Rayfield Wright, Cowboys’ Hall of Fame Lineman, Dies at 76

Rayfield Wright, a troublesome, agile Corridor of Fame offensive sort out for the Dallas Cowboys who was on 5 Tremendous Bowl groups within the Seventies, then suffered from dementia for at the very least a decade, which he believed was almost definitely attributable to repeated blows to the top, died on Thursday. He was 76.

The Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame introduced his dying and mentioned he had been hospitalized for a number of days due to a seizure. It didn’t say the place he died.

Wright incurred quite a few concussions between 1967 and 1979 — “so many who I couldn’t even depend them,” he instructed The New York Instances in 2014. Like many former gamers, he struggled together with his reminiscence, cognitive issues and complications.

‘Typically I stroll into the kitchen and neglect why I went there,” he mentioned. “I’ve gotten into a number of automobile accidents due to seizures. Totaled two automobiles. My reminiscence shouldn’t be good. There’s a giant combat inside myself.”

At 6-foot-7 and about 255 kilos, Wright was a towering presence at proper sort out, defending the scrambling quarterback Roger Staubach and creating holes within the line of defense for working backs like Calvin Hill, Duane Thomas and Tony Dorsett.

“I like blocking, I like the contact,” Wright, who was nicknamed the Large Cat for his athleticism, instructed The Fort Price Star-Telegram in 1973. “There’s quite a lot of satisfaction in figuring out that you just’re transferring your man out of there. However the largest satisfaction of all was to place my man on the bottom. I’m on prime of him, and the ball service is 10 to fifteen yards downfield.”

Wright was a first-team All-Professional 3 times, chosen for the Professional Bowl in six consecutive years and named to the N.F.L.’s all-decade group of the Seventies. He was inducted into the Corridor of Fame, in Canton, Ohio, in 2006.

Carl Eller, the Minnesota Vikings defensive finish who was considered one of Wright’s fiercest opponents and who’s himself a Corridor of Famer, instructed The Related Press earlier than Wright’s induction, “An all-day combat with Rayfield Wright is unquestionably not my concept of a nice Sunday afternoon.”

At Tremendous Bowl VI in 1972, the Cowboys accrued 252 yards in speeding — a Tremendous Bowl document on the time — on the way in which to a 24-3 victory over the Miami Dolphins. It was considered one of two Tremendous Bowl victories for the Cowboys within the Seventies; in addition they misplaced 3 times.

“What we did at the moment is the way in which you’re presupposed to play this sport,” Wright instructed The Dayton Day by day Information. “Who’s going to manage issues up entrance — that’s what counts, all the pieces else being equal.”

He added, “We managed them on the road, and that’s what did it.”

Larry Rayfield Wright was born on Aug. 23, 1945, in Griffin, Ga., about 35 miles south of Atlanta, and raised by his mom, Opel Wright, and considered one of his grandmothers. A Boy Scout, he recalled memorizing Robert Frost’s poem “The Street Not Taken” when he was within the eighth grade, and he mentioned it guided him to consider that life supplied him selections.

In highschool, he excelled in basketball however didn’t make the soccer group till his senior yr. Taking part in basketball for Fort Valley State School (now College) in Georgia, he averaged 20 factors and 21 rebounds a sport and attracted the curiosity of the Cincinnati Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) of the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation. He was additionally a free security, punter, defensive finish and tight finish for the soccer group and was chosen by Dallas as a decent finish within the 1967 N.F.L. draft.

“He was an amazing competitor, proficient and sensible, and he might run; you would have gotten away with enjoying him at large receiver,” Gil Brandt, the Cowboys’ former director of participant personnel, mentioned in a telephone interview.

Wright had been a backup tight finish for the Cowboys for 2 seasons when Coach Tom Landry moved him to proper sort out to interchange the injured Ralph Neely. In his first begin on the place, in 1969, he confronted Deacon Jones, the dreaded Los Angeles Rams defensive finish.

“Hey, boy,” he later recalled Jones’s greeting. “Do you mama know you’re out right here?”

“What does my mama have something to do with this?” Wright recalled pondering to himself, which distracted him sufficient to momentarily lose his focus when the ball was snapped. Jones promptly slapped his large proper hand towards Wright’s helmet, sending him reeling backward to the turf.

“It was as if I’d simply been hit within the head by a baseball hat,” he instructed The Instances.

It was most likely his first concussion, he mentioned, incurred at a time when the N.F.L. didn’t take head trauma critically and gamers have been inspired to return to motion as quickly as doable.

Wright continued to play at a excessive stage for a lot of the subsequent 10 years, till leg issues decreased his effectiveness. He was launched by the Cowboys in 1980 and signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, however he retired earlier than he performed a sport with them.

His survivors embrace his spouse, Di; his daughters, Courtney Minor, Anitra Hernandez and Ariel Wright; his sons, Laray and Larry Jr. and his brother, Lamar

In retirement, Wright was a motivational speaker and fashioned a basis to assist kids get grants to go to school.

He was recognized with dementia in 2012. That yr, he and a gaggle of former Cowboys joined hundreds of different retired gamers in submitting concussion-related lawsuits towards the N.F.L. that accused the league of hiding the hyperlinks between repeated head hits and degenerative mind illness from the gamers.

They have been consolidated right into a class-action swimsuit in federal court docket that was settled in 2015, offering funds of as much as $5 million to particular person gamers who’ve considered one of a handful of extreme neurological and cognitive problems.

“I’m scared,” Wright mentioned of his dementia within the 2014 Instances interview. “I don’t need this to occur.” Wiping away a tear, he added, “I simply need to know why that is taking place to me.”