RIP Mongo - Alex Karras

Straightshooter2

Straightshooter2

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Alex Karras, former NFL Detroit Lions great and known to millions as Mongo who knocked out a horse in "Blazing Saddles" has died. Karras had been suffering from dementia as have many former NFL players but passed away due to cancer. He had met his current wife, Susan Clark Karras when she played Babe Didrikson and he played George Zaharias in the movie "Babe".

CW
 
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He was quite the witt and joker. I seen him interviewed once and he complained how the pretty boys on his team were given hunting trips to advertise sporting goods but all he got was a offer from some cane pole manufactor to go to some canel around chicago and fish for carp!
 
Met Alex once in the Lyndell AC sports bar across from old Briggs Stadium in Detroit. Nice guy - genuine - what you see is what you got.He got in a couple of fights when he was with the Lions - always in a bar and usually after some half drunk idiot bet he could take Karras - they couldn't. RIP Alex.
 
I am sorry to hear that. He was a great football player. Mike Ditka, tight end for the Chicago Bears and later their coach said he was glad George Halas never put him one on one against Karras. I also enjoyed his Monday Night Football commentary. His humor just came through.

I can't think of anyone else who could have done "Mongo" any better than Alex Karras. He was also in a T.V. series called "Webster" in the early eighties. RIP Alex Karras
 
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Always liked him as a player and of course on the screen.
One humorous gentleman, RIP
 
RIP Alex. Other than his football playing, I remember him best as "Potato Broembagh" in the TV mini-series "Centennial". Good player, good actor, good man.
 
I met Alex at a car dealership on 8-Mile road. I was just a punk kid but he took time out to"shoot the bull" with my Pop and me.What a colorful character and genuinely nice guy. May he rest in peace.
 
Right after Blazing Saddles came out, all of a sudden my "friends" started calling me "Mongo". I have no idea why... unless it's that I'm bigger than Alex was. Or that I could do a really good "Mongo like Candy" impression.

I think a good indication of how thoughtful Alex was that when, in Jerry Kramer's book "Instant Replay" chronicling the 1967 Packer season, Kramer compared Alex to Merlin Olsen of the Rams as his two toughest matchups. Kramer said that Olsen came after you every play no matter what the score, but that if the Lions were down a bunch of points that Karras would kind of coast on some plays and not try hard all the time. When Karras was informed of Kramer's comments, instead of blowing up he took a moment to think on it, and replied that Kramer was right; he did take a play off now and then in a lopsided game. Karras wasn't worried about what others thought of his comment, he just told the truth. Don't see that too often now with spin for everything said or done.
 
Alex, while doing the MNF broadcasts, is the one who, when the camera did a closeup of Otis Sistrunk's bald, massive, steaming head, identified Sistrunk as being out of "The University of Mars."
 
As a kid, a skinny kid, I admired him as a player ....Later on Mongo made me laugh, As a skinny old guy this news truly makes me sad.
 
kennyb said:
a fearsome def.tackle.....R.I.P.
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I think the funniest story I ever read about him was during a game against the Bears. Karras never could see well enough to make out faces so he just beat the **** out of whoever was in front of him. In this particular game he was just pounding on the Bears guard and finally Halas pulled the guard out of the game when they got the ball back and stuck a defensive tackle in his place thinking Karras would go easy on him. Karras commenced to beating on the replacement during the first couple of plays. When they lined up for third down, Karras heard the guy across from him say, "Alex, take it easy man. It's me, your brother Teddy." The story never said if he let up on Teddy or not.

CW
 
He was also in the movie Against All Odds with Jeff Bridges where he played an out of character bad guy. Still a good movie after all those years. He was great as Mongo though, no question.
 
He was one of the victims of dementia likely caused by the hits he took and administered and one of the most outspoken advocates for the NFL to step up and take care of the players so afflicted and to devise ways to minimize it in the future. The players lost a great advocate.

I liked him for all the reasons everyone else has stated but my favorite (if my feeble mind is remembering correctly) is his disdain for the then new 'specialty soccer style kickers' whom he characterized as '150 pound dufuses' running onto the field yelling "I'm goink to keek a tach-dawn !"
 
NFrameFred said:
I liked him for all the reasons everyone else has stated but my favorite (if my feeble mind is remembering correctly) is his disdain for the then new 'specialty soccer style kickers' whom he characterized as '150 pound dufuses' running onto the field yelling "I'm goink to keek a tach-dawn !"
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You beat me to it, NFrame -one of the funniest quotes I ever heard from an athlete. If I remember correctly, he prefaced that remark with something about how he and the others were out there getting beat up for 3 hours trying to win, when the little foreign kicker runs on, wins the game, and says as you quoted.

Andy
 
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