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Vince Lombardi could not have said it better. Brown, in fact, still relates more to Lombardi, the late Redskin coach, than to Allen. "I owe that man everything," Brown says of Lombardi, who coached him in his first season in the big league. "He was a great coach. George Allen is great too, but he's much more defense oriented. Lombardi taught me to believe in myself, to believe I could make it." When Brown first arrived at training camp, even Lombardi admitted to having some doubts. Noticing that the rookie was slow at responding to signals, the coach shouted: "What's wrong with you, Brown? Are you deaf?" Replied Brown, passively: "Yes, sir. I can't hear out of my left ear." Lombardi immediately ordered a $400 helmet rigged with a hearing aid, and, as Brown says, "it made all the difference." To rectify Brown's habit of dropping passes, Lombardi had another straightforward solution: he ordered the rookie to carry a football wherever he went.
The strategy paid off handsomely. In his freshman season Brown rushed for 888 yds. to become the league's fourth leading ground gainer. As a bonus, he also caught 34 passes for an additional 302 yds. After 3½ years in the N.F.L., Brown has piled up more yardage—2 miles 1,436 yds. to be exact—than anyone else in the league. As the boy hero of Allen's antiquarians, there seems to be no stopping him. "You don't tackle Brown," says St. Louis Defensive Tackle Bob Rowe, "you just hit him and hope help comes along." How long can Larry Brown hold out as the No. 1 target? "The key for me," he says, "is being quick, changing direction on a dime." Brown plans to remain quick: "Who's to say that I won't still have my legs at 30?" By that time, in fact, he will also have something that he now lacks: the requisite years of service to qualify as a bona fide member of the over-the-hill gang.
*Some of Allen's more notable veteran acquisitions are Defensive End Ron McDole, 33; Quarterback Billy Kilmer, 33; Linebacker Myron Pottios, 33; Safety Roosevelt Taylor, 35; and Linebacker Jack Pardee, 36.