Goodbye to Ryan Mallett at the age of 35.
Mallett possessed one of the strongest arms that I've seen and after transferring from Michigan after one season, led Arkansas to their best season in years, both before and since, in taking the Razorbacks to the then-BCS, and the Sugar Bowl against Ohio State, where Mallett and the Hogs gave the Buckeyes all that they could want in a 31-26 Ohio State win as Mallett led Arkansas back from a 28-10 halftime deficit before being intercepted inside the OSU twenty with one minute remaining.
Mallett was drafted in the third round by New England in 2011 and would backup Tom Brady for three seasons before being traded to the Texans, where he would start eight games in 2014 and 2015 before being released in mid-season of 2015 and signed by Baltimore, where he would have his biggest NFL game in throwing for 274 yards in an upset win over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Mallett would backup Joe Flacco for the next two years in his final NFL action and in recent years, Mallett had served as a high school coach in Arkansas with his first head coaching position in 2022 at White Hall high school, where he finished 4-6.
Goodbye to Nicolas Coster at the age of 89.
The long-time character actor made his biggest splash on soap operas such as "All My Children", "Another World", and "Santa Barbara" but also made many appearances on the main television circuit, in Broadway theatre, and on the big screen in theatres.
Coster's big role in soaps was as "Lionel Lockridge", the heel patriarch of the Lockridge family opposing the Capwell family that held the stars of the daytime drama.
Coster appears in the 1976 classic "All The President's Men" at the beginning of the film as a potential counsel to the Watergate burglars and has two scenes in the courtroom with Robert Redford's character-Bob Woodward.
Coster also held recurring roles as the chief of detectives in the two-season run of "The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo" and as "Blair Warner's" big-money father in "The Facts of Life".
Goodbye to Vince Tobin at the age of 79.
The former head coach of the Arizona Cardinals led the Cardinals to their first playoff berth in sixteen years in 1998 and their first playoff win in over fifty years in the same season, when the Cardinals upset Dallas in Texas Stadium before losing to top-seeded Minnesota.
The problem for Tobin was that 1998 was the only winning season in his five years with the Cardinals and he was fired with a 2-5 record in 2000.
Tobin was the defensive coordinator for the 1984 and 1985 USFL champion Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars and took over for Buddy Ryan as the Chicago Bears defensive coordinator for seven seasons after Ryan accepted the head coaching position with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Tobin's Bears units always ranked at the top of the defensive rankings but were never quite as dominant as they were under Ryan.
Goodbye to Alan Arkin at the age of 89.
Arkin, the father of actors Adam and Matthew, won numerous awards including a Tony, Golden Globe, and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the hilarious 2006 film "Little Miss Sunshine" as a foul-mouthed grandfather on a family trip with his granddaughter on a car trip to a beauty pageant.
Arkin's resume is too long to recite but he collected two more Emmy nominations for his co-starring role in "The Kominsky Method" on Netflix with Michael Douglas in both 2019 and 2020.
Goodbye to Antwyn Echols at the age of 52.
A hard-punching middleweight contender in the middle to late 1990s, Echols challenged Bernard Hopkins for his IBF title, losing a competitive unanimous decision in December 1999 and after winning two fights, earned a rematch with Hopkins in December 2000 that some observers thought Echols was a dark horse to upset Hopkins but was stopped in the tenth round.
Echols bounced back with a memorable battle at super middleweight against another big-banging action fighter in Charles "The Hatchet" Brewer on Showtime in which Brewer knocked Echols down three times in the second round before Echols rebounded to stop Brewer in the following round.
Echols won four more fights before losing a unanimous decision in Australia for the vacant WBA title to Anthony Mundine and won two fights following his loss to Mundine but after those wins, Echols would win just one fight against nineteen losses and three draws over the remainder of his career, suffering knockout losses in the final six fights of his career.
Echols's obituary listed him as the father of twenty-three children, which is just one of those numbers that seem so large that I just cannot process that many children.
It's been rumored that Echols could have even more children, he was asked in a 2013 interview how many children he had, and Echols answered "Twenty-Three, I think".
No comments:
Post a Comment