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Rest In Peace Merlin

By: Jackie Clark

On March 11, 2010 football fans said goodbye to a twentieth-century all-star. Merlin Olsen, a famous defensive lineman for the Los Angeles Rams in the sixties and seventies died after a long battle with an aggressive cancer known as mesothelioma, which is triggered from asbestos exposure.  Olsen died at the age of 69 years old.

Merlin Olsen first shone as a defensive star during his four years at Utah State University. During his time there the Aggie defense allowed less than 140 yards on average. In Utah State's celebrated 20-13 victory over New Mexico State in 1960's Sun Bowl, Olsen and his defensive comrades held their opponents to just 44 yards of offense. During his last two years of college, Utah State went 18-3-1 and won their conference championship both times.

After receiving lucrative offers from different teams in the then-separate National Football League and the American Football League, Olsen joined the Los Angeles Rams in 1962 and took the number 74 for his jersey. His salary was $50,000, more than four times the average player's pay at the time. Unlike many professional athletes of today, this six-foot five, 270 pound defensive tackle spent all of his fifteen years in the league with the Rams. According to Pro-Football-Reference he only missed two games in his entire career. Olsen’s second year on the team, the Rams’ defensive lines Rosie Grier, Deacon Jones and Lamar Lundy joined him. They soon became known as the Fearsome Four, dominating and suppressing opposing offenses.

Though the Rams never won the Super Bowl during Olsen's time there, they frequently won the division in which they played. In fact, they won the NFC West title every year for the last four years of Olsen's career. He went with the Rams to the playoffs on each of those occasions. Amazingly, Olsen made it to the Pro-Bowl every year but the last in his career.

After his two-hundred-eighth game with the Rams, Merlin Olsen retired and went on to work as a broadcaster and an actor. In 2009, his doctors began the first of three series of chemotherapy treatments after a mesothelioma prognosis. He passed away at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California.