During Conrad Dobler's heyday anchoring the right side of the St. Louis [football[ Cardinals offensive line alongside fellow stand-out Dan Dierdorf, that, er, one-two punch always generated a serious buzz through the mid-'70s..

(In those days, I happened to be away each fall at Boston University when the "Cardiac Cards" were heating up the NFC under Don Coryell's passing-centric regime, so I had to watch it all on TV from in my dorm rooms, rather than in person under The Arch at old Busch Memorial Stadium (with its twin mobile field grandstands rolled on their railroad tracks away from the baseball Cards' home plate into their football configuration, the third-base side of the moveable pair being where my family's season tickets were located ever since 1966, the football team's first season there).

The Cardinals made the playoffs three times under Coryell, but never won in the post-season in those days and thus never got anywhere near the Super Bowl. But nonetheless EVERYBODY in St. Louis--and even around the country--talked about that Dobler & Dierdorf combination, something rare for typically-anonymous NFL offensive linemen.

Dierdorf is still very much alive at 73, and is also a veteran of the ABC's Monday Night Football booth.

(In fact, decades later I indirectly worked for retired broadcaster Dierdorf briefly as a call-in host at the turn of the century, as he is the majority shareholder of KTRS, the longtime St. Louis newstalk radio outlet at 550 kHz. It was an extended audition, actually, and I didn't get the gig in the end; never met Dierdorf, but after my on-air stint he reportedly told an associate, "That Styble fellow just isn't St. Louis." Maybe the talented Dierdorf--he was absolutely first-rate on ABC for MNF, so no sour grapes here--was correct in his assessment of my modest broadcasting skill set...but as it happens, Mr. Dierdorf, I WAS born and raised in The Gateway City.)

As for the late Dobler, who died on Monday, February 13th: can't say that I applaud his underhanded-play reputation, but I did find quite nifty the playful payback his gridiron victim Merlin Olsen--one of my all-time faves, the future "Little House on the Prairie" actor in those days a solid part of the Los Angeles Rams' glorious "Fearsome Foursome" defensive line--engineered years later by having Dobler's name etched onto a tombstone for an episode of his spinoff NBC drama "Father Murphy". (Hadn't heard that story before, yet it's already one of my favorite NFL anecdotes ever!)

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
==================https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Dobler

I should have pointed out that one reason I'm sour-grapes-free after that Dierdorf rejection is that his people paid me in full for my short-lived KTRS/St. Louis stint--pinch-hitting for George Noory on his old "Night Hawk" broadcast, of all talk radio personalities!--and rather handsomely at that, given it was merely an extended audition.

STYBLE/Florida