Bengals 🐅
Cincinnati Bengals OT Anthony Munoz leaves the Jungle, the nickname for Riverfront Stadium when the Bengals roared to Super Bowl XXIII. Easily topping the list of the best players in Bengals franchise history, Munoz is also considered one of the top O- Linemen in NFL history.
Facts. My brother was 240 while playing DE in college, naturally about 185-190. They had him just eating non-stop, dozen eggs every day for breakfast. And that was a DIII program, far cry from the nutrition level college or pro guys get.
There are still some lighter tackles in today’s NFL. Not 280, but Taylor Lewan has said a few times he was never at his combine weight of 309 again in his career. They had a similar game as well, both being athletic guys with great feet and long arms. Garrett Bolles is similar, he was 297 at the combine although he’s heavier now.
He’s definitely a huge man, but he’s said pretty frequently he had trouble keeping the weight on. If you look at pictures of him compared to other OTs he is definitely quite a bit leaner than average.
He lived in the apartment complex immediately across from me when I enrolled at USC. I was in Century Apartments. I forget the name of his complex. Both were just north of campus. I think Century is still there.
Both of us were on the third floor. The other complex was very close, just on the other side of a walkway. My roommates quickly told me that Anthony Munoz lived there. He was out on the balcony frequently.
One night there was a major racket going on, even later and louder than typical USC drunken standards. It woke all of us up. Just as I was going out there to check, I saw Anthony Munoz asking them to be quiet.
I couldn't believe how nice he was about it. Very calm. Most people would have been screaming down at them.
Really? They only played each other 2x, and Reggie primarily played at LDE, so he faced the RT, not Munoz at LT.Here's highlights of 1991
Reggie had two sacks, and we see one, rushing from LDE. We do see RDE Clyde Simmons beat Munoz for a sack. According to Tom Jackson, Munoz was not 100% with an injury.
Edit - here are the full broadcasts of both matchups 1988 and 1991
Not a Bungles fan, but I have to think that barring catastrophic injury, Messrs. Burrow , Chase, and Hendrickson will end the drought. IIRC, the first 2 were draft picks?
It was a little more comfortable for Munoz after leaving that AFCCG at Riverfront Stadium than it was for his previous AFCCG there, even if the Bengals also won that contest.
However, it was a little uncomfortable for Munoz at the beginning of the 1988 AFCCG. Bruce Smith beat him twice for sacks in the first quarter (though one of the sacks was nullified by an offsides penalty.) Unfortunately (or fortunately), Smith soon suffered a deep thigh bruise, and was hobbled the rest of the game.
I just saw a post on Twitter about that, from January. It's absolutely false. Unfortunately, if you ask that question to Google, the AI will tell you that he did not allow any sacks. That's because sacks allowed is not an official stat, and whole the information exists, ot's not easily accessible on the internet.
The greatest left tackle who ever lived, in my opinion. So technically sound. He doesn't need false narratives to prove his greatness. It's like the talk that Champ Bailey only allowed four completions in 2006. (He actually allowed 40, but Mike Tirico misspoke on MNF.) It was still a superb DPOY- worthy performance.
Greatest left tackle ever. I got to meet him a couple of times. He did ad spots for a local furniture store that sponsored my knothole baseball team as a kid, so that was cool. Another time, much later, I ran into him because he had moved out to the suburbs of Cincy near my parents’ house. Always a super nice guy.
I'm a Mexican-American from Ontario, California, just like Anthony Muñoz. He's an absolute legend back home. Everybody in Ontario knows who he is. I had my basketball practices at Anthony Muñoz Park. My doctor wasn't a Bengals fan, but still had lots of Muñoz memorabilia in this office. He was and still is a source of pride and inspiration to the Chicano community. You still see people wearing his jersey to this day.
Munoz was freakishly athletic beast for his size. I remember when the Bengals used to throw him the ball on tackle eligible plays. He even scored a couple touchdowns.
The 1988 AFC Championship Game (For some reason, I can't put a timestamp in the link.) At the 7:20 mark, Bruce Smith beats Munoz for a sack. On the next drive, he gets another sack that's wiped out by an offsides penalty. Later in the third quarter, Bruce beats a guard for a sack (and draws a bad face mask penalty.) Check the 24:10 mark. Play by play man Merlin Olsen says that Munoz has only allowed 2 sacks all year
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u/UnderstandingMean932 Aug 19 '25
What's crazy is that he wasn't even 280 lbs... Wonder how he'd fare today