Jack Tatum was the first football player I learned to recognize when I was a kid. He was the reason I became a football fan in general, and a Raiders fan in particular. I met him briefly at a Raider game in Oakland about ten years ago, and got to tell him that. He was quiet and polite, graciously accepting my compliment, talking briefly, moving on to the next fan in the stands as the game was about to start.
Tatum and George Atkinson were, during that sweet spot in the mid-'70s, the nastiest, hardest-hitting safety duo in the league. Fearless and ferocious, they literally terrorized opposing wide receivers forcing opposing offenses to alter their usual passing game plans.
Tatum never seemed quite the same after paralyzing Darryl Stingley, understandably so. That event tragically underscored just how dangerous the "game" really is, large men in peak physical condition deliberately hurtling at each other with force and impact comparable to an automobile accident, sixty times in three hours.
Certainly Tatum had hit other players harder, before and after Stingley, and to see many of the hits Tatum laid on people, it was actually surprising he hadn't hurt himself catastrophically. One step earlier or later, and Stingley just gets the wind knocked out of him. But the hit broke the way that it did, and Stingley and Tatum carried their respective burdens from that split-second for three decades after.
RIP, Assassin.
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