Merlin Olsen

Long Live Merlin Olsen

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Former NFL great Merlin Olsen passed away on Thursday. Known as one of the members of the legendary “Fearsome Foursome” with the Los Angeles Rams, Olsen established himself as one of the greatest defensive tackles in league history.

Olsen joined David “Deacon” Jones, Rosey Grier, and Lamar Lundy to comprise one of the best defensive fronts ever to play in the NFL and in the process, also helped make the Rams a perennial playoff team during the ’60s and ’70s.

A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Olsen not only thrived on the field but off as well. Following his days as a player, he became a television star on NBC’s Little House on the Prairie beginning in the late ’70s.

The 14-time Pro Bowler and member of the NFL’s 75th Anniversary All-Time team also starred in the booth as one of football’s premier television analysts. Along with play-by-play man Dick Enberg, the duo became NBC’s A-team as a part of the network’s AFC package of games throughout the ’80s.

Merlin Olsen was 69.

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