An all-time nice of the American Football League and one of the most embellished Buffalo Bills in workforce chronicle, Pro Football Hall of Famer Billy Shaw died on Friday of hyponatremia, his household introduced.
Shaw, an offensive guard, made eight AFL All-Star video games in his 9 seasons, was an All-AFL choice 5 instances and was twice an AFL champion. He was additionally a member of the All-Time AFL Team.
“Billy Shaw holds the distinction of being the only member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame to play his entire career in the American Football League, but while that fact is worthy of noting and nice to recite, it comes nowhere near providing the reason he was elected as a member of the Class of 1999,” Hall of Fame president Jim Porter stated Friday in a assertion. “Billy's all-around athleticism brought a new dimension to the guard position and made the 1960s Buffalo Bills a formidable opponent capable of bruising opponents with a punishing rushing attack. And while Billy could be unforgiving to anyone in his way on the football field, he was the classic example of the ‘Southern gentlemen' off the field to everyone he encountered.”
Protecting quarterback and future United States Representative Jack Kemp and paving the means for working again Cookie Gilchrist, Shaw was a driving pressure in the Bills profitable back-to-back AFL Championships in 1964-65. Those title triumphs stand as the Bills' solely AFL/NFL championships.
Selected in the second spherical of the 1961 AFL Draft by the Bills and the 14th spherical of the 1961 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys, the Georgia Tech product headed north to Buffalo.
Shaw began all 14 video games as a rookie and would begin 116 of the 119 he performed in his profession. At 6-foot-2, 258 kilos, Shaw was on the smaller aspect for an offensive lineman even throughout his period. Nonetheless, he was a prototypical pulling guard and a essential cog in the Bills' success as a working workforce in an AFL typically dominated by the go.
A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 1999, Shaw stands as the solely participant in the Hall to have by no means performed in the NFL as the length of his profession befell in the AFL. That historic footnote was hardly what made Shaw's induction memorable, although, as he grew to become a cautionary story of kinds. During his induction speech, Shaw forgot to say his spouse, Patsy. After realizing his fake pas, Shaw returned to the stage and apologized to his spouse — whereas on his knees.
It was a becoming instance of a stand-up man who was a standout for the Bills throughout 9 seasons.
