John Madden

Former coach and NFL broadcaster John Madden died yesterday at the age of 85, and his passing has been met with an avalanche of praise. And yet. Madden was the Raiders’ coach in August of 1978 when safety Jack Tatum’s tackle of Patriots’ receiver Darryl Stingley broke two vertebrae in Stingley’s neck and damaged his spinal cord. Tatum made the tackle helmet-first. Accounts say that Madden was distraught by the injury that left Stingley paralyzed; visited Stingley regularly; helped with the logistics of his rehab; and was a regular presence in Stingley’s life from that point on. The injury may even have been the precipitating event that led Madden to quit coaching at the end of the season. And yet. And yet Madden never talked about it, as far as I know. In all his thirty years of doing games, I never heard talk about that injury or allude to it in any way during a broadcast. I never heard him call for cleaning the game up or protecting players from grievous injury, and I never heard him call out a player for a dirty hit. But he was always entertaining. It must be me.