Athletic heroes each live one life but often seem to need two obituaries: One for what they meant to their sport, and the other for how they interacted with the world. This is especially true for Jim Brown, who died Friday at age 87.
Calling Brown’s social legacy “complicated” is an extreme understatement; he was at the forefront of the fight for racial justice, but also faced numerous allegations of violence against women. A long discussion can—and should—be had about Brown’s values and actions.
His football legacy is a much simpler story. Some athletes are so far ahead of their time that they don’t really have peers in their era. Babe Ruth. Simone Biles. Michael Phelps. Tiger Woods. Jim Brown.
Brown, who starred in the middle of the 20th century, was really built for the 21st. Picture, now, the 1958 Cleveland Browns. Their starting offensive line averaged 6'3" and 238 pounds. Brown was 6'2" and 230 or so, with elite speed, balance and toughness.
Imagine Brown getting the ball in that environment. Brown was a good 10 pounds heavier than the right guard who blocked for him for most of the year, future Steelers coaching legend Chuck Noll. There is no comparison today. Derrick Henry? He is listed at 247 pounds; most offensive linemen weigh more than 300.
It truly was not fair. Brown was not just a battering ram, either. He was an athletic freak. At Syracuse, he competed in the high jump, he threw the javelin and (oh, by the way!) he was one of the best lacrosse players in the country.
Brown entered the NFL in 1957 and retired in ’65. In an era dominated by the running game, you could have argued he was the best player in the entire league for pretty much every day he was employed. He made first-team All-NFL eight times.
In 1963 two NFL players ran for more than 1,000 yards: Green Bay Packers’ Hall of Famer Jim Taylor, who ran for 1,018, and Brown—who ran for 1,863. Brown accumulated more rushing yards himself that year than 11 of the other 13 teams did. He averaged 6.4 yards per attempt, a number that was just as preposterous then as it would be today; the next highest qualifying player averaged 5.0.
He never missed a game. The legend was that he never ran out of bounds—he had to be pushed, usually by multiple defenders. He competed in an era of 12- and then 14-game seasons and played his last game at age 29—and still set a career rushing record that would stand for 19 more seasons.
Discussions of the greatest players in history are fun, but they almost always feature apples-to-oranges comparisons by necessity. Brown competed with and against guys who needed full-time jobs in the offseason. Weightlifting and fitness training was nothing like what they are today. The famous photo of Len Dawson smoking a cigarette at halftime of the Super Bowl was taken more than a year after Brown retired.
So there is really no way to know what Brown would have done behind the offensive line that blocked for Emmitt Smith, just as there is no way to know what Ruth would have done in post-integration baseball or what kind of athletic career Bo Jackson would have in today’s era of specialization and advanced medicine.
But if you want to talk about the most dominant NFL players in their era: That might be Brown’s title forever. He was decades ahead of his time, to a degree that would be impossible today. There have been a lot of incredible careers in NFL history, but none like Jim Brown’s.
