For modern fans of the Green Bay Packers, running back Eddie Lacy was a favorite for his ability to steamroll defenders and catch passes out of the backfield. For his first two seasons in the NFL, Lacy was a legitimate beast.
And then, for whatever reason, his production fell off a cliff. His body was plagued by injury, he seemed to have trouble staying in shape, and after four years in Green Bay and one nondescript season in Seattle, he was out of the league.
John Brockington, in a way, was the Eddie Lacy of the early 1970s – but with better speed and more elusiveness. A ninth-overall draft pick for the Packers in 1971 who weighed in at 225 pounds, Brockington stormed into the league, trucking over defenses for 1,105 rushing yards, another 98 yards passing, five total touchdowns and a yards-per-carry average of 5.1. He was the second leading rusher in the NFL (to Floyd Little), winning the league’s award for Offensive Rookie of the Year while playing alongside fellow running back Donny Anderson.
In Brockington’s second campaign, he put up another 1,027 yards on a whopping 274 carries, while also catching 19 passes for 243 yards. Brockington scored 9 total touchdowns as the Packers went 10-4 and made the playoffs for the first time since the Lombardi era – he was now teamed with running back MacArthur Lane, for whom Green Bay had traded in exchange for Anderson.
The Packers were one-and-done in the playoffs that season, but their arrow, as the saying goes, seemed to be pointed straight up. It was not to be.
In ‘73, Brockington remained a force, racking up 1,144 yards on 265 carries, with another 128 yards through the air. The Packers went 5-7-2, but he had made the Pro Bowl – when it still mattered – for three straight seasons to start his career, while also setting record for being the first back to rush for 1,000 yards in his first three campaigns.
The total of 775 regular season carries – along with his bruising, take-no-prisoners play style – apparently began to weigh on him physically. In 1974, he failed to clear 1,000 yards for the first time, and he would never get there again.
"We used to joke, 'Nobody wants to be the first guy to make contact with John Brockington,” former Packers guard Bill Lueck, who blocked for Brockington for the running back’s first four seasons, told Packers Historian Cliff Christl. "He was a beast. Nobody wanted to tackle him. He'd run over the first guy. That was his game. But he was elusive also. That's what made him such a dangerous running back. He may run over you the first play, and the next play you're all tensed up and ready for this major collision, and he'd put a move on you. You never knew what was coming: A move or run over you."
But the physical side of Brockington also led to injuries – to other people. That’s how hard he ran. For example, he laid a hit on Dolphins safety Ken Dyer that literally paralyzed Dyer for several weeks. He knocked a player unconscious. Another player lost several teeth and suffered a broken jaw after being run over by Brockington.
So, was it age and injury slowed down Brockington, or was it fear of hurting an opponent even worse? In Dyer’s case, the safety was trying to make a tackle, and Brockington’s knee struck Dyer’s helmet. A doctor later told Dyer he should have died upon impact, so bad was his neck injured. Dyer would walk again after being told he would not, but his playing days were over, and he lay completely paralyzed for five weeks.
Former Packers trainer Domenic Gentile, who was with the team for more than three decades, wrote in his book, “The Packer Tapes,” that even with Dyer mostly recovering from the collision, Brockington was shaken by it.
“John was so bothered by the incident … that I wonder to this day if it didn’t contribute to his mysterious collapse,” Gentile wrote. “... In his sixth and last full season with the Packers, he was just a shell of his former self.”
Still, even with just that three-year burst of dominance, Brockington remains the fourth leading rusher in Packers history behind Ahman Green, Jim Taylor and Aaron Jones. Brockington died in 2023 at age 74. He was inducted into the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame in 1984.