Earlier this month Antonio Brown made what may be essentially the most dramatic exit in sports activities historical past, stripping down and stalking off the sphere in the course of an NFL recreation, as his defending champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been rallying towards the lowly New York Jets on the highway.
Eric Dickerson might by no means.
“Hell no,” says the 61-year-old Corridor of Famer. “My mom would’ve killed me. I can’t converse for an additional man. I can’t converse for what’s on his thoughts. However I’ll say this: in the future, when he will get to be an older man, he’ll look again and say, Perhaps I shouldn’t have carried out that…”
Again within the Nineteen Eighties and 90s Dickerson wasn’t simply considered the Antonio Brown of that day. He was seen as much more sinister: a supremely boastful operating again who ruined Southern Methodist’s ascendant program, performed hardball with the Los Angeles Rams and in any other case sulked his manner by means of 11 NFL seasons – all of them, by his reckoning, underpaid. Ingrate, Dickerson says, was how sportswriters most frequently described him. And to the ear of this proud native of Sealy, Texas – the tiny mattress-making city the place he remembers whites and blacks actually residing on reverse sides of the railroad observe – that phrase sounded a bit an excessive amount of like one other that begins with an N. Earlier than a 1990 recreation throughout his time with the Colts, Dickerson remembers jogging out for warmups and being greeted by a banner of a Black child in his No 29 jersey carrying purple lipstick, holding a fried rooster leg, with a watermelon on one aspect and a stack of cash on the opposite. And these have been Coltsfollowers. “I used to be a nasty, unhealthy man again within the 80s,” Dickerson says. “After which individuals meet me and are like, You ain’t nothin’ like they make you out to be.”
After a long time of being forged as the last word heel Dickerson lastly units the report straight in Watch My Smoke, an autobiography he co-wrote with Individuals journal’s Greg Hanlon. Within the ebook Dickerson pays homage to his adoptive mother and father, addresses the notorious Trans Am present that almost resulted within the NCAA banning Southern Methodist College from aggressive soccer, and the ebbs and flows of his underheralded NFL profession. Threaded all through are digressions on race and the pill-popping that was in vogue throughout his NFL time – together with his personal use of Darvocet, a now-banned opioid painkiller, to calm his nerves earlier than video games. Dickerson even particulars his playboy misadventures off the sphere, not least the time he prematurely ended a romantic interlude with Pam Grier as a result of he feared breaking his Rams curfew. “Each time I see her in a film,” he cracks. “I’m like, You had your probability. You had it!”
As a expertise Dickerson was sui generis, much less tailback than tall again whose upright gait was as unorthodox as his behavior of pairing racquetball specs with a Jheri curl. And whereas his 13,259 profession yards (the league’s second-highest mark when he retired in 1993) have lengthy since been eclipsed repeatedly, the five-time All-Professional owns what may be the one two information that actually matter in professional soccer: the rookie single-season dashing customary (1,808) and the general single-season dashing report (2,105), which Dickerson achieved the very subsequent 12 months. Not solely have these numbers develop into extra hallowed because the NFL has advanced right into a pass-wacky league, however within the case of the single-season dashing mark, each participant who comes shut appears to disintegrate shortly thereafter.
After cracking the two,000-yard mark in his second season the Titans Chris Johnson by no means broke 1,400 yards for the remainder of his profession. Barry Sanders and Terrell Davis have been out of the league shortly after summiting 2K. Adrian Peterson hasn’t been the identical bruiser since he flirted with Dickerson’s report in 2012. And Derrick Henry missed half of this season after approaching the mark in 2020. If the report weren’t so out of attain, some may be inclined to imagine it’s jinxed. “My teammates all the time say when a man’s getting shut, they pull the voodoo dolls out,” Dickerson jokes.
It’s Dickerson’s unhealthy luck that he got here alongside when he did. In his autobiography he reserves a few of his harshest phrases for the NCAA, likening their student-athlete assemble to “wage theft”. Regardless of being one of the crucial proficient backs in school, he cut up carries in SMU’s Pony Categorical offense; regardless of averaging 7.0 yards per carry and ending fourth within the nation in dashing for the undefeated Mustangs as senior in 1982, Dickerson completed within the Heisman vote behind Stanford’s John Elway and Georgia’s Herschel Walker – who's campaigning as a Republican for that state’s open US Senate seat now. “Perhaps that’s what he feels is correct for him,” Dickerson says diplomatically. “I don’t agree with a few of the issues he’s mentioned, for certain.”
Within the professionals Dickerson by no means made it farther than the 1985 convention championship, dropping to the Tremendous Bowl Shuffle Bears. As a lot as he loved enjoying for coach John Robinson – a operating recreation savant, in Dickerson’s view – he wonders what would possibly’ve been had performed up the coast with Joe Montana. “I performed with him within the Professional Bowl and, man, his passes have been simply really easy to catch,” Dickerson says.
Dickerson is definitely poorer for having preceded the arrival of free company, when his ambition and self-determinist streak wouldn’t have marked him as an unbearable jerk. If something comes throughout within the ebook and in dialog, it’s that Dickerson is sort of nice firm, a pure storyteller. You could possibly see how he landed a post-retirement gig as a Monday Evening Soccer sideline reporter within the early aughts – even when, by his personal reckoning, he “was horrible at it”.
However earlier than you go complicated Watch My Smoke for some Pippen-esque try to recoup misplaced wages, be clear: Dickerson isn’t hurting. He’s lengthy been again with the Rams as an envoy and lengthy since made amends with the Colts and crew proprietor Jim Irsay, whom he as soon as derisively nicknamed “Daffy Duck”. And when Dickerson does make TV appearances, he doesn’t shy from utilizing the platform to take present NFL gamers to activity for not doing sufficient to look out for and in any other case help their forebears.
In Watch My Smoke, Dickerson relates a little bit of foreshadowing he acquired from OJ Simpson. “Once you flip 50,” the Juice instructed him, “these hits are gonna come again to you.” Other than a again drawback that makes for stressed nights and a foot concern that dates to a 1984 turf toe damage, he’s held stout towards the ravages of time. When information broke final 12 months that the NFL’s testing protocols for head damage claims have been biased towards Black gamers, Dickerson might have damaged right into a landing dance. “We mentioned that from the start, when the [2013 concussion] lawsuit began,” he says. “They usually replied, ‘Effectively, we received’t do it once more.’ They’ll proceed to do it. They are going to by no means cease. Man, individuals are grasping. It’s a greed factor.”
That Dickerson has gone from the man being known as a money-grubber to the one pointing it out is nice redemption. Did he see the day coming? Dickerson might by no means.
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