For friends, fans and family alike, they should spend a Sunday afternoon of football with smiles on their faces remembering the late Sam Huff, says Huff's longtime broadcast partner Frank Herzog.
The Hall of Fame linebacker died on Saturday after a prolonged battle with dementia. Huff was 87.
"I think for friends and fans of Sam Huff, I think the day should be spent with a smile on your face, because he was a great guy," Herzog said of his friend Huff in an appearance with Earl Forcey on 106.7 The Fan on Sunday. "He lived a wonderful life."
"When you think about all the things he accomplished from growing up on a coal mine in West Virginia," Herzog said, "you know, his high school football practices, one of the rules of practice was after a play, you were to pick up a rock and throw it off the field so the next time you tackled somebody, it wouldn't hurt as much. That's where he came from. And he went on to become a Hall of Famer, a broadcaster, a Virginia country gentleman, a horse breeder. It's an amazing life story."
Washington's legendary broadcast trio of "Sonny, Sam, and Frank" came together in pieces, with Huff first joining the broadcast booth in 1975. Then in 1979, Herzog came along. Finally, the group that would go on to call three Redskins Super Bowl victories together was complete with Sonny Jurgensen's arrival in 1981. They'd spend the next 23 seasons together.
"Can you imagine sitting in the bar with Hall of Famers on each side of you, and you're watching a football game and you're talking about it all day?" Herzog recalled. "I mean, that's what it was like."
"My job was simply to call the plays. I did the best job I could because I felt like the pressure was on," he said. "I had two guys there that knew the game intimately. Sam and I started alone the first year in '79. And he came across with this country boy West Virginia guy [persona], and I think people took that for granted, saying, 'Well, he's just a dumb linebacker.' Sam Huff was anything but that. That was an act. He knew what was going on in the world and he handled himself and was very successful as well.
"Sitting there, the three of us, it got to the point where I said, 'You know, I'd be a fool if I didn't tap the knowledge that these two guys have,' so I would ask them questions and I would try to draw them out and get information about the game. And in the process, I think I got my graduate degree in professional football."
Herzog was fired in Aug. 2004, a decision that many long-suffering Washington fans still loathe, and replaced by Larry Michael, who had previously served as pre- and post-game host for the game broadcasts. Huff retired from the broadcast prior to the 2013 season, the same year he was diagnosed with dementia. Jurgensen announced his retirement mere moments before Washington's preseason opener in 2019, with the Hall of Fame quarterback saying at the time, simply, "I had enough."
"The broadcast, Frank, every Washington Football fan — and they still miss you to this day — they felt like they were a part of the family," Forcey told Herzog. "You guys made them part of the family. And I think that's part of what Sam was. He was a tough, hard-nosed football player you didn't want to run into between the hash marks, but he was just a good person. He was a Hall of Fame player and I'd say he was a Hall of Fame person as well."
"Yep. I think you're absolutely right," Herzog agreed. "He was a mentor, he was a friend, and I will miss him greatly."
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