Ken Anderson, a member of the Bengals’ inaugural Ring of Honor class, has the rare perspective of this year’s group as the quarterback who threw tight end Bob Trumpy’s last career touchdown and running back James Brooks’ first Bengals’ touchdown seven seasons apart.
“He was a tight end before his time. Gronk before Gronk,” said Anderson after Wednesday’s announcement, comparing his good friend Trumpy to Patriots’ latter-day legend Rob Gronkowski
“It was (Brooks’) versatility. I distinctly remember throwing him a halfback corner (route for a touchdown ) in New Orleans … He had great speed. He wasn’t a big guy, but he had power between the tackles, which surprised a lot of people.”
Anderson is one of three teammates who paid tribute to Trumpy Wednesday. Bob Johnson, his road roommate, said he thought his friend would be “honored and humbled,” by the vote of the season ticket-members, and Anderson said he’d be “ecstatic.”
Dave Lapham, the Bengals’ long-time radio analyst who went into the Ring last year, had a sense how “happy and humbled,’ Trumpy would be.
“He had this baritone voice. He loved football,” Lapham said. “He loved his teams. Loved his coaches. Loved everything about it. Loved competing.”
And he was one of the greats. Lapham followed him into the broadcast booth, where Trumpy went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his announcing contributions to the game. But …
“In my mind, he’s a Hall of Fame tight end,” Lapham said. “He was used in ways tight ends weren’t used at all in his era of football … He was built differently … Taller, a little lankier, and he could run. Trumpy could fly. He could run, particularly for the tight end position.
“Trumpy was dynamic. The Pittsburgh Steelers played him twice a year and would say, “He’s different than any tight end we face all season long.’ He got in and out of his cuts like a wide receiver.”
Trumpy and Anderson, Lapham said, “made beautiful music together,” when Anderson would fire it at him even before Trumpy got out of his break more than 50 years before Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase.
“You could split him out at receiver, and he was great running routes on the inside,” Anderson said. “He was a good in-line blocker. With his size (6-6), he just kind of engulfed guys. With his size, he was easy to see and had very good hands.”
Johnson had an answer for why Trumpy was such a good blocker despite being so underweight for the position. Especially early in his career.
“He would just latch on to the outside linebacker and the guy couldn’t get rid of him,” Johnson said Wednesday. “They’d push him around, but they couldn’t get rid of him. He’d be working his feet and he’d stay with them.”
Chalk up Johnson as another witness to Trumpy’s sneaky speed. He says since teams overlooked the expansion Bengals in general, Trumpy shocked them in particular.
“A team like the Chargers would cover him with a big strong safety but not a great coverage safety. I don’t think they realized what a good receiver he was,” Johnson said. “And Trumpy would run either a post pattern or go right at their safety and break inside 45 degrees or 45 degrees outside. He was so wide open, it was ridiculous. He had a lot of 20-yards gains and some 80-yarders.
“He was a slow starter. But once he got rolling with those big old long legs, he could beat you. If you had a race with somebody and they were even after 10 yards, Trumpy would beat people you wouldn’t believe he could beat.”
Former running backs coach Jim Anderson, the longest-serving Bengals assistant ever with 29 years at Riverfront and Paycor, now has two players in the Ring with Brooks joining all-time rusher Corey Dillon.
Anderson’s first season was in 1984, Brooks’ first in Cincinnati after the Bengals picked him up in the San Diego trade for then Bengals all-time rusher Pete Johnson. Brooks wasn’t happy at first, “but he stayed with it.”
“It was two players who had uncomfortable situations in their respective places,” Anderson said Wednesday. “Pete had some contract stuff, and J.B. was the fullback for Chuck Muncie. It was a great deal for us because he fit in with what we did offensively. The next year, everything fell into place.”
Yes, Brooks could run the ball. (No NFL running back with more than 1,000 attempts during his eight seasons in Cincinnati had a better yards per than his 4.8.) Yes, he could catch. (His 27 touchdown catches in that same span nearly doubled the next NFL back.)
“Back in the day, he was like the back of today,” Anderson said. “He could run it, he could catch it, and he could block it.”
That’s where Anderson starts telling stories of the 5-10, 180-pound Brooks. With the game Brooks picked up in pass protection rampaging Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, all 6-3-237-Hall-of-Fame pounds of him.
“There was nothing you could tell him that he couldn’t do,” Anderson said. “We were preparing for the Giants with Lawrence Taylor blitzing like hell and you don’t want to create that physical mismatch. We worked all week to come up with formations where James wouldn’t have to block Lawrence Taylor. Wouldn’t you know, the first pass play we called, and they’re in a defense and we’re in a formation James has to block Taylor. He blocked him. He’d be the first to tell you, ‘I got him, too.'”
That backs up what Lapham saw from the booth: “Pound for pound, he was probably the best Bengal I saw picking up the blitz.”
That’s why Anderson called him, “Half-pint, overproof.”
“That meant he wasn’t the biggest guy,” Anderson said. “But he was tough, he was potent and he always brought his game.”
That’s also why wide receiver Tim McGee, Brooks’ teammate on two division champions and a Super Bowl team, called Brooks on Wednesday, “Pound for pound the best athlete and hardest worker in Bengals history. Not even a close No. 2. You wouldn’t believe he was 180 pounds with what he did.”
McGee and Brooks were in on one of the greatest passing days in Bengals history in 1990 when Boomer Esiason threw for 490 yards without top wide receiver Eddie Brown. With Brooks and tight end Rodney Holman splitting wide during various junctures in head coach Sam Wyche’s Swiss army knife of a no huddle offense, the Bengals knocked off the Rams in overtime during the only game the franchise has ever had three 100-yard receivers.
Brooks logged a career-high 109 yards in the air. So did Holman with 161. McGee had 142 before he popped a quad in overtime.
“He was a student of the game. You have to give JB credit because he learned to play so many different positions,” McGee said. “When Sam and (offensive coordinator Bruce) Coslet put in the no-huddle, they moved him around and in a game like that, he was able to line up like a receiver.
“Yeah, he watched the receivers. He didn’t run routes as polished as guys like Eddie Brown and Cris Collinsworth, but he ran more than capable routes from a running back … He knew the game … it was a testament to his desire and passion.”
McGee, who lockered next to Brooks in their last couple of seasons at Spinney Field, is happy he made the Ring for another reason.
“He wasn’t a self-promoter,” McGee said. “He was a braggart in the locker room, but not away from it. I was afraid he wouldn’t get the recognition because he didn’t promote himself.”
Brooks put up a raft of great numbers. Here are some more delivered to Bengals.com by pro football historian Ryan Michael:
“During his Cincinnati tenure, James Brooks was just one of eight NFL players and one of seven running backs to record three or more seasons of 1,500 scrimmage yards.
“Among those seven backs, Brooks produced the most such seasons while averaging six yards or better per touch, accomplishing this feat in his 1,500-yard campaigns of 1985-86 and 1989.” …
Bob Johnson turned out to be Trumpy’s sixth and last roommate during that wild first training camp of expansion at 1968 Wilmington College and they stayed together. It never surprised Johnson in the ensuing years that Trumpy became one of the greatest talkmasters in the history of American sports radio.
“I saw the precursor in that 12 by 12 room,” Johnson said. “It was the single most entertaining thing for me. Twelve weeks in that room. He was never boring.”
Only Johnson can turn the tables and deliver a Trumpy story.
He thinks it was that first training camp and one night they began throwing around some kind of inflated ball. One guy bounced it twice off the wall and furniture. One guy did it three times. Coslet walked in and Trumpy said, ‘Watch this,” and he bounced it three times before it hit Coslet.
“That started a game. I think it was Coslet who named it, ‘Human Billiards.’ “You tried to hit the guy with the ball after you banked it three times,” Johnson said. “Guys would try to hide under the little desks they had, or something, so they wouldn’t get hit.
“We had bed check every night at 10 and one night one of the defensive coaches looks in our room and says, ‘What are you guys doing?’ We tell him, ‘Human Billiards,’ and he says, ‘Can I try?’ and I swear to God, at 1 in the morning, (he’s) under a desk trying not to get hit with a ball.”
Bob Johnson is still laughing.
“Like I say,” he says of his old roomie Trumpy. “He was never boring.” …