Ever hear the one about the daredevil plasterer who lit an Olympic flame in a four-time first-team All-Pro defensive end?
Jared Allen roars at the mention of Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, the face of the 1988 Winter Games and embodiment of Pierre de Coubertin’s mantra. The beaming, bespectacled British ski jumper finished last in the 70m and 90m events in Calgary but won hearts and minds the world over.
After 136 sacks in 12 NFL seasons, a happily retired Allen and an old friend watched the feelgood 2016 biopic that celebrates the life and times of Michael David Edwards. It had consequences.
“Yeah! Eddie the Eagle! Great movie,” Allen tells The Athletic on the telephone from Nashville. “That’s what inspired me to make a bet with my buddy to try to make the Olympics!
“Eddie the Eagle had to work his butt off to qualify and become a ski jumper, which was the inspirational side of it. But the point I loved about it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I just need to go find a sport that’s not on the books that we don’t really do well at and go join that’,” says Allen, bursting into laughter.
And what of the bet?
Allen said he was inspired by Eddie The Eagle (Mike Powell/Allsport via Getty Images)
“The number was pointless. My buddy threw a number out. I was like, ‘Sure, whatever’. Yes, it was over beers… It’s more just a gentleman’s bet. But nobody wants to welch on a bet! I don’t want to have to tell him he was right — I want him to have to eat crow and tell me that I was right!”
So Allen got to work. In 2018, he formed the All-Pro Curling Team with three former NFL players — quarterback Marc Bulger, linebacker Keith Bulluck and offensive tackle Michael Roos — and set his sights on Beijing.
“I started off as skip, no one had curled ever — we were four football players. Life took off and I ended up joining some other teams. I had no ego, so I ended up playing lead and playing pretty good at lead and sweeping pretty good. So that’s kind of where I found my spot. I really like playing second — I think second is a fun position. But wherever they tell me they need me is where I’ll fit in.”
While he didn’t make the 2022 Games, Allen has had some minor miracles on ice.
“I beat (John) Shuster two years ago at the nationals in Denver, we beat a team last year that were top 30 in the world, we had some success over in Switzerland and Canada, I’ve got to play some really tough teams, and it’s been a fun deal.”
But brace yourselves. Just as the Milan-Cortina Winter Games loom into view, here comes the plot twist.
“I’ll probably not play this year,” Allen, 42, says. “My team kind of broke up. One guy in my team retired. Another guy has moved on. And then I actually got invited to play with Korey Dropkin as his alternate this year, but USA Curling and the USOPC put the kibosh on it, saying I didn’t have a good enough curling resume.
“Their exact words. We won nationals and all the trials, but they have replaced me as the alternate.
“And then they changed our rules — we used to have a two-year point run-up for Olympic trial qualification and now they’re taking the top three point-earners for the year based on their year to date, and then they’re doing a one tournament play-in.”
Does that mean that the Olympic dream is… over?
Allen playing in London (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
“No! No! I’ve still got time. I still love curling, I’m still gonna practise, we’ll figure it out,” Allen says. “A lot of people aren’t playing this year. Unless you can go to the Slams, Shuster, Dropkin, and (Danny) Casper pretty much already have the top three spots locked up.
“Everybody is like, ‘Why are we going to travel, waste our time on these tournaments that mean nothing for us over the next year and a half?’. So everybody’s trying to just practise for the next year, put a team together for The Challenger and try to win the play-in.”
Should Allen win his wager, it would represent another tale to tell for one of the NFL’s biggest personalities of the 21st century.
Drafted by Kansas City in 2004, Allen was traded to Minnesota four years later as the then highest-paid defensive player.
The 2009 Vikings are one of the NFL’s great nearly teams, with quarterback Brett Favre steering them to the NFC Championship in the Superdome. There, they were beaten by themselves (six fumbles, three lost, two interceptions and 12 men in the huddle in the fourth quarter to knock them out of field goal range) and the New Orleans Saints, who were later punished for the Bountygate scandal.
“If we beat the Saints and we go out and win the Super Bowl, our 2009 season arguably goes down as one of the best seasons in NFL history,” Allen says. “Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the Super Bowl because we lost that controversial game.”
Allen headed to the Chicago Bears in 2014 and was traded to the Carolina Panthers in September 2015 for a last hurrah. The 15-1 Panthers almost went all the way, losing Super Bowl 50 against the Denver Broncos.
“It was a blast. It’s one of those surreal moments. I tell people it was my least productive statistical year of my career — I was dealing with injury and all sorts of stuff — but it was the most successful of my career because the goal is to get the Super Bowl.”
Allen after setting the Vikings franchise single-season sack record (Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
Allen’s is a career worthy of Canton (he has been a finalist for the past four years). He led the league twice in sacks (2007 and 2011), the second seeing a tally of 22, making Michael Strahan sweat about losing his all-time record (22.5).
The highlight reel moments are many. They include his one-handed sack of Eli Manning and the tete-a-tete with Donald Penn. And then there’s his contribution to one of the most infamous plays in NFL history. You know the one.
It was 2008 and while playing for the winless Detroit Lions, quarterback Dan Orlovsky stepped out of bounds in the Metrodome for a safety. Orlovsky — now a stellar ESPN analyst — can look back and laugh. Allen is chuckling at it still.
“I wish he wouldn’t have ran out the back — I could have actually hit him! It was my sack. I was actually laughing because Kevin Williams had like four sacks that game, so I was trying to catch up to him. He was pissed. We were in a tight sack race that year. I got a cheapo. I got a freebie!
“To my credit, I did whoop the tight end. I was wide open! Could have throttled him. It was a good job they called a safety,” Allen says.
Johnny Knoxville was not so lucky. As the wider public embraced Allen with his signature mullet and everyman appeal, in 2010 he was invited to California to film a segment called The Blindside for Jackass 3.
“That was a fun deal. Knoxville is a great guy — I still talk to Johnny. I actually found out later I separated his sternum when I tackled him from behind.
“We filmed the run where he catches the ball over the middle a few times. He’s like, ‘Man, come on!’ Like, well, if you want to see what I actually do, let’s drop back for a pass and I’ll hit you from behind. So we did that. There was only one take on that one!”
Allen, who returns to England for the first time since the Vikings beat Pittsburgh at Wembley in 2013, will be inducted into the London Ring of Honor during Sunday’s game between the New York Jets and Minnesota.
He likes what he has seen so far this season from his former team.
“They’re aggressive. What’s most impressive is they are getting what they need to get out of their new acquisitions, who are already making massive impacts. That’s what you like to see when you pick up free agents.
“Hats off to the coaching staff for getting the players that fit their system and creating a system and an environment that they can be successful in.”
And he may well come face-to-face with a familiar foe. It will be almost exactly 15 years ago to the day that Favre and the Vikings beat the Packers on Monday Night Football. Allen had a career-high 4.5 sacks against Aaron Rodgers in a raucous Metrodome. “That was a great day,” he says. “Goodness. Time flies. Whenever I see Aaron it’s very cordial!”
But first, he wants to find some decent grub. “My wife and kids are coming, so I want to show them some of the sights. I want to find some good pubs, have a couple of pints and some bangers and mash.”
Who knows, perhaps he’ll bump into Eddie the Eagle.
(Top photo: David Berding/Getty Images)