Dick Modzelewski, a lineman who spent 14 years as an NFL player and another 22 years as an NFL coach, has died at the age of 87.
At six feet tall and 260 pounds, Modzelewski was small by the standards of today’s defensive tackles, but a giant in his day. Gay Talese wrote in the New York Times that Modzelewski was “260 pounds of tough tenderloin with shoulders so broad that he often has to pass through doors sideways.” Talese added, however, that “When he is not playing tackle for the New York Giants, Modzelewski is a warm-hearted, gentle soul who loves to babysit for his 108-pound wife, Dorothy. But when he is playing football he is thoroughly bellicose. He wants to win more than any man since Machiavelli, Dillinger or Leo Durocher.”
In 1949 Modzelewski enrolled at Maryland, joining his older brother, Ed Modzelewski, on a Terrapins team that was one of the best in the country. Dick Modzelewski was a two-time All-American and winner of the Outland Trophy, awarded to the best lineman in college football. He was later voted to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Washington drafted Modzelewski in 1953, but he didn’t get along with coach Joe Kuharich and after two years in the NFL signed a contract to leave for the Canadian Football League and a Calgary Stampeders team that was coached by one of his former Maryland coaches. But a lawsuit voided that contract and kept Modzelewski in the NFL, where he was traded to Pittsburgh. After just one year with the Steelers, Modzelewski once again was traded, this time to the Giants. That was where he found his greatest success.
During Modzelewski’s eight years with the Giants, they went to the NFL championship game six times, and his presence in the middle of the line helped make the Giants’ defense among the best in football. Modzelewski also got to line up several times against his brother in the NFL, and he didn’t hold back when facing family.
“Ed is my brother and I love him,” Modzelewski said. “But on the field he wears a white shirt and I wear a blue shirt and we don’t know each other.”
But Ed Modzelewski wasn’t the toughest opponent Dick Modzelewski faced. That would be Browns running back Jim Brown. After a brutal 1961 game between the Giants and the Browns at Yankee Stadium ended in a 7-7 tie, Modzelewski proudly showed off his scratches and bruises and told reporters, “Look what I got from Jimmy Brown.”
In 1964 Modzelewski was traded once more, to the Browns, where he became Jim Brown’s teammate and played his last three NFL seasons. After retiring as a player, Modzelewski was immediately hired by the Browns as a scout, and then made defensive line coach. He was later promoted to defensive coordinator, and he was the Browns’ interim head coach for one game at the end of the 1977 season. Modzelewski would later have spots on the staffs of the Giants, Bengals, Packers and Lions.
In 1989 Modzelewski announced that he thought he had coached long enough, and he felt that it was time to step aside for a younger generation of coaches. He spent retirement with Dorothy, his wife of 64 years, and is survived by her and their four children.
