Goodbye to Vaughn Johnson at the age of 57.
Johnson was one of the inside linebackers of the New Orleans Saints "Dome Patrol" defense that brought the Jim Mora Saints teams to prominence after years of being the worst team in the NFL.
Johnson was named to four Pro Bowls from 1989-92 with the Saints before finishing his career with the Eagles in 1994.
The odd part about the career of Johnson is that arguably his best season in 1993, his Pro Bowl streak ended even though Johnson notched his second-highest total in tackles with career-highs in sacks and forced fumbles.
I also remember Johnson from his days with the Jacksonville Bulls of the USFL and the Saints used their first pick in the 1984 USFL Supplemental Draft on Johnson (15th overall) to control the rights to Johnson after the league ceased to play in 1985.
Johnson would play four games for the Eagles in 1994 and his career was over.
Between a short career peak and playing as part of a linebacking group with one Hall of Famer (Rickey Jackson), another that has an excellent case for Canton (Sam Mills) and a third that was one of the top pass rushers in the game at the time (Pat Swilling), Vaughn Johnson has been overshadowed to a degree- he shouldn't have been.
Goodbye to Hayden Fry at the age of 90.
Fry was the head coach at North Texas, SMU, and most famously at Iowa from 1962-1998.
Fry's eleven-year time period at SMU saw him finish seventeen games under .500, although he did lead the Mustangs to the Cotton Bowl in 1966 as the SWC champions and which was the only title for SMU in the 33 years between 1948 and 1981.
Fry moved the then-named North Texas State Mean Green into Division I with winning seasons in all four of their seasons in D-I before moving to Iowa in 1979 for the final twenty seasons of his career.
The Hawkeyes were a Big Ten bottom-dweller that had not finished with a winning record in eighteen years, but in the third year of the Fry era, Iowa won a share of the Big Ten title and represented the conference in the Rose Bowl for the first of three trips to Pasadena under Fry.
Iowa would play bowl games in 14 of Fry's 20 years (14 of his final 18) and established Iowa football as a perennial conference contender.
Fry is also credited with the idea of the famous pink visitors' locker room at Kinnick Stadium to relax the opposing team and was the inspiration for Craig T. Nelson's character name of "Hayden Fox" on the TV series "Coach".
Series creator Barry Kemp graduated from Iowa and named the character to honor Fry.
A final note on Fry- When he began his coaching career at Odessa High ( Texas), he taught (although did not coach) a young man in history class named Roy Orbison.
Mercy.
Goodbye to Fred Cox at the age of 80.
Cox, the straight-ahead kicker for the Minnesota Vikings from 1963-1977 and was Minnesota's placekicker for all four of the Vikings NFC Championship teams (or Super Bowl losers, if you so prefer).
Cox was an All-Pro in 1969 and when he left football, he was second only to Lou Groza in scoring in league history.
Cox might be more notable for a football note that didn't include his kicking career from 1972.
In that year, Cox was looking for a soft football for kids to kick and with a local partner, took a mold of a full-sized football and filled it with a foam-like material.
The pair then sold the idea to Parker Brothers and a little thing called the Nerf Football was born.
Goodbye to Pat Sullivan at the age of 69.
Sullivan won the 1971 Heisman Trophy as the quarterback for the Auburn Tigers as the first of Auburn's three winners (Bo Jackson and Cam Newton are the others) and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
Sullivan spent four years with the Falcons, mostly as a backup after Atlanta selected him in the second round of the 1972 draft.
Sullivan was later the head coach at TCU for six seasons and brought them to two bowls before Sullivan's recruiting suffered after agreeing to accept the head job at LSU in 1994.
However, LSU refused to pay Sullivan's buyout and Sullivan would not pay it either with the result being LSU hiring Gerry DiNardo and Sullivan returning to TCU, where recruiting would take a hit as recruits believed that Sullivan was looking for a way out of Fort Worth.
Sullivan would later coach at UAB as an offensive coordinator and would lead 1-AA Samford for eight years.
Goodbye to George Atkinson III at the age of 27.
The son of the outstanding Raiders defensive back of the 60s and 70s, Atkinson played his college football at Notre Dame before playing in 2014 for the Raiders and the Browns in 2016.
Atkinson mostly returned kickoffs for Cleveland but in the season finale in Pittsburgh, Atkinson carried the ball seven times for 34 yards and a score and did so with such energy that I wondered why on Earth did Hue Jackson not use him as a runner before?
Atkinson was released by the Browns in the spring and would never play in the league again after failing in training camp attempts with the Raiders, Chiefs, and Jets.
Goodbye to Rusty Hilger at the age of 57.
Hilger was drafted by the then Los Angeles Raiders in the sixth round of the 1985 draft from Oklahoma State and would make 14 starts in the league, five with the Raiders in 1987 and nine more with the Lions in 1988.
Known for a strong arm, Hilger was interception-prone, finishing his career with 19 interceptions and only 11 touchdowns.
At Oklahoma State, Hilger led Oklahoma State to two bowl victories and in 1985, Hilger quarterbacked the Cowboys to the first ten-win season in Oklahoma State history on a team with running back Thurman Thomas.
Goodbye to Elbert Dubenion at the age of 86.
Dubenion was the final member of the original AFL Buffalo Bills to leave the team, having played for the Bills for the first nine of the AFL's ten seasons.
Dubenion played for the Bills 1964 and 1965 AFL champions as their deep threat at wide receiver, finishing 1965 with over eleven hundred yards in receiving yardage.
Dubenion caught 295 passes for Buffalo, 35 for touchdowns, averaged eighteen yards a catch for his career and holds the record for the longest reception in league playoff history when he caught a 93-yard touchdown from Daryle Lamonica in the AFL Eastern Division Final against the then Boston Patriots.
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