In the last regular-season game he played in the NFL, running back Jim Brown was ejected for fighting with a St. Louis Cardinals defensive lineman.
The incident occurred on Dec. 19, 1965, in the regular-season finale between the Cardinals and Cleveland Browns at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Just before halftime, Brown and Cardinals defensive end Joe Robb hit and kicked one another. The referee tossed both from the game. Brown still finished as the NFL rushing leader for the eighth time in nine seasons.
Despite a stellar performance by Cardinals safety Larry Wilson, who intercepted three passes and returned one 96 yards for a touchdown, the Browns won, 27-24, and advanced to the NFL championship game against the Green Bay Packers. Video
Brown, 29, played in the title game, won by the Packers, and then retired from football, launching an acting career with a role in the film “The Dirty Dozen.”
Tough guy
Joe Robb was born and raised in the east Texas town of Lufkin, near the Davy Crockett National Forest. His father was a professional wrestler.
Described by the Waco News-Tribune as “a carefree sort unused to a tight harness,” Robb played on the defensive line at Texas Christian University with future Pro Football Hall of Fame tackle Bob Lilly.
A rangy 6 feet 3 and 215 pounds, Robb was chosen by the Chicago Bears in the 14th round of the 1959 NFL draft. He was cut from the roster near the end of training camp and claimed by the Philadelphia Eagles.
A year later, Robb, who bulked up to about 240 pounds, was a starting defensive end for the Eagles when they won the 1960 NFL championship. In the title game against the Packers, Robb was matched against the future Hall of Fame offensive tackle, Forrest Gregg.
“Robb is a tough, hard-nosed kid,” Gregg told the Philadelphia Daily News. “He was charging the same on the last play as he was the first.”
When it came time to discuss a contract for the 1961 season, Robb said, “I went in and asked for $13,000. (General manager) Vince McNally said I was asking for a quarterback’s salary.”
The Eagles traded Robb to the Cardinals for defensive end Leo Sugar and linebacker John Tracey.
Trench battles
In joining the 1961 Cardinals, Robb and Jim Brown nearly became teammates. The Cardinals claimed they turned down a trade offer of Brown for running back John David Crow.
Wally Lemm became the Cardinals’ head coach in 1962 and Robb thrived in the system designed by defensive coordinator Chuck Drulis. Robb had 8.5 sacks in 14 games in 1963. “I really learned something about football at St. Louis,” Robb told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Chuck Drulis taught me everything I know.”
The Eagles’ Bob Brown, the future Hall of Fame offensive tackle, said Deacon Jones of the Los Angeles Rams, the Packers’ Willie Davis and Robb were the toughest defensive linemen to block. Regarding Robb, Bob Brown told The Sporting News, “There’s bad blood between us. We just don’t like each other.”
Before the December 1965 game against the Cardinals, Cleveland’s Jim Brown had been ejected once since entering the NFL in 1957. It happened on Oct. 27, 1963, when he tried to block blitzing New York Giants linebacker Tom Scott on a play in the closing minute of the game. Brown and Scott traded punches and were ejected for fighting.
In an interview with author Alex Haley for Playboy magazine, Brown said he had been gouged in the eye “seven or eight times until I was half blinded” in an earlier game against the Giants.
“I made up my mind that if anybody ever again came deliberately close to my eyes, I would retaliate in spades,” Brown said. “So when I felt Scott’s fingers grabbing for me, I just swung on him and we had that little scuffle.”
Rough stuff
Jim Brown seemed headed toward a stellar performance against the Cardinals in the 1965 regular-season finale. He ran for a touchdown early in the second quarter and was averaging better than five yards per carry in the game.
Just before halftime, with Cleveland ahead, 17-7, Brown took a handoff from Frank Ryan and was hit by Robb.
“Robb hit me with a clothesline blow,” Brown told the Mansfield News-Journal.
The clothesline hit usually is defined as a strike to the head or neck with an extended stiff arm.
Robb told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “I tried to clothesline him. I missed.”
Brown said Robb hit him a second time _ in the back of the head with an elbow when Brown was returning to the huddle.
“He hit me twice,” Brown told Alex Haley. “I didn’t mind being hit _ that’s part of the game _ but he hit me for no reason, no reason at all, and that I did mind.”
Come and get it
On the next play, a deep pass, with Brown assigned to stay in the backfield to block, he motioned for the offensive linemen to let Robb advance unimpeded.
“When they came out of the huddle, he pointed his finger and said he was going to get me,” Robb told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
As Robb rushed into the backfield, Brown met him and raised his forearm. “It hit Joe like a machete,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Robb struck back and hit Brown.
“Brown swung again at Robb and landed,” the Fort Worth newspaper reported.
Robb said, “I grabbed his face mask with my left hand and busted his lip with the other.”
“He hit me on the jaw,” Brown told the Associated Press.
Brown knocked down Robb and kicked him. “I’ve got two cleat marks on the inside of my thigh,” Robb said to the Fort Worth newspaper.
“It was boom, boom, boom,” Brown said to the Mansfield News-Journal.
The two were kicking one another on the ground when the officials intervened and ejected them.
Robb said, “I told Brown, ‘Well, it’s over now, let’s shake hands.’ He didn’t want to, but he did.”
Brown said, “There’s no bad blood between us. We shook hands.”
Brown told the Mansfield newspaper he shouldn’t have let Robb anger him.
“I’m very disappointed when anything like this occurs,” Brown said. “An offensive man should not be looking for trouble. Every man is a cog in the team. I eliminated myself. It was a failure on my part. An offensive player should school himself to take such things.”
Career change
The Browns played the second half without Jim Brown and their top receiver, Gary Collins, who suffered a rib injury in the second quarter, but rallied to win after the Cardinals took a 24-17 lead.
Jim Brown finished the game with 12 carries for 74 yards, giving him 1,544 rushing yards for the season. The touchdown he scored was his career-high 21st of the season. Game stats
The Browns advanced to face the Packers in the NFL championship game on Jan. 2, 1966. Led by Paul Hornung, who had 105 yards rushing and a touchdown, the Packers won, 23-12. In what turned out to be his last game, Jim Brown had 50 yards rushing and 44 yards receiving but didn’t score.
The next summer, while acting in “The Dirty Dozen” in London with Lee Marvin, Brown announced his retirement from football. He followed “The Dirty Dozen” with another classic action film, “Dark of the Sun” with Rod Taylor.
Moving on
In June 1968, after he was traded to the Detroit Lions for linebacker Ernie Clark, Robb told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “I think there is a mutual lack of respect between players and management” on the Cardinals.
Asked about dissension that plagued the 1967 Cardinals under head coach Charley Winner, Robb said to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “It was just a bad situation. In fact, you could call it terrible. Most of the players were simply demoralized … A head coach’s job is to get his team psychologically prepared to play and Winner was incapable of that.”
Robb played for the Lions from 1968-71. He and former baseball Cardinals outfielder Carl Warwick went into the real estate business together in Texas.
In 1974, when he made a comeback at age 37 with the Houston Texans of the World Football League, Robb told the Philadelphia Daily News he had broken his nose 15 times while playing football and had undergone three knee operations. He was 50 when he died in 1987.
RetroSimba 
Another excellent piece Mark! I get a lot of questions about the fight and it’s nice to have it all put together in one story. Great quotes from both players and it’s interesting to see the comment about a mutual lack of respect between the players and management (Bidwills) even back in the 60s. It was a common theme throughout their stay in St. Louis.
Thank you, Bob. I’m grateful you gave me the suggestion to do this piece. I didn’t know about the fight or Jim Brown’s ejection until you told me. Thanks for your confidence in me to do justice to the story.
I had fun hunting for the details. It was rewarding to find newspapers such as Mansfield and Fort Worth to be sources of good interviews with Jim Brown and Joe Robb.
Joe Robb had a lot of harsh comments about Cardinals management in an interview with the Fort Worth newspaper soon after his trade to the Lions. I didn’t use all his quotes. He didn’t hold back. He much preferred Wally Lemm to Charley Winner as a head coach.
Charley was the winningest coach in Cardinals history when he was fired in 1970, but most players did not respect him for the way he handled the Hart/Johnson QB controversy, the racial issues in the locker room, and how he didn’t hold certain players accountable. Never heard anything bad about Wally Lemm.
Thanks for those insights, Bob. With your research and with your personal connections to so many players, I appreciate the credible information.
Reblogged this on THE BIG RED ZONE and commented:
Jim Brown played the last regular season game of his career at Old Sportsman’s Park (Busch I) and was ejected from the game for fighting with Joe Robb. Mark Tomasik breaks it down with an excellent story below. Interesting to see Robb talk about the mutual lack of respect between the players and Big Red management even in 1965. That was a common theme throughout their stay in St. Louis.
From 1960 to 1965 the Cardinals and Browns played 12 times. Only twice did the Big Red keep Jim Brown under 100 yards of total offense. Sorry to hear that Joe Robb passed away at only 50. That 1974 Houston Texans franchise had a number of former Big Red players including Don Brumm, Garland Boyette and Chuck Latourette.
Thanks for all the good info, Phillip. I didn’t know so many former Cardinals went on to play for the World Football League team in Houston. Bob Underwood of The Big Red Zone did an informative piece on Chuck Latourette. Here is a link to it: https://thebigredzone.com/2021/07/24/remembering-big-red-special-teams-star-chuck-latourette/
Enjoyed this article very much and thank you for all of the research. I am fortunate to own a Robb jersey and remember both he and Don Brumm as stalwarts on the Big Red Line.
Thank you for reading and for commenting. That Joe Robb jersey is a special treasure. What a cool connection to the football Cardinals of the 1960s!
Am fortunate to have a few others from that time period which was a very successful albeit star crossed time for the team. So close a number of times.
Great article – very interesting. Joe Robb was my step-father and was still playing football while I was in my freshman year at the University of Texas-Austin. You should also check out the time the entire Detroit Lions football team travelled to San Antonio, Texas for the funeral of Chuck Hughes, who collapsed on the field while returning to the huddle and died in the hospital. He was only 26 and was dad’s roommate when the team was traveling. My mom was sitting with his wife in the stands when they carried him off the field. One thing I’m confused about, however, is the “cancer” diagnosis for dad’s death – as that’s not what I remember. Please share where you got that information. Thanks for a great article – with great quotes!
Hi, Lisa. Thank you for reading and for taking the time to provide the insightful comments about your stepfather, Joe Robb. I enjoyed researching his career. He was quite a player and a terrific storyteller.
I will look up the Chuck Hughes story. Thanks for the tip on that. Maybe it will lead to another article for this blog.
In the April 22, 1987, obituary for Joe Robb in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, it noted his long illness and ended with the sentence: “The family requests that memorials be made to the American Cancer Society.”
Thanks! I’m happy that you enjoyed researching his career – he WAS quite a player and loved telling (and embellishing!) stories. Wonderful sense of humor for sure. Let me know if you decide to post an article about Chuck Hughes – if I recall correctly, he was one of 13 children. Such a sad story – so very young, as was my dad. As for the request for memorials to the American Cancer Society, that was NOT due to his having cancer – as far as I know, he did not.
Thanks, will do. And I removed the cancer reference from my article.