Gold Jacket Spotlight: Only Injuries Slowed Charlie Joiner

Gold Jacket Spotlight: Only Injuries Slowed Charlie Joiner

Coaches at all levels of sports – from peewees to pros – agree when citing the most important ability of their players.

Availability.

Take wide receiver.

A player might possess the sure hands of a Charlie Joiner. Or study his opponents and his own playbook with the diligence of a Charlie Joiner. Or run the game’s most precise routes, like a Charlie Joiner.

But if that player can’t stay on the field, his value to the team diminishes.

Such was the case over the first five seasons of the professional career of Charlie Joiner, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 1996 who this week steps into the Gold Jacket Spotlight.

The Houston Oilers drafted Charlie with the 93rd overall selection in the 1969 AFL-NFL Draft. He had been a standout at Grambling University who helped the Tigers post a 24-5-1 record from 1966-68 with a team-leading 2,066 receiving yards.

His rookie campaign ended midway through the 1969 season, however, due to a broken arm. He had totaled only seven receptions for 77 yards and no touchdowns. The 1970 season followed a similar script, ending in Week 9 with another broken arm and with only 28 catches.

In 1971, Charlie led the Oilers with 31 receptions for 681 yards and seven touchdowns, but midway through the 1972 season he was traded to the Cincinnati Bengals. The 1973 season was another near-washout because of injury: five games, 13 receptions for 214 yards and no touchdowns.

In his first five seasons, Charlie missed 25 games because of injuries.

And then it was over.

Not his career, of course, but rather the injury bug. Over the next 13 seasons, 11 of them in San Diego following another trade, Charlie played in 192 games while not missing any due to injury.

His durability and reliability were evident on a national stage in the 1979 season finale – a win-or-go-home showdown with the Denver Broncos on “Monday Night Football.” The victor would claim the AFC West title; the loser would miss the playoffs.

Charlie called it “the most memorable game” of his career, although he also told a Los Angeles Times reporter years later, “I kind of questioned my own sanity that night.”

The Chargers dressed three receivers that night, one of them a rookie.

“It was me or nothing,” Charlie said. “I just came out and played as hard as I could.”

At one point in the game, Charlie went to the locker room for treatment of a thigh bruise. A few plays later, he caught a short pass, only to get nailed by Broncos linebacker Tom Jackson, opening a gash over his right eye that required 12 stitches to close.

In an interview several years later, Charlie called it the “worst hit I had ever taken” in his 18-year pro playing career – or college or high school. He said he would have been required to enter concussion protocol under more modern rules.

He eventually returned to the game and hauled in a 32-yard touchdown pass from Hall of Fame teammate Dan Fouts in the fourth quarter, giving the Chargers a 14-7 lead. They eventually won 17-7, ending a division title drought that dated back to 1965 in the AFL.

“I don’t remember catching the touchdown pass; I really don’t,” Charlie told NFL Films shortly afterward.

Charlie’s three receptions that night gave him 72 for the season, second-best in the AFC and a career high, and he surpassed the 1,000-yard mark as well. He earned a Pro Bowl invitation and called 1979 “my most rewarding season.”

Charlie followed up with 1,100-yard-plus seasons in both 1980 and 1981 as the Chargers reached back-to-back AFC Championship Games. He played five more seasons in San Diego, totaling 586 passes for 9,203 yards and 47 TDs with the Chargers.

Along the way, he passed Charley Taylor as the NFL’s all-time leader in receptions and Don Maynard's record for receiving yards. As the last active player from the AFL, he retired with 750 receptions for 12,146 yards and 65 touchdowns.