10 best individual player rivalries in NFL history
By Kinnu Singh
6. Jim Brown vs. Sam Huff
To this day, Jim Brown is considered to be one of the greatest NFL players of all time and the greatest running back in NFL history.
Understandably, Brown remains relevant because of his legacy, but what isn’t as widely remembered is that Brown faced a Hall of Fame foe that once held him to eight yards in a playoff game. Legendary New York Giants linebacker Sam Huff proved to be an even match for Brown, and in the 1950s and 1960s, Brown versus Huff was the matchup to watch.
The rivalry between these two was based on mutual respect, but each player had fun in remembering their opponent. Brown suggested Huff built a reputation off of attaching himself to Brown’s leg, while Huff admitted that he and his teammates slammed into Brown whether or not he held the football.
“Sam was basically the quarterback of that defense,” Brown said in an interview. “And he had the flair to understand he was in New York, so he became an instant celebrity by attaching himself to my legs quite often.”
“We hit him whether he had the ball or not,” Huff said in an interview. “And we knew that we had to stop Brown because their offense was built around him. Why shouldn’t you? The man averaged 5.2 yards a carry lifetime.”
Huff played for a New York Giants team coached by Vince Lombardi on offense and Tom Landry on defense, contributing to the Giants’ fourth and last NFL championship in 1956. A year later, the Cleveland Browns drafted Jim Brown, who led them to their own fourth and final NFL championship in 1964, one year after Huff was traded to Washington. In 1958, the Giants shut down the Browns in the Eastern Conference championship game, holding Brown to eight yards on seven carries. As the quarterback of the Giants’ defense, Huff led his unit to limit the Browns’ offense to just 86 yards.
David Hinckley, a former journalist and lifelong Browns fan, remembered watching Huff battle his favorite player in the late 1950s.
“Huff, already the best middle linebacker in the game, went on to be the best or one of the best for another decade,” Hinckley wrote. “He intercepted 30 passes and played a central role in defining the middle linebacker as the quarterback of the defense.”
It was Tom Landry who popularized the 4-3 defense utilized today, and it was Sam Huff who starred as its first highly successful middle linebacker. In 1959, Huff became the first NFL player featured on the cover of Time Magazine, and in 1960, he became the first NFL player who wore a microphone on television for Walter Cronkite’s documentary, “The Violent World of Sam Huff” (the first player to wear a microphone during an NFL game was Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Bill Saul in 1967).
Both Jim Brown and Sam Huff are Hall of Fame players included in the NFL 100 list, which makes the fact that they battled one another even more impressive. Huff may have become famous for blocking Brown, but it’s only because he’s one of the few players who ever could.