Merlin Olsen left quite an impression, even on his first day with the Los Angeles Rams.
Jack Teele remembers it well. It was the summer of 1962, just before the start of training camp. Teele was the team's director of public relations and, because everyone else had the weekend off, was the Rams' highest-ranking official at the Chapman College facility.
Olsen arrived on a Saturday night with the other prized rookie, quarterback Roman Gabriel. (Gabriel had been the second player selected in the NFL draft, Olsen the third.) Teele called general manager Elroy Hirsch to give him an update.
"I told him Gabe was a little shy and imposing physically," Teele recalled. "And about Merlin I said, 'Elroy, if you don't get back here in 48 hours, we've got a new GM.'
"It was almost an aura he had about him, a self-assuredness. He was always in control."
Olsen, a Hall of Fame defensive lineman remembered as even more impressive off the field, died Thursday after battling mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer. The tackle, a fixture in the Rams' Fearsome Foursome defensive front, was 69.
Olsen's gentle charisma -- later known to millions in his career as a broadcaster and as an actor on "Little House on the Prairie" and "Father Murphy" -- was in stark contrast to his ferocity as a player. He played one of the meanest positions in football and did it better than just about anyone, earning 14 consecutive Pro Bowl invitations.
"He was a man among men on the field," said Rayfield Wright, a Hall of Fame offensive tackle for the Dallas Cowboys, who typically lined up against the Fearsome Foursome stalwart Deacon Jones when facing the Rams. Occasionally during a game, Wright would be the pulling tackle assigned to block Olsen.
"He was a force in that middle, no question about it," Wright said. "When you look at that Fearsome Foursome, those guys were playing at around 270 but still had the quickness and finesse. Merlin Olsen held that nose like no other tackle in the game.."
Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films, counts Olsen among the three best defensive tackles in history, along with Pittsburgh's "Mean" Joe Greene and Dallas' Bob Lilly. Sabol says Olsen and Reggie White were the game's best bull rushers, rolling through and over blockers in their path.
