Falcons' Tommy Nobis was one of NFL's champions, and perhaps one of its casualties

Tommy Nobis was the First Falcon, literally and in every other sense.

The great middle linebacker, who died Wednesday at 74, played his entire pro career for Atlanta, from its birth as an expansion team to his 1976 retirement.

He might also be another case study in the toll big-time football can take on a human body not made for years of high-impact collisions.

As a player, and a team leader, Nobis was a champion in every sense. He was a star on both offense and defense at Texas under legendary coach Darrell Royal, winning the Maxwell Award his senior year as the best all-around player in college football, and the Outland Trophy for the nation’s best lineman.

Nobis was so good that he famously attracted attention from outer space. The NFL and AFL had not yet merged into a single two-conference league, and Nobis was drafted by both the Falcons and the Houston Oilers. Astronaut Frank Borman, whose two sons were Oilers ball boys, radioed from his Gemini spacecraft that Nobis should sign with Houston.

Fortunately for Atlanta, Nobis didn’t take Borman’s advice, and he didn’t wait long to make the hometown fans love him: He was both NFL rookie of the year and an All-Pro in the Falcons’ inaugural 1966 season, logging 296 individual and assisted tackles — a franchise record that still stands after more than 50 years.

Nobis was destined to play out his career for mostly terrible Atlanta teams, which partly explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that he has never been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The late Furman Bisher, legendary Atlanta sports columnist and Hall of Fame voter, wrote, "In the glow of a winning team … he would already have been residing in Canton. It's not a Falcons thing, it's a Nobis thing, and here is a man who lives up to all the ideals I would establish for admission to the Pro Football Hall of Fame."

Nobis would lead the Falcons in tackles nine times in his 11-year career and be named to five Pro Bowls. He was an inaugural inductee into the Falcons’ “Ring of Honor” in 2004, and his No. 60 has never been worn by another Falcon since his retirement.

Nobis was also, sadly, among hundreds of former NFL players who settled a concussion lawsuit with the league, one that reimburses them for treatment for neurological problems that might be career-related. In the era in which Nobis played, a team’s response to a concussive blow might be asking the player “How many fingers am I holding up?” before sending him back onto the field.

Lynn Nobis, his wife, told the Houston Chronicle last year, “We’ve told him the Falcons are in the Super Bowl … but it doesn’t seem to click. I don’t know if he understands.” But, she added, “I know he loved it more than anything. He wouldn't have had it any other way."

This story was originally published December 14, 2017 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Falcons' Tommy Nobis was one of NFL's champions, and perhaps one of its casualties."