A death in the family, Part Who Knows

I remember Johnie Cooks.

I remember he was a linebacker the Colts took second in the draft in 1982, two years before they abandoned Baltimore for Indianapolis. A terror at Mississippi State, he was one of the league's top defensive rookies in '82, and thus was a name we all recognized that first season in Indiana.

He was at Anderson College with the rest of the Horseshoes that  summer for training camp, when none of us had much of a clue. Was that Mike Pagel back there in the pocket, or Johnny Unitas? Weren't running backs Randy McMillan and Curtis Dickey, going to pile up eleventy-hundred yards apiece and grind defenses into disgusting chewed-up defense bits? And Cliff Odom, Barry Krauss and, yes, Johnie Cooks -- weren't they the All-Pro backbone of a fearsome D?

Look, there's reserve linebacker Gary Padjen knocking over a garage in a local TV ad. How tough is that?

Tougher'n Colts coach and legendary hard-ass Frank Kush, by golly. You could take that to the bank without a co-sign.

And then ...

And then, the Colts broke camp and the season started and they were what they were, a 4-12 football team. And the legendary hard-ass didn't make it through the season, fired with a game to play.

And now, a bunch of years later, he's gone. And so is Johnie Cooks.

He died this week at 64, and not for the first time my immediate reaction was "But he wasn't that old!" It didn't seem that long ago, after all, since that first summer in Anderson when he was a starter and we all sweltered and marveled that an actual NFL team was here among us. Truthfully it never does.

But you know what?

It really hasn't been that long ago. Because Cooks really wasn't that old.

He was, however, an NFL linebacker for a decade, initiating and receiving car-crash contact week after week. It takes its toll, all of that. Just go sit in the hotel lobby in Canton, Ohio, on Hall of Fame weekend, and watch the parade of broken bodies hobble past, old beyond their years.

Almost 60 former NFL players have died so far in 2023, and the year's barely half over. Some of them saw their full measure of days and more -- Jim Brown was 87 when he passed, Joe Kapp 85, and 24 others were in their 80s or 90s -- but a distressing number did not.

Charles White, at 64. Calvin Muhammad, also 64. Clark Haggans at 46 and Sonny Gordon at 57 and Tracy Johnson  at 56 and Stanley Wilson at 40 and a bunch of others who didn't make it to 70, or barely did.

And, sure, you can't blame the football threshing machine for all of them. Some died of cancer and some from various other ailments, and one, 35-year-old Ryan Mallett, got caught in a riptide and drowned in Florida. And then there were former Lions and Chargers linebacker Jesse Lemonier and Browns defensive end Chris Smith, who were just 25 and 31 when they died this year.

I couldn't find the cause of death for either. Suffice it to say they're two more NFL players who are no longer with us, but should be.

And of whom, again, we can only say this: "But he wasn't that old!"