I don't think "heart" has anything to do with it. If he's hurt, he's hurt. Heart and durability are two different things.

i thought last year croyle was to small. a oline would really really really help.

I don't think it has much to do with heart, the guys body just can't take hits and hold up.

Really? How old are you? 23? 25? Do you know what the rules were like in 1970? What the equipment was like? There were no domes, carpet, replay booths or oxygen tanks on the sideline. If a player ran 60 yards on a play, he stayed in the game and ran the next series of plays without a breather. There was no such thing as a face-mask penalty or a chop block foul. In many ways, the game is actually safer now.

Regardless of somewhat bigger, faster athletes we may have today, football, as Jo Po so eloquently puts it, has always been a violent game. Dick Butkus played his last game in the 1970s, and ask the old timers if anyone since is as much a pure 100% mauler.

Dawson played 19 seasons. That stands on its own. But like I said below, its just nature and the grace of God.

And hillbilly heroin.

This was the day of tough men, young Mr. Mecca.

i dont agree.

That he vomited up, and then picked it out of his own vomit and swallowed it again...ROFL

Oh, these kids...

:shake:

bednarick was tougher.:)

He was very, very tough. Last player to play boths ways for 60 minutes. Ray Neitzke was another ferocious man. Everyone feared Deacon Jones. The word "sack" was coined to describe Jones' relentless dropping of QBs in the backfield.

Our own Willie Lanier was so feared that his league-wide nickname was "Contact".

The list goes on and on, but look at the SI Cover story I posted. I am not aware of any other major sports publication putting a player on its cover with that title.

Speaking of tough QBs, who was the last QB to play without a face mask?
No, it wasn't george Blanda (another tough SOB).
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sammy baugh?

I only said that because that it seems that everytime that a game is going particularly bad, he gets "conveniently" hurt. Maybe it is just me being overly critical, but that is just what I've seen.

Thoughts on Croyle's mental toughness? It seems like plenty of players take the same hits/harder hits as Croyle but continue to get up. Is this a question of Cryole's body just not being constructed well enough to take the punishment (regardless of his height/weight) or are there some legitimate questions about his willingness to rise and get back to the huddle after hits?

This may sound ****ed up but Butkus and all that is a different era, in todays game he'd be considered to slow.

And if they had the rules now they had then guys would die on the field, guys are bigger and faster. The athletic talent in the game is at a much much higher level.

You have to be alot more than big and mean now, you have to have speed.