Conrad Dobler: the offensive lineman's Cardinals lost a playoff game to the Rams in 1975, but he still is proud of the effect he had on Merlin Olsen that day - The Game I'll Never Forget

Football Digest, Oct, 2003 by Chuck O'Donnell

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JULY 4, 2001, STARTED OUT AS A DAY FOR Conrad Dobler to celebrate life.

The former offensive lineman--whose penchant for biting, kicking, and leg-whipping foes gave him a repetition as the dirtiest player in toe NFL during the 1970s and '80s--had long ago traded in his pads for a place in the corporate world. He worked as diligently and determinedly building his company, a nurse staffing agency, as he once did trying to open holes for running backs. That company grew to have offices in several cities throughout the United States, and it made Dobler and ms wife, Joy, very wealthy.

By all accounts, Joy was aptly named. She was a registered nurse who always managed to carve out time in her day to take care of her husband and their five kids. She "sacrificed herself the way moms do." Conrad would later say.

On that July day, Joy wanted to take a break from the summer heat and settled into a hammock. But when the hammock gave way, the Doblers' life came crashing down with it Joy Dobler was lust a foot and a half off the ground. but when she fell, she broke her neck and ended up paralyzed from the waist down.

Joy now is working with the same doctors who have tried to help paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve walk again. While she dedicates herself to getting back on her feet, Dobler has assumed her role as the caretaker of the family.

"I miss her," says Dobler now 52. "She's my partner, my wife, toe mother of my kids, The kids and have been bacheloring it by ourselves, What she's going through ... she's probably handling it well. What I'm trying to do is make sure she has nothing to worry about other than completely committing herself to rehabbing herself. That's dedicating her mental state, physical state to trying to walk again, and that's what she's doing. So I have live-in help with her."

Dobler knows all about commitment. He was one of the hardest-working players in NFL history. Drafted in the fifth round of the 1972 draft out of Wyoming by St. Louis, tie spent six seasons with the Cardinals, two with the New Orleans Saints and two with the Buffalo Bills, He earned three trips to the Pro Bowl, battling any way he could to gain an advantage.

Some of the stories about Dobler have become legendary. During one game, he broke the arm of a former teammate who had been too aggressive in a practice years earlier.

Another time he bit an opponent's finger so hard it bled. Dobler reasoned that the guy shouldn't have had his hand inside his face mask. "I knew his fingers weren't there to stroke my mustache," he says with a shrug, Word of his biting spread throughout the league, allegedly prompting Minnesota Vikings defensive line men to ask for rabies shots.

His long-running feud with Hall-of-Famer Merlin Olsen, the subject of the accompanying "Game I'll Never Forget," was particularly notorious. When told of Dobler's memories of forcing him out of the 1975 playoff game between the Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams, Olsen chuckled and said," I really don't want to play games with that because ... Conrad's entitled to his memories. Certainly, I never found myself out of the ballgame. In fact, I don't remember missing any plays in that game. I remember that we won the game. I do remember being--frustrated that Conrad was not called for some of what he was doing the field.