Bob Hayes: How “The World’s Fastest Human” Changed Football Forever

NFL offenses in the 1960s were still mostly tight and rumbling, evolving from the game’s rugby roots. Running backs ruled. Receivers were still called “ends” or “split ends” before regularly moving out wide closer to the sidelines. That was before Bob Hayes. In 1964, the Dallas Cowboys’ brain trust of Tom Landry, Tex Schramm and Gil Brandt used a seventh-round draft pick on Hayes—an Olympic gold medal sprinter and multiple world-record holder with undefined, but undeniable, football skill. Dallas essentially “pre-drafted” Hayes since he was still in college at Florida A&M, and he didn’t enter the NFL until 1965. In…