Ex-Texas, Falcons linebacker ferocious
AUSTIN — In 1963, Sports Illustrated’s Dan Jenkins went up to Army coach Paul Dietzel and quizzed him about the Texas Longhorns, a team the Cadets would face in ’64.
Texas, ranked No. 1 in the country, had a sophomore linebacker from San Antonio with particular aggression. “I asked him, ‘Have you ever seen a better linebacker than Tommy Nobis?’ ” Jenkins said Wednesday.
Dietzel won a national title at LSU in 1958, so he had been around some stout players.
“Tommy Nobis is not the greatest linebacker I’ve ever seen,” Dietzel told Jenkins. “Tommy Nobis is the greatest linebacker who ever lived.”
Nobis, one of the most ferocious players in Texas history and the Atlanta Falcons’ first draft pick, died Wednesday after
a long illness, UT and Falcons officials confirmed. His wife, Lynn, was by his side. Nobis was 74.
Nobis played pro football from 1966-76 and was a five-time Pro Bowler. In Atlanta, he’s known as “Mr. Falcon.” But back home, Nobis is known as the best linebacker in Texas history, a two-time All-American who started on the 1963 national championship team and one of the best players Darrell Royal once said he coached.
“He was one of the best, for sure,” said Duke Carlisle, UT’s starting quarterback in 1963. “I played with (Pat) Culpeppper and (Johnny) Treadwell my first years, I didn’t think I’d seen any linebackers to compare with them. He quickly showed that he was probably the best that I’d seen since I’d been watching football.
“I’d imagine most of the guys on our team would say the hardest licks they got all year was when he tackled ’em.”
David McWilliams, a lineman on the ’63 team and later UT’s coach, said Nobis tackled in a way that might get him kicked out of games today.
Two-way rarity
“He hit a kid at Baylor, I don’t know how that poor boy got up,” McWilliams said. “Really, Tommy would tackle you with his chest. He would come up and raise his head and tackle you with his big ol’ arms. He was, to me, the best linebacker I ever saw play at Texas.”
Royal eventually put Nobis on the field as a guard.
“If Nobis plays just defense, he’s going to be out there less than half the time,” the coach once said. “You gotta be crazy to have Nobis playing less than half the time.”
Nobis was a consensus All-American in 1965 and won the Outland Trophy and Maxwell Award as the nation’s best defensive player. He finished seventh in the Heisman Trophy voting that season, two spots ahead of Florida’s Steve Spurrier.
After UT, Nobis was a prime target in the AFLNFL signing skirmishes. The Falcons drafted him No. 1 overall but the AFL Oilers wanted him, too. Astronaut Frank Borman radioed in from Gemini 7: “Tell Nobis to sign with Houston.”
But Nobis opted for the NFL and the expansion Falcons. He was the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year in 1966, averaging 21 tackles per game, and he was a five-time Pro Bowl selection and three times a first- or second-team All-Pro.
Slowed by injuries in 1969 and 1971, Nobis retired in 1976 having played for teams with a combined record of 50-100-4 with no playoff appearances. A member of the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame and College Football Hall of Fame, he has never come close to enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Unlucky in the NFL
“With any other team, he would be in the Hall of Fame,” longtime Falcons teammate and former University of Houston player Greg Brezina told the Chronicle this year. “He has always been the measure of a Falcons player. Even with the success of (the 2016 team), he is the greatest Falcon ever, not only for his play but his character.”
After his playing days were over, Nobis had a long career in the Falcons front office and became well known in the Atlanta area for running a charitable organization that provided job training to people with disabilities.
Like many of his NFL and college contemporaries, Nobis suffered from physical and cognitive ailments. He was among 250-plus past or present beneficiaries of the 88 Plan, the NFL program that reimburses retired players for expenses for treatment arising from dementia, Parkinson’s, ALS or other neurological disorders, and was among the plaintiffs in the recently settled NFL concussion lawsuit.
Multiple concussions
Nobis suffered at least three concussions in the NFL plus an unknown number in college and high school.
During his UT days, he said that in the trenches on the goal line: “Your first contact is with your head. When you’re 2 yards from a touchdown, you’re gutting it.”
His brain will be donated to a research group in Atlanta, Lynn Nobis said.
“It’s sad what football has done to these players,” she told the Chronicle this year. “But I know he loved it more than anything. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
Nobis is survived by his wife and three children, Tommy, Kevin and Devon, as well as eight grandchildren.