Germ,

Serveral years????? I've been retired for a lot longer than that.

Speaking of Howie Long....he was the first person I ever went up against in the NFL (from another team). We were playing the Raders(pre season) and for some reason (he did this seldom but still did it) he lined up at tackle instead of his normal end position. Well everbody is staring at me in the huddle (most of us were rookies) and I can't quite figureout why. Well then I look up and there he is just standing there with his hands on his hips in that classic "Howie Long" pose.....in the tackle position, kinda smiling at me,and I thought "I'm dead......I'm dead...." Well thankfully it was only four plays so the beatdown didn't last too long (no pun intended) I did learn one thing from my Howie encounter and that was.... big fat Itallian guys can indeed fly! My coach said I did a good job against a future Hall of Famer (he got that part right at least)but I just wanted to crawl under a rock and hide during the film meeting.

As the years go by though I'm getting better and better. Who knows in about 20 more years, I will be kicking his butt all over the field!