Steve Zabel, a tight end and pass rusher who was Oklahoma’s last two-way player and then played both positions in the NFL, has died at the age of 78.
Zabel could do everything in college at Oklahoma, playing tight end, linebacker and punter, and the Eagles selected him with the sixth overall pick in the 1970 NFL draft. Zabel recalled in a 2021 interview with the Eagles’ website that his status as a two-way player began because he was one of the few Sooners playing well during a tough start to the 1968 season.
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“Chuck Fairbanks called me in his office and said, ‘Steve, we’ve proven we can’t outscore people. We want you to play defensive end as well as tight end and see if we can’t win some games.’ For me, it was a great transition. I played both ways and punted, and we won our last six games in a row and won the Big Eight Championship,” Zabel said.
When he got to Philadelphia, Zabel again started as a tight end, only to have his coaches decide that his violent style of play would make him a better fit for hitting people on defense.
“As a rookie tight end, I’d gotten kicked out of three games for fighting. And at the end of the year, they told me they didn’t think I had the proper temperament to be successful on offense and wanted to move me to outside linebacker,” Zabel recalled. “I jumped at the opportunity. My rookie year, I came into camp weighing almost 270 pounds. They told me they wanted me to get big to be a blocking tight end, and it really hampered my speed and agility. My second year, I came to Training Camp as an outside linebacker weighing 230 pounds. I gained all my quickness and speed back. It was a wonderful thing. I was all for playing linebacker, believe me.”
In 1975, a contract negotiation with Eagles head coach Mike McCormack turned personal, and Zabel was traded to the Patriots.
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“I was asking for a contract for $75,000, and I got up and said, ‘You know what, Coach? I wouldn’t play for you for $100,000.’ I walked out the door and stuck my head back in and said, ‘Well, maybe for $100,000, I would.’ And I got traded two hours later to the New England Patriots,” Zabel said.
Determined to make things better for players after his own contract negotiations, Zabel became a labor organizer, often saying that the NFL players’ union was not fighting hard enough for its members. In 1975, a Patriots preseason game was canceled when Zabel and his teammates refused to play, citing a lack of progress on changes to the players’ pension, insurance, medical benefits and working conditions.
“We were sick of the owners and we were sick of our own [union] management that had allowed us to go forward,” Zabel recalled in an interview with The Oklahoman.
A deal between the league and the union was reached soon after, but Zabel called it a bad deal for the players, whom he said were “duped” by the owners.
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After four seasons with the Patriots, Zabel finished his career with one season on the Baltimore Colts, in 1979.
In retirement, Zabel went into coaching, but he turned down job opportunities with major college programs, preferring to coach at the high school and small college level where he would have more time with his family and with his charitable work. Zabel and a college teammate founded a nonprofit organization that provides food for homeless people and mentoring for children in Oklahoma City.
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