Like father like son for football's Kleckos

George Kimball/America At LargeThanks to his supporting roles in two of the worst films (Smokey and the Bandit II and The Cannonball Run) in Hollywood history, millions of Americans (and, for that matter, Europeans with dubious taste) who might never have seen Joe Klecko play football still know what he looks like sans helmet: thick and barrel-chested, rubbery lips, looks like a leg-breaker.

Hey, you think it's hard to type-cast?

A mainstay of the New York Jets defensive line a quarter-century ago, Klecko was the scourge of NFL quarterbacks. He and linemate Mark Gastineau (who also had Hollywood connections: he was the guy who inherited Brigitte Nielsen from Sylvester Stallone) once recorded 20-sack seasons in the same year.

In the contemporary setting of the National Football League, the phrase "blue-collar player" tends to be overworked. It more often than not is used to describe a certain attitude and mindset rather than a reflection of economic status, but never was there an NFL player more authentically blue-collar than Klecko.

He played only one year of high school football, and, with no intention of going to college at all, spent the next two years driving a truck. He was playing, under an assumed name, in a semi-pro sandlot league in Pennsylvania when he was spotted by the Temple University equipment manager, who persuaded the school's football coach to take a look. Joe went on to play as a defensive lineman at Temple, although the fact that they waited until the sixth round to draft him a quarter-century ago suggests that the Jets didn't know they had a future All-Star on their hands.

During his Philadelphia days, by the way, Joe was also an amateur boxer, another endeavour he shared with Gastineau. (Gastineau actually boxed as a professional heavyweight, running up nine straight defeats against a carefully-selected string of fall-down opponents. After one of his intended victims accidentally beat him and the fight's promoter was killed in retribution, the frightened victor blew the whistle to the authorities. It came to light that most of Gastineau's wins had been stage-managed.)

Klecko, on the other hand, had a taste of the real thing. He'd even sparred with Joe Frazier at the old Cloverlay Gym in Philadelphia before he'd ever practised with the Temple varsity.

"All it took was feeling the air from a punch Frazier missed to let me know I was in over my head," said Klecko.

Klecko has been quietly retired for well over a decade now, but he was back in the news last week when his son Dan, by all accounts a virtual doppelganger for his father, was drafted (out of Temple) by the New England Patriots.

Since he first laced on a pair of shoulder pads, the younger Klecko has worn the same jersey, No 73, Joe did when he was terrorising opposing quarterbacks for the Jets, but the number won't be available in New England, which retired it several years ago in honour of Hall of Famer John Hannah, by most accounts the greatest offensive lineman who ever played.

Less than an hour after he was selected by the Patriots in the fourth round of the 2003 NFL draft, Dan Klecko was asked about the "burden" of playing football with a famous name.

"Not at all," said young Klecko. "I truly took it as a blessing. You could be in a lot worse position than that." Right. He could have been born, say, Gastineau's kid.

In addition to sharing his father's uniform number, Dan is by all accounts a powerful and relentless overachiever, though an undersized and, by NFL standards, slow one as well.

Those attributes explained why Joe Klecko lasted until the sixth round of the 1977 draft, and why his son wasn't selected until the second day of last weekend's draft, even though he is the reigning Big East Defensive Player of the Year.

"To me, the proof is in the pudding," added Joe. "Last time I looked, colleges like Miami, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, were all rated in the top 20 and he was the defensive player of the year in that league. When I hear negative comments about Dan's size, that's all I really point to."

Dan was only 11 when his father retired from the NFL, but he grew up in a household hearing stories about the old Jets-Patriots rivalry. Dan has watched film aplenty of his father in action.

"I'm amazed at how quick and agile he was for a guy his size; he could play today," said Dan.

Although the son says he's unabashedly modelled himself after his father, it was suggested last weekend that his privileged upbringing would seemingly preclude the development of the same raw hunger that drove his dad.

"You've never lived in my house if you don't think it's tough," said Joe. "Look, I know Danny has had a much easier life than I have. Of course, every parent wants better for their children. But, as far as his work ethic and the things that happen to him on the football field, Danny walked around with a little bit of a bullseye on his back on the football field because of who he was. Guys would come after him and he'd always get the smart remarks from the young guys out there playing. He handled it well. How he handled it well was basically . . . He lives under the premise that if he can't be better than somebody, he has to outwork them, but he's still had to carry this monkey on his back from being Joe Klecko's son."

Joe is now 49 and, as they say, "between pictures". He works as a vice-president for a New Jersey roofing company and is the father of five. Yes, more Kleckos could be on the way.

Dan has an older brother, Michael (26), but Joe and his wife have what they call their "second generation" of kids, now aged nine, eight and six.

"My oldest and my youngest were born 21 years apart," said Klecko yesterday. "I think what happened was that once I stopped getting the shit kicked out of me every week, some things must have started to work again."