Charlotte Observer: Delamielleure Unhappy With Haslett

Joe Delamielleure

Posted on Tue, Mar. 29, 2005

Delamielleure unhappy with Haslett

Hall of Famer says comment by Saints coach inappropriate

STAN OLSON

Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

New Orleans coach Jim Haslett's comment last week that half of the NFL's players and all of its offensive linemen were using anabolic steroids in the 1980s infuriated Joe Delamielleure.

"That was inappropriate and irresponsible," said Delamielleure, a Charlottean, on Monday. "Haslett shouldn't say everyone was taking them, because I wasn't. But for Haslett to make that comment doesn't surprise me. I played with him (in Buffalo), and he was always inserting his foot in his mouth, then taking it out and putting the other one in."

Delamielleure played guard for 13 seasons in a Hall of Fame career with the Bills and Cleveland, and he knew the league had a steroid problem.

"I knew guys were taking them; it wasn't a banned substance until 1987, and (steroids) were a great leap physically for some guys," he said. "As much talk as there was, everybody thought something was going on, because guys were getting bigger and bigger. But personally, I never saw anybody injecting steroids.

After the 1985 season, Delamielleure was forced from the game, primarily because he couldn't add weight to his 260-pound frame.

"I was very bitter; 260 got me into the Hall of Fame, and all of a sudden it's not big enough to play," he said. "No matter how hard I worked out, I couldn't get bigger than that. That last year I was barely hanging on. And guys were cheating but nothing was done until a couple of years later."

Delamielleure doesn't put all the blame on his peers of several decades ago. At the time, he said, you could compare steroids to tobacco.

"My dad smoked; he thought he was cool, the Marlboro man and all that," he said. "Nobody knew that it might kill you, and steroids were like that."

Now they are finding out.

"I was in an NFL strongest man competition with six other guys back in '82 or '83," Delamielleure said. "Now five of them are dead."

Circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but worth consideration. And that brings him back to Haslett, who said he used steroids for one season as a linebacker in the '80s.

"Now I'm a personal trainer. I work with high school football players and they think if all linemen took that stuff, then I must have taken it," Delamielleure said.

He's not certain the game's current players have learned. The NFL has crowed for years that its drug testing is the pride of pro sports, but Delamielleure isn't sure that still holds true.

"Look at some of these guys; there's no way you can weigh 350 pounds naturally," he said. "And for everything the testers do, the guy who knows how to mask it is always one step ahead and just getting richer."

And he worries about the future of the game.

"It is unfair when you do it the right way," Delamielleure said, "and you teach kids that the guy who works the hardest will succeed, and then, because somebody else is taking something, it doesn't pay off."