Jon Arnett

[Don Wassall]

I was looking for YouTube videos of Rob Konrad from his Syracuse and/or high school days, but there's nothing, even though he played in the 1990s. In our short attention span society, just about anything that happened pre-internet didn't happen. While looking for other RB highlights, including the great Hugh McElheny -- again virtually nothing on YouTube even though he was perhaps the best open field runner ever -- I did find this one on the now forgotten "Jaguar" Jon Arnett, who starred for USC and made 5 Pro Bowls in the NFL. He was an extremely slippery runner; I was surprised to find out he was 5' 11" 197 pounds as he ran like a scatback. Other than Danny Woodhead there's no contemporary White runner to compare him to as the NFL deliberately purged White running backs 30 years ago.

[video=youtube;8P0Vo-MQJXw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0Vo-MQJXw[/video]​

 

[dwid]

I was looking for YouTube videos of Rob Konrad from his Syracuse and/or high school days, but there's nothing, even though he played in the 1990s. In our short attention span society, just about anything that happened pre-internet didn't happen. While looking for other RB highlights, including the great Hugh McElheny -- again virtually nothing on YouTube even though he was perhaps the best open field runner ever -- I did find this one on the now forgotten "Jaguar" Jon Arnett, who starred for USC and made 5 Pro Bowls in the NFL. He was an extremely slippery runner; I was surprised to find out he was 5' 11" 197 pounds as he ran like a scatback. Other than Danny Woodhead there's no contemporary White runner to compare him to as the NFL deliberately purged White running backs 30 years ago.

[video=youtube;8P0Vo-MQJXw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0Vo-MQJXw[/video]​

great find, I wonder if he should have been the token White guy on "top 10 most elusive runners" instead of Dickie Post. I did find a few clips of McElheny a while back and man he was a beast. The footage was mixed in with other players back in the same time period so I can't remember where it is, right now just footage of him in college, a 296 yard performance. I'm sure there is more footage sitting there in NFL film archives. They manage to find stuff like "football follies from those early years but don't post too much of White backs. Lets keep the myth alive that they were just power runners. I mean footage of Riggins from his days with the Jets are hard to find and that was the 70's.

 

[sport historian]

In the late 1950's and early 60's, Jon Arnett was much more famous than Dickie Post was in the late 60's. He also lasted longer.

Post was a favorite of Steve Sabol's, who did a feature on him in 1970, from which most of the Dickie Post footage comes. Sabol also did a short segment on Jon Arnett around 1990, which is in the link Don provided.

 

[jacknyc]

I had heard of Jon Arnett, but had never seen him run and didn't know what an elusive runner he was.
On a side note, I thought it was interesting what John Robinson said about getting the hand-offs so close to the line of scrimmage, vs. in later years when tailbacks lined up so deep in the backfield and had a running start and a better visual on how the defense was moving. Good point. I had never thought of that.

Thanks for posting this.