Beginning of the article - should be a 30 for 30 episodes on Bob.
They started calling him “Hitman” in college after he knocked a teammate’s shoulder out one day in practice. The coaches at Iowa eventually had to pull Bob Sanders from contact drills altogether. They couldn’t risk the Hitman taking out half the offense.
In the NFL, his coach dubbed him “The Eraser.” Bob Sanders was so good, Tony Dungy said, that he erased his own teammates’ mistakes. A rival team called him “The Missile” for the way he covered ground and crashed into any and everything in front of him.
“When he didn’t torpedo the guy or absolutely send him backwards, you were almost surprised,” Peyton Manning says now.
“No safety I’ve ever seen was that fast and hit that hard,” Dungy adds.
“Phenomenal when he played,” Tom Brady says. “One of the elite players in the league.”
During games, commentators would search for the right words to capture Sanders’ singular style. “Controlled recklessness,” Dan Dierdorf said on CBS. “A speeding bullet from the secondary,” Mike Tirico called him on ESPN. “Holy moly!” John Madden gushed on NBC.
The internet came up with its own jokes.
Bob Sanders doesn’t do push-ups. Instead, he pushes the earth down.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Bob Sanders allows to live.
Seventy percent of the Earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Bob Sanders.
His career was a bolt of lightning, undeniable in impact but fleeting in duration. Demond “Bob” Sanders treated his body like a tackling dummy, and he paid the price. He was a 5-foot-8, 215-pound football anomaly, one of the greatest safeties of his era, and one of only five in history to win AP Defensive Player of the Year.
Then he was gone.
They started calling him “Hitman” in college after he knocked a teammate’s shoulder out one day in practice. The coaches at Iowa eventually had to pull Bob Sanders from contact drills altogether. They couldn’t risk the Hitman taking out half the offense.
In the NFL, his coach dubbed him “The Eraser.” Bob Sanders was so good, Tony Dungy said, that he erased his own teammates’ mistakes. A rival team called him “The Missile” for the way he covered ground and crashed into any and everything in front of him.
“When he didn’t torpedo the guy or absolutely send him backwards, you were almost surprised,” Peyton Manning says now.
“No safety I’ve ever seen was that fast and hit that hard,” Dungy adds.
“Phenomenal when he played,” Tom Brady says. “One of the elite players in the league.”
During games, commentators would search for the right words to capture Sanders’ singular style. “Controlled recklessness,” Dan Dierdorf said on CBS. “A speeding bullet from the secondary,” Mike Tirico called him on ESPN. “Holy moly!” John Madden gushed on NBC.
The internet came up with its own jokes.
Bob Sanders doesn’t do push-ups. Instead, he pushes the earth down.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Bob Sanders allows to live.
Seventy percent of the Earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Bob Sanders.
His career was a bolt of lightning, undeniable in impact but fleeting in duration. Demond “Bob” Sanders treated his body like a tackling dummy, and he paid the price. He was a 5-foot-8, 215-pound football anomaly, one of the greatest safeties of his era, and one of only five in history to win AP Defensive Player of the Year.
Then he was gone.
Hitman: Bob Sanders changed Colts' defense, lifted them to a Super Bowl, then vanished
"If you don’t know the Colts, you might’ve forgotten about him. But if you know the Colts, there ain’t no forgetting Bob Sanders."
theathletic.com