Larry Allen, a guard and tackle road grader for the Dallas Cowboys, utilized his superhuman strength to pave the way to a Super Bowl victory in 1996 and earned 11 Pro Bowl selections, earning him recognition as one of the nation’s best offensive linemen. The first player in Football League history died on Sunday in Mexico. He was 52 years old.
His death, which occurred while on vacation with his family, was announced by the Cowboys, his team for the first 12 years of his 14-year career. The team did not mention a cause or say where in Mexico he died.
As the most dominant player on one of football’s most dominant offensive lines, Allen was a key addition to a dynasty 1990s Cowboy team that featured Hall of Famers Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Deion Sanders and Emmitt Smith. Allen went on to become the league’s all-time rushing leader.
Allen, drafted as a guard, played every position on the offensive line except center. A seven-time All-Pro, he was a first-ballot inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013 and was named to the league’s All-Decade Team for the 1990s and 2000s.
Working in the trenches, Allen wasn’t as visible to casual fans as his All-Pro teammates who scored touchdowns. But his teammates keenly understood his value. “You always hear people say Larry was the best offensive lineman in the game,” Irvin said. “But that’s not right.” “Larry was the best player in the league, and he wasn’t even close.”
At 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighing about 325 pounds, Allen was the Goliath of Goliaths, known as the league’s strongest player. In 2001, his jaw dropped after he bench-pressed 700 pounds in the Cowboys’ weight room.
He dominated the field in the ‘strongest man’ competition held at the 2006 Pro Bowl. Allen bench-pressed 225 pounds for a quick 43 reps, and ESPN’s Chris Berman said, “For the first 30 reps, he looked like he was lifting a salad fork.”
But Allen was more than just a mountain of men. Boasting impressive quickness and speed for his size, he was truly an athlete. He surprised coaches at Sonoma State University who recruited him by showing he could dunk a basketball at 320 pounds.
“When he hit that ball, you could have heard a pin drop,” Sonoma State coach Tim Scalercio said in a 2013 interview. He said, “It was like a movie where it just went ‘tick, tick, tick, tick,’ and then it stopped.”
Even the best defensive linemen against Allen often ended up on the wrong end of pancake blocks. Minnesota Vikings star defensive tackle John Randle, known for his fumbles, tended to cringe when dealing with Allen. “That guy can launch you,” Randle said in a 2010 NFL video in which he named Allen one of the top 100 players of all time. “It was like he was fighting a bear.”
Allen himself quietly went about his business. “I didn’t say much during my career,” he said in his Hall of Fame induction speech. “There was no need for that. I had a helmet on.”
Larry Christopher Allen Jr. was born in Los Angeles on November 27, 1971, to Larry and Vera Allen.
Growing up in Compton, California, he started playing soccer to stay out of trouble on the streets. But sometimes difficulties came to him. When he was about 10 years old, he was stabbed 12 times while trying to protect his younger brother in a fight.
After his father left the family, his mother moved from Compton to Northern California to protect him from the temptations of gang life and ultimately enrolled him in a series of high schools, including Napa’s Vintage High School. graduate.
Not academically eligible to play football at a Division 1 college program, he spent two years at Butte College, a community college in Oroville, California, before arriving at Sonoma State University, about 50 miles north of San Francisco.
The university was by no means a football factory, but Allen was a two-time All-American there and allowed only one sack in two seasons. The Cowboys selected him in the second round of the 1994 NFL Draft, and he wasted little time accomplishing his feat.
During a ‘Monday Night Football’ game against the New Orleans Saints as a rookie, a buzzing Allen surprised viewers by chasing down speedy linebacker Darion Connor, who had a clear path to the end zone after an interception. “This is one of the most impressive feats of athleticism I have ever seen,” said announcer Dan Dierdorf.
Allen’s survivors include his wife, Janelle (Trimboli) Allen; two daughters, Jayla and Loriana Allen; and a son, Larry III, a former Harvard security guard.
After playing for the Cowboys, Allen played two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers and was nominated for his final Pro Bowl before retiring in 2008.
Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster John Madden once said of Allen: “If someone asked God, ‘What should all security guards look like?’ he would send down Larry Allen.”
