NFL 100: At No. 45, Larry Allen lives in mythological lore, but he was real and spectacular

Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. You can order the book version here. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned on Wednesday, Sept. 8.

To properly express Larry Allen’s legend amongst those who played with him, against him and viewed him from close range, we must enter into evidence that routinely his ability was discussed in terms that made comparisons somewhat pointless.

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For instance, modern Cowboys All-Pro guard Zack Martin is an amazing player and one of the very best in the modern era. He will surely join Allen in the Hall of Fame someday. Yet, you never hear him compared to Allen. It is unfair to him to have to stack up to the legend. People don’t even do it.

The same goes for any player in that position in Cowboys history and to a certain extent, most feel the same way in the NFL. His dominance preceded him with such terrifying and ominous effects that opponents dreaded the meetings.

The comparisons often stopped, save for local radio entertainers who would canvas teammates about how Allen would do outside the confines of the NFL in feats of strength and dominance.

Could he win in a Battle Royale that included all of humanity?

Could he win a square off with a fairly sized black bear? How about an irate chimpanzee? Or maybe a middleweight lion?

Teammates would certainly not claim Allen could take out any and all wild animals, but they would also not completely rule out his chances.

He was that big, strong and mean.

Imagine a player so feared that you actually had to turn to a bear to find an opponent that would make him an underdog — mostly because bears won’t play within the NFL rulebook.

That is probably the best way to describe Larry Allen to those who need a description.

He entered the league in 1994. By his second season, he would run off a streak of seven consecutive years of making the first-team All-Pro squad and he would go to 11 Pro Bowls. He played in an era where almost all of the tape has survived and you can see him put on absolute clinics in critical spots, perhaps best demonstrated by his two-game masterclass in the 1995 NFC Championship Game against Green Bay and Super Bowl 30 two weeks later against Pittsburgh in Arizona.

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Brad Sham, in his 2003 book “Stadium Stories,” made the claim that Allen is the greatest draft pick in the history of the Cowboys franchise. Sham eliminated those who were taken particularly high and were supposed to be great, arriving at his answer in a way that is defensible but also subjective. The Cowboys have made some superb picks over the years and Jason Witten’s third-round selection in 2003 certainly can’t be far behind. Yet, you can see where Sham is coming from here. You should never get what many suggest is the best guard ever with pick No. 46, and the team selecting someone that special should never be coming off back-to-back Super Bowl wins.

Yet, this happened. Just 27 days after Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones divorced, the Cowboys traded up to select Shante Carver with pick No. 23 by sending the 49ers their first- (No. 28) and second-round (No. 62) selections. But with the NFL introducing compensatory picks for the loss of free agents in 1994, Dallas was awarded another Day 2 pick: No. 46.

Describing Allen with words can become difficult when hyperbole is thrown around with such routine for every player who comes along. If everyone is “special,” the truly special players have their value diminished. But to those who played with and against him, the dominance and fear of Allen is something this sport has rarely seen. You will seldom if ever find a guy who left foes resorting to such hushed tones of reverence when speaking his name.

John Randle is a Hall of Fame inductee and one of the best defensive tackles to ever lace them up. Randle put up 14 years of superb play and has his bust residing in Canton, Ohio, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame as of 2010. To hear him speak of Allen should tell those who didn’t see his prime all they need to know:

“When a man can bench press 692 pounds, that man can launch you. It’s like going against a bear; I mean, he’s just humongous. He’ll grab you, pick you up and start laughing. And there is nothing you can do. It’s like going against a car; you are trying to stop him and you are just sliding.

“I’ve seen him take linebackers and just drive them 20 yards. Not 5, not 10. And you go back to the huddle and that linebacker is looking at you like, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Do the best you can. Do the best you can.

“You didn’t taunt him. You were nice to him. Give him a hand up and smile at him. Sometimes he’d smile back. But don’t get him mad. He is one of the most powerful men to ever play the game.” — John Randle, NFL Films

Allen’s excellence is unmatched. If you simply look at his seven first-team All-Pro selections and his 11 Pro Bowl berths, you would find the elite company we are discussing. As far as offensive linemen across the league, over five and 10 in those categories, only Anthony Munoz (1980 draft), Bruce Matthews (1983) and Randall McDaniel (1988) qualify.

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What if you used that same bar for any Dallas Cowboys in the 5/10 club? What would that list look like?

It would include nobody but Larry Allen. Randy White would have enough All-Pro teams and Jason Witten would have enough Pro Bowls, but only L.A. checks both boxes. It is remarkable to consider what a player from Butte Junior College (a place that also produced Aaron Rodgers) and Sonoma State (a place that produced seemingly no other athletes of note and no longer has a football program) became on Sundays at Texas Stadium.

Justin Tuck would tell a story in retirement that would put the picture in the frame about how Allen would love to get inside your head by walking to the line of scrimmage and looking across the line at the defense, put up his right hand to pull down the string on an imaginary train whistle and yell “whoot-whoot!” to let you know the train is coming.

That, of course, meant so was Emmitt Smith right behind him.

“He would love to signal that here was where the hole was that Emmitt is about to run through and there is nothing you can do about it. Imagine that. What are you going to do about it? It was like playing football with your son,” Tuck said. “It wouldn’t matter if your young boy was told your play. Dad is going to make a hole here.”

This, of course, is why to this day Smith can be the all-time leading rusher in NFL history and still be underrated in some circles. Because Allen was so devastating that many would attribute that rushing record largely to him. Think about that.

There are so many other stories that would be listed as his feats of strength.

• Week 15 in 1994. As a rookie, Allen had been forced to play tackle because Erik Williams has been injured. The Cowboys led 7-0 in the second quarter when a pass is deflected at the line of scrimmage. Darion Conner picks it off and is running it the other way. Allen runs him down the sideline and tackles him to save a pick-6 with Dan Dierdorf losing his mind at the marvel he just saw. “This guy has a rocket booster strapped to his back. … Look at this, folks — 6-3, 325 pounds! I’m telling you, that is one of the most impressive athletic feats I have ever seen!”

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• The time he really did bench 700 pounds in the Cowboys’ weight room. To see the pandemonium and euphoria that he created was the result from a man bench pressing more weight than NFL players can possibly conceive. It then became part of his name during games, as in “Larry Allen of the Cowboys — who once benched 700 pounds — just made a great block there.”

• The time in San Francisco when Allen did not appreciate the kicker chirping at him after an extra point (for an unknown reason) and quickly smacked said kicker in the facemask hard enough to produce more stars than Jose Cortez was used to seeing on the sides of helmets.

• The time he put on a clinic in Indianapolis on a series of consecutive plays that NFL circles offered condolences to the Colts defense that day for having an example made at their expense.

He was an awesome player who seldom lost a snap. He did lose one or two, by the way — including a famous one to the late, great Reggie White in a moment where young Allen was playing tackle and Reggie got under him with a hump move to prove that when two Hall of Famers do battle, the other guy might win once in a while.

But, that is the thing about the offensive line. They can win 98 percent of the snaps, give up two sacks and everyone thinks they had the bad game. The defensive guy can lose 98 percent, get a sack and leave the game feeling great. It is a slanted battle, but Allen seldom showed to be human.

He was huge. He was nasty. He was confident. And he was also reserved in his talking. But, there was never any question about what the incredibly gifted and talented players in the NFL thought about him. They were reverent and respectful. Careful to choose their words so as not to upset him. In a game where mouths run with no harness because talking trash is an art form, even the best talkers would nod at Allen and try to get out of Dodge without any significant damage.

He was simply incomparable amongst his fellow man. The only bears with a chance did not play for Chicago.

(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; photo: Sporting News / Getty Images)

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