Bennie and his jets By GEOFF HOBSON May 16, 2006 Posted: 5:30 a.m. Brazell: "Football is my heart" (Bengals photo) In the blistering tradition of Bob Hayes and Isaac Curtis, Bennie Brazell is sending an Olympic jolt sizzling through Bengaldom after his exciting rookie camp woke up the echoes. “There are two kinds of these guys,” says Gil Brandt, the personnel maven who recruited Hayes for the Cowboys in the AFL-NFL war of the ‘60s. “Track guys who play football and track guys who think they can play football. (Brazell) can play football.” As he ran by everyone last weekend, Brazell quietly shelved any track talk. The only evidence he made the finals of the 400-meter hurdles in Athens is his 2004 Olympics backpack that now houses the Bengals playbook. “It’s cool, but I’m not thinking about that now. I’m focused only on football,” Brazell says. “I’ve played football since little league. I played track and football, but football is my heart.” Brazell’s stint over the weekend did Bengals receivers coach Hue Jackson’s heart good. What he saw at LSU’s pro day translated into three days of NFL coaching even though Brazell caught just 13 balls last year. It was the 25.5 yards per catch that sent the Bengals running to Baton Rouge and picking him with their last choice in the seventh round. “Normally these guys pull up, they get hurt, they don’t catch the ball as well,” Jackson says of track guys. “They have that speed. You get enamored by that, but they’re not able to learn the material or catch the ball consistently. “Bennie’s nothing like that. He can double-move. He can sink his hips. He has all the characteristics of a receiver. Obviously that’s why we drafted him, and he really confirmed that in this camp.” Ever since Hayes came flying out of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as the “World’s Fastest Man” to score a touchdown every 4.7 catches for Dallas in the ’60s and ‘70s, the NFL has been trying to wring the neck of the track world for receivers. “Tex loved speed. He knew the track times of everyone in California and Texas,” says Brandt of Tex Schramm, the old Cowboys general manager. “There were other guys before Bob Hayes. There was Bob Boyd with the Rams in the ‘50s and Glenn Davis was a hurdler out of Ohio State who played for only about a year. But Hayes was the first guy to make it big, and you know the NFL. It’s a fad league. Now the fad is trying to find basketball players that can play tight end.” But track guys have never died out as a fad as teams search for the next Bullet Bob Hayes. From Curtis to Willie Gault to Renaldo Nehemiah to the latter-day generation Brazell, a 6-1, 175-pounder who finished eighth in the final of the 400-meter hurdles in 49.51 seconds. Each of their football experience varied before and after they reached the NFL. As a rookie, Hayes shocked the world averaging 21.8 yards per catch and 12 touchdowns while Nehemiah had just 43 catches and four touchdowns in four seasons. While Curtis played just one year of receiver before the Bengals drafted him, Brazell was a USA Today All-American in high school with 36 catches for 967 yards and 10 touchdowns his senior year in Houston. “He can run, you can see that,” says Curtis, who watched Brazell work in Monday’s practice on the grass fields at Paul Brown Stadium. “From what I can tell in the drills, he has good feet, too. The one thing about speed, (the defense) will give you room. They have to respect you.” Bengals great is born Isaac Curtis The year after Hayes retired in 1972, Curtis became one of the most respected players in history when the Bengals took him with the 15th pick in the draft. From Anthony Muñoz’s battered knees to Ken Anderson’s small-school production, Bengals founder Paul Brown’s best moves were big-time gambles and Curtis was no different. Curtis had played just one year of receiver in his life when Brown opted for speed over logic because, like Brandt says, the most logical thing in football is speed. “We felt like we could teach guys to catch the ball and run routes and all that,” Brandt says. “But you can’t teach a guy to run fast.” Curtis, who ran a couple of wind-aided 9.2 seconds in the 100-yard dash, could have easily gone to the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 after finishing second in the nationals for the University of California that spring. But after three years as a blocking running back at Cal (did those guys get fired?), Curtis knew he should be playing wide receiver with his hands and world-class speed. When he got the opportunity to transfer without having to sit out a year and play for coach Don Coryell’s air circus at San Diego State, he took it. “I had never played receiver, but I had always played football and I had never had a problem catching the football,” Curtis says. “Yeah, I was raw when I got to the Bengals, but I had good people around me. The two receivers, Chip Myers and Charlie Joiner, coached receivers in the NFL and I think Charlie is still coaching, and (Hall of Fame coach) Bill Walsh was working with the quarterbacks and receivers. “I saw myself as a football player who ran track,” says Curtis, who had a similarly spectacular rookie season as Hayes in 1973 with 18.7 yards per his 45 catches for nine touchdowns. Dave Lapham, the Bengals radio analyst who played with Curtis for nine seasons, says Curtis had the most natural hands he’s ever seen. “Isaac was a football player first, I don’t think there’s any question about that,” Lapham says. “But he had that unbelievable combination. This kid (Brazell) has got experience. He’s played it before.” Brazell is tight-lipped about his experiences at LSU. He nearly quit after he came home from Athens and was barely used that fall and finished his first three seasons with just four catches for 48 yards. “This is the first spring practice he’s ever been in,” says Andrew Whitworth, Brazell’s college teammate for five seasons. “At LSU, they go with the guys who are always doing the assignments and it was tough on him because he didn’t get a lot of assignments. He’s going to get better with more reps. He’s probably had the reps in college of two years.” Track guys are supposed to be high-maintenance prima donnas; more evidence Brazell is a football guy. Just say, “Olympic finals,” and that can give you goose bumps. “Oh yeah, that’s big stuff,” Whitworth says. “He’s as humble as they come. He’s had so much success track-wise, and he’s been on such a high level of competition. With all those people watching at the Olympics, he’s used to the pressure. But he’s been very humble ever since I’ve known him.” He’s a football guy. Here’s the question. Your biggest thrill. Lining up for an Olympic final or getting drafted in the NFL? “I don’t know. It’s kind of a tie,” Brazell says. “People said I couldn’t do either one. Nobody thought I could make the Olympic team and nobody thought I’d get drafted, but here I am. It’s better when people doubt you and you still do it. It took hard work.” Brazell says he had to work at catching the ball, and he certainly impressed the coaches over the weekend with his ability to do it. And it’s not as easy as it looks. Brandt remembers the Raiders track guy, a future Pro Bowler named Cliff Branch, a guy that Curtis beat on the track. “They called Cliff Branch ‘Old Stone Hands,’ ” Brandt says. “They had to teach him how to catch.” Although Brazell was running by some guys who are no longer here and won’t be here come September, he did get behind them and catch it. He did go over the middle to catch it. When Jackson explained one route with, “Bennie, you’ve got to get to this spot like you’re (running) in Munich or somewhere,” he got to the spot and caught it. His only memorable drop came Monday on a ran-before-he-caught-it crossing pattern over the middle. “That’s because I was teasing him,” Jackson says. “I was telling him it was time to take one to the house and I think he was about to do it.” But even in the miscue, Jackson could see why the kid may not be that big of a gamble because he had such separation from the defenders. “He squeezed (the defender) at the top of the route and made a break, which he did the day before,” Jackson says. “He didn’t do it as well and the DB was able to get his hand on it. He had the separation this time where the DB didn’t have the chance to get his hand on the ball. That’s improvement in my book.” Brandt, now writing for NFL.com, sat in the stands in Tokyo that day when Hayes anchored America’s 400-meter relay team to victory in a world-record 39.06 seconds in which his come-from-behind split was an unbelievable 8.6 seconds in what has been called the greatest sprint of all-time. He has seen what speed can do and applauds what the Bengals did with an extra seventh-rounder. Brandt goes back to the Bengals pick of Mississippi tackle Stacy Andrews with an extra pick in the fourth round two years ago. Even though he had just 70 college snaps while concentrating on track, Andrews has emerged as a player the Bengals think has a bright future. “That will help them with this pick because they can see that they can get something out of a developmental project,” Brandt says. “And he’s going to a good team. A team that has real good receivers and a quarterback and knows how to throw the ball.” Kind of like the kid from San Diego State. The guy who played only one year of receiver ended up averaging 17.1 yards per his 416 catches. He scored a TD every 7.8 times he touched it. “I probably wasn’t a project because I was a first-rounder,” Curtis says. “But they gambled on me. I don’t know what they saw in me. Well,” he paused. “I guess I do. ... Speed.”
long live bennie! definetly one of my favorite tigers over the years and a real class act. I hope he goes far. :geauxtige
Somebody needs to get that boy a sandwich and he could be ok. 175 lbs won't cut it. Glad he had a good camp.
hopefully xavier can be our big speedster along with the long awaited emergence of early doucet behind crag davis and dwayne bowe. any idea whether bennie wwill make the team?
Tell that to Michael Lewis, Jeremy Bloom, Todd Pinkston, and Tim Dwight. I think if he gains wait then he loses speed, his main asset and the reason the Bengals drafted him.
Gaining wieght will not cause Bennie to lose speed unless he gains fat. If he gains "good" wieght he will be fine.
In general, when an athlete gains weight he also loses speed. It happens all the time. Ricky Williams is a good example of that. He was much faster when he dropped weight.
