John Hog Hannah - Offensive Conduct: My Life on the Line

This work is dedicated to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God Almighty, who has borne my transgressions, forgiven my sins, and shed light upon my path to Eternal Life. I pray the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart will be acceptable and pleasing in His sight. Amen.

Contents

Foreword by Andre Tippett

I was always a collector of magazines, and because of my interests, Black Belt Magazine , Karate Illustrated , and Sports Illustrated were three of them. I remember picking up a Sports Illustrated in August 1981 and reading it with great interest because John Hannah was on the cover. Like me he was an Alabama native, and I had recently watched a game where he had battled tooth and nail with Randy White. The magazine proclaimed that Hannah was The Best Offensive Lineman of All Time. I was totally fascinated and read it cover to cover.

Fast forward less than a year, and I had been drafted by the New England Patriots in the second round of the 1982 NFL Draft. Being a high draft pick at linebacker, all I could think about was: Dont let John Hannah put you in the hospital.

As rookies we had to report to training camp about days earlier than the veterans. The anxiety for the rookie linebackers built as the veteran reporting date approached. The buzz in the locker room at Bryant College was all about John Hannah. As it turned out, we should have been even more scared than we were. Our first morning session with the veterans had all of us rethinking our strategy for the second session. Hannah went through us like a hot knife through butter and had every one of us reporting to the equipment room for horse collars and more pads to wear under our shoulder pads. By the end of the first day, we were trying to figure out how to have him kidnapped.

Hannah made us all better football players just by his presence. You knew you better come correct and use all of your best techniques in practice and buckle up every time he was on the field. He led by example. He was never one to give speeches, but his desire to win was obvious, and we all fed off that.

Truth be told, I never even had a conversation with John until 1986. It was my first Pro Bowl after our appearance in Super Bowl XX. Right after practice he gathered all of the Patriots Pro Bowlers together and said, Look, Pat Sullivan gave me some money, so that we could all go out to dinner on the team. Lets meet with all our families in the lobby around 6 oclock. I remember it like it was yesterday. There I was, a veteran and Pro Bowler, who had just played in the Super Bowl, and I was mesmerized because a guy who had been my teammate for four years was talking to me!

Of course, over time we became friends, but I never lost that level of respect for John. When you are being considered for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the voters give a lot of weight to what your opponents and teammates say about you. John, being who he is, commands a lot of respect when he discusses the attributes of players with whom he competed. I consider it a great honor to have had John Hannah speak out on behalf of my candidacy. When I was later elected to the Hall of Fame and John said, Welcome to the fraternity, I was almost speechless.

Having been retired from the game for almost 20 years, I have the benefit of perspective. I can honestly say that one of my proudest accomplishments is that I am in three Hall of Fames (the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the New England Patriots Hall of Fame, and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame) with one of the greatest to ever play the game. Im also proud to call him a friend.

As the best offensive lineman of all tim e, J ohn was the ultimate protector on the field. Off the field, he is the ultimate protector of his family, his friends, and this great game of football that we all love.

Andre Tippett

New England Patriots executive director of community affairs

Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2008

New England Patriots 19821993

Introduction by Tom Hale

I have known John Hannah and his family since 1971 and remain very close to him and his brothers, Charley and David. The Hannah name is truly legendary in the SEC, the University of Alabama, and the New England area, and Johns legacy as a Pro Football Hall of Fame lineman with the New England Patriots from 1973 to 1985 is forever immortalized in the August 3, 1981 edition of Sports Illustrated , which summarily declared him The Best Offensive Lineman of All Time.

Im a few years younger than John and when I was 14 and a freshman at Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I became aware of who John was about the same time I met his youngest brother, David. He was in my freshman class, too, and even though he was a supremely gifted athlete and I was only mediocre, we struck up a friendship that has endured and grown stronger for more than 40 years now. As close as our friendship has been, I dont necessarily find it a complete coincidence that I lost my older brother, Chip, within a couple of hours on the exact day in 2007 when David lost his oldest child, Bill.

I was also an acquaintance of the middle Hannah brother, Charley, who was also at Baylor when I was there, but we didnt become friends really until three or four years ago. A while back I reminded Charley, who had an outstanding career of his own with the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, that my friendship with him mainly revolved around his penchant for picking me up and throwing me over his head into a corner because I was sitting in his favorite chair in the commissary or pulling me headfirst by the hair out of the antechamber of the lunchroom. (Apparently, I had it coming because I was only a sophomore.)

With all these Hannah encounters and events in my early teens, I became an instant fan of Johns, even though I had only seen him in person once and had never actually met him. Before we became great friends six or seven years ago, the only time I saw him was when he walked into the dining hall at Baylor with his dad, mom, Charley, and David just after he signed with New England. The room of chattering prep boys and clattering silverware quickly silenced as everyone looked to see this awesome display of genetics appear in the room. John was a pinch over 6 and 275 pounds and looked as if he had less than percent body fat. He was huge . His shoulders were twice as wide as his waist, and his arms were thicker than my thighs. I, along with other dorm students, just stared for a moment. Besides David and Charley, Im quite certain no one else in that room had ever seen such a giant like himlet alone an NFL player.

With his additional extraordinary talents in track and field, baseball, basketball, and wrestling, John is still regarded among the best large athletes to have ever lived. Having personally seen most every professional game he played with the Patriots and witnessed many of the other superhuman feats he performed in wrestling and track, I wholeheartedly second that notion. Hannahs main acclaim, however, comes from the 13 bruising years he played with the Patriots, and in the process he earned the right to be regarded as the finest, most feared offensive lineman to have ever played the game of professional football.

If you look up the all-time highlight films of Sports Illustrated s top pro football players, Hannah is No. 24. The highlight clips of the Hog absolutely demolishing the defensive line and secondarygame after gamewill leave little room for doubt that No. 73, the left guard for the Patriots, was a force never seen before and one that has never been seen since.