Friday, January 29, 1999
Romanowski just likes to hit people
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MIAMI — If you play offense, Bill Romanowski would like to rip your head off. He'd fly over the linemen and straight into you. He'd hit you so hard, your cousin would feel it. It would be a heck of a thing.
“Pull off?” he says. “No.”
Someone has asked Romanowski if he has ever held back from hitting someone in a football game. It's a stupid question.
“There's been times where maybe a quarterback is getting out of the pocket and going down,” Romanowski says, “and you wanna just nail him, but you know if you do, you'll probably get a penalty. There's sometimes you gotta be smart. But if a guy is running with a ball in his hands, I've never pulled off.”
He is polite, he isn't boastful, he doesn't come off like Stone Cold Steve Austin. You ask him a question — “Bill, what does it feel like to crush a running back's sternum?” — he'll give you an answer:
“When you get a real good hit, I mean it just feels good. There's nothing that fires a team up more.”
“How about that one against the Jets?” Romanowski flying-leaped the Jets' line and crashed into running back Curtis Martin like a red wine hangover, in the AFC title game. “You knocked him clear off his feet. Both of you got up shaking your heads.”
“That felt good,” Romanowski says. “I was just a little dizzy after it.”
Keeping things simple
He is a simple man, as simple as the game he plays. We could spend days and weeks talking about defensive “wrinkles” and “schemes” if we wanted to sound smart. But defensive football isn't for smart guys. Not really. It's for people who like to hit other people, people who like the taste of blood, anybody's blood.
We wanted to read things into Romanowski's spitting on San Francisco's J.J. Stokes last year. It was a silly thing to do, and Romanowski has apologized for it ever since. But he meant no lasting harm. It was just football for him.
In 11 years playing linebacker in Denver, Philadelphia and San Francisco, Romanowski has missed one game, the preseason opener two years ago. Romanowski has played in 21 postseason games and seven conference championships. He has three Super Bowl rings.
Certain people were made to do specific things. Romanowski was made to wear a helmet and hit people.
“Did you pop 8-year-olds when you started playing?” someone asks.
“I was trying. I started when I was 10. I was kind of a wimp. By the time I was 13, I was pretty good,” he says. Of course. We can see that clearly. Little Billy Romanowski of Vernon, Conn., terror of the eighth grade team, knee-capping quarterbacks in practice.
As a 49er, Romanowski even drilled Jerry Rice, seemingly annually during training camp. In San Francisco, that's like pistol-whipping the pope. “A couple times, the whole offensive line attacked me for that,” he says.
It doesn't matter who you are. That's the message. On the field, Romanowski lives for the contact.
One for the ages
He would fit in any NFL era, but we'd love to have seen him in the '60s, with Nitschke and Butkus, wearing one of those single-bar facemasks and gouging eyes.
He could have played for the Raiders. He could have been a '70s Steeler (his hero is Jack Lambert, who had teeth like Dracula), he could have been an '85 Chicago Bear.
That Romanowski plays in the '90s — when players make lots of money and foes actually shake hands and pray with one another after games — is an irony he has to live with.
“Leather helmets,” he says. Do you like the good ol' days? “Absolutely,” says Romanowski. “There was a love for the game.”
He says older, former Broncos greet him often. “Bill, don't you ever change,” they say. “We love the way you play.”
Sure they do. They're probably all defensive guys.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
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