Arnie Weinmeister
A Brief but Brilliant Career
(NOTE: This article originally appeared on about.com July 1, 2000.)When Lawrence Taylor joined the New York Giants in 1981, a couple of older sportswriters compared him to Arnie Weinmeister.
And younger fans asked, "Arnie who?"
Weinmeister died in Seattle on June 29, 2000, at the age of 77. It's a tribute to his greatness as a defensive tackle that he's in the Pro Football Hall of Fame even though he spent only seven seasons in pro football, and only four of those in the NFL.
During those seven seasons, he was named to six all-league teams in three different leagues.
Weinmeister spent three years in the U. S. Army before entering the University of Washington. He was 25 when he joined the New York Yankees of the old All-America Football Conference in 1948.
At Washington and with the Yankees, Weinmeister was a two-way tackle. He was named to the All-AFC team in 1949, his second year as a pro.
When he went to the New York Giants in 1950, he became a defensive specialist, and he was named all-NFL all four of his seasons with the Giants.
At 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds, Weinmeister was about average size for a defensive tackle in those days. But his exceptional speed and agility lifted him far above average.
The Giants used to haze rookie backs by challenging them to run a 100-yard sprint against Weinmeister. Reportedly, he never lost. In fact, it's said that the only teammate who could ever outrun him was Buddy Young of the Yankees, a halfback who had been the NCAA 100-yard champion while at the University of Illinois.
With Steve Owen as coach, the Giants were primarily a defensive team in the early 1950s. From 1950 through 1953, they gave up an average of only 17 points a game, but they didn't quite have the offense to match the Cleveland Browns, who ruled the Eastern Conference during that period.
In 1950, for example, they limited the powerful Browns to 21 points in three games, beating them twice during the regular season, but losing the conference playoff game, 8-3.
Weinmeister was a major reason for their success on defense. With his size, speed, quick lateral movement, and ability to diagnose plays almost instantaneously, he could penetrate into the backfield to stop the ballcarrier for a loss on one play, break up an attempted screen pass on the next, and then sack the quarterback on third down.
Giants' fans rewarded Weinmeister with cheers of a sort that usually went only to offensive stars in those days. He was the first defensive matinee idol, a role later filled by Emlen Tunnell, Tom Landry, Andy Robustelli, Roosevelt Grier, and Sam Huff, to name just a few who played for the Giants.
In 1954, the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League offered Weinmeister $15,000. The counter-offer from the Giants was only $12,000. So he went north, back to his roots in the Pacific Northwest, and he was named to the All-CFL team in his one season as a full-time player there.
He finished his football career as a player-coach with British Columbia in 1955, then retired at the age of 33 to become a national organizer for the Teamsters Union. He was active in union activities on the Pacific Coast for the rest of his working life.
Meanwhile, a new generation of football fans grew up, nurtured by television, and Weinmeister was almost forgotten. But the comparison to Lawrence Taylor brought his name back into the forefront and in 1984, more than 30 years after his last game with the Giants, he was finally elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.