The Redskins Blog

Sunday, February 7: Russ Grimm's Future Turned Out Better Than He Expected

As the 1988 NFL season got ready to kick off, the Redskins were riding high in D.C. Coming off a Super Bowl win, they were the toast of the town, and part of being the toast of D.C. in the eighties was a lengthy profile in Washingtonian Magazine. For the Super Bowl XXII champions, what this meant was a dozen of the players providing first-person accounts of what it was like to play in the NFL, each essay accompanied by a revealing portrait of the subject.

Russ Grimm, who was elected yesterday for enshrinement to the Hall of Fame, was one of those dozen players.

At this point in his career, Grimm had played in three Super Bowls and won two. He was an integral part of one of the greatest offensive lines in NFL history (which also happened to be one of the most famous), in a town that had learned to adore offensive lineman.

The Russ Grimm of 1988 had no way of knowing it, of course, but he also had one more Super Bowl ring coming to him as a player, another as a coach on the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers staff, and would coach in still another with the Arizona Cardinals. Plus that whole Hall of Fame thing from yesterday.

So what did Russ Grimm elect to talk about? It wouldn’t come as a surprise to Donnie Warren or any of his other teammates: Grimm talked about pain:

An injury hurts on the sidelines, it hurts in the huddle, but, believe me, when you get up to the line of scrimmage and the ball is snapped, you don’t feel anything until the play is over. The adrenaline is going and you’re just thinking about who you need to block. But when you’re sitting on the bench with a bunch of trainers around you, all you can think about is the pain.

Injuries really affect you mentally. You tend to isolate yourself. Last year my knee injury kept me out for nine weeks, and it was probably the worst nine weeks of my life.You’re not as much a part of the camaraderie, you’re not out there sweating with all the other guys. You can’t go out for a beer and say, ‘ ‘Remember that play when you stepped on my hand.” It’s not the same thing to say, “Oh yeah, I saw that from the sidelines.” That isolation motivates you to come back and play sooner, sometimes sooner than you should and you end up getting hurt again.

I was on the field when Joe Theismann broke his leg. I saw the bone sticking out and I turned away and thought, “Hey, that could have been me.” That’s the only time I’ve ever felt that way. It was an eerie feeling. That injury had an effect on everyone out there that night. Lawrence Taylor, who made the tackle on Joe, said that after the injury he didn’t play with the same intensity. A lot of guys didn’t.

Fans may remember only two or three big hits in a game, but there’s constant pounding going on out there, especially on the line. You’re always getting your legs caught in pile-ups. Or you get your fingers caught in someone’s face mask or someone’s jersey. It’s a big power game today; it’s more physical because the players are bigger, faster, and stronger.

You can avoid some injuries by knowing what you’re doing out there and where you should be on each play. But a lot of times it’s just luck. Sometimes you’ll get your leg caught and you think, “Uh-oh, this is it,”and you end up walking away from it. Other times you’re not so lucky. When I hurt my knee my rookie year, my leg was caught in a pile and it was turned in the wrong direction. I was slowly being pushed over. I could feel my knee going and I couldn’t do anything about it. It was like slow motion. When I hurt my knee last year, it was a quick shot. Someone rolled over the back of my leg. It was over like that.

But you can’t dwell on those things. It’s a big-money game and you’re playing for keeps. If you’re out there worrying about an injury, you shouldn’t be out there. If you’re afraid of getting into a pile-up or you’re pulling back from contact, you’ll get someone else hurt.

They always tell you the soreness should be gone by Thursday. But if it starts lasting Sunday to Sunday, that’s your body telling you it’s time to head down the road.

When I was single, I felt that if I tore up my knee, I tore it up. I didn’t have to worry about anyone but Russ Grimm. But now I have a wife and two kids. And when I’m 40 years old, I still want to be able to walk out to the backyard and play football with the two boys. I don’t want to be walking around with a cane. You do think about that.

Now 50, Grimm not only walks without a cane, he’s a Hall of Famer and a successful NFL coach. I’d say things went better than Russ Grimm could possibly have expected.

Article and image from Washingtonian Magazine, September 1988.