On guard: Randall McDaniel heads to Hall of Fame

[August 04, 2009]  MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Randall McDaniel still looks as if he could lower his 6-foot-4, 275-pound frame into that strange, off-balance stance and line up at left guard, poised to plow into the guy on the other side.

He has other work to do, though.

Fitting with his preference to be in the background during a 14-year NFL career along the relative anonymity of the offensive line, he's now a full-time basic skills instructor at an elementary school in a Minneapolis suburb spending his time with second-graders born far too late to have seen his success with the Minnesota Vikings.

In the classroom, he's known simply as Mr. McDaniel.

"It's the hardest job you'll ever love," said McDaniel, one of this year's Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees.

He's teaching instead of blocking, but it's again impossible for him to avoid the attention and the praise.

After a league-record 12 straight trips to the Pro Bowl and seven times as an Associated Press first team All-Pro, McDaniel is bound this weekend for Canton, Ohio, to join the game's greats.

Despite the age of his students, well, it was inevitable the full story would emerge.

"A lot of the kids figured out I used to play football," McDaniel said in a recent interview with The AP. "Once the Hall of Fame announcement came out, they were all like, 'Wow, you were really good!'"

Yes, indeed. He was durable, for one. McDaniel and another Hall of Fame guard, Bruce Matthews, are the only two NFL players who appeared in every game during the 1990s.

He was athletic, taking part in baseball, basketball and track as a kid and arriving at Arizona State as a tight end, before blossoming into a guard who was so quick he sometimes outpaced the running back he was pulling for downfield. The Vikings chose him with the 19th pick in the first round in 1988.

McDaniel owned a special mix of power and intelligence, too, as opponents could attest over 12 seasons with the Vikings and two with Tampa Bay.

"He'd block the mess out of you," said motormouth former Buccaneers defensive tackle Warren Sapp, who faced McDaniel many times but never was able to distract with his infamous trash talk. "I would either drag you into talking with me or I would make you hate me talking at you so much that I knew it bothered you. I couldn't do that to him. He wouldn't talk and wouldn't let me know that it was bothering him. He'd just keep playing, keep blocking."

The lasting image of McDaniel's career is that awkward stance, a technique no sane coach would ever endorse.

Here's how it started: Teammate Todd Kalis accidentally rolled into McDaniel's knee early in his second season with Minnesota, and he was supposed to be out for a month.

Well, McDaniel's replacement was struggling during a game two weeks later, and offensive line coach John Michels screamed at him to take his place. Wearing a bulky brace, McDaniel couldn't get his leg to bend the way he needed to set up in his stance.

So he improvised, turning his left leg out and laying it straight and as low as he could with his ankle essentially flat against the turf.

"I thought I was just going to try it for that game," McDaniel recalled, "but then the defensive linemen made a comment to me: 'I have no clue what you're doing. I can't tell if you're pulling, passing or coming at me.' I thought, 'Heck, I'm never getting out of this.' It never stopped me from doing what I needed to do."

Matt Birk, now a six-time Pro Bowl center with the Baltimore Ravens, learned a lot from McDaniel during his first two years with the Vikings -- including some stern advice.

"One day I was screwing around and imitating his stance," Birk said. "He said, 'Don't you ever try to do that again, because you can never do what I do.' So I never tried that again."

Rebuke aside, Birk appreciated McDaniel's willingness to welcome him and treat a rookie with respect.

"He was a great player, and that wasn't by accident. Off the field, he was just a great guy," Birk said.

The value McDaniel has long had for education will be evident at this weekend's induction ceremony: He invited O.K. Fulton, his former athletic director and assistant principal from Agua Fria Union High School in the Phoenix area, to introduce him.

Whether it's helping kids at Hilltop Primary School or organizing community-service outings for area middle-schoolers with his wife, Marianne, McDaniel is just as busy as he was as a player.

"I was always one of those people that led by example. The best way to show people how to do things is to get out there and do it yourself," said McDaniel, who's now 44.

Simone Reed struggled with reading in third grade, when McDaniel worked in her classroom. He gave her a math tip, too: Eight times eight equals 64, his old uniform number.

"He was always willing to give you a hand to do whatever you wanted to do. He just wanted to help you, even though he was a football star," said Reed, who -- 10 years later -- is headed to Southern Illinois University to study film.

Nancy Benz, the principal at Hilltop, first invited McDaniel to volunteer with one of her classes at a previous school more than a decade ago. When he retired in 2002, he received a provisional teaching certificate and two years later was working full time.

"He just kind of adopted the cause," Benz said. "He's had a really positive influence on the kids. It's been fun to watch him."

The Vikings enjoyed watching him, too. He took over as their starter in the second game of his first season and became an anchor of one of the NFL's best offenses while playing the game within a game that exists at the line.

"The competition, I loved it," he said. "The offensive line, I loved that unit, playing as one. We were like brothers in there."

[Associated Press; By DAVE CAMPBELL]

AP Sports Writer Fred Goodall in Tampa, Fla., contributed to this report.

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