Dudek recalls big chance
Quincy native stars during NFL strike
The dream that had died suddenly had been revived and so Joe Dudek had a decision to make. It wasn’t as easy as you might think.
Would he do what so many other dreamers were doing in the crisp fall days of 1987? Would he do what he’d already twice said he would not — cross a picket line for one last chance to prove he belonged?
Dreams die hard, although Dudek didn’t really have many about the NFL until late in his time carrying a football at Plymouth State in New Hampshire. After becoming a cult hero rushing for 5,570 yards and an NCAA-record 79 touchdowns, Dudek on Dec. 2, 1985, found his face on the cover of Sports Illustrated along with Bo Jackson.
Bo knows, but Bo didn’t know jack about Joe.
Jackson was the odds-on favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. On the SI cover, below the pictures of him and Iowa quarterback Chuck Long, was Dudek with the headline touting him as “The Thinking Man’s Vote” for the Heisman.
The box that was checked: Not your average Joe’s.
He finished ninth in the balloting, the highest ever for a Division 3 player. Despite that, Dudek’s story was the same coming out of Plymouth State as when he graduated from North Quincy High. Nobody picked him.
He went to the tiny New Hampshire college because no one else asked. When he walked off Plymouth State’s field for the final time he’d left Walter Payton in the dust and nearly bowled over Bo Jackson. But on draft day the NFL didn’t call until the drafting was done.
The Denver Broncos gave him a chance, and he ended up on injured reserve in 1986. He got an AFC Championship ring for his trouble and was among the final cuts in the summer of ’87. But there were ill winds blowing through the NFL that summer so coach Dan Reeves had one last request.
“They asked me to sign a contract in case of a strike,” Dudek recalled from his new home near St. Louis. “I told them absolutely not. I didn’t want to cross my teammates’ picket line if there was one. They were still my teammates.”
So Dudek went home to an uncertain football future, rehabbing tripledeckers in Dorchester for his brother as football faded in the rear view. Then, two weeks into the season, NFL players began a 24-day strike. It’s 30 years ago today that the third week of the 1987 season was wiped out but it seems like yesterday to Dudek, who was suddenly back in a national magazine although not yet back on a football team.
“People magazine did an article on me,” Dudek said. “The week before I was working construction. Now the Broncos were calling again.”
In Chicago, Mike Ditka called his team of replacement players “the spare Bears.” Some teams thought it was a joke and put little effort into forming rosters even after the league announced after the first week of the strike it would stage games the following Sunday and they would count. Whenever the strike ended, what the spare Bears did would be set in stone.
Dudek again rejected Denver’s pleadings that first week as picket lines formed. In places like Kansas City, there were more than picketers. There were guns and fist fights.
On the strike’s first day, picketers assembled in Kansas City surrounded by TV cameras when a pickup truck rolled up. Standing on the flatbed were Bill Maas and Dino Hackett, two striking Chiefs dressed in army fatigues and carrying rifles. Next to them stood an ill-tempered dog. All three were growling.
Later that day, Hackett and Jack Del Rio, who today coaches the Oakland Raiders, were picketing when a local college student showed up with his agent to try out for the replacement Chiefs. When the agent returned to his car, the tires had been slashed.
He and Del Rio got into it and then out came the player, escorted by former All-Pro receiver Otis Taylor, then a Chiefs scout. Del Rio, new to the Chiefs, had no idea who Taylor was except to realize he’d just crossed his picket line. Taylor and Del Rio began rolling on the ground.
And that was just the first day of the strike.
Dudek heard those stories but after the Houston Oilers’ replacements beat up the Broncos, 40-10, Denver called again. This time they said he’d be the focus of their offense against the Raiders.
At first he didn’t waver but when told veterans were already crossing the line, including the Broncos’ Steve Watson and Bill Bryan, he began to think.
“Even though I didn’t come from a union family I believed in the union concept and I wanted to support my teammates, but I’m in Massachusetts rehabbing houses while guys making a lot more than me were crossing the picket lines,” Dudek explained. “It was one of those forks in the road you face in life. They were offering me a chance to be the featured back on ‘Monday Night Football!’ It was a chance I couldn’t pass up. I needed to take this shot. How could I say no?”
Dudek never saw a picket line and didn’t have to cross one that he can recall after he returned to Denver. Unlike the Chiefs, the Broncos were less militant. Whatever their feelings on Oct. 12, 1987, when the replacement Broncos ran into Mile High Stadium to face future Hall of Famer Howie Long and the Raiders, Dudek knew how he felt. He was a mile high.
“I had a lot of nervous energy before the game,” recalled Dudek, whose No. 32 Broncos jersey hangs in a frame on his wall. “It’s one thing to play in a scrimmage or preseason. It’s another to play in a game. It was as real as it can get with Howie and Bill Pickel on the other side of the line. We had one of the biggest strike crowds. In a small way, I got to know what it was like to be John Elway. It was ‘Monday Night Football.’ All my life I knew what that meant. It was electric.”
So was Dudek, scoring two first-quarter touchdowns and rushing for 128 yards in a 30-14 victory. Six days later, in Kansas City, it was a different story.
“It doesn’t take the NFL long to make adjustments,” Dudek said. “It was obvious we weren’t going to pass (not after replacement quarterback Ken Karcher went 9-for-23 against the Raiders). They stacked the line with eight guys. We weren’t going to go far running the ball.”
Reeves told Karcher to start throwing and Dudek finished with five receptions on five targets and Denver won again, 26-17. It was the game that convinced Dudek he “could find a niche.”
Several days later the players caved, the picket lines came down and the spare Bears were replaced by real Bears. Same was true with the Broncos but with the players’ return came a brand-new practice squad and a place for Dudek.
“That gave me a chance to adjust to the speed of the NFL,” Dudek said. “There was some awkward silences at first but deep down the players realized if Joe Dudek and a few others hadn’t crossed maybe they go 0-3 and their season is over. They could at least rationalize it. ‘We didn’t lose our season.’ ”
Many teams did but the Broncos ultimately returned to Super Bowl XXII, where they lost to the Redskins. By that time, Dudek was home swinging a hammer.
“I got released late that season when Clarence Kay got hurt,” Dudek said. “They immediately signed me for the next season but I don’t think my body type could have taken the pounding a running back takes in the NFL. But I do believe I could have been successful as a third-down back. After Denver cut me again, the Jets offered me that chance but it didn’t work out. I could have chased the dream a little more but it was time to move on.”
The NFL moved on without Joe Dudek, like most of the replacement players.
“I went from a high school kid who didn’t think he’d get a chance to play college football to carrying the ball in the NFL,” Dudek said. “I got more out of football than I could have ever dreamed. I was on the cover of SI and played against the Raiders on Monday night. That will be with me forever. There were some great players on both sides of the ball those two weeks.”
For two weeks 30 years ago, Joe Dudek was one of them, a kid from Quincy living a dream. So what if it didn’t last. What dreams do?