John Randle, Riverfront Stadium, & Deep Balls
TAPE #005 FROM THE I-80 SPORTS BLOG ARCHIVE
Original interview recorded: 1/29/15, 7:56 PM
Jeff Blake played quarterback in an NFL that looked considerably different from the league we watch today.
Quarterbacks got hit harder. Concussion protocols barely resembled what exists now. Artificial turf could feel like concrete. A 3,000-yard passing season meant something different. And if a defensive tackle like John Randle got his hands on you, there wasn’t necessarily a flag coming to save your ass.
Blake lived through that NFL.
And for more than 15 minutes in this original I-80 Sports Blog interview, he walks me through it.
The conversation starts with Deflategate and quickly becomes something much bigger: an accidental tour through several eras of NFL history.
Blake remembers the hardest hit he ever took. He describes what playing on the old Riverfront Stadium turf actually felt like. He explains why modern quarterback protections would have changed the way he played the position. He talks about throwing deep to Carl Pickens and Darnay Scott, playing for struggling Bengals teams, reaching a Super Bowl with the Eagles, visiting the Bears as a free agent, and learning how to become a backup after years as a starter.
Years before I dug the full recording back out of the archive, one piece of this conversation became its own I-80 Sports Blog story: my lifelong fascination with Jeff Blake’s absolutely gorgeous deep ball. How the hell did he throw that BIG, BEAUTIFUL deep ball?
Read the original story: Jeff Blake Interview: How To Throw The Deep Ball →
Here is the original interview:
Listen to the Original Jeff Blake Interview
Jeff Blake Interview — 2015
Runtime: 15:33
Interview subject: Jeff Blake
Interviewer: Paul Eide
Recorded: 2015
Archive designation: Tape #005
Collection: The Tape Room
Source: Original I-80 Sports Blog interview
Archival note: This recording has been preserved from the original I-80 Sports Blog media archive. The transcript excerpts below have been lightly edited for readability, including punctuation, obvious transcription errors, and occasional verbal repetition. The substance and meaning of the conversation have been preserved. The original recording includes additional conversation not reproduced in the curated transcript below.
What Jeff Blake Discusses
This interview begins with a very 2015 subject: Deflategate.
But it doesn’t stay there long.
Instead, Blake’s answer about football pressure opens a much larger conversation about how quarterbacking—and the NFL itself—changed during and after his playing career.
Among the subjects discussed:
- Why Blake thought Deflategate had become a bigger story than the actual competitive advantage involved
- How quarterbacks feel small differences in football pressure and grip
- How modern quarterback-protection rules would have changed the way Blake played the position
- The hardest hit Blake remembers taking in the NFL
- Getting driven into the ground by Hall of Fame defensive tackle John Randle
- What “getting your bell rung” meant before modern concussion protocols
- Why Blake believes football toughness has always been partly a product of the era
- What the old artificial turf at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium actually felt like
- Throwing deep to Carl Pickens and Darnay Scott
- The secret behind Blake’s famous deep ball
- Playing quarterback for the Bengals during a difficult period in franchise history
- Why a strong running game changes everything for a quarterback
- Blake’s relationship and chemistry with Carl Pickens
- Why shorter quarterbacks don’t need to throw over linemen
- Blake’s 1995 Pro Bowl season
- Finally reaching the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles
- Visiting the Chicago Bears as a free agent before they signed Kordell Stewart
- The psychological adjustment from longtime NFL starter to backup quarterback
- Training young quarterbacks after his playing career
What began as an interview with a former NFL quarterback became a firsthand walk through the league Blake actually experienced.
Jeff Blake on Quarterbacks Getting Hit Then vs. Now
Early in the conversation, I ask Blake about the difference between the NFL he played in and the increasingly quarterback-protected league he was watching in 2015.
Blake immediately identifies something that would have changed his approach to the position.
PAUL EIDE:
When you were playing, you’re getting pounded.
I mean, quarterbacks in your era were just beat up every week. There was no protection.
Talk about watching the NFL now compared to what you had to go through.
JEFF BLAKE:
Well, if I had to play now, I would hold the ball in the pocket a little bit longer.
I know they won’t be able to hit me.
Not hard, anyway.
So you just have a different mindset as a quarterback.
Quarterbacks are a little bit more prone to stay in the pocket a little bit longer, knowing that if they get hit, it won’t be that old brutal stuff that used to happen back in the day.
Guys like Tom Brady, who played for a long time, and Peyton Manning played for a long time—they’ve had a little bit of both.
For them to play now, it’s like nothing for them now.
They can stand back there and feel comfortable knowing that, hey, if somebody hits me and they hit me hard, we’re going to get a penalty and we’re going to get a first down.
The Hardest Hit Jeff Blake Ever Took
That leads to an obvious question.
PAUL EIDE:
Do you remember the biggest hit you ever took?
JEFF BLAKE:
Yeah, I do.
It was by John Randle.
PAUL EIDE:
Yeah, absolutely.
Defensive tackle getting through, getting past the guard probably.
JEFF BLAKE:
Yeah.
He picked me up, and he jumped about five feet in the air with me, with my legs wrapped around his waist, and he came straight down to the ground.
PAUL EIDE:
Man, isn’t that something?
Because now it would not only be a 15-yard penalty at the moment, you’d hear about it for the next three days in the media.
JEFF BLAKE:
Yeah.
He pretty much knocked me out.
I blanked out for a minute and knocked the wind out of me.
I had to come off the field one play and go right back out, because at that time they didn’t check for concussions. They didn’t have the concussion stuff.
If you got your bell rung—which is a concussion—you just came off the field for one play, and if you could see and if you could function, you’d go right back out the next play.
That answer captures more than one violent play.
It captures an NFL medical culture that belonged to another era.
Were NFL Players Tougher Then?
PAUL EIDE:
What made you so tough, and what made the successful quarterbacks of your era so tough?
Is it just wanting to be out there?
JEFF BLAKE:
Just the time we grew up in.
You talk to the guys that played in the ’60s and the ’70s—they felt like they were even tougher than us.
They had less equipment to protect them.
It’s just a sign of the times.
Guys of different eras, I think, are tougher because of the time that they played.
It’s an interesting answer because Blake doesn’t claim his generation as football’s toughest.
He looks backward.
Every generation adapted to the conditions the sport demanded of it.
Riverfront Stadium: “Concrete With Carpet on Top of It”
Then I take the conversation somewhere statistics can’t adequately preserve:
What did the old stadium actually feel like?
PAUL EIDE:
I always thought Riverfront Stadium looked like a really cool stadium to play in, but that turf looked like it was about as thick as the linoleum in my kitchen.
What did it feel like?
JEFF BLAKE:
Concrete with carpet on top of it.
PAUL EIDE:
Oh, man.
JEFF BLAKE:
It was a thin layer of turf.
It wasn’t a thick layer of turf.
The turf was very old, so the padding that was underneath it probably had deteriorated in most spots of it.
And they played baseball there, too.
That had a lot of wear and tear on the turf as well.
There are plenty of photographs of Riverfront Stadium.
There are statistics from every Bengals game played there.
But neither tells you what getting tackled there felt like.
Jeff Blake does.
Concrete with carpet on top of it.
That’s why we keep the tapes.
Jeff Blake on Throwing the Deep Ball
Then I finally get to something I’d remembered about Blake since watching Bengals games as a teenager.
The deep ball.
PAUL EIDE:
And also, back to that era, I’ve gotta say—to me, you threw the best deep ball of any quarterback I’d ever seen at any level, particularly in NFL history.
What is the key to that?
I remember being in high school. Anytime a Bengals game would come on, I knew you were gonna light it up.
Darnay Scott. Carl Pickens.
They were just gonna get bombed.
Cincinnati had some trouble on defense. It wasn’t a great time for the franchise.
But how were you able to produce that and just throw these awesome bombs over and over?
JEFF BLAKE:
Well, people usually pay me for that information.
PAUL EIDE:
That’s right.
JEFF BLAKE:
That’s how I make my money.
They’ve got to come to me. I’ve got to tell them.
PAUL EIDE:
That’s the perfect segue.
And Blake wasn’t kidding.
By the end of the interview, he explains that training quarterbacks—including players preparing for combines and pro days—had become part of his post-NFL work.
The mechanics behind that deep ball had become knowledge he could pass to another generation.
Playing for the Bengals in the 1990s
Later, I ask Blake what it was actually like to play in Cincinnati during one of the more difficult periods in Bengals history.
PAUL EIDE:
What was it like, just getting back to your playing career, to play in Cincinnati in the early to mid-’90s when it had been a pretty rough stretch for the franchise?
JEFF BLAKE:
It was tough.
We had a lot of first-round draft picks on defense.
We had some good defensive guys, and just for some reason, we couldn’t put it all together.
We moved the ball on offense, though.
For some reason, we couldn’t stop anybody on defense.
I mean, we would lose games 45–42.
I then ask whether opposing defenses could focus on Blake and Carl Pickens because Cincinnati hadn’t yet developed the running game it eventually would.
JEFF BLAKE:
They knew if they could stop me and Pickens, they had a good chance of winning the game.
And so that made it tougher on us as a unit to go out and perform every week.
Blake compares the situation to what a productive running game could do for quarterbacks like Russell Wilson and Tony Romo.
Force a defense to respect the run, Blake explains, and everything changes for the quarterback.
Jeff Blake and Carl Pickens
The discussion eventually turns directly to Blake’s relationship with his primary receiver.
PAUL EIDE:
Talk a little bit about Carl Pickens and the relationship you guys had.
JEFF BLAKE:
When I first got to Cincinnati, me and Carl hit it off right away.
We had a lot in common, and we hung out together.
The relationship extended beyond simply throwing routes during games.
They spent time together. They practiced together. They learned one another.
That familiarity eventually became football chemistry—the kind where quarterback and receiver could anticipate what the other was seeing as a play developed.
For a quarterback known for dropping deep passes into the hands of Pickens and Darnay Scott, that relationship matters.
The highlight is the throw.
The tape preserves some of what made the throw possible.
“You Don’t Throw Over People. You Throw Through Lanes.”
Blake was listed at around six feet tall, which inevitably created questions about playing quarterback among much larger offensive and defensive linemen.
His explanation is wonderfully simple.
JEFF BLAKE:
You don’t throw over people.
You throw through lanes.
And everybody throws through lanes.
It’s just that simple.
I mean, even Tom Brady doesn’t throw over people. They all throw through lanes.
It’s a quarterback explaining quarterbacking without making it complicated.
Height matters.
But Blake’s point is that the throwing lane matters more.
From a Pro Bowl to the Super Bowl
When I ask Blake to identify his favorite periods from his NFL career, two seasons immediately come to mind.
PAUL EIDE:
Looking back on your career in hindsight, what was your favorite year?
What was your favorite time?
JEFF BLAKE:
Probably in ’95, when we went to the Pro Bowl. It was fun.
And then in 2004, when I was backing up Donovan McNabb, we went to the Super Bowl that year.
It took me 13 years to get there, so I was excited about that as well.
PAUL EIDE:
Talk about the Super Bowl experience.
We’re on the eve of the Super Bowl, essentially.
JEFF BLAKE:
Man, it was great to be in that atmosphere.
I had the opportunity to be on that big stage like that.
It was a great opportunity.
I wish I could have played in it, but I got to be there.
And that was more than some guys ever had the opportunity to do.
The Bears Almost Signed Jeff Blake
Then the conversation takes another turn into a small piece of forgotten NFL free-agency history.
PAUL EIDE:
I still remember back in 2003, the year before you got on with the Eagles.
You were a free agent.
And I’m a Bears fan by trade.
The Bears at that time needed a quarterback.
And it was coming down to, like, you, Kurt Warner, Jake Plummer, and Kordell Stewart.
What was that whole process like, just in free agency in general?
JEFF BLAKE:
I actually took a visit to Chicago that year and thought maybe they would be interested in me.
But I think they went with Kordell.
PAUL EIDE:
They did.
JEFF BLAKE:
And then I wound up going there in 2005, two years later.
They were interested in me two years before that.
It’s a tiny piece of NFL history.
But those are exactly the pieces that disappear.
A quarterback visits a team.
The team chooses another quarterback.
Everybody moves on.
Years later, unless someone asks the player about it, the moment barely exists.
Here it is on the tape.
“You Don’t Know How to Be a Backup.”
Near the end of the conversation, Blake reflects on another transition veteran quarterbacks eventually face.
What happens when someone who has spent years preparing to start suddenly isn’t the starter anymore?
Blake’s answer is revealing.
JEFF BLAKE:
You don’t know how to be a backup.
You continue to practice like you are a starter, which is a good thing.
A lot of guys who are backups, they don’t practice like starters because they’re backups.
But when you are a starter and you’ve started for a long time, you don’t know how to be a backup.
You only practice like you’re the starter.
So that’s a good thing.
If you have to go back on the field, you never miss a beat.
It’s an appropriate place for the football portion of the interview to end.
A career that began with Blake fighting for an opportunity eventually required him to prepare the same way even when the opportunity wasn’t guaranteed.
Why This Tape Matters
Jeff Blake’s career can be reconstructed from statistics.
This tape preserves something statistics can’t.
What his NFL felt like.
It felt like John Randle lifting a quarterback off the ground and driving him into the turf.
It felt like leaving the field after getting your bell rung, making sure you could see and function, and going back into the game.
It felt like Riverfront Stadium’s artificial surface:
“Concrete with carpet on top of it.”
It sounded like Blake throwing deep to Carl Pickens and Darnay Scott while Bengals teams struggled to stop opponents on the other side of the ball.
It meant learning to find throwing lanes as a six-foot quarterback, reaching a Pro Bowl, waiting 13 years to experience a Super Bowl, visiting Chicago during a forgotten quarterback search, and eventually learning that after years of starting:
“You don’t know how to be a backup.”
And then there’s the deep ball.
I tell Blake twice during the conversation that he threw the best deep ball I’d ever seen.
The first time, Blake jokes that people normally have to pay him to learn how he did it.
By the end of the interview, we learn why.
Blake had begun training quarterbacks.
The thing football fans remembered watching him do had become something he was teaching to the next generation.
But that’s only one part of this recording.
The old story was about Jeff Blake’s deep ball.
The tape is about the NFL Jeff Blake lived through.
That’s the difference.
And that’s why this recording belongs in The Tape Room.
Key Moments
00:14 — Deflategate from a quarterback’s perspective
Blake explains why he believes the controversy became overblown and how quarterbacks actually feel subtle differences in football pressure.
02:07 — “If I had to play now…”
Blake explains why modern quarterback protections would allow him to hold the football longer in the pocket.
02:54 — The biggest hit Blake ever took
I ask the question, and Blake immediately names John Randle.
03:08 — John Randle picks Blake up and drives him into the ground
Blake describes the hit that left him briefly blacked out.
03:38 — “They didn’t have the concussion stuff.”
Blake explains what happened when an NFL quarterback “got his bell rung” during his era.
04:02 — Were previous generations tougher?
Blake says players from the 1960s and ’70s probably considered themselves tougher than his generation because they played with even less protection.
04:23 — Riverfront Stadium’s infamous turf
I compare it to kitchen linoleum.
04:34 — “Concrete with carpet on top of it.”
Blake gives perhaps the perfect description of the old Riverfront Stadium playing surface.
04:56 — The Jeff Blake deep ball
I tell Blake he threw the best deep ball I’d ever seen and remember watching him bomb away to Carl Pickens and Darnay Scott.
05:24 — “People usually pay me for that information.”
Blake isn’t giving away the secret that easily.
06:08 — The injury that opened the door for Aaron Brooks
While discussing injuries from his playing career, Blake recalls the foot injury he suffered in New Orleans and the quarterback change that followed.
07:52 — What the 1990s Bengals were really like
Blake discusses playing for Cincinnati during a difficult period for the franchise.
09:00 — “We would lose games 45–42.”
Blake remembers an offense capable of moving the football paired with a team that struggled to stop opponents.
09:18 — Stop Blake and Pickens
Blake explains how opposing defenses approached Cincinnati’s offense.
11:07 — Carl Pickens and quarterback-receiver chemistry
Blake describes the relationship he developed with one of the defining receivers of his Bengals career.
12:05 — “You don’t throw over people. You throw through lanes.”
Blake explains quarterback height and passing lanes in one sentence.
12:23 — Blake’s favorite NFL seasons
He names his 1995 Pro Bowl season and finally reaching the Super Bowl with Philadelphia.
13:26 — Jeff Blake visited the Chicago Bears
Blake confirms that he visited Chicago during the Bears’ 2003 quarterback search before the team chose Kordell Stewart.
14:29 — “You don’t know how to be a backup.”
Blake explains the mentality of a longtime starter adjusting to a backup role.
14:52 — Teaching the next generation
Blake discusses training quarterbacks for combines and pro days after his NFL career.
Artifact Record
Archive Number: TR-005
Artifact: Original interview audio
Interview Subject: Jeff Blake
Interviewer: Paul Eide
Recorded For: I-80 Sports Blog
Recorded: 2015
Duration: 15:33
Original Filename: Jeff Blake.wav
Recommended Archival Filename: 2015-jeff-blake-interview-i80-sports-blog.wav
Audio Format: WAV
Channels: Mono
Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz
Bit Depth: 16-bit
Collection: The Tape Room
Provenance: Original interview conducted by Paul Eide for the I-80 Sports Blog
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