They’re Lining Up to Return the Favor

No one ever had to worry about Charlie Cowan. When the ball was snapped, Charlie was there.

He never missed a team plane, a team bus--or a block.

He was on time, in shape. He didn’t make waves, just lanes for the ball carrier and time for the passer.

He cleared a path for Ram runners from Jon Arnett to Dick Bass to Lawrence McCutcheon. He was knocking people out of the way the day Willie Ellison set the single-game rushing record, 247 yards in 26 carries, against New Orleans in 1971.

No one ever calls an offensive line by any alliterative nicknames. They’re never a Fearsome Foursome or Purple People Eaters or Steel Curtain or a Doomsday Line. They’re as taken for granted as sunshine in July.

You talk of great Ram teams and the conversation pretty quickly gets around to Crazy Legs Hirsch, Bob Waterfield, Norm Van Brocklin, Tom Fears.

You say, “What about the line?” and they say, “Oh, yeah! Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Rosey Grier, Lamar Lundy! All the greats!”

As a famous Southern football coach once observed, “Nobody ever notices a levee until it cracks.”

No one ever wrote any songs or poems abut it, but the Ram line when Charlie Cowan was in it was as uncrossable as an alligator pit.

You happen to notice, did you, in the recent awed prose about Super Bowl XXIV, how everybody talks of the great things Joe Montana did? How everyone notes he was such a magician he didn’t even get grass stains on his uniform in three games?

How do you think he did that? With mirrors? I mean, you ever heard of Harris Barton, Bruce Collie, Jesse Sapolu, Guy McIntyre, Bubba Paris?

Ask Joe Montana who they are. Bet me, he’ll know.

Ask any Ram quarterback between 1961 and 1975 who Charlie Cowan was and he’ll get misty-eyed and all choked up. He may even remove his hat.

Listen to the noblest Roman of them all talking from his home in North Carolina about Charlie Cowan:

“You never had to worry about Charlie’s man. When I dropped back to pass, I was never concerned about Charlie’s not being where we wanted him to be,” says Roman Gabriel, who got off 3,313 passes, most in Ram history, because Charlie kept the league’s hit men off him.

Charlie Cowan’s man was right where you wanted him to be, too. Usually, flat on his back or hopelessly trapped well outside the play.

Charlie might have been the best pass-blocker of all time. In 1973, Ram quarterbacks were sacked only 17 times.

“Charlie Cowan took it personally when the quarterback got sacked, even though it wasn’t his fault,” Gabriel says. “He felt it was an insult.”

The headlines went to others, but there are students of the game who hold that the most important five people on a team are not the artful receivers, the whip-armed throwers or the high-stepping runners. They are the guys clearing the stage, so the others can go on with their solos.

The real pride of the Rams in those salad years was Charlie Cowan and Joe Carollo, Tom Mack and Joe Scibelli and Ken Iman in the pivot. They were like the black gang in the hold of a ship pouring the coals.

Quarterbacks came and went. Charlie blocked for--take a deep breath--Frank Ryan, Zeke Bratkowski, Roman Gabriel, Bill Munson, John Hadl and James Harris, not to mention the immortal Karl Sweetan. They got the quality protection of a President of the United States on a foreign tour.

“He was the best technician in the game,” insists Roman Gabriel. “He could have been a fullback. He was fast enough to be one in college and a heck of a basketball player.

“He was ahead of his time. He used blocking techniques that are standard now and he came up at a time when the defensive tackles had the head slap, the four-man rush and (blockers) had to keep their hands in on their chest to block.

“He could play any side of the line. Once, when Bob Brown was getting beat badly by the Redskins’ Bill Brundige, we put Charlie in a swap with Brown and Brundige disappeared off the screen.”

But Charlie’s the one who needs a block now. Charlie is up against a pass rush that makes Gino Marchetti, Mean Joe Greene, Alan Page, Carl Eller and the Purple People Eaters look like an Easter-egg hunt. Charlie, 51, is not fighting for a first down, he’s fighting for his life. His kidneys have jumped the team. Charlie was never in a Super Bowl but he’s in one now.

For the first time in the history of the franchise, somebody has to worry abut Charlie Cowan.

“About eight months ago, Charlie found out he needed a kidney transplant,” says Gabriel. “Before Christmas, they found one that seemed compatible. The next day, the medication affected the colon. The colon blew up. The transplant didn’t take.

“The chances are, a new one wouldn’t work, either. Charlie is facing long, expensive dialysis treatments.”

Charlie Cowan played in 206 games for the Rams, more than any other player except Merlin Olsen, who made 208. Offensive linemen spend their careers doing things for other people.

It’s time for the old Rams to return the favor. On Thursday and Friday at the Las Vegas Dunes, a golf tournament and auction will be held to raise money for C.C., as the Rams used to call him.

They don’t add up blocks and traps in the NFL stats. They measure offensive linemen’s performances by whether their quarterbacks can walk without a cane.

There are very few offensive linemen in the Hall of Fame. A few centers here and there. It’s an offensive lineman’s job to put other people in there.

But Charlie Cowan is the one who needs a hole over left tackle these days. And it’s the rest of the Rams who will gather at the Dunes this weekend to help clear the way for him for a change.

Charlie’s reward was always hearing the cheers for someone else, the guy who caught the pass or scored the touchdown. Let’s hope Charlie gets to spike this ball.