Eagles all-timer Hall of Famer Bob Brown has died
Bob Brown, who spent the first five years of his brilliant Hall of Fame career playing offensive tackle for the Eagles, died Friday, the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced Saturday.
He was 81.
Brown’s wife Cecelia Brown told the Hall that her husband died peacefully at a rehabilitation center surrounded by his family. He had suffered a stroke in April.
The Eagles honored Brown at halftime of a preseason game against the Ravens at the Linc in August of 2004, two weeks after he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
“I believe that I was very competitive when I was working,” Brown said before the game. “I believed I could block anything that was born from a woman, walked upright and called himself a man.”
With the second pick in the 1964 draft, the Eagles selected Brown out of Nebraska, where he had studied biology. The Broncos picked him fourth overall in the AFL draft, but Brown took less money to sign with the Eagles and in just five years became one of the most decorated offensive linemen in team history.
He made the Pro Bowl and 1st-team. all-pro in 1965, 1966 and 1968, and the two years he wasn’t 1st-team all-pro he made 2nd-team.
To this day – half a century after he retired – he’s one of only nine Eagles in franchise history to earn 1st-team all-pro honors three times.
The only offensive lineman in franchise history picked to more first-team all-pro teams is five-time selection Jason Kelce.
“I was going to come hard all day when I played against you,” Brown told the Lincoln (Neb.) Star Journal the week of his Hall of Fame induction. “I knew that I had to do whatever it took to wear you down, and if that meant physically beating on somebody so that he was weak and vulnerable in the fourth quarter, so be it.
“When I went down that tunnel, I made Attila the Hun look like Little Miss Muffet.”
Brown wasn’t inducted into the Hall of Fame until 21 years after he retired.
“The road I’ve taken has been arduous and interesting,” he told the Lincoln Star. “If I would have played my entire pro career with one team, maybe I’d have been selected sooner. I had to take this walk on my own because I was a gypsy.
“But a thousand years from now, I’ll still be enshrined here along with the best players in history.”
The Eagles traded Brown to the Rams after the 1968 season and he made all-pro two more times before finishing his career with the Raiders, where he made his sixth Pro Bowl. He retired after the 1973 season.
Brown made the NFL’s Team of the Decade for the 1960s and was inducted into the Eagles Hall of Fame in 2017. In 1993, he was selected to the College Football Hall of Fame, and in 2004 Nebraska retired his No. 64.
Brown was known as a ferocious run blocker, and Eagles running back Timmy Brown made two Pro Bowls playing behind Brown.
“When he pulls out to lead a sweep, there are two things for a guy like me to do,” Hall of Famer Herb Adderley from Northeast High told the Star Journal. “Get out of the way or get hurt.”
In the same story, Hall of Famer Carl Eller of the Vikings said, “He would strike out at you. He wanted to do bodily harm. I always felt satisfied when I had a good game against Bob because his intention was to inflict pain.”
While he was playing for the Eagles, Brown enrolled at Penn and earned his masters in educational administration.
Along with Steve Van Buren, Pete Pihos, Chuck Bednarik, Tommy McDonald, Harold Carmichael, Reggie White and Brian Dawkins, Brown is one of only eight players in the Hall of Fame who spent at least half his career with the Eagles.
