Cowboys Hall of Famer Larry Allen dies suddenly at age 52

Cowboys Hall of Famer Larry Allen dies suddenly at age 52

By SCHUYLER DIXON AP Pro Football Writer

DALLAS — Larry Allen, one of the most dominant offensive linemen in the NFL during a 12-year career spent mostly with the Dallas Cowboys, has died. He was 52.

Allen died suddenly on Sunday while on vacation with his family in Mexico, the Cowboys said.

A six-time All-Pro, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013. Allen said few words but let his blocking do the talking.

“Larry, known for his great athleticism and incredible strength, was one of the most respected, accomplished offensive linemen to ever play in the NFL,” the Cowboys said Monday. “His versatility and dependability were also signature parts of his career. Through that, he continued to serve as inspiration for many other players, defining what it meant to be a great teammate, competitor and winner.”

The former Sonoma State lineman drafted in the second round by the Cowboys in 1994 – the year before the last of the franchise’s five Super Bowl titles – Allen once bench-pressed 700 pounds while dumbfounded teammates watched, then mobbed him.

Allen was feared enough among his peers that notorious trash-talker John Randle of the Minnesota Vikings decided to keep to himself when he faced the Cowboys, so as to avoid making Allen mad.

“He never said nothin’,” Nate Newton, one of Allen’s mentors on Dallas’ offensive line, told The Associated Press for its Hall of Fame story on Allen 11 years ago. “Every now and then you’d hear him utter a cuss word or hear him laugh that old funny laugh he had.”

Former New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, also a Hall of Famer, said Allen received enormous respect from his opponents.

“Players will watch him on film during the week and then pull up with some mysterious injury or flu or something,” former Strahan said. “We call that catching ‘Allen-itis.’”

Allen entered the Hall of Fame as a first-ballot selection about a year after his mother died, knowing her presence would have helped him get through a speech after a career spent trying to avoid the spotlight.

“I miss her,” Allen said before going into the Hall. “Whenever I’d get nervous or had a big game and got nervous, I’d give her a call, and she’d start making me laugh.”

The Cowboys were coming off consecutive Super Bowl wins when they drafted Allen. He was surrounded by Pro Bowl offensive linemen but didn’t take long to get noticed, eventually making 11 Pro Bowls himself.

Late in his rookie season, Allen saved a touchdown by running down Darion Conner when it looked like the New Orleans linebacker only had Troy Aikman to beat down the sideline. Most of the rest of his career was defined by power – first as a tackle, where the Cowboys figured he would be a mainstay, and ultimately as a guard.

Allen was named in 2019 to the NFL’s top-100 list in 2019, which ranked the best players in league history. He also was chosen for the All-Decade teams for both the 1990s and 2000s and is one of just three players to be named to both teams, joining fellow offensive lineman Willie Roaf and defensive lineman Warren Sapp, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.

“The National Football League is filled with gifted athletes, but only a rare few have combined the size, brute strength, speed and agility of Larry Allen,” the Hall of Fame said in a statement. “What he could do as an offensive lineman often defied logic and comprehension.”

Allen spent his final two seasons closer to home with the San Francisco 49ers. Then, true to his personality as a player, Allen retired to a quiet life in Northern California with his wife and three kids.

“He was deeply loved and cared for by his wife, Janelle – whom he referred to as his heart and soul – his daughters Jayla and Loriana and son, Larry III,” the Cowboys said.

Allen, who was called for holding only 13 times in 14 seasons, missed the first two Super Bowl titles in “The Triplets” era of Aikman, running back Emmitt Smith and receiver Michael Irvin, all three Hall of Famers themselves.

After a loss to the 49ers in the NFC championship game when Allen was a rookie, the Cowboys broke through the next year to become the first to win three Super Bowls in four seasons.

“He was a HOF offensive lineman that dominated opponents regardless of the position played,” Aikman posted on the social platform X (formerly Twitter). “Off the field, he was a gentle giant that loved his family. Rest in Peace LA.”

Smith said in a video posted to Instagram that the news of Allen’s death “just breaks my heart.”

“I’m at a loss of words right now. Such a good dude, great player, super person,” Smith said. “The one thing about Larry Allen, I know. He had a big heart and he lived life to the fullest. A man of very few words but on the football field was a beast. And [he] will be sorely missed.”

Allen was playing at Butte College when his coach at Sonoma State, Frank Scalercio, discovered him at the junior college where the lineman landed after attending four high schools in the L.A. area in part because his mother, Vera, moved him around to keep him away from gangs. At age 9, he was stabbed 12 times in the head and shoulder while defending his younger brother, Von, from an older boy whose mother had given him a knife.

“We would hear the gunfire outside our house, we would automatically roll out of the bed, lay on the floor until the shooting stopped, then get back in bed and go to sleep,” Allen’s mother told The Los Angeles Times in 1994. “After a while, we got pretty good at that.”

Allen often credited his mother for guiding him. She moved with her two sons to Northern California a few years after the knife incident. Allen attended four high schools and didn’t play football until his junior year, when the family returned to Southern California and he enrolled at Centennial High in Compton.

A year later Allen again left the area because of gang activity and drug dealing near his family’s home, playing his senior year at Vintage High in Napa. Allen didn’t graduate and drifted to Butte (in Chico), where he dominated on the field but didn’t earn the grades to transfer to a Division I program.

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Then an assistant for Sonoma, Scalercio was recruiting another player when he saw Allen throw an opponent to the ground for the first time.

“I kinda forgot about the guy I was actually recruiting,” Scalercio said.

That’s how Allen ended up at tiny Sonoma, a Division II school, even though he clearly had Division I talent.

“He could literally beat the will out of his opponents, with many quitting midgame or not dressing at all rather than face him, but that was only on the field,” the Hall of Fame said. “Off it, he was a quiet, gentle giant.”

In retirement, Allen showed up at Sonoma basketball games – the football program was dropped a couple of years after Allen left – and happily signed autographs and posed for pictures.

“He’s even bigger now than he ever was on campus,” Tim Burrell, a friend of Allen’s, said in 2013. “Everybody loves him.”

Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman Larry Allen takes a knee during a training camp practice on Aug. 1, 2005, in Oxnard. Allen, one of the most dominant O-linemen in the NFL during a 12-year career spent mostly with the Cowboys, died suddenly on Sunday while on vacation with his family in Mexico. He was 52. (Irwin Thompson/The Dallas Morning News via AP, File)