Speaker 1: It's time for another episode of TATS from the Past podcast.
Speaker 2: Matt Smith pleased to be joined by one of.
Speaker 1: The all time great Patriots, former tight end, Rus Francis,
Speaker 1: all the way up from Connecticut. Thank you for coming
Speaker 1: up here and really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2: Great to see you.
Speaker 3: It's great to see you, Matt.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me so for the new a
Speaker 1: fight Patriot fans who might only think of tight ends
Speaker 1: and Rob Gronkowski. I don't know how accurate this is,
Speaker 1: but Russ Francis was Rob Gronkowski before Gronk averaging you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes seventeen yards a catch famously known or coined the
Speaker 1: phrase by all world announcer Howard Cosel, Russ was the
Speaker 1: all worlds tight end. If you're watching Monday Night Football
Speaker 1: and listen to the halftime highlights, that's how Cosel called
Speaker 1: Russ Francis on two of the great pre craft Patriot
Speaker 1: teams of all time, nineteen seventy six and nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately they never got a cheat to win it all. Rush.
Speaker 1: Before we start talking about your football career and everything,
Speaker 1: I know you're living in Connecticut. Why don't you tell
Speaker 1: what Patriot fans know what's you're up to these days.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you mentioned Brook Gronkowski. Rob what
Speaker 3: a monster he is. I mean, there's a guy that
Speaker 3: can do everything. So I just wanted another Patriot tight end,
Speaker 3: which I'm very, very proud to tell people about. From
Speaker 3: time to time, I'm in Hawaii. Part of the time,
Speaker 3: I'm in Oregon. Family got a place in Cody, Wyoming,
Speaker 3: and as you mentioned, in Connecticut. So I'm still traveling.
Speaker 3: I still love to do that, visit family, visit friends,
Speaker 3: and I run into fans all over the place. Not
Speaker 3: just Patriots fans or forty nine er fans because of
Speaker 3: the time I spent there, but NFL fans, sports fans,
Speaker 3: Red Sox fans, which is one of my favorite things
Speaker 3: to do, go to Fenway. So it's a pleasure. I
Speaker 3: mean to be here at Jillette Stadium. I feel like
Speaker 3: I just walked in on my first day after being drafted.
Speaker 1: Do you think rush when you look back at you know,
Speaker 1: your kind of unassuming origin into the game of football.
Speaker 1: Did you become a football player by accident?
Speaker 2: Almost?
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't like you grew up as a
Speaker 1: kid and we're looking at you know, old black and
Speaker 1: white tape or anything. And you know, one day I'm
Speaker 1: going to be a football player. It just sort of happened.
Speaker 1: Why don't you, you know, help educate fans as to
Speaker 1: how the origins of Russ Francis football player came to be.
Speaker 3: Well, my mother was a nurse number one. She had
Speaker 3: five boys and a girl, and the boys were not
Speaker 3: going to play youth football or any of that stuff.
Speaker 3: She was way ahead of her time with brain injury
Speaker 3: and that type of thing, orthopedic injuries. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: until high school when she said, when your bones stopped
Speaker 3: growing or they're close to stop growing. And my oldest brother, Bill,
Speaker 3: who's almost three years older, he loved football, so he
Speaker 3: kind of dragged me into it. I really didn't want
Speaker 3: to play, you know, I'd rather be at the beach surfing,
Speaker 3: I mean, just or sailing or something anything but football.
Speaker 1: Because you're growing up in I should we should remind
Speaker 1: people what state are you from?
Speaker 3: From the Hawaiian Islands? Yes, so I came from a
Speaker 3: real different background and come to New England where they're
Speaker 3: very very very serious about their sports, and they were
Speaker 3: very very serious about their patriots. And I didn't know anything.
Speaker 3: My teammates wanted nothing to do with me because I
Speaker 3: only played one year my junior year in football, didn't
Speaker 3: play my senior year, and all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 3: here on the practice field. Luckily my teammate that Ray
Speaker 3: Perkins put me in with a training camp. And then
Speaker 3: on the road is Darryl Stingley, God rest his soul,
Speaker 3: and Daryl taught me how to read coverages, run routes,
Speaker 3: and Perk made sure that he did. We did it
Speaker 3: before practice, we did it after practice. So I was very,
Speaker 3: very fortunate. I think the number one thing when you
Speaker 3: ask of how do you develop becoming a football player,
Speaker 3: starting as a rookie with Steve Grogan also starting as
Speaker 3: a rookie, you have to have people all around you
Speaker 3: like my coach, Ray Perkins and Red Miller on the line,
Speaker 3: Ray's receivers and Raymond Barry's receivers, Chuck Fairbanks, Ron Earhart
Speaker 3: offensive coordinator. Such a great group of guys you can't
Speaker 3: help but learn. I'm a self taught incompetent, so I
Speaker 3: looked to the highest level I can find if somebody
Speaker 3: knows something, and then I started drilling them, how do
Speaker 3: you do this? How do you do that?
Speaker 1: So University of Oregon recruited you in Hawaii to throw
Speaker 1: the javelin, is that correct?
Speaker 3: Well, actually, the University of Oregon canceled their baseball program
Speaker 3: due to Title nine. So I was going to go
Speaker 3: play baseball at the University of Oregon. Middle of my
Speaker 3: senior year in Hawaii, my parents tell me my brother's
Speaker 3: going away to college with his girlfriend. I've got to
Speaker 3: go back to the ranch in Oregon. So I'm going
Speaker 3: to finish high school there my second year. Javelins are
Speaker 3: illegal in Hawaii, as they are in many states spears,
Speaker 3: so I'd never seen one guy goes walking by after
Speaker 3: the basketball season. I'd just gotten there. I threw it.
Speaker 3: It shattered in the parking lot because I thought I
Speaker 3: could reach the grass a little over confident, and the said, listen,
Speaker 3: you can either pay me one hundred and fifty two
Speaker 3: dollars or join the track team. Since the baseball team
Speaker 3: was not my guys, I said, okay, fine. So because
Speaker 3: of this coach, who's one of the top track and
Speaker 3: field coaches in the United States, at a small school,
Speaker 3: Pleasant Hill in Oregon of four hundred and eighty kids,
Speaker 3: I set the national record three times. He was a
Speaker 3: job and thrower himself. So we started by just hitting paper.
Speaker 3: I said, can I throw it down the field? Note?
Speaker 3: Just through the point, through the point, through the point.
Speaker 3: Having people like that in your life, all across the
Speaker 3: board of your life is how anybody succeeds. You don't
Speaker 3: do it. A small part of it really is you
Speaker 3: pep oh. You're a good athlete, You're this, you're that,
Speaker 3: You're big, you're strong, and you're faster. None of that
Speaker 3: counts if you don't start putting all the information. If
Speaker 3: they're not willing to give it to you, it's game over.
Speaker 1: Who was your roommate at the University of Oregon that
Speaker 1: was also on the track team.
Speaker 3: When I first got to the University of Oregon The
Speaker 3: coach Bill Barman, who ended up becoming the nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: two this is nineteen seventy one, nineteen seventy two Olympic
Speaker 3: track and field coach for the United States in Munich, Germany.
Speaker 3: Many people remember the sort of disaster that that was.
Speaker 3: The guy that he put me in as a roommate
Speaker 3: on the road, came up to me the first day
Speaker 3: of practice, ran around the little guy running around the track,
Speaker 3: running around the track, running around the going up downstairs,
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to learn how to throw the javelin
Speaker 3: some more. He comes over. He goes, here, let me
Speaker 3: show you how to throw that. He's about five eight
Speaker 3: five seven, about one hundred and twenty pounds left handed,
Speaker 3: and he grabbed it. He threw it, kind of threw
Speaker 3: it sideways. He goes, oh, I used to throw it
Speaker 3: better in high school. He says, you got to get
Speaker 3: that left foot down better. And I said, who are you?
Speaker 3: He goes, My name's pre I said, didn't your mother
Speaker 3: like you? That old story? And he says Steve Prefontaine,
Speaker 3: like I was supposed to know. Well, he was well
Speaker 3: known around the world at that point. I said, nice
Speaker 3: to meet you, pre So let me finish throwing the javelin.
Speaker 3: So I didn't know it, but he had gone to
Speaker 3: the coach. The coach had talked said this guy needs
Speaker 3: a seasoned member of the team as his roommate to
Speaker 3: help him out because he's he's got issues me. And
Speaker 3: he was right. I was lost. I mean, I I
Speaker 3: did you know I'm twenty miles twenty five miles from
Speaker 3: the ranch and didn't know anybody in town and pre
Speaker 3: introduced me to everybody. He became a dear, dear friend.
Speaker 1: So you played one year of collegiate football at the
Speaker 1: University of Oregon. Great, you know, good conference, top talent,
Speaker 1: and you were drafted sixteenth overall in the first round
Speaker 1: by the New England Patriots. Was that Steinberg who was
Speaker 1: a GM back then? Yes, and tell the story like, well,
Speaker 1: he was not a personnellity right when you were found
Speaker 1: when you found out you were drafted, did you think
Speaker 1: they had reinstituted the Armed Services draft?
Speaker 2: Like you didn't even know what the NFL draft was.
Speaker 3: Right, My brother comes down from the ranch house. I'm
Speaker 3: in the snow feeding cattle. We had a bunch of cattle.
Speaker 3: We worked two other ranches, so you had a busy
Speaker 3: day feeding cattle every day, hauling hay in the summer.
Speaker 3: And this is January when the NFL used to hold
Speaker 3: the draft. Then he comes zimbling down and he's the
Speaker 3: responsible when became a policeman. My oldest brother Bill, and
Speaker 3: he says, hey, you've been drafted. You got to get
Speaker 3: up to the phone. They're waiting for you. I said,
Speaker 3: they can't do that again. They get they had the
Speaker 3: lottery back. Then he goes, no, you idiot, it's the NFL.
Speaker 3: I go tell him, I'm I'm playing. I've been drafted
Speaker 3: in the fall. This is January by the Kansas City
Speaker 3: Royals to pitch way down. I think it was ninth
Speaker 3: round or something like that, maybe even farther down. But
Speaker 3: I wanted to play baseball so bad, so I said, no,
Speaker 3: just tell him I'm I'm not going to play. He goes,
Speaker 3: you tell him? So I said, well, tell him. It's
Speaker 3: going to be two hours before I'm through feeding. I
Speaker 3: got to go back to the bar and get Hay
Speaker 3: and all that stuff go there, and then phone's hanging swinging.
Speaker 3: I said, Bill, what's going on with the phone? He said,
Speaker 3: they're still waiting, and I don't think the coach, his
Speaker 3: name is Chuck Fairbanks, is very happy. Oh, I'm just
Speaker 3: come over from Hawaii. She just walked by to see
Speaker 3: what's happening with her boys just keep on going. She
Speaker 3: wasn't sure what was going on that it was a
Speaker 3: football team, because she would have said, let me talk
Speaker 3: to him. But I get there and it was Ernie Adams,
Speaker 3: who's been a fixed year here with the Newland Patriots
Speaker 3: since then. He and Nancy Meyer, two of my best
Speaker 3: friends and buddies, were all rookies together, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: Coach Fairbanks is pretty hot. He said, you might want
Speaker 3: to start out kind of slow, or you just tell
Speaker 3: him pleasure meeting you, Ernie. My mother's working on her boys.
Speaker 3: I said, please just tell him. We don't need to talk.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna I'm gonna play baseball because you're gonna
Speaker 3: have tell him yourself. And he was kind of like
Speaker 3: this anyway, So Chuck came on and he says, you're
Speaker 3: on a plane tonight to Boston. I said, you know,
Speaker 3: I really can't do that, Coach. I've got a feed cattle.
Speaker 3: I've got class, summer classes and graduate early at the
Speaker 3: University of Oregon pre med. And my mother goes walking by.
Speaker 3: He said, is your mother home? Put mom on the phone.
Speaker 3: She is, yes, Coach, yes, I understand them. Okay, fine,
Speaker 3: I'll tell him, but it's up to him. It's his decision.
Speaker 3: He'll call you back. Click. She said, listen, my recommendation
Speaker 3: is that you get to go first class tonight, get
Speaker 3: into Boston tomorrow morning, meet with the coach, let him
Speaker 3: have his say, then tell him whatever you want. To
Speaker 3: say that you're either going to play or you're not
Speaker 3: going to play, but do it in person.
Speaker 2: That's really good advice, by the way.
Speaker 3: And I said, and that's how mom was with the boys.
Speaker 3: I said, Mom, I got a feed cattle, I got
Speaker 3: classes and ever there. She goes, Bill, Billy, you're taking
Speaker 3: Russell's cattle. I don't know what he could do for
Speaker 3: your classes. Maybe he can sit in for you. But
Speaker 3: you need to go, I said, Mom, I just I
Speaker 3: don't have time. She goes. You know what's at Boston
Speaker 3: because she knew her son all of her Since I
Speaker 3: said no, she goes, and you'll get to see it.
Speaker 3: I said, no, what Fenway Park, the Green Monster. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's right, the Red Sox. You think I'll really be
Speaker 3: able to see the Red Sox? Ernie drove me over
Speaker 3: to the Fenway Whenever when you picked me.
Speaker 1: Up the next day, When you look back at that
Speaker 1: Russ and you think about it, like it sounds like
Speaker 1: a kid.
Speaker 2: Who football wasn't a priority to you. You had other
Speaker 2: things going on in your life.
Speaker 1: Here comes this surprise phone call that you have no
Speaker 1: idea really what it means or anything like that. How
Speaker 1: when you look back at that and how that was
Speaker 1: a defining moment in your life for taking a turn
Speaker 1: that you really didn't know what you're getting into.
Speaker 2: By saying, you know what, I'm going to hop in
Speaker 2: the planet and go to Boston and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Do you ever look back at that and reminisce about, like,
Speaker 1: you know how.
Speaker 2: Important that moment was in your life?
Speaker 3: Well, my mother, my grandmother, my father, grandfather, our whole family.
Speaker 3: It was all about making your own decisions. So she's
Speaker 3: gonna give you some advice, and she's going to give
Speaker 3: you some backup reasons or ideas or thoughts. Then you
Speaker 3: get to think about it mulled over, and then you
Speaker 3: make the decision. I came really close to just say no,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna stick with baseball, you know. Plus I'd
Speaker 3: been accepted by a couple of colleges to VET school
Speaker 3: here in the Northeast, So I came really really close
Speaker 3: to saying no, I'm not going to I'm going to
Speaker 3: go spring practice for baseball. And I never would have
Speaker 3: done much. I don't think in baseball as a pitcher,
Speaker 3: and I could throw really fast, especially after throwing the javelin.
Speaker 3: I had no idea where he's gone football and baseball too,
Speaker 3: is more of a team. They're going to deal with
Speaker 3: the top players they have. They'll develop you as they can.
Speaker 3: Either you can or you can't. In football with Ray Perkins,
Speaker 3: it was every day working with me catching the ball.
Speaker 3: Raymond Barry saying, those threads that come to the point
Speaker 3: of the ball, what do you see with those threads?
Speaker 3: I said, I see threads, Coach, when he throw me
Speaker 3: the ball. He was very, very cerebral kind of coach,
Speaker 3: and he said, keep looking, throw me the tight spiral.
Speaker 3: So finally, one moment it hit me and these are
Speaker 3: the people I get to work with. And I'd already
Speaker 3: played three years in the league, and I was doing
Speaker 3: pretty well, Pro Bowl and everything else. I drop a
Speaker 3: pass every now and then I went to almost zero
Speaker 3: drops when he saw said, look at the threads coming
Speaker 3: together at the point of the ball. It forms a
Speaker 3: black dot when you turn your head around. And Steve
Speaker 3: Grogan has just throwing that ball, or Joe Montana in
Speaker 3: this case, and it's already on its way and you
Speaker 3: have to pick it up. If you pick up that football,
Speaker 3: you'll go right to your hands. You just can't get
Speaker 3: to it. If you pick up that dot, you can
Speaker 3: stop it. And I went son of a Gun coach
Speaker 3: Jam Fingers later, but finally, that's the kind of coaching.
Speaker 3: I had. Teammates like Daryl Stingley, you know, John Hannah,
Speaker 3: Leon Gray Shelby, Jordan I God rest his soul, Steve Nelson,
Speaker 3: the guy, Steve King, Steve's able, the three, Steve A.
Speaker 3: Darrow's I call him the linebackers for the Patriots. They
Speaker 3: were so good at detail stuff and getting better every
Speaker 3: single day. Then you go with the kuy like Bill
Speaker 3: Walsh where they wrote the book they called me genius.
Speaker 3: Well that was for a reason. The West Coast offense
Speaker 3: and Joe Montana and all those guys that were on
Speaker 3: that team, Roger Craigan. It was an honor and a privilege.
Speaker 3: The chance to do broadcasting. We were talking earlier with
Speaker 3: al Michaels and how great he is. I got a
Speaker 3: chance to do college football games with al Michaels.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that.
Speaker 3: One of my heroes, right, And I just say that
Speaker 3: based on these are people that walked into my life.
Speaker 3: I had no idea they were coming. I'm a self
Speaker 3: taught incompetence, so I'm here to learn I learned that
Speaker 3: from my flat instructors, and I learned that from my parents.
Speaker 1: So here you come as a first round draft pick,
Speaker 1: sixteenth overall the draft. You're coming to an area you
Speaker 1: don't know, you don't know any of your teammates or
Speaker 1: anything like that. I think you've said to me off
Speaker 1: camera that you know, there's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: bullseye on your back.
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 3: Was it?
Speaker 1: You know, not that it wasn't a welcoming environment or
Speaker 1: a nurturing environment. Certainly the coaches, it was important for
Speaker 1: them to see you develop and develop well. But as
Speaker 1: this hot shot first round pick with a bunch of veterans,
Speaker 1: was it a difficult transition to transition into pro football?
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely. I mean Tommy Nevill who was the starting
Speaker 3: right tackle at the time before Shelby Jordan the next
Speaker 3: year or to Tommy's towards the end of his career,
Speaker 3: A really honorable guy, you know, from Alabama. I think
Speaker 3: Alabama Arkansas. I can never hogle get upset if I
Speaker 3: said Arkansas. So I started doing it on purpose. John
Speaker 3: Hannah from Alabama. John, he came up to me the
Speaker 3: first day of practice. He goes, listen, my name is
Speaker 3: Tommy Neville. I'm the right tackle. You would be playing
Speaker 3: tight end next to me from time to time. I
Speaker 3: just want you to know I'm rooting for the veteran
Speaker 3: Bob Windsor. Don't come to me with any questions about
Speaker 3: how to run your plays, or how to block or
Speaker 3: anything else. You either figure it out or you're out
Speaker 3: of here. That was my welcome.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I've always admired Tommy Nevill because he told me exactly
Speaker 3: how it was. First day, straight shooter. He straight shooter,
Speaker 3: and you have to make the adjustment. I think, knowing
Speaker 3: Tommy later and talking to him after he retired, he said,
Speaker 3: I wanted to see what you were made at him.
Speaker 3: He said, so you kept coming back. He said that
Speaker 3: was all right. And Bob Windsor got hurt so before
Speaker 3: the season, and Bob Allens got hurt the second string guy.
Speaker 3: So I'm starting as a rookie. The guys are going,
Speaker 3: oh my goodness, you know so and two games later,
Speaker 3: Jim Plunker goes down. So Steve Grogan comes in and said,
Speaker 3: what do we do? He goes, if I do this
Speaker 3: because I don't know the plays. When he calls him
Speaker 3: in the huddle, just run straight, just run down. Then
Speaker 3: that's where I got the yard is my first year,
Speaker 3: and they kept throwing to me, deep, was it lonely?
Speaker 2: Rush a little bit.
Speaker 3: It wasn't lonely from the standpoint of I've learned to
Speaker 3: be comfortable in my own skin, with my own company,
Speaker 3: kept myself busy, and then in the off season, I
Speaker 3: went home. I flew the airplane back to Oregon, hopped
Speaker 3: another commercial plane to Hawaii, and started a charter service,
Speaker 3: the state's first civilian or ambulance service in a helicopter
Speaker 3: service in Hawaii. No, I wasn't lonely.
Speaker 1: I had my airplanes, so and those airplanes came into play.
Speaker 1: As an NFL player, you know back in the day
Speaker 1: when you started training camp in July and you had
Speaker 1: training camp for nine weeks, and it was real training camp,
Speaker 1: not like what the players are accustomed to today. Two
Speaker 1: days and you were telling me that there were sometimes
Speaker 1: were three days early on, but let's focus on the
Speaker 1: two days practice. In the morning, you'd hop in the
Speaker 1: plane and go to the vineyard for lunch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I did. I went to the vineyard for
Speaker 3: lunch because it was a college environment Brian College. The
Speaker 3: food wasn't that great. And my mother and grandmother were
Speaker 3: great cooks, so I was told that there were great
Speaker 3: restaurants on the islands. I grew up on an island,
Speaker 3: so I gravitated towards the island. So I kept my
Speaker 3: little airplanes that I bought with my bone at signing
Speaker 3: bones the beach grafts Sierra, and flew to the vineyard,
Speaker 3: flew to Nantucket, and with every one in a while
Speaker 3: player would say, hey, can I come with you? Well,
Speaker 3: we're supposed to be eating lunch with the team, socializing,
Speaker 3: but I didn't get along with that. I didn't get along.
Speaker 3: I didn't know anybody. And then you're supposed to go
Speaker 3: take a nap and rest up and get ready for
Speaker 3: the three o'clock practice. Well, I'll go to the vineyard,
Speaker 3: just have a nibble of this or some really good
Speaker 3: or some lobster or whatever, go walk on the beach
Speaker 3: and then fly back, fly back to and get no nap,
Speaker 3: don't need a nap, and go in to get dressed
Speaker 3: and go to practice.
Speaker 1: That would be unusual today, had to have been unusual yesterday.
Speaker 1: Did you get the sense that you were maybe developing this?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know you're a nonconformist. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to follow you rules. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: break any rules or anything. But you know what, there's
Speaker 1: certain things that I want to do, you know, and
Speaker 1: as long as I'm not hurting anybody or breaking any
Speaker 1: team rules.
Speaker 2: Or anything like that, I'm going to do it. Did
Speaker 2: you get a quizzical look?
Speaker 1: And then maybe some other players saying, hey, that's pretty
Speaker 1: cool to your point?
Speaker 2: Can I come with you for lunch?
Speaker 3: There was their team, their game, their rules, and I
Speaker 3: followed them for the most part. They want me to
Speaker 3: tape ankles, I wouldn't do that. They want me to
Speaker 3: lift weights. I didn't do that. I was a little
Speaker 3: precocious because my mother had totter boys. I developed. If
Speaker 3: you tape an ankle too tight, you restrict a blood flow,
Speaker 3: range of motion. It becomes like a cast a new atrophy.
Speaker 3: You actually weaken the ankle. Go run on the sand,
Speaker 3: Go run knee deep in the water, which I did
Speaker 3: in the off season. Lifting weights, muscle becomes greater than
Speaker 3: the ten and it takes the ten and right off
Speaker 3: the bone. They must supposed to tear first, So I said, guys,
Speaker 3: I just so I guess in that way, I was
Speaker 3: kind of a handful. But I aside from that, my
Speaker 3: mother taught us to live our lives our own way,
Speaker 3: and make our own decisions and judge, listen to good ideas,
Speaker 3: and even criticism, constructive criticism, consider it because we are
Speaker 3: all self taught in competence, learn the right way to
Speaker 3: do something if you really have joy and passion like
Speaker 3: I did for flying. They called me in mister Sullivan,
Speaker 3: Billy Sullivan, Chuck Fairbanks, Peter had Hazy, the general manager
Speaker 3: of my rookie year. When they found out I was flying.
Speaker 3: This is before taking the guys, this is when we're
Speaker 3: going to Amherst for summer camp. They found out I
Speaker 3: was flying down out of Norwood. They said, you have
Speaker 3: an airplane here that you flew back from Oregon and
Speaker 3: you're flying it on your days off on Tuesday up
Speaker 3: to LLBean and you can't do that. In the standard
Speaker 3: player contract it says if you get hurt, you know,
Speaker 3: if you can't play, your insurance isn't covered, and you don't,
Speaker 3: you stop getting paid. I said, first of all, in airplanes,
Speaker 3: since there's a crush, there aren't any injuries. So but
Speaker 3: I understand what you're saying. So I apologize and I'll
Speaker 3: clean out my locker and they said what I said, Well,
Speaker 3: he just fired me. I thought they'd fired me because
Speaker 3: they were adamant Chuck Fairbanks was was this pretty steady guy.
Speaker 3: Loved him, you know, great coach miss him as well,
Speaker 3: along with the other guys. But I thought they just
Speaker 3: fired me. So I learned a very important lesson. I said,
Speaker 3: I'll get my locker cleaned out and everything else. They
Speaker 3: thought I was, I'll just take the airplane and go,
Speaker 3: which wasn't what I meant. I hadn't. I had embarrassed them.
Speaker 3: I had done the wrong thing. I felt bad about it.
Speaker 3: I really did, so I was gonna pick up and go.
Speaker 3: They said, okay, wait a second, just don't talk to
Speaker 3: the press about it. Just don't do this and don't
Speaker 3: do that. So pretty soon I learned, if you're playing
Speaker 3: hard enough and you're learning quick enough, there's just about
Speaker 3: anything that you want to do within reason. And I
Speaker 3: wasn't doing anything. I didn't go out drinking at night.
Speaker 3: I wasn't running around with girls. I wasn't, you know.
Speaker 3: My girlfriend from high school was my girlfriend. I was
Speaker 3: focused on being the best football player I possibly could
Speaker 3: rape her made sure that instead of Red Miller. So
Speaker 3: I'm honored to say that I gave everything. I hadn't
Speaker 3: continued and any time I've ever done anything with the
Speaker 3: New England Patriots. That's why I came back to see
Speaker 3: Pete Brock when he retired as the alumni president. He's
Speaker 3: been so much to us guys over the years and
Speaker 3: the fans of running that whole organization. I couldn't let
Speaker 3: them have the big party without me to say so
Speaker 3: long to Pete, and he's going to, like the rest
Speaker 3: of us, We'll be back.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine if there was a player of your
Speaker 1: magnitude today in this social media world that we live
Speaker 1: in that was flying a plane. I mean, they don't
Speaker 1: have two days, so that couldn't happen, but it would
Speaker 1: cause such a stir And if you can look back
Speaker 1: on it and say, wow, I was able to do that.
Speaker 1: Maybe to the point that you were saying about your parents,
Speaker 1: and your mom lived the life that you want to live.
Speaker 1: Be respectful, don't you know You're not going to commit
Speaker 1: crimes or anything like that, but live your life. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was a simple a time back then where you
Speaker 1: were allowed to do that, and it's.
Speaker 2: Just it's unimaginable.
Speaker 1: It's something like that would ever be able to be
Speaker 1: allowed today.
Speaker 3: You know, even back then, no social media, right, no Internet.
Speaker 3: Somebody saw me having lunch in Hawaii with Priscilla Presley.
Speaker 3: Now all of a sudden, it's on the Hollywood side
Speaker 3: of the pond, as they say, the Pacific Priscilla Presley
Speaker 3: is dating younger NFL player Res Francis. We had a
Speaker 3: mutual friend that was one of my charter customers who
Speaker 3: was at the table, woman named Marge Garamhausen. Never forget her.
Speaker 3: She and Priscilla were good friends. But Priscilla was very
Speaker 3: sitting right next to me very soon, and she'd put
Speaker 3: her hand on my hand, and well, that's so funny,
Speaker 3: that's so nice. You're gonna teach her how to surf
Speaker 3: and all that type of stuff, because Marge asked me to. So.
Speaker 3: Even the quote unquote celebrities of the day, Bill Lee Spaceman,
Speaker 3: I just talked to him the other day. He was
Speaker 3: the guy that said to me at Daisy Buchanans, I said,
Speaker 3: how do you guys get away from people just arguing
Speaker 3: with you? I said, I don't mind the fans coming
Speaker 3: up to you. I'll sit until the last autograph is signed.
Speaker 3: I still do it. I get a couple hundred requests
Speaker 3: a month. Every single one of them is signed and
Speaker 3: sent back. How do you how do you guys do it?
Speaker 3: He says rest He said, just live your life. He said,
Speaker 3: stop stop winding about it. This is Spaceman. He's just
Speaker 3: a great guy.
Speaker 2: There's a guy who lived his life.
Speaker 3: He's still seventy seven. He just told me the other
Speaker 3: day he struck out a forty five year old with
Speaker 3: two curves and fastball. It's unbelievable, said, it works every time.
Speaker 1: He's believable, fast pitch right, seventy seven, unbelievable.
Speaker 3: One of my heroes.
Speaker 1: So, a dormant NFL franchise in the mid seventies, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Nick Knights, that's seventy sixteen, captures the
Speaker 1: region by storm. You beat the defending champions Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: You beat the bag out of the Raiders here in Foxborough.
Speaker 1: You should have beaten the Raiders in the playoff game.
Speaker 2: We all know that.
Speaker 1: You know at that point in time, what we're thinking
Speaker 1: about the NFL and the new England pay at that point.
Speaker 3: In time, R was, well, first of all, every one
Speaker 3: of us has moments in our lives that will never forget, good, bad,
Speaker 3: indifferent or puzzled by it whatever. That first year, my
Speaker 3: rookie year, when I was really all by myself, and
Speaker 3: you know, guys tried, you know, Steve's able was tried
Speaker 3: to approach me. We had a little fight on the
Speaker 3: field and then he said, well this isn't right. And
Speaker 3: he was a senior guy, so you know he's helping
Speaker 3: me calm down and everything else. But one of the
Speaker 3: things that you'll you never forget are you're being sort
Speaker 3: of outcast, and then people get to know who you are.
Speaker 3: Howard Cosell is calling you all world. You're doing ABC
Speaker 3: Superstar Competition and setting the record, by the way, which
Speaker 3: stood for years in the pool until Greg LUGAINUS and
Speaker 3: Olympian beat it. Craig messed up my whole thing. You
Speaker 3: can't remember, You can't forget those things. But if you
Speaker 3: think about how damaging the first year was three and eleven,
Speaker 3: how hurtful that was. The fans were, I felt so bad.
Speaker 3: They're coming to the stadium and we lost again, and
Speaker 3: we lost again. We lost eleven times, they would still
Speaker 3: be out there getting an autograph at the end, but
Speaker 3: the line was smaller, and I just felt our job
Speaker 3: is to win. So we got together and Coach Fairbah's
Speaker 3: got Mike Haynes and Tim Fox the next year and
Speaker 3: everything else, and Stanley Morgan came back early from Tennessee
Speaker 3: and Steve Grogan from Kansas, and we got there early
Speaker 3: before camp and we start, we're not gonna let this
Speaker 3: happen again. Well, it takes every single person, not just
Speaker 3: one guy standing up and putting his hands on his hips.
Speaker 3: Let's go break the gates. Men. It was everybody working together,
Speaker 3: and we went eleven and three, the largest, quickest, biggest
Speaker 3: turnaround in NFL history, and went on to play the Raiders,
Speaker 3: and we should have won that game. It's the only
Speaker 3: game I played. And I would say this, I've been
Speaker 3: saying it for years that I'm absolutely possibly sure that
Speaker 3: somebody got to somebody, and I won't talk about payoffs
Speaker 3: or anything else. There were too many calls in that game,
Speaker 3: not just the Ben Drive callers. There's three or four
Speaker 3: major calls where they would turn away and look when
Speaker 3: you looked at the official just kind of like like this,
Speaker 3: and Ben was one of those one of those plays
Speaker 3: with me holding the ball, hits me in the chest
Speaker 3: and Villa Piano's got his arms around me. I got
Speaker 3: Villa Piano back when he came to the Pro Bowl,
Speaker 3: he and his wife, and they wanted to fly to Maui,
Speaker 3: and I had the charter service, and I took him
Speaker 3: up in the single engine airplane because I wanted us
Speaker 3: to be nice and cozy in the cockpit, because I
Speaker 3: had this already thought out and planned. Get mid the
Speaker 3: fa listen to stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: This is nineteen seventy six. I think it was seventy five,
Speaker 3: No seventy six, so seventy seven beginning of seventy seven,
Speaker 3: if they want to check the records. So we're going
Speaker 3: between Maui, Molokai and Lanai, from Oahu to Maui. He
Speaker 3: and his wife were taking there for nothing. They were
Speaker 3: there for the Pro Bowl. This is the guy that
Speaker 3: helped me and helped us lose that game. They go
Speaker 3: on to win the Super Bowl. So I said, look
Speaker 3: at I tipped the wing just a little bit like
Speaker 3: this to look at Lennai, which is right down there.
Speaker 3: Moloke's there I'm always right there. I said, look at that, Phil,
Speaker 3: and he went to do it, and I grabbed the
Speaker 3: handle of the door and opened it up, and I
Speaker 3: kicked the opposite rudder to take the wind away from
Speaker 3: the door. The door flew open, and I undid a seatbelt,
Speaker 3: and he thought that he'd be able to go right
Speaker 3: out the door. Well, he came close, but I kicked it.
Speaker 3: I was just started to kick the plane back when Patty,
Speaker 3: his wife, came over the top with nails and everything.
Speaker 3: You're trying to kill my husband. The planes going like
Speaker 3: this all over the place. I finally slammed the door.
Speaker 3: I said, I just playing, I'm just kidding, just having
Speaker 3: a good time. He didn't think that was funny. But
Speaker 3: we're still good friends. I think aren't.
Speaker 1: Well, so I could see. And I don't proclaim to
Speaker 1: know you or John. And I'm just using him particularly
Speaker 1: as an example. But this free spirit, this I'm going
Speaker 1: to live my life. I've got a lot of talent
Speaker 1: and I want to get to something following that up.
Speaker 1: But a guy like John Hannah farm raised you also,
Speaker 1: you know raised you know, did a lot of work
Speaker 1: and everything like that. He's a no nonsense kind of
Speaker 1: a guy one of those personalities on a team. Mesh,
Speaker 1: do you feel like you need to prove something to
Speaker 1: a John Hannah type who's not in an airplane dipping
Speaker 1: and bobbing and weaving and.
Speaker 2: Doing things like that, or flying back or jumping out
Speaker 2: of planes.
Speaker 3: Even from that matter, I always wanted to take him
Speaker 3: up and push him on an airplane.
Speaker 2: How does that, sorry, John?
Speaker 1: How does that sort of job where you can gain
Speaker 1: his respect, you gain his and you just we're different people,
Speaker 1: but we do have the same goal in mind because
Speaker 1: we want to win well.
Speaker 3: First of all, John Hannah is the greatest offensive lineman
Speaker 3: ever played, bar none. Now I'm talking about practice, end games.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about longevity, being able to play as hard
Speaker 3: as he played every single down. I pay you the
Speaker 3: guys that are us from in practice because it's full
Speaker 3: speed every day. I'm doing half speed with the linebackers
Speaker 3: because you work on footwork. He didn't need work on footwork.
Speaker 3: It was all natural to take that two hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty two and ninety pound body and swivel from a
Speaker 3: stance down by the ground and be to the outside
Speaker 3: before the fullback can get there. Sam Cunningham that's a
Speaker 3: real quick and miss the center, missed the quarterback, and
Speaker 3: miss everybody else the footwork that it takes. And then
Speaker 3: to take that linebacker and take him to the sideline
Speaker 3: or take him, knock him down, go on for the safety.
Speaker 3: John Hannah is a freaking nature and he said one time,
Speaker 3: and we are very, very different. I love to live life,
Speaker 3: but when I step across the line, the sideline or
Speaker 3: the end line, I'm a different person. I'll go and
Speaker 3: run and hit the sled and do the stairs and
Speaker 3: all that stuff. And it may look like I'm having fun,
Speaker 3: which it is. But if I'm on there to practice
Speaker 3: and play, all that stuff went away. And John didn't
Speaker 3: know how deep and serious all of that was. He
Speaker 3: wears that on his face and his body and everything else.
Speaker 3: You don't see it me, but line up across from
Speaker 3: me and try and beat me at the line of
Speaker 3: scrimmage or cover me in a play, and you'll find out.
Speaker 3: John made the mistake of saying to the Boston Globe,
Speaker 3: somebody probably willn't have gun. And somebody, you know, Russ
Speaker 3: Francis has more talent in his body one percent of
Speaker 3: his body than the rest of us. If he could
Speaker 3: learn how to use that talent, he'd be a great player. Well,
Speaker 3: John didn't know at the time, was I was dead
Speaker 3: serious everything single time. I may be smiling, but I'm
Speaker 3: gonna put you on your back. And so that started
Speaker 3: to happen. So it took a couple of seasons, even
Speaker 3: after the seventy sixth seasons, for John Hannah to come
Speaker 3: up and kind of slap me on the back, says, Okay,
Speaker 3: you've made the team their team.
Speaker 2: Do you feel validated at that point? Does that?
Speaker 1: Uh, validation from a guy like John Hanness, who you
Speaker 1: obviously respect and was already a great pro and everything
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: What does that mean to you when you get that?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, in our family, we were taught
Speaker 3: by our parents and our grandparents and everything else to
Speaker 3: understand what we can and can't do and work to
Speaker 3: get better. Just because somebody's better doesn't mean that at
Speaker 3: some point in time you're not going to be as
Speaker 3: good or better. So focus on yourself, don't worry about
Speaker 3: everybody else. So whether John thought I was a really
Speaker 3: good player or not never cross my mind. The fact
Speaker 3: that he was saying something in public, say it to
Speaker 3: my face. That was what got my no. So I
Speaker 3: went straight to him face to face. I said, don't
Speaker 3: ever do that again, mister Hannah, you know, and I
Speaker 3: respected him, so for him to come up and pat
Speaker 3: you on the back later and everything else, I already
Speaker 3: knew that I passed that point. I didn't need anybody
Speaker 3: to I've never needed a slap on the back. I
Speaker 3: did appreciate being his teammate because being accepted as his teammate,
Speaker 3: now I can be part of this group. And I've
Speaker 3: been on teams before. That really really did well because
Speaker 3: everybody understood their roles and their responsibilities and they carried
Speaker 3: them out and they didn't try to do your job
Speaker 3: for you. As Bill Walls said, find your highest and
Speaker 3: best use focus on that. When he told me he
Speaker 3: wanted to pull me out of retirement, and he said,
Speaker 3: you're not going to throw the ball like you do
Speaker 3: in New England, I had a forty five yard pass
Speaker 3: to Dwight Clark. However, with the forty nine ers, we
Speaker 3: have a quarterback. His name is Joe. You're not going
Speaker 3: to run with the ball. We have a running back
Speaker 3: named Wende Tyler and Roger Craig. He said, you can
Speaker 3: block her in the running play and run pass patterns
Speaker 3: and catch the ball and hopefully score points for us.
Speaker 3: I was just a tight end on the team. I
Speaker 3: was Joe Montana. I wasn't Steve Grogan. I understood my role.
Speaker 3: I wasn't John Hannah. I couldn't do what John Hannah did,
Speaker 3: and John Hannah couldn't do what I did. So that's
Speaker 3: where the coaches like Coach Fairbanks and Coach Walls, and
Speaker 3: the assistant coach is Ray Perkins, Raymond Barry all the
Speaker 3: guy Denny Green over in San Francisco, they put that
Speaker 3: chemistry and that talent together and then they develop it
Speaker 3: more because it's so much stronger as a team. And
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, we're looking at a season, a
Speaker 3: year where we only lost one game, and that was
Speaker 3: because they called back a kick by Ray Wershing and
Speaker 3: he missed the second one. We had to beat the
Speaker 3: Pittsburgh Steelers and went on to beat Miami in the
Speaker 3: Super Bowl. Super Bowl nineteen. Yeah, John, I see John
Speaker 3: Hannah today, So we move fast forward all the way
Speaker 3: from those days to this day. I have the most
Speaker 3: respect for him because of the way he's lived his
Speaker 3: life exactly the way he wanted to his family is
Speaker 3: tight and he's still he's doing everything for his family
Speaker 3: he can do, and so is everybody in his family.
Speaker 3: He comes up here because he loves the fans, he
Speaker 3: loves his teammates, he loves the time that he spent here.
Speaker 3: But he's not going to leave a crop that needs
Speaker 3: to be brought in or something. You have to schedule
Speaker 3: it for you. Absolutely, I have the utmost respect for
Speaker 3: John Hannah and all those guys that I played with.
Speaker 1: As a twenty something year old kid. You mentioned ABC
Speaker 1: Superstars and there's probably people listening to this have no
Speaker 1: idea what that is. And ABC back in the day
Speaker 1: would gather the best athletes from respective sports Reggie Jackson
Speaker 1: in baseball, Lynn Swan and football, yourself in football, and
Speaker 1: you'd compete against each other and.
Speaker 2: To Cathlian type items.
Speaker 1: Right, here's a twenty something year old kid who's being
Speaker 1: called all world tight end by Howard Kosel, who's being
Speaker 1: invited to go on ABC's Superstars.
Speaker 2: Is your mind blown a little bit by this?
Speaker 1: Who's a guy who's not a football player, and you
Speaker 1: know it comes from a simpler life maybe in Oregon
Speaker 1: and a little bit hawide that all of this notoriety
Speaker 1: is coming in away.
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't watch much TV growing up, certainly sports,
Speaker 3: certainly never football because that was never live until after
Speaker 3: I started playing. But Howard Cosell coined the all world
Speaker 3: phrase my rookie year when I caught it, like a
Speaker 3: forty yard pass in Miami on a Monday night game. Well,
Speaker 3: I've been catching I think I averaged over eighteen yards
Speaker 3: as a rookie. And what he didn't know, and I
Speaker 3: told his wife when they asked me to speak of
Speaker 3: his services after he'd passed that the only reason I
Speaker 3: didn't tell Howard why I was catching such long passes
Speaker 3: is because I called him up when he started calling
Speaker 3: me all world, because my teammates started trying to beat
Speaker 3: me up in practice and roll me over, need me
Speaker 3: in the ribs and everything else. The guy's on the
Speaker 3: field playing against saying all world my ass.
Speaker 2: Right, that can be. It's a blessing and curse and.
Speaker 3: They're coming after me, right, So I said, mister Cossell,
Speaker 3: I'm really honored if you could, because I finally got
Speaker 3: him after like four phone calls. And this is before
Speaker 3: I started working for ABC. My rookie year. Here's a
Speaker 3: rookie calling Howard Cosell. I still didn't really understand the
Speaker 3: importance of all these people. I'd never heard of him before.
Speaker 3: So you asked me earlier about how to deal with that.
Speaker 3: I didn't know any better, So I just lived my life.
Speaker 3: I said, mister Cosell, thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 3: I was such an honor for you to even mention
Speaker 3: my name on a Monday night game. I said, I
Speaker 3: have a big, big favor to ask of you, and
Speaker 3: he says number eighty one. He said, Oh world, He said,
Speaker 3: what can I do for you today? Oh god, I'm
Speaker 3: just stumbling and they'll go ahead anything eighty one. Come on,
Speaker 3: it's so good to hear. Thank you for calling. I'm
Speaker 3: sorry I missed your other calls. I've been busy with
Speaker 3: Frank and the gift and everything and this and that
Speaker 3: and on and on. I said, mister Cossel, could you
Speaker 3: please stop calling me all world? They're killing me out there,
Speaker 3: my teammates and the other guys. Do you notice any
Speaker 3: silence right now? There was silence, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: that booming voice were eighty one. Listen up and listen close,
Speaker 3: get tough or get out click so missus Cosel at
Speaker 3: his service. They asked me, Billy Crystal, myself and Frank
Speaker 3: the Ford right to speak at it because we had
Speaker 3: become baby sat their grandchildren, Justin and Jared, who I
Speaker 3: think we're in ESPN now at the pools when we
Speaker 3: played in Miami and everything else. Got to know him
Speaker 3: pretty well. Heather, their mother sweek out. Emmy was just
Speaker 3: a sweetheart, I can do do everything kind of wife
Speaker 3: and mother. I said, I got to tell you the story,
Speaker 3: I said, never got a chance to tell it the
Speaker 3: story to Howard because I was afraid. And she goes,
Speaker 3: what I said, you know that all world things that
Speaker 3: he he kept calling. She goes, oh, he just thought
Speaker 3: you were a great player. She's given me the same thing.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, the truth of the matter is
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to read coverages or run past prays.
Speaker 3: So here's the truth. I'm pouring it out. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to do this, especially it's at his services, I said,
Speaker 3: but I kind of felt like, well, Howard's here, we're
Speaker 3: all here together, right, So but I called him up
Speaker 3: and asked him to not call me all world, and
Speaker 3: he slammed me down and said get tough for get out.
Speaker 3: So I wasn't gonna tell him. It's because Steve just
Speaker 3: told me to go straight. I didn't know how to run.
Speaker 3: It wasn't because I was a great player. It's because
Speaker 3: I had speed. Steve had an arm. We had Randy Vatah,
Speaker 3: Stanley Morgan. You know, a bunch of greatsus Steve Burke,
Speaker 3: great receiver from Arkansas, and this kid who didn't know
Speaker 3: anything about football. So I'm looking good because of all
Speaker 3: of them. And a great offensive line. So you know,
Speaker 3: once Shelby Jordan and all the other guys got together
Speaker 3: that nineteen seventy eight team you're talking about, we ran
Speaker 3: over people.
Speaker 1: Held a rushing record until just a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago in Ravens that reconstruct for forty something years ago.
Speaker 3: Something. We're very, very proud of it. And the one
Speaker 3: thing that the Craft family, by the way, on a
Speaker 3: couple of these alumni weekends when we come in for games,
Speaker 3: had made a real They've given us an opportunity to
Speaker 3: highlight some of the film when they show it to
Speaker 3: the fans. They're up in the club boxes and everything else.
Speaker 3: Sometimes on the screen of those teams with John Hannah
Speaker 3: coming around and Sam Cunningham. He was always fast enough
Speaker 3: and good enough for passes and everything else. When you
Speaker 3: send him out there first two hundred and forty five pounds,
Speaker 3: he ran a four or five forty. He just blow
Speaker 3: through people. There goes John, there goes I'm looking for
Speaker 3: people to block. I don't have to write.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned receivers and you were remiss to not
Speaker 1: ask you about Darryl Stingley, who you said you roomed
Speaker 1: with in your rookie year and when he got hurt.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember watching it as a kid. It
Speaker 1: was devastating to everybody in New England. He's paralyzed, paralyzed
Speaker 1: for life. And you took a stand Russ. That probably
Speaker 1: changed your life in a lot of different ways because
Speaker 1: ownership at the time it said that they were going
Speaker 1: to pick up all his medical bills.
Speaker 2: Of course that's the right thing to do, and then
Speaker 2: they rescinded the offer. What did that? What did that
Speaker 2: mean and do to you in that situation?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, Darrow was my roommate on the road and
Speaker 3: in training camp for three seasons before he got hurt.
Speaker 3: My third year be his sixth year. He really took
Speaker 3: a lot of time. I didn't pick things up that fast.
Speaker 3: I hadn't played youth football. I hadn't played but a
Speaker 3: couple years of high school. Because my brother was a captain.
Speaker 3: I didn't play very well, didn't play much one year
Speaker 3: in college. I was so far behind the curve and
Speaker 3: Darrow was so patient. And I was a player representative
Speaker 3: at that time. Darrow was the first guy to tell
Speaker 3: me as a rookie. He said, the team's just met
Speaker 3: and voted. I said, voted on what? And why didn't
Speaker 3: they let me know that there was a meeting. Well, Russ,
Speaker 3: you're not really their favorite guy, I said, but they
Speaker 3: did vote you to be the player representative, their union
Speaker 3: rep essentially the NFL Player Association represented. Wow, I'm like
Speaker 3: a little kid up in Hawaii. Right.
Speaker 1: It was like a penance, probably right to give it
Speaker 1: to somebody that you know.
Speaker 3: Oh fantastic, right, I said, Well, that's an honor, he says, Russ.
Speaker 3: The reason they voted you is that guy's normally fired
Speaker 3: by management. You said, you're kidding, and he goes, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not kidding. He was. He talked straight to me.
Speaker 3: Daryl's from Chicago. He was everything was straight and just
Speaker 3: a really really smart guy and how things worked and
Speaker 3: everything else, and so I became the player rep. And
Speaker 3: when he got hurt, the league covers a career ending
Speaker 3: injury three and sixty five days, and the team's supposed
Speaker 3: to pick up and they probably can contribute some too,
Speaker 3: like all the other teams. After that year's up, the
Speaker 3: team then has to take over. On the three hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty sixth day, Jack Sans, Darryl's attorney in Boston
Speaker 3: called me up, told me they just canceled his medical coverage.
Speaker 3: They're not going to provide medical coverage. So I sued
Speaker 3: the team and the league. So we found in favor
Speaker 3: of the lawsuit found in favor of Darryl. Middle of the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty season. I finished the season and then I.
Speaker 2: Retired because you were so upset about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna stay in. I did stay
Speaker 3: in to see the lawsuit through and to push it
Speaker 3: and what do we need to do? What do we
Speaker 3: need to do? What do I know? I'm a football player,
Speaker 3: But I had great guys working with me. You know,
Speaker 3: Peter had Hazy us now with the league office and
Speaker 3: everything else, who knew Darryl well as also and the
Speaker 3: Rooney family doing the best they can. So as soon
Speaker 3: as that season's are with, I want to a long
Speaker 3: motorcycle ride which we used to do in Misco Gill, Klahoma,
Speaker 3: jump out airplanes, ride down to Colleen, Texas, visit our
Speaker 3: friends down at Fort Hood, and then ship back to
Speaker 3: the or run back to the West Coast. By the
Speaker 3: time I got to the West Coast went back to why,
Speaker 3: I called mister Sullivan up. I said, I'm coming over
Speaker 3: in two days. I'd like to meet with you. And
Speaker 3: I met with mister Sullivan and I said, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm not playing anymore, and I retired. I didn't say
Speaker 3: anything about it at the time because I didn't want
Speaker 3: any reflection on the team or really mister Sullivan.
Speaker 1: So so you're retired. Was that an easy decision for you?
Speaker 1: And I think the thing that Patriot fans will find interesting.
Speaker 1: Before you know, somebody convinced you to come back and play.
Speaker 1: Who called you with a job opportunity when you retired?
Speaker 3: Nobody called me. Well, there were some calls after I retired.
Speaker 3: I don't remember who they were, but I do remember.
Speaker 2: Was there an opportunity in broadcasting for you?
Speaker 3: It was towards the end, I was still doing ESPN
Speaker 3: and ABC wide World of Sports broadcasting from time to time,
Speaker 3: so I got to do the Pro Bowl. Well, the
Speaker 3: forty nine ers had just won their first Super Bowl
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighty one season, the one that I was
Speaker 3: out of, so the championship coaching staff gets to coach
Speaker 3: the AFC or NFC side. Bill Walshston his team was
Speaker 3: coaching the NFC All Pros in Hawaii at the Pro
Speaker 3: Bowl because a group of us got the player meetings
Speaker 3: all that happen in Hawaii. Then we started bringing the
Speaker 3: owners meetings to Hawaii and ge whiz. Then the Pro
Speaker 3: Bowl showed up in Hawaii, and then we did a
Speaker 3: contract that five year with a five year option with
Speaker 3: the NFL Management Council and owners that I'm still very
Speaker 3: proud of that we did and held that for ten years.
Speaker 3: So I'm interviewing Bill Walsh as the Super Bowl coach
Speaker 3: for ABC Sports. So after we're done, he says, you
Speaker 3: know that I went to college with your high school
Speaker 3: basketball coach and really my surrogate father's second father in
Speaker 3: middle school, high school my basketball coach, and then afterwards
Speaker 3: teaching us how to throw a net. And he was
Speaker 3: one of the few one hundred percent of Hawaiians left,
Speaker 3: and he just turned ninety last September and still walking
Speaker 3: the beaches, fishing and everything else. Merv Lopes is his name.
Speaker 3: He and Bill Walsh were inseparable at santas A State.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that they were playing tennis. I knew
Speaker 3: they were playing tennis together. Bill would come over and
Speaker 3: play tennis with Merv, but I didn't realize until I
Speaker 3: started putting together. When I started playing with Bill, the
Speaker 3: coaching styles they're very, very similar, the way that they
Speaker 3: work with players. So Bill's coming to me and he said, hey, listen,
Speaker 3: we're gonna have dinner tonight, coach and me and you
Speaker 3: at the beautiful Hilton Hawaiian Hotel, not the new Hilton Hawaiian,
Speaker 3: the Kohala, the big hotel by Diamond Head. And so
Speaker 3: I turned to my coaches were walking away. I said,
Speaker 3: what's that all about. He goes, he's going to offer
Speaker 3: you a job at the forty nine ers. He said,
Speaker 3: tell him to save his money. I'm not coming back.
Speaker 3: I'm having a great time with ABC, skydiving in France,
Speaker 3: surfing in Morocco, you know, And he said, just listen rush.
Speaker 3: Just listen. So he did. He asked me to come
Speaker 3: back and play and I said no. He asked me again.
Speaker 3: I said no. He uped the price. I said, I'm
Speaker 3: not negotiating. Up the price again. I said I'm not.
Speaker 3: Still not negotiating. He said, this is my last offer.
Speaker 3: He says, more than any other tight end of the league.
Speaker 3: I said, well, that's why I was getting paid before
Speaker 3: I left, more than any other tight end of the league,
Speaker 3: So that doesn't mean anything to me. ABC's paying me
Speaker 3: more more than that. And he said, just remember this
Speaker 3: one thing. It's the only chance in your life you
Speaker 3: can be able to work with a group of people
Speaker 3: that work to get better every single day, from Ronnie
Speaker 3: Lot to Joe Montana, Roger to all these great players. ABC.
Speaker 3: You have a great crew and everything else, but you're
Speaker 3: just kind of by yourself. It's just you're doing this,
Speaker 3: you're doing that. You're the co host, you're the host.
Speaker 3: He said, this is the only chance you'll get. And
Speaker 3: like two or three months later, I called him back up.
Speaker 3: I said, all right, this is the number. These are
Speaker 3: the conditions. I don't want any roommates in training camp.
Speaker 3: But you know I don't want any roommates on the road.
Speaker 3: I'm here to play football. I don't, so I had
Speaker 3: all my conditions, he says, done this, say negotiation? So
Speaker 3: I couldn't you know? We went there and I played
Speaker 3: eight more years, six with him and two more here.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to come back and finish with Raymond Barry,
Speaker 3: who I had the utmost respect for and is one
Speaker 3: another one of my heroes.
Speaker 1: We'm going to follow up on San Francisco in a minute,
Speaker 1: but I want to go back to the broadcasting part
Speaker 1: because I think they, maybe as I remember it, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's misremembered, you're retired tension of playing football and
Speaker 1: didn't co sell.
Speaker 2: How was your entree into ABC?
Speaker 1: I know you were doing the Superstars, so they saw
Speaker 1: that you were glib and personable and things like that,
Speaker 1: but your opportunity to do college football games? Did Howard
Speaker 1: help broke her that with you to get you into
Speaker 1: the announcing moove? How did that start happen when you
Speaker 1: first retired from New England.
Speaker 3: Cross, I come back from a season here and excuse
Speaker 3: me from my retirement, miss talking to I flew all
Speaker 3: the way over. I wanted to do it in person.
Speaker 3: Mother had taught us the boys to if you're going
Speaker 3: to do it, do it in person. So I'm flying
Speaker 3: back to San Francisco. From San Francisco to Hawaii, Boston,
Speaker 3: San Francisco NonStop. And then so my chief pilot picks
Speaker 3: me up. And he's a character. He's a former submarine sailor,
Speaker 3: so lack of oxygen for days and weeks at a
Speaker 3: time has certainly affected his brain. And he said, heck
Speaker 3: of a pilot, skydiving buddy of mine motorcycle. He's one
Speaker 3: of the guys. Every year we went across country claw
Speaker 3: the kid boy skyguide. I won't give his real name,
Speaker 3: but that was his moniker that he put on himself.
Speaker 3: So he picks me up at the airport Honolulu and
Speaker 3: he says, hey, listen, you got to call Howard cosseell back.
Speaker 3: He just called for a little while ago. He said,
Speaker 3: no matter what time, day or night, is it six
Speaker 3: hour difference. He wants a phone call as soon as
Speaker 3: you land. I don't have a cell phone, so I said,
Speaker 3: you have to wait till we get to the house,
Speaker 3: which is an hour away on the north shore. I
Speaker 3: had a house on the beach, and he goes, he's
Speaker 3: not going to be happy, I said, Claw. Howard Cosell
Speaker 3: did not call me. We're friends, yes, but he's getting
Speaker 3: ready to go into the football season and everything else.
Speaker 3: There's nothing he wants to talk to me about. He said, Russ,
Speaker 3: he called you, and now it's a serious claw face.
Speaker 3: So I called him up as like Midnight number eighty one.
Speaker 3: It just it just always wring in my head. What
Speaker 3: a wonderful guy he was. It's what a fantastic talent
Speaker 3: he was, but what a genuine human being he was.
Speaker 3: He said, it's six o'clock your time. I said, I know.
Speaker 3: I'm on the North Shore. The ways are breaking. Can't
Speaker 3: wait till tomorrow? He says. You need to get on
Speaker 3: a plane tonight, fly to San Francisco and take the
Speaker 3: all night and then pick up the seven o'clock in
Speaker 3: the morning and get here by ten o'clock or whatever.
Speaker 3: So get where, said New York City. The limit will
Speaker 3: pick you up. You've got a meeting tomorrow with who
Speaker 3: ran it? Ruin rune Arlidge running everything, and John Martin
Speaker 3: was running sports. That's what it was, he said, Rune
Speaker 3: Arledge and John Martin and myself. I said, come on,
Speaker 3: quit kidding around he goes, no, I'm serious. They want you.
Speaker 3: I've asked them to consider you to work as Al
Speaker 3: Michaels Keith Jackson and do a lot of you sky dive,
Speaker 3: you surf, you do all these things. It's perfect. That
Speaker 3: was Howard. Howard got me started into broadcasting. It's one
Speaker 3: thing to be receiving as we are now. You're thinking
Speaker 3: of everything that could work. The reporters are thinking of
Speaker 3: everything they want to get answers to. But when you're
Speaker 3: hosting and having to do the show. Howard brought me
Speaker 3: into New York. I came in the next week, Don Meredith,
Speaker 3: Frank Gifford, all those guys were there. I'm reading learn
Speaker 3: how to read teleproductor for the first time, this and
Speaker 3: over here, this over here, over here, cards over here.
Speaker 2: But what's fascinating Russ is here. You are.
Speaker 1: So Howard gives it this opportunity, and as a neophyte
Speaker 1: as far as broadcasting is concerned, you're going to do
Speaker 1: a college football package and the two announcers that you're
Speaker 1: going to do with is young Russ Francis, who hasn't
Speaker 1: done any games. You get to work with Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame Keith Jackson and Will be in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2: He's probably in a thousand of them already.
Speaker 1: Al Michaels like, that's that's a small world when I
Speaker 1: think about that.
Speaker 3: You know what I think of when I think of
Speaker 3: those two guys and that great opportunity that Howard gave
Speaker 3: me and Ruin gave me, and John Martin did and
Speaker 3: Keith had to agree, as did al Michaels, that you
Speaker 3: don't just assign a guide to those guys. My favorite
Speaker 3: memory is meeting al in one of the early college
Speaker 3: games in Washington Seattle, and I'd flown my little plane
Speaker 3: up from Eugene Orton because I'd already flown to the
Speaker 3: West coast, and I said, come on, hop In, I'll
Speaker 3: fly We're doing the Cougar game in Pullman. I said,
Speaker 3: I'll fly over to Pullman. Found out all al Michael's
Speaker 3: hates to fly, said don't ever mention that again. Okay,
Speaker 3: don't ask me how I got anywhere or did anything.
Speaker 3: I just you want to fly to the games, you
Speaker 3: just do yourself.
Speaker 2: But that's before al Michaels was al Michaels.
Speaker 1: Al Michaels was on the rise as a young announcer
Speaker 1: at ABC who hadn't you know, do you believe in miracles?
Speaker 2: Hadn't necessary?
Speaker 3: Maybe that had just happened, right, Yeah, yeah it did.
Speaker 3: But Keith Jackson was hand picking guys. Nobody had a
Speaker 3: memory like al Michaels. Nobody had the enthusiasm and the
Speaker 3: passion when he's going to tell his story what happened
Speaker 3: twenty years ago for you know Hallis with the Cleveland
Speaker 3: Browns or Bill Walsh as an assistant to Hallis and
Speaker 3: then worked his way up to becoming a Super Bowl Channe.
Speaker 3: Nobody does that any better than than al Michaels. He
Speaker 3: just has a memory for detail. And Keith Jackson was
Speaker 3: the guy that and probably Howard Gozell. Those guys kind
Speaker 3: of picked and choose, you know, Howard picked Don Meredith
Speaker 3: and Frank Gifford and put those guys together. That was Monday.
Speaker 3: That football is all Howard's I did.
Speaker 2: Sure? Did you have fun doing it?
Speaker 3: Oh? I loved it. I loved it because I could
Speaker 3: just say what I had to say, really short, succinct,
Speaker 3: and those guys could go and then they'd asked me,
Speaker 3: really they knew the game. They could have said, why
Speaker 3: that guy blitzed one the other time, he didn't because
Speaker 3: the left guard was pulling and coming right at him.
Speaker 3: They could have done all of that, but they said,
Speaker 3: why did that play? How did it develop so quickly? Well, Keith,
Speaker 3: you know? And Keith said, just mellow your because I'm
Speaker 3: a little bit higher pitched back then, he said, just
Speaker 3: mellow your your voice out a little bit. I said,
Speaker 3: because he's got that whoa mellye type of thing and
Speaker 3: it's just beautiful and it resonates. And said, how do
Speaker 3: I do that? How do I get because I am
Speaker 3: naive and I on one side of me is and
Speaker 3: the rest of it's don't get in my way because
Speaker 3: I'm coming. I'm going to figure this out real fast.
Speaker 3: The only way I want to figure it out, being
Speaker 3: the self taught and competent is the actor asked the master.
Speaker 3: Mastard said, so, how do I mellow my voice out
Speaker 3: and get it strong like yours? He looked at me.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget. We're sitting in the booth getting ready
Speaker 3: to do a game whiskey hmm, lots of whiskey. And
Speaker 3: those are the memories of he and Al that I
Speaker 3: have and Bobyatty and I did skiing Men's Pro Skey
Speaker 3: tour free ESPN. We did every weekend. He was a
Speaker 3: fun guy, but a professional he did. I recommend to
Speaker 3: Mike Pearl, who's producer at ABC, one of the best
Speaker 3: ever to do the National Skydiving Championships. I jump out
Speaker 3: of the plane with the teams that were competing and
Speaker 3: have a skull mic on and call it in the air.
Speaker 3: Who's ever done that before? Nobody's done it before. So uh,
Speaker 3: you know Al Michael's and all those guys would play
Speaker 3: off of all of those different things that you did
Speaker 3: that separated you from everybody else. But they taught me
Speaker 3: how to prepare for it. They taught me how to
Speaker 3: set the teams up, to interview who the best jumpers
Speaker 3: were and everything else.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to San franciscing and this negotiation
Speaker 1: that you had with Walsh.
Speaker 2: Walsh finally wears you down.
Speaker 1: You come to the decision I'm going to play, and
Speaker 1: you play for those that great organization. You know the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl it was Montana versus a young Dan Marino.
Speaker 2: You win a super Bowl, there's so.
Speaker 1: Much of an emphasis on winning, and you a Super
Speaker 1: Bowl champion? How important was that in your career? Russ
Speaker 1: As you look back on it to have your career
Speaker 1: validated by winning a Super Bowl, being part, excuse me
Speaker 1: off a Super Bowl championship team.
Speaker 3: Anybody who plays high school, college professional football wants to
Speaker 3: be in the last game, the championship game. And we've
Speaker 3: got close a couple of times here with the Patriots.
Speaker 3: So when we started out just beating everybody up with
Speaker 3: San Francisco, and we knew we had a good team.
Speaker 3: Eddie de Barbilo Junior, who was the owner of the team,
Speaker 3: his sister and her husband, John York and Denise York.
Speaker 3: They now own the team that he's relaxing in Florida.
Speaker 3: He brought on a guy named Bill Walsh, and he
Speaker 3: brought on some great coaches. I I hesitate to say
Speaker 3: that it was just Bill Walsh or just Eddie de Bartelow,
Speaker 3: but they had to pick the chemistry and the talent
Speaker 3: on that team. You don't just find a Joe Montana
Speaker 3: coming out of Notre Dame and had an okay college career.
Speaker 3: I know he's going to be a Super Bowl, multiple
Speaker 3: Super Bowl champion. Bill Walsh is one of the smartest,
Speaker 3: most decent. He since passed, hard working, find a way
Speaker 3: to get it right kind of guy and challenges you
Speaker 3: to do the same thing and give you all the
Speaker 3: tools and all the training and everything else to do it.
Speaker 3: He had Sam Wish as the quarterback coach. Sam would
Speaker 3: teach Joe Montana his drops and everything else. But then
Speaker 3: he taught receivers better ways to break on patters to
Speaker 3: get separation from the defender. To help the quarterback. He said,
Speaker 3: otherwise he's going to be watching that guy who's going
Speaker 3: to cut be able to cut in front. You need
Speaker 3: to bend it back a little bit to keep your
Speaker 3: back to that guy. So it was everybody working in
Speaker 3: concert because of Bill Walsh. Eddie de Bardloa made a
Speaker 3: very very smart move. Bill lost. The first couple of
Speaker 3: seasons were horrible seventy nine, eighty, but then in eighty
Speaker 3: one he wins the Super Bowl, talks me out of retirement.
Speaker 3: I come back in eighty two and there's a nine
Speaker 3: week strike and so then we put things back together
Speaker 3: eighty three and then eighty four we go to the
Speaker 3: super Bowl, and then they repeat after that. Bill Walsh
Speaker 3: and Adie de Bardela Junior were the driving forces behind that.
Speaker 3: If you have those two together, the ownership front office
Speaker 3: John McVay, who was a GM working with Eddie and Bill,
Speaker 3: part of that three man team. And then the coach
Speaker 3: head coach, separating all the coaches. You can't don't bother
Speaker 3: my coach, as these are my coaches, guys like Sam
Speaker 3: Wisch and others. Danny Green comes a head coach too,
Speaker 3: Bob McKittrick offensive line coach. Just goes on and on
Speaker 3: and on. You don't have any choice but to win,
Speaker 3: and you know it, you see it coming and you
Speaker 3: start digging in. That doesn't mean you take more hours
Speaker 3: hitting the sled or or watching more film or anything else.
Speaker 3: It's repetition. And that's the other thing with Bill. Repetition. Repetition, repetition.
Speaker 3: We'd run one play fifty times in one week because
Speaker 3: they Miami Dolphins have a way to look at make
Speaker 3: it look different, five, ten, fifteen different ways, which now
Speaker 3: we've seen them all. So when it happened, we just
Speaker 3: everybody makes your adjustments. The thing with Bill is when
Speaker 3: they call the player in the huddle, that may not
Speaker 3: be anything what you run with the lion of scrimmage.
Speaker 3: If if somebody moves here, so we all change. There's
Speaker 3: no way to defend that.
Speaker 1: So you get that taste in San Francisco, and as
Speaker 1: your football career winds down and you see you talk
Speaker 1: about how important the organizational structure was in San Francisco
Speaker 1: and how that was instrumental to their success. When you
Speaker 1: look back at your former team here in New England
Speaker 1: and see that the foundation that the Crafts have built
Speaker 1: and along with Bill Belichick, does you do you get
Speaker 1: a sense like, oh, yeah, I know that culture is
Speaker 1: because I sort of grew up on you know, I
Speaker 1: got a taste of it in San Francisco and as
Speaker 1: it you know, as you see it developed here in
Speaker 1: New England, do you sense a little bit of a
Speaker 1: pride like I was there on the ground floor. I
Speaker 1: wish we could have kicked the door open. We can
Speaker 1: damn close to kicking the door open. But look at
Speaker 1: what they've had now with that organizational structure.
Speaker 3: The first thing I think about is how wonderful and
Speaker 3: great Robert Craft Bill Belichick are for the fans of
Speaker 3: New England. We came so close, We had a great
Speaker 3: run at it, so to speak, and we brought more
Speaker 3: fans on board because of it. You know, people are
Speaker 3: still writing and still asking for cards or photos or whatever.
Speaker 3: But what Robert Craft has done from being the guy
Speaker 3: in the stadium watching the games as a young guy
Speaker 3: and then to become the owner and to do what
Speaker 3: he's done and find a guy like Bill Belichick, who
Speaker 3: by the way, was a big fan and devotee of
Speaker 3: Bill Walsh smartly, rightfully, So they're very similar in that
Speaker 3: they're unorthodox, They're going to find a way to beat you.
Speaker 3: I had the greatest respect for Robert Kraft because he's
Speaker 3: put all of those people together, and then Bill Belichick
Speaker 3: the way that he's handled the coaching staff and the players.
Speaker 3: They're like a bunch of wild animals in the locker room.
Speaker 3: We have a pretty high level of intensity of passion.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we can hold it back, sometimes we can't. Sometimes
Speaker 3: we seem really really relaxed until you poke the bear
Speaker 3: and then part of your ear comes off or whatever.
Speaker 3: And I'm saying that metaphorically. But Robert Craft was a
Speaker 3: a an enormous gift to the fans of New England.
Speaker 3: The NFL itself, owners can be really, really difficult to
Speaker 3: deal with. He is a smart man. He's let's just
Speaker 3: do it right and we're gonna win. And he brought
Speaker 3: the people in to do that. And Bill Belichick, you know,
Speaker 3: God bless his soul. He's had some tough years, he's
Speaker 3: had some fantastic years. He's the type of guy that
Speaker 3: he doesn't care what happened fifteen minutes ago. It's what
Speaker 3: are we going to do now to get better to win.
Speaker 3: I want to be his tight end coach. Tell him
Speaker 3: that because he is so good with young players and
Speaker 3: season players, and they're totally different makeups. The season guy,
Speaker 3: you've got to walk a little tenderly. And Bill's really
Speaker 3: good at saying, well, what do you think about it?
Speaker 3: A young guy, you could say, I'm not really considered
Speaker 3: right now what you think. I need you to do
Speaker 3: this one released this way or that way, or we'll
Speaker 3: talk about what you think later on. He's really really
Speaker 3: good with that. So are as coaches.
Speaker 1: Last one here for me, russ Is and we talked
Speaker 1: a lot about football, and you mentioned what a wonderful
Speaker 1: life you've had, and is from an outsider standpoint. I
Speaker 1: hear skydiving, I hear cattle farming, surfing, surfing pilot. Yes,
Speaker 1: you played professional football announcer ABC Superstars. You know, do
Speaker 1: you pinch yourself sometimes and go man? You know, this
Speaker 1: is what I wanted to do, and I've done it.
Speaker 1: I've done what I wanted to do in life.
Speaker 3: You know. I do reflect sitting here with you looking
Speaker 3: out at the field. I ran a couple of what
Speaker 3: I used to call glides and I could still step
Speaker 3: it off. It was okay. You let me hit the
Speaker 3: sledge a little bit to put ice on my neck.
Speaker 3: I didn't hit that hard. It brings back a lot
Speaker 3: of fond memories and I am honored to have been
Speaker 3: part of that past. I know where my place is.
Speaker 3: This is the twenty twenty three season football season. The
Speaker 3: team's getting ready for that's the focus and I'm all
Speaker 3: for it, and I'll be there in the stadium yelling
Speaker 3: and screaming along with everybody else. So it's been an honor.
Speaker 3: I look for the next thing. We're putting together, a
Speaker 3: possible company someplace in the East Coast that has to
Speaker 3: with airplanes. I'll be flying a lot anyway, and I
Speaker 3: still do fly a lot, but that's a challenge, so
Speaker 3: I'm looking to the next. I don't live much in
Speaker 3: the past. I like to go back and visit, especially
Speaker 3: with my friends and my teammates. And now you you know,
Speaker 3: we'll be able to take some of this stuff that
Speaker 3: we get responses from because they've been watching you for years.
Speaker 3: You and I are in the same boat, except you're
Speaker 3: more You have a lot more exposure on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: And I truly am honored that you gave me this
Speaker 3: opportunity to speak.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Matt, I appreciate that I like to you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you one more and I mentioned Gronkowski.
Speaker 2: Aloha Aloha, mahalo mahala, Yes, I mentioned Gronkowski.
Speaker 1: Do you watch Do you look at a guy like
Speaker 1: Gronk who played for the team that you used to
Speaker 1: play for.
Speaker 2: And I mean Marvel, bigger kid than you are.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was faster than you were
Speaker 1: at the time, different strengths, but a guy who you
Speaker 1: could put on the line and he'd knock a guy
Speaker 1: fifteen yards past, a true tight end and yes, you
Speaker 1: could say him up the scene and he could run
Speaker 1: by linebackers.
Speaker 2: What did you think of him when you watched him play.
Speaker 3: Russ Well, first of all, you said the one thing
Speaker 3: that separates him and I believe me, from most tight ends.
Speaker 3: You said, a complete tight end that would block and
Speaker 3: have the speed to get downfield and have the hands.
Speaker 3: He's got incredible a sense for the balls. Your head
Speaker 3: comes around right here and there's a little flash of brown.
Speaker 2: And you get radius very high, like you could put
Speaker 2: the ball. Almost any plays with him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So one thing I would say about about Rob
Speaker 3: Gronkowski is there isn't anything you can't do on a
Speaker 3: football field that he decides to do. And that's the
Speaker 3: goal of every tight end. And I work with some
Speaker 3: young tight ends from time to time. They want to
Speaker 3: get a college scholarship or high school or a couple
Speaker 3: of young pro guys. Not in the coaching standpoint, but
Speaker 3: just technique because I had to learn from the very
Speaker 3: very beginning. I won't give you away one of my
Speaker 3: secrets I learned that helps tight ends improve quicker. But
Speaker 3: to look at a Grondkowski, we're probably about the same speed.
Speaker 3: I was four or five forty. I think that's probably
Speaker 3: what Rob runs, four or five four six. We're both
Speaker 3: in that range. I waited. I played about they say
Speaker 3: it comes out in my car. That was two forty
Speaker 3: I played it two fifty five. Now, when I got here,
Speaker 3: I was about two forty five. I quickly became two
Speaker 3: fifty by hitting the sled. I never lifted weights. They
Speaker 3: said you need to lift weights put on more weight. No,
Speaker 3: the muscle becomes stronger than the tendon and it rips
Speaker 3: the tendon, and the muscle is supposed to get first. So
Speaker 3: I'm not doing any of that. So I'm going to
Speaker 3: hit the sled instead, so that put on weight. So
Speaker 3: I ended up weighing about two hundred and fifty five pounds.
Speaker 3: If I hadn't done more running and more stairs, I
Speaker 3: probably would have gone to you know, sixty five to seventy,
Speaker 3: because you do build up muscle hitting those sleds. But
Speaker 3: I didn't want to compromise my speed, so I stopped
Speaker 3: a two hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty five pounds.
Speaker 3: Rob was probably we're about the same height. I'm probably
Speaker 3: not as tall as I was when I started, nor
Speaker 3: will he be. He's about six six sixty seven six six. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just a big guy all around, and when he hits,
Speaker 3: he explodes. That's his number one quality in the running game.
Speaker 3: And he has the want to to take that guy
Speaker 3: fifteen yards. He's not just gonna hit him and the
Speaker 3: ball the guy goes by and he just lets him go,
Speaker 3: he's gonna bury him. And when he runs her route,
Speaker 3: he's so fluid for a big guy, he's like a
Speaker 3: ballerina out there. You know. Lin Swan used to take
Speaker 3: ballet lessons so that he could be quicker. And what
Speaker 3: a gifted receiver he was. I look at Rob Gronkowski
Speaker 3: and I marvel at what he can do. And I
Speaker 3: can't wait till the next play and the next play. Oh,
Speaker 3: now he's playing in Tampa bayh Is Brady there too? Oh?
Speaker 3: Great to get to watch both of them. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: watch him and I do my Rob does a little
Speaker 3: bit early. Oh that's a little bit late. You could
Speaker 3: have done this. She could have done that. I'm sure
Speaker 3: he if he did. Look at any of my film
Speaker 3: in the days. Oh, you could have done better on that. Russ,
Speaker 3: you could have done better on that. One of the
Speaker 3: best of all time. And he will go into the.
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame Off the field.
Speaker 1: Did he have a little bit of Russ Francis in him?
Speaker 1: As well as maybe a free spirit? Because there's a
Speaker 1: guy who definitely bangs the drum to a different beat.
Speaker 1: He's not just like everybody else. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've seen that him as you maybe look at
Speaker 1: him from afar on social media and how he is.
Speaker 4: He's a different cat. Yeah, well is similar to you.
Speaker 4: Tight ends are different to begin with. I mean the
Speaker 4: offensive line won't claim us. Yeah, we're going to look
Speaker 4: at film for the running game. They put you over
Speaker 4: in the side over here. The receivers, you're not really
Speaker 4: a receiver, so they're off running their little fancy little
Speaker 4: you know Darrell used to do. Stanley used to do
Speaker 4: these pair of weets. Try this, Russ. He's trying to
Speaker 4: work on my foot coordination. So we are pretty much
Speaker 4: on our own and we're fine with that. That type
Speaker 4: of mentality is just who do I hit, where do
Speaker 4: I run the pattern? How do I get better? And
Speaker 4: all that type of stuff.
Speaker 3: Rob I don't do social media, so I haven't seen
Speaker 3: him on social media. I could see where he is
Speaker 3: a real kick because he speaks his mind, got a
Speaker 3: great sense of humor, and you know, he's done comedy
Speaker 3: shows and everything else. There's nothing that he can't do.
Speaker 3: Gronk is a rare specimen, rare physical specimen. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be surprised if you went back and played with Brady
Speaker 3: again this next coming season. And they could show up
Speaker 3: a week before and be ready to play.
Speaker 1: Our guest has been Russ Francis. Russ has been truly
Speaker 1: an honor. Thank you so much for your time. It
Speaker 1: was great to see a great stories, great information, great career,
Speaker 1: great life.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Matt, and I want to thank
Speaker 3: all the fans that watch your show, listen to your podcasts,
Speaker 3: and everything else for everything they've done for forty eight years.
Speaker 3: Nancy Meyer and I came in together. She's still with
Speaker 3: the team in the front office. Got to see her today,
Speaker 3: lover to death. Gave her a big hug. I want
Speaker 3: to give her another hug before I leave. But the
Speaker 3: fans have been fantastic. They are why we got to play.
Speaker 3: They were therefore us win or lose in the snow,
Speaker 3: in the rain. They couldn't I couldn't have been. You
Speaker 3: talked about being privileged to meet these people, play with
Speaker 3: these people, and everything else, but the fans are there
Speaker 3: at the very top of the pyramid. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: To thank you for downloading this podcast.
Speaker 2: Subscribe on Apple, Google Play, and everywhere.
Speaker 3: Else you listen.
Speaker 2: Like the show, please rate and review us.
Speaker 3: Listener comments and ratings help keep us high in the
Speaker 3: podcast rankings, so new listeners can find us.
Speaker 2: Be sure to check patriots dot com for more news
Speaker 2: and more podcasts.