The fierce linebacker who became an NFL icon
Sam Huff 1934–2021
As football began to rival baseball as America’s No. 1 sport in the 1950s and ’60s, Sam Huff emerged as the NFL’s menacing poster boy. Playing for the New York Giants, the handsome and ferocious linebacker brought the kind of renown to defense that had once been the domain of quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers. He was a terror in “the Greatest Game Ever Played”—the 1958 NFL championship showdown that the Giants lost in overtime to the Baltimore Colts, 23-17— forcing a fumble and blocking an attempted field goal. His fame reached new heights two years later, when CBS wired him for sound for a Walter Cronkite–narrated special, The Violent World of Sam Huff. A radio transmitter in Huff’s shoulder pads let viewers hear him crunch opponents and warn a receiver, “Don’t hit me on the chin with your elbow. Do that again, you’ll get a broken nose.”
Robert Lee Huff—he had no idea how he came to be called Sam—was born to a coal miner father and a homemaker mother in Morgantown, W.Va., said the New York Daily News. Huff “stayed out of the coal mines by starring as a two-way lineman” in high school and as an AllAmerica
guard for West Virginia University. Drafted by the Giants in 1956, Huff “had trouble fitting in,” said The Washington Post.
At 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, he was too small for the defensive line and too slow to block. But when defensive coordinator Tom Landry installed a 4-3 scheme, with three linebackers, Huff fit in perfectly as middle linebacker— the defense’s anchor. “It was like I was born to play the position,” he said.
Huff had 30 career interceptions, said The
New York Times, but was remembered “for his head-on duels with two of the game’s greatest fullbacks: the Cleveland Browns’ Jim Brown and the Green Bay Packers’ Jim Taylor.” He was a key figure in the Giants’ 1956 NFL Championship win, but the team came up short in five subsequent years, and Huff was traded to Washington in 1963. He felt betrayed—and delighted in Washington’s 72-41 victory over the Giants in 1966. “Justice is done,” Huff said. He retired from playing in 1969, later working as a radio broadcaster for Washington games. Huff bemoaned efforts to make the game less violent. “When I hit you, I tried to hit you hard enough to hurt you,” he said in 2002. “That’s the way the game should be played.”