BALTIMORE COLT JIM PARKER---THE BEST OFFENSIVE LINEMAN EVER
James Thomas "Jim" Parker (April 3, 1934 – July 18, 2005) played for the Baltimore Colts from 1957 to 1967. He was named All-Pro for 10 straight years and played in eight Pro Bowls. Parker was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1974 as a two-time All American from Ohio State.
Parker was selected by the Baltimore Colts in the first round of the 1957 NFL Draft as the eighth player selected overall. The Colts, with quarterback Johnny Unitas, relied on a passing offense very different from the running offense of Ohio State. Nevertheless, Parker soon came to be known as the premier pass blocker in the game.
From 1957 until 1962, Parker played as an offensive tackle. He was selected to five Pro Bowl teams in those six years. In 1963 Parker moved to the offensive guard position, as a favor to his college coach Woody Hayes, to make room for another former Buckeye, Bob Vogel. Parker was selected to three more Pro Bowls from the guard position.
Many consider Parker to be the greatest lineman to ever play pro football. Parker was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973, his first year of eligibility. He was the first full-time offensive lineman so inducted. In 1994, Parker was selected to the NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team. In 1999, he was ranked number 24 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, second among guards behind John Hannah, and third among offensive linemen behind Hannah and Anthony Munoz, both of whom began their careers well after Parker retired.
For his 1984 book, The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football,[2] Paul Zimmerman "polled 25 old-timers and asked them to name their candidates for 'best ever' offensive linemen," and Parker was among those listed, stating that Parker was "the best pure pass-blocker who ever lived. Knew all the tricks — the quick push-off, the short jab — that are legal now."
"If Jim got through the line, I'd be right on his hip because I knew he'd clear out the area." ---Lenny Moore
Colts great 'blocked out the sun' and rushers, too
by Mike Klingaman, The Baltimore Sun 7/19/05
His crushing blocks launched Lenny Moore's runs and saved John Unitas' skin.
A mainstay on the Colts' National Football League championship teams of 1958 and 1959, Jim Parker was a superb blocker. He carved out paths for runners and guarded Unitas, his stoop-shouldered quarterback, with the ferocity of an embassy Marine.
"As Johnny's protector, Jim was second to none," said Moore, the Hall of Famer who ran amok in Parker's wake. "If Jim got through the line, I'd be right on his hip because I knew he'd clear out the area."
A first-round draft pick in 1957 from Ohio State, Parker played 11 years with the Colts. He made All-Pro eight straight times - four at guard and four at tackle.
"Anyplace he played on that line, Jim kicked tail," John Mackey, the Colts' Hall of Fame tight end, recalled several years ago. "John [Unitas] never worried about his blind side; Parker was good enough to annihilate the best defensive end."
At 6 feet 3 and 273 pounds, Parker was, at the time, the biggest player ever drafted by Baltimore. "He blocked out the sun," said Ernie Accorsi, former Colts general manager.
A two-time All-American, Parker led Ohio State to a Rose Bowl victory in 1954. His senior year, he won the Outland Award as the nation's premier college lineman, a trophy he cherished to the end in his home in Columbia.
"When I'm gone, I'd like to be known as the best offensive lineman that ever lived," Parker told The Sun in a 2000 interview. "I set that goal as a college freshman, but I didn't get bodacious about it until later.
"You don't broadcast goals 'til it's all over."
Born James Thomas Parker in 1934, he grew up in Macon, Ga., picking peaches and cotton on the family farm. At 13, he took up football. Parker weighed all of 105 pounds at the time.
"I got the living hell beat out of me the first day of practice," he recalled later. "So my daddy bought a case of oatmeal and a case of grits and had me eat it three times a day."
Four years later, Parker had gained nearly 100 pounds and a college football scholarship. At Ohio State, where few blacks lived on campus, he stayed at the home of the late Woody Hayes, the Buckeyes' head coach, who would introduce Parker at his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973.
"Physically, Jim was in a class by himself," Hayes said at that ceremony. "Attitude-wise, he was even greater. You only had to tell him once."
Colts fans embraced Parker, who wore No. 77, from the outset.
"He was a legitimate starter from the first day of training camp," said Buzz Nutter, the team's center. "About twice a game, Parker would absolutely 'pancake' a linebacker, running over him like a big elephant. The guy would disappear like he'd been driven right into the ground."
Parker plugged a vital hole in the Colts' front line, said Raymond Berry, the club's star receiver who played alongside him and was inducted with him in the Hall of Fame in 1973.
"Before Jim came, we couldn't handle [pass rushers] like Chicago's Doug Atkins, a tremendous athlete who'd charge from Unitas' blind side," said Berry. "Once Jim came, we never heard from Doug anymore. In fact, we never heard from anyone on that side anymore."
Atkins, the Bears' Hall of Fame defensive end, called Parker "the best tackle I ever faced. You had to hit Jim full speed, and sometimes that still didn't budge him."
Atkins took credit for instructing Parker in the more subtle nuances of the game.
"I taught him how to cuss," he said. "When we lined up, I'd call him an ugly name and he'd say something back and I'd say, 'Jim, those two words don't even go together.' "
Parker's signature performance came early on, in the 1958 championship dubbed "The Greatest Game Ever Played." In the Colts' 23-17, sudden-death victory over New York, Parker dominated the Giants' heralded pass rusher, Andy Robustelli.
"I thought about him [Robustelli] all night before the game," Parker recalled. "Just pronouncing his name scared the hell out of me. Well, he beat me a couple of times that day, but that was it."
After the game, sitting at his locker, it was Robustelli's turn to praise: "He [Parker] is the best I've played against."
Parker could be a pain on game day, teammates said.
"He got really worked up in the locker room; you had to stay out of his way," said Jim Mutscheller, the Colts' tight end. "Jim would move around without seeing people and just run into them without realizing it. I'd be black-and-blue before the game started."
Parker's appetite was legend. He routinely struggled to make weight, no thanks to players like Nutter and guard George Preas, who roomed opposite him in training camp at McDaniel (then Western Maryland) College.
Much of the rest of his life, Parker spent receiving accolades and tending his package goods store in West Baltimore. The store, at Liberty Heights Avenue and Garrison Boulevard, closed in 1999 after Parker suffered a stroke.
"Jim ran a business in a pretty difficult neighborhood, but he did it with real class," said former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke. "The biggest problem was combating the growing drug trafficking in that community, but he made it clear he wouldn't tolerate it inside his establishment."
Schmoke said it wasn't uncommon for Parker to storm out of his store in pursuit of a suspect in a purse-snatching or mugging.
Parker was the first full-time offensive lineman elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame - one of five sports shrines to honor him (the others were Ohio State University, the state of Georgia, the Colts and the College Football Hall of Fame).
He was a unanimous choice for the NFL's 75th anniversary team. And when the New York Daily News commissioned a poll to select the 50 top pro football players of the century, Parker finished No. 20, just ahead of quarterbacks Terry Bradshaw and Dan Marino.
"I thank God for giving me the strength and courage and knowledge to play this game," Parker told The Sun. "It didn't just happen. Someone was looking over my shoulder."
Jim Parker flattened opponents, paving way for Colts to win titles
by Mike Klingaman, The Baltimore Sun 5/8/12
Lenny Moore can hardly attend an NFL function without some gnarly old linebacker wagging his finger at the 78-year-old Baltimore Colts Hall of Fame running back and telling Moore something he already knows.
"Lenny," the old-timer will say, "I had a bead on you so many times out there, I was going to knock the living hell out of you. But then I'd look up and, all of a sudden, here comes Jim Parker— and he'd get me first."
Moore will listen, smile and nod. Then he'll look skyward and thank the man upstairs — No. 77, the big lug with the horseshoe on his helmet — for running interference.
Parker, the first full-time offensive lineman inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died in 2005. But his legacy lives on.
"Jim was top grade, and I relied on him," Moore said. "When I got the ball, I knew to stick right on his hip. If [defenders] knocked him down, they'd get me. But how often did they knock him down?"
Besides carving out daylight for Colts running backs for 11 years (1957 through 1967), Parker was a fierce pass-blocker, fending off attackers on Johnny Unitas' blind side who were itching to maul the stoop-shouldered quarterback.
"Jim took on deadly pass rushers and totally neutralized them, allowing Unitas to go about his work," said Raymond Berry, the Colts' star receiver. "He was one of the most significant players we ever drafted.
"Back then, the Chicago Bears had a massive defensive end, Doug Atkins, who — at 6-foot-8 and 260 pounds — was our No. 1 villain. Well, when we drafted Parker No. 1 from Ohio State, we put him at left tackle ... and never heard from Atkins again."
Said Berry: "I can still see Atkins [a Hall of Famer] leaping forward and grabbing Parker with both hands, as if to flip him. He'd wrench right, and then left. The fireplug never moved. All Doug got out of it was a wrenched back."
The blocks Parker put on Andy Robustelli in the 1958 championship game kept the New York Giants' rugged defensive end at bay, allowed Unitas to march the Colts downfield ... and likely won the title for the Colts, Berry said.
Named first-team All-Pro eight straight years, Parker did it the hard way: four times each at tackle and guard.
"To move from one of those positions to the other calls for a whole new measure of ability," Moore said. "But Jim did it, and made All-Pro at both."
In 1994, Parker was a consensus selection for the NFL's 75th anniversary team. And when the New York Daily News commissioned a poll to name the greatest players of the 20th century, Parker landed at No. 20.
"When I'm gone, I'd like to be known as the best offensive lineman that ever lived," he told The Baltimore Sun in a 2000 interview.
Few players worked as hard, Gino Marchetti said. As a rookie, the 275-pound Parker asked the Colts' star defensive end for tips.
"Would you teach me to block guys like you?" he said.
For weeks, the two stayed late, one future Hall of Famer sharing his pass-rushing secrets with another.
"Jim worked like hell at it," Marchetti said. "Finally, one day, he knocked me on my butt a few times.
"I told him, 'Hey, Parker, you know it all now.'
"The rest is history."
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