Hardy Brown
This name may not ring a bell, but old-timers will tell you Brown was the most feared hitter of his day. Back in the 1950s, when players wore deflated footballs as helmets and eye-gouging was basically encouraged, you could get away with pretty much anything — and that’s exactly what Brown did during his tenure with the 49ers. He was 6-feet tall at best, but that didn’t stop him from leaving a trail of broken bodies in his wake thanks to a vicious shoulder tackle that he often delivered to the throats or faces of his opponents. “He was a psychic occurrence,” one of his former teammates once said of him. We’re not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds pretty manly.
