the Giants' linebackers and deep backs are about as strong a set as any. But that team is exceedingly good at typing an opponent. No offense is perfect and the Giants seem to know where each little imperfection is. They know what a team will do in a given situation at a certain spot on the field. Look how well they have contained the Browns who have good passing, great strength to the inside with Brown and the big threat to the outside with Mitchell. The Giants always seem to know what to expect.'
But the clever planning in the game would not stop a versatile offense like the Browns' without a Sam Huff thinking, reacting and hitting on his own. As Sam takes his defensive position a shade off the opposing center he may be well schooled on the probabilities of the play coming up, but how soon he stops it depends on his own diagnosis and reaction. The linebacker's responsibilities, play after play, are heavier than those of the other defenders. In any given situation he may be called upon to one of the following:
1) Throw off a block and stop the run.
2) Maneuver like a defensive halfback and break up a pass.
3) Slow down or harass an end or back, causing him to run a pattern he didn't intend to.
4) Rush the passer.
What Huff does depends on what he sees (as well as what he hears from defensive play-caller Andy Robustelli). Sam takes his 'key' from a center, a halfback or fullback. The key tells him the nature and direction of the play; that is, it does if he has read the key correctly. 'You have to move when your key does,' Sam says. 'If you hesitate too long they'll reach you with a blocker.' Sam has a catalog of 'keys' tucked away in his mind. Some are based on the habits of a particular player; others are based on the offensive characteristics of the team he is facing.
If, for example, Huff is keying on the fullback and the fullback drops back to protect the passer on the right, Sam may know the pass will go in that direction because the particular fullback usually protects the passer on his throwing side. Some centers never lose the habit of putting extra pressure on the ball when they're supposed to drive ahead and block on a running play.'You can read most of the backs in the league,' Sam says. 'If the halfback has cheated a little you know he's coming in and they're going to run a slant to the other half. From his upright position Sam can read hands and feet in the backfield. Some otherwise slick halfbacks tip their hand (or feet) when they're set to fly on a long pass by assuming the classic sprinter's position. Huff learns little while listening to or watching quarterbacks. The good ones never show their hand until they have unloaded the pass.
The toughest play for the middle linebacker to make, even when he can see or sense its development, is the draw. It was an old standby with the Cleveland Browns long before Huff arrived on the pro scene. The original masters of the draw were quarterback Otto Graham and fullback Marion Motley, who turned the maneuver into a linebacker's nightmare. The play is now an old chestnut, but the best of linebackers get burned by it when it is done to perfection by perfectionists like Milt Plum and Jimmy Brown. The draw is a fake pass in which ends go down and out, halfbacks flare wide to open up the defense. The fullback waits in a crouch as if to protect the quarterback who is striding back into pass position. The ruse is carried further by the offensive linemen who let the first assault wave get part way before bumping them to the outside. The 'pass' becomes a run when the quarterback slips the ball to the fullback who starts to the left or right then starts up the middle. Since the draw play is pulled on a charging line that anticipates a pass, the offensive guards and center often have no major problem except to obliterate the middle linebacker. 'What makes the draw so tough,' Huff says, 'is that they've got a blocker on you before you hardly know what's up. You've got to get a quick drop on the pass (because that's the way it starts out). But the draw is set up because you've got a rush on, so you've got to help out. It's no longer just the fullback who comes booming through on the draw. They've got draw plays for the halfbacks, too.'
The draw takes advantage of overzealousness on the part of the defense, reminding the four linemen and three linebackers that a hard rush can be costly. One of the secrets of the Giants' success on defense is that the blitz, or red dog, if you prefer, is called with great discretion. (In the Giants' defense huddle the call 'Bad Weather' means an all-out blitz. 'Blitz Meg' is Sam's personal number.) But even the Giants can get stung by their aggressive shooting. Last November when the Philadelphia Eagles were moving resolutely to the division title they were suddenly stymied by the Giants at Yankee Stadium. Quarterback Norm Van Brocklin spent the first half in the clutches of the Giant red dog, throwing hurried passes that seldom reached Bobby Walston, Pete Retzlaff or Tommy McDonald, his favorite targets. 'Those Giants came after me like I was a piece of chocolate cake in the first half,' Van Brocklin said. 'I'd take two steps and Grier would have me by one leg and Modzelewski by the other.' But Van Brocklin foiled the blitz and the Giants in the second half. The Eagles let the Giants penetrate and Van Brocklin shredded them with short, look-in passes just over the line. Once Huff was caught in the trap. The Eagles, who had suffered in the past from Sam's deadly tackling and knew he liked to move up and hit the runner by the line, drew him in by faking to the fullback and then springing rookie Ted Dean into the area that Huff had vacated. Van Brocklin hit Dean with a long-gaining pass.
Huff's tackles, which raise the animal cry in Yankee Stadium, are as lasting and genuine as any in football. There are words for Sam's ability in an old nursery rhyme:
Sam is nimble; Sam is quick;
Sam makes every tackle stick.
Huff can make a slamming tackle on a runner even when the offense has a partial block on him. Against San Francisco in 1957, Y.A. Tittle, then of the 49ers, faded and tossed a flat-screen pass to Hugh McElhenny, who took it on the sidelines with two blockers- Bruce Bosley and Lou Palatella- in front of him. The minute Tittle dropped back, Huff diagnosed the play. Sam headed for the sideline and was coming on full speed as McElhenny grabbed the pass. With one smacking motion, Sam put a hand on Bosley's chest, another on Palatella's and slammed both of them into the ball-carrier. They went down in a play-ending heap.
When he gets a head-on shot at a fullback pounding up the middle or on an unsuspecting end- heaven help him- who is reaching up for a little swing pass over center, Huff is as neat and complete as a guillotine. The speed and force of the tackle are all Sam's, but the technique was handed down by Tom Landry, now the Dallas coach. 'In high school and college they tell you to lead with your head,' Sam says, 'but Landry taught us to put our shoulder in the runner's rib cage and our head to the small of the back. This way he may still outrun you but if he tries to cut back you've got him head-on. The best tackle is the one that gets the runner down the easiest for you. Take Mitchell of Cleveland- you hit HIM low and you get air. Go in high with the shoulder and be sure you come down on top of him. Brown? Don't tackle him high because he's bigger than you. Hit him low, hang on and hope that help comes.' (With no disrespect to Brown or Mitchell, Huff rates John David Crow of the Cardinals as the best all-around back in the league.)
Huff has been the best man for the job for so long (about three seasons) that all linebackers are measured against him. In Detroit the local partisans say that Sam is outyelled and outhit by Joe Schmidt. In Chicago, Bill George gets support as the best middle man in the league. The Bears give George more liberty to roam around than Sam has. In Green Bay ex-Giant coach Vince Lombardi has built his hard-nosed defense around a tough set of linebackers- corner men Dan Currie and Bill Forester and middle man Ray Nitschke. In Los Angeles, middle linebacker Les Richter is as much a crowd favorite as the Rams' swift backs. But Huff has the advantage of playing with the most astute defense in football. He has been given fine support by a pair of unsung cornermen- Cliff Livingston and, until he turned coach, Harland Svare.
Huff, at 26, is at his linebacking prime. His serious approach to his exacting job was made clear again last summer when he reported to the Giants for his sixth season. He was 12 pounds underweight- as lean and hungry-looking as a 218-pound strongman can be. In his room at Fairfield University a huge 15-pound box of chocolate and peanut butter fudge candy- homemade by a West Virginia admirer- rested on a bedside table. His teammates paraded through the room, picking the box clean. Sam protested but not loudly. Each piece missed was a piece of a tackle he wouldn't miss during the season. However, Huff did get up to his 230 playing weight without sacrificing any of his mobility.
It is not simply love of combat or 'that good feeling when I hit someone' that keeps Sam lean and mean and at the top of the game. He has a family of three (Sammy Lee, now nine; Kathy, four; and Joe D., two, who is named after Joe Marconi, not Joe DiMaggio) and homes in Flushing, New York, and Rock Lake, West Virginia. His accumulating fame has given him a profitable sales territory for a cigarette company. The Giants are willing to pay him approximately $12,500 for staying on the ball from August through December. It's a tough, demanding way to pick up a pay check, but Sam is not about to give up for 'a little ole No. 3 shovel.' "
-Jack Newcombe, Sport Magazine, December 1961
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