Jack Tatum's Memory Deserves a Break

At this rate, your average NFL player will have to pull a skirt over his shoulder pads by the end of the decade.

You can't breathe on quarterbacks anymore. You also have league and union officials huddling about limiting the amount of contact in practices during training camp and the regular season.

Yes, there is an epidemic of concussions in the league, and, yes, action was needed on the matter long ago. It's just that you wonder if football warriors such as Jack Tatum could have functioned inside this rapidly growing namby-pamby environment of the NFL.

I say no.

"Yes, he could have," said Art Shell, the Hall of Fame offensive lineman, referring to Tatum, who, contrary to popular belief, was a notoriously jarring but mostly clean free safety.

Tatum died on Tuesday at 61 of a massive heart attack, but it also could have been from a broken heart. He is in the College Football Hall of Fame after his greatness at Ohio State. Still, he lacks a bust in Canton for this eternal reason: despite prospering decades ago with Shell on those explosive Oakland Raiders teams, Tatum has a slew of folks holding that Darryl Stingley tragedy against him.

The late Stingley was a New England Patriots wide receiver who became a quadriplegic during a 1978 exhibition game against the Raiders. That's because Stingley was clobbered by Tatum, but it was a legal hit.

It was just crushing, like all of Tatum's hits.



"See, like today, guys are making unnecessary contact with their helmets by using themselves as missiles, but it was different with Jack," said Shell, among the definitive experts on the subject.

After a couple of stints as the Raiders head coach -- while serving as an NFL assistant in between -- Shell is the league's appeals officer. His primary job is to listen to players wishing to have their penalties reduced for things such as what the NFL deems as illegal hits.

Added Shell, "When Jack and 'em played, they were taught to tackle with your shoulder. He'd use his head at times, but he used his shoulder a lot more. With just his shoulder, he'd jar the hell out of you."

To paraphrase the title of Tatum's autobiography, they called him "The Assassin" around the NFL and beyond. Shell laughed, saying, "Among ourselves, we called him 'The Dreamer,' because after he hit you, he put you to sleep, and he did so in a legal way."

I'm shaking again.

A few weeks before I began covering Shell and the rest of those legendary Raiders in 1980 for the San Francisco Examiner, they traded Tatum to the Houston Oilers, and I was pleased. No, I was ecstatic. I was scared of the guy, and I never met him.

I heard all of the stories, though. The most striking one -- especially for a young sports journalist just a couple of years out of college and preparing to cover the most intimidating NFL team of that time or of any time -- involved the garbage-can thing.

Let's start with this: reporters weren't exactly Tatum's favorite people and, according to Shell after chuckling, "There weren't too many folks in general who got close to him."

Anyway, Tatum was the leader of a secondary that former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll said contributed to the "criminal element" of the NFL. He specifically blasted George Atkinson, the Raiders' strong safety, who spent the 1976 AFC Championship Game and a regular-season game during the next season knocking Steelers receiver Lynn Swann unconscious with vicious blows to the head.

In addition to Tatum and Atkinson, the Raiders had defensive backs during the latter 1970s such as Willie Brown, Skip Thomas and Lester Hayes -- all noted bruisers, all located in the back of the team's locker room that they labeled The Ghetto.

They didn't take kindly to trespassers, especially reporters. The story goes that the least of the penalties for the guilty was to have a snarling Tatum stuff you into that aforementioned garbage can.

"You didn't have to be a reporter to have that happen. You could be a receiver, a running back or a lineman going down there by yourself," Shell said, laughing. "Before you know it, they've got you picked up, and you're in that can, because they were like a bunch of killer bees. They were in that corner, way beyond us as offensive linemen.

"Every now and then, they'd be mouthing off at one of us, and then we would take about two or three of us down there, and we'd clean them out. But if you went down there by yourself, you'd be in trouble."

Yep, I heard.



In contrast, I saw the Immaculate Reception on television. That was during a 1972 playoff game in Pittsburgh, where Franco Harris spent the dying seconds grabbing Terry Bradshaw's deflected pass before tight-roping 42 yards down the sidelines for a Steelers victory.

The ball ricocheted off (who else?) Tatum before he crashed into John "Frenchy" Fuqua, Bradshaw's intended receiver.

Either that, or Fuqua touched the ball first.

The rule was that an offensive player couldn't touch a pass and have a teammate subsequently catch it. Said Shell, "Jack said he didn't hit the ball, and I watched the tape, and I don't think he hit the ball. He made contact with the player, and the ball bounced off (Fuqua) into Franco's hands, which made the play illegal."

The play would have been irrelevant had Tatum done the simple thing by tackling the guy.

Game over.

No immaculate anything.

The thing is, Tatum wasn't into giving in -- at least, in his mind -- which is why he never apologized for his Stingley hit.

"It was an unfortunate accident, because if you run quick slants like they did back then, and you throw the ball in there like that, you, as a quarterback, got to know that if the safety is sitting back there in the middle, your receiver is going to be in danger," Shell said. "So you have to get the ball to him quickly, and you have to get him the ball in a position where he can catch and get the hell down.

"Jack was just doing his job, and we all felt bad that Stingley got hurt on the play. Jack felt terrible, but he got castigated for making a simple football play that he had made many times and others had made many times."

Two years later, Tatum was finished in the NFL after his only season with the Oilers. He retired in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was afflicted so badly by diabetes that his left leg was amputated below the knee in 2003. He was treated through the years for kidney and liver failure.

Then Tatum died, three years after Stingley.

"People say Jack did not try to make contact with Stingley, but he tried after that game, but nobody would let Jack near him," Shell said. "Because he was denied that chance, bitterness slipped in. The walls went up, and those guys never communicated. I wish they had."

So does everybody with a heart.