Bob Brown, Pro Football Hall of Fame offensive lineman, dead at 81

Hall of Fame offensive lineman Bob Brown, who played 10 seasons in the NFL with the Eagles, Rams and Raiders, died Friday. He was 81.

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The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced Brown’s death on Saturday. He had suffered a stroke in April, his family said in a statement released by the Hall of Fame.

The 6-foot-4, 280-pounder was enshrined in Canton in 2004, not far from Cleveland, where he was born on Dec. 8, 1941. He attended East Tech High School in Cleveland.

“On the field, he was as fierce an opponent as any defensive linemen or linebacker ever faced,” Hall of Fame President Jim Porter said in a statement. “He used every tactic and technique -- and sometimes brute force -- to crush the will of the person across the line from him. And took great pride in doing so.”

Brown was voted college football’s lineman of the year in 1963 when he starred at the University of Nebraska. An All-America guard for the Cornhuskers, Brown was drafted by the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and the AFL’s Denver Broncos, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com.

He decided on the NFL, and the Eagles made him their first-round pick and second overall in the 1964 NFL draft.

Brown was a five-time All-Pro and was named to the Pro Bowl six times. He started in 124 of his 126 games for the Eagles (1964-68), Rams (1969-70) and Raiders (1971-73).

His coach at Oakland, fellow Hall of Famer John Madden, said that Brown “played offense with a defensive duy’s personality.”

“He believed that he could hit you with his forearm and take a quarter out of you,” Madden said. “In other words, if he really hit you, you wouldn’t play hard until the next quarter.”

“I didn’t try to finesse guys,” Brown once told NFL Films. “I just tried to beat up on them for 60 minutes.”

Brown was also elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1963, according to NFL.com.