By DAVE CAMPBELL, Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS — Jared Allen will be wearing a cowboy hat next weekend in Canton for his Hall of Fame induction, the signature apparel that inspired his celebratory calf-roping act after each sack and still serves as a fitting snapshot of his off-the-field life.
Raised on a horse ranch in Morgan Hill, Allen was audacious enough at age 8 to tell his father he planned to become a professional football player.
After starring at Los Gatos High, Allen fulfilled that vision with a relentless vengeance on the offensive tackles tasked with blocking him and the quarterbacks who tried to escape, using exceptional quickness, creative moves and pure strength to accumulate 136 sacks and four first-team All-Pro selections as a defensive end over a 12-year career in the NFL.
“When you’re doing what you love to do, you want to honor the game by being great, not in an arrogant way but in a way to show respect and gratitude for all those who came before you,” said Allen, who will be honored at the ceremony this weekend along with Antonio Gates, Eric Allen and Sterling Sharpe. “I always wanted to go out there and let people know I genuinely loved playing this game.”
First making his mark with the Kansas City Chiefs and then reaching another level with the Minnesota Vikings, Allen was one of the most fun-loving players of his generation.
That went all the way down to his routine of running away from the play, dropping to one knee, twirling his hand as if he had a lasso and pretending to catch a calf in a rodeo before extending both arms outward to the crowd. He was a showman who had plenty to show for it.
The crossroads of Allen’s career came upon consummation of the 2008 trade that sent him from the Chiefs to the Vikings, his promising start in the NFL tainted by off-the-field trouble that followed him from Idaho State.
Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson, who drafted Allen in the fourth round in 2004, soured on the prodigious pass rusher after two different citations for drunken driving in 2006 and declared him a “young man at risk.” Allen was irked by the lack of front-office support and asked to be dealt, absent a new contract.
After accumulating 15 1/2 sacks in 14 games in 2007 after serving a two-game suspension, Allen finally got his wish. Having given up alcohol after the second arrest, he redoubled his conditioning efforts in determination to prove his worth.
“I loved Kansas City. I wanted to spend my whole career there. Unfortunately, you learn the business side of the game can be a little ruthless, and I’m just stubborn enough to want to get my way,” Allen said.
The Vikings sent their first-round pick and two third-round picks in 2008 to the Chiefs, then signed Allen to a six-year, $73 million deal that at the time was the largest in history for a defensive player. He earned every penny, too, without any salary reductions or early releases that often follow big-money contracts in a league that has little patience for declining production by players with large cap hits.
“With a contract like that and a trade like that comes a lot of pressure,” Allen said. “It’s not in my saddle to rest on my laurels. The most impressive thing was I was able to play it out. I think I represented myself well.”
Allen averaged more than 14 sacks per season over six years with the Vikings, including a career-best 22 sacks in 2011 that came within one-half of the record set by Michael Strahan and later matched by T.J. Watt.
Allen is officially 12th on the career sacks list, a statistic the NFL didn’t compile until 1982. Research by Pro Football Reference on all games played before then produced a comprehensive list that has Allen with the 16th-most sacks in history, after winding down his career with the Chicago Bears in 2014 and being traded to the Carolina Panthers the following season.
While he ditched his drinking problem and cleaned up off the field, Allen never lost his thrill-seeking lifestyle, once running with the bulls in Spain, and killing a wild boar in Texas with a knife. He was a joke-cracking, wide-smiling life of the locker room with the Vikings, where he forged lifelong friendships that transcended the bitter disappointment of losing in overtime to the New Orleans Saints in the NFC championship game after the 2009 season.
Picked up at the airport in Minneapolis after the trade by defensive line coach Karl Dunbar and the alpha males of the position group, Kevin Williams and Pat Williams, Allen quickly knew he was in the right place.
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“I am as competitive as they come, and it was brought to another level walking into that room,” Allen said. “The minute I got into that car, Pat and Kevin started talking trash about how I couldn’t play the run.”
Allen formed the alpha center of those Vikings teams with the Williamses on one of the best defensive lines in the league. He frequently was at his best when the lights were on, including a 4 1/2-sack game on Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers when Brett Favre quarterbacked the Vikings to a 2009 victory in his first revenge matchup against the Packers.
The Vikings have a long history of dominant defensive linemen, with Alan Page, Carl Eller, Chris Doleman and John Randle all enshrined before Allen in Canton. The famed Purple People Eaters — Page, Eller, Jim Marshall and Gary Larsen — helped the Vikings reach four Super Bowls and set a high standard for their successor.
“You’re never going to race ’em, but I wanted people to talk about myself, Pat and Kevin,” Allen said. “We wanted to be the fiercest, nastiest front four you could be, and that was all to pay respect to the guys who did it before us.”
