Remembering Alex Karras as a Football Player

Alex Karras loved to perform. He’s famous for his success as an actor but he should also be remembered as one of the N.F.L.’s defensive stars of the 1960s. Karras died on Wednesday of kidney failure at his home in Los Angeles. He was 77. A few thoughts:


Alex Karras is perhaps best known for his one-punch knockout of a horse in “Blazing Saddles” (“Mongo only pawn in game of life”), or as the adoptive father in “Webster”, the ABC sitcom he starred in along side his wife, Susan Clark, or even as one of the voices in the heyday of “Monday Night Football,” in the mid-70s. But before all of that, Karras was No. 71 of the Detroit Lions, one of the N.F.L.’s best defensive tackles of the 1960s.

Karras was born and raised in Gary, Ind., where his father was the community doctor. He was all-state for three years in high school at guard, tackle and fullback.

At the University of Iowa, despite quitting the team at least twice after disputes with his coach, Forest Evashevski, Karras was so good that he was named an all-American as a two-way tackle in 1956 and 1957. That year, as a senior, he also won the Outland Trophy as the nation’s top collegiate lineman, and he finished second to John David Crow in the voting for the Heisman Trophy.

Karras was selected by the Lions in the first round of the 1958 draft (10th over all). He spent 12 seasons at left defensive tackle in Detroit, from 1958-1962, and from 1964-1970, when an injury to his right knee effectively ended his career. He was named first team All-Pro in 1960, 1961 and 1965, and he was selected for the Western Division Pro-Bowl team four times, from 1960-1962 and again in 1965. Karras, Merlin Olsen of the Rams and Bob Lilly of the Cowboys were the three defensive tackles chosen for the All-Decade team of the 1960s.

In 1960, Karras and ends Darris McCord and Bill Glass were joined by a 6-foot-5 inch, 300-pound rookie, Roger Brown, at right defensive tackle. They quickly developed into one of the N.F.L.’s best young defensive lines. Brown’s presence provided Karras with more opportunities for a one-on-one matchup with the guard on passing downs. The center couldn’t double-team both of them.

The Lions didn’t have enough offense to seriously challenge the Packers in the Western Division in the early ’60s. In 1962, their defense, which featured four future Hall of Famers — middle linebacker Joe Schmidt, cornerbacks Night Train Lane and Dick LeBeau, and safety Yale Lary — allowed 177 points, second fewest in the league. They finished 11-3, still two games behind Green Bay.

That year, Sam Williams replaced Bill Glass at right defensive end. In the annual Thanksgiving Day game against the Packers at Tiger Stadium, the Lions sacked Bart Starr, depending on the source, 10 or 11 times, including once for a safety. Williams also returned a fumble for a touchdown as the Lions built a 26-0 lead after three quarters in an eventual 26-14 victory. The Green Bay offense was held to 122 net yards in their only loss of the season.

As a result of that game, which was nationally televised, Detroit’s defensive line — Karras, Brown, McCord and Williams — was soon called the Fearsome Foursome. (That nickname, now exclusively associated with the Rams of Merlin Olsen, Deacon Jones, Rosey Grier and Lamar Lundy, had already been used to describe the defensive lines of the Giants and the Colts in the late ’50s and the San Diego Chargers of the A.F.L. in the early ’60s.) The Lions averaged about 50 sacks in the seasons when the four were together, in 1962, 1964 and 1965, all in 14-game schedules.

At 6 feet 2 and about 250 pounds, Karras was squatty and powerful. He was “stocky, like a bowling ball,” writes one of his main on-field antagonists, Packers guard Jerry Kramer, in “Instant Replay,” his diary of the 1967 season (Doubleday, 2006, p. 150, originally published in 1968 by The New American Library). And yet Karras was light on his feet. His coaches in Detroit referred to him as Mr. Twinkletoes.

In his playing days, Karras normally wore black horn-rimmed glasses everywhere except on the field. During the game, he relied mostly on instinct and feel within the narrowly defined area of the line of scrimmage. Against the run, he was strong at the point of attack. He was even better in pursuit, especially early in his career. Later, his level of effort was not as consistent.

Karras was primarily an outside pass rusher. At the snap, he tended to feint a move to the inside to try to force the guard to shift his weight to his inside foot, and then Karras would quickly break back to his outside. “One of his moves is a little hop and a skip to the outside,” said Jerry Kramer. “He actually hops, and it looks funny, but it works.” (Instant Replay, p. 129) Karras used an inside move only as a change-up. He also occasionally used a bull-rush technique in which he dropped his head and drove it into the upper chest of the blocker.

In addition to his quick feet, Karras also had fast hands. “His specialty is the karate chop,” the veteran guard John Wilbur said. “It can numb you for a second if you don’t learn how to get out of the way of it.” (Paul Zimmerman, “The New Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football,” Simon & Schuster, 1984, p. 137.)

Karras was smart, funny and often controversial. He wasn’t a big fan of authority. His many fights with his employers (and his coaches) over the years usually led to trouble, but he didn’t seem to mind. Here’s how Murray Olderman, the longtime sportswriter and editor, described Karras in the early ’70s:

He had a cherubic face and an owlish sense of humor, but on the field for the Detroit Lions, Alex Karras was all business… He was Spanky McFarland grown up into a man-sized monster. Underneath that face, the shoulders sloped broadly to a thick trunk of a body with sturdy underpinning. Illogically, Alex George Karras was built to play football… He was by turns talky, grumbling, witty, snarling, impish. He made it interesting. (Murray Olderman, “The Defenders,” Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973, p. 204-205.)
In early January 1963, the N.F.L. commissioner, Pete Rozelle, confirmed on the record that the league was investigating suspicions that some of its players had been associating with known gamblers. A week later, Karras appeared on the “Huntley-Brinkley Report” and admitted that he’d bet on games, some of them involving the Lions.

On April 17, Rozelle announced that he was suspending Karras and Green Bay’s star halfback, Paul Hornung, indefinitely. He also fined five of Karras’s teammates for betting on the 1962 championship game between the Packers and the Giants.

In the immediate aftermath, Hornung appeared genuinely contrite. Typically, Karras expressed no such sentiment, then or ever. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of,” he said, “and I’m not guilty of anything.” (Michael MacCambridge, “America’s Game,” Anchor Books, 2005, p. 178). Hornung and Karras were reinstated before the start of the 1964 season.

The news media and the public generally reacted favorably to Rozelle’s decision. As Jim Murray wrote in The Los Angeles Times: “Rozelle had to protect the game rather than the players. He had to show the owners, the players — and the public — that pro football was a big boy now, a public trust that the public could trust.” (MacCambridge, p. 178-179)

Sometime in the mid-60s, before a game, Karras, as a defensive captain, went to the center of the field for the coin toss. “Captain Karras,” said the referee, “while I flip this coin, would you please call it heads or tails.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Karras. “I am not permitted to gamble.” (Olderman, p. 207)