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The Official Web Site of the WVU Varsity Club |
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Profile: Jim Braxton
The powerful Buffalo Bills fullback who helped paved the way for O.J. Simpson’s record-breaking career died of lung cancer in the summer of 1986. “We have lost an outstanding former player and an exceptional human being,” said Buffalo Bills owner Ralph C. Wilson at the time of his passing. “People who saw Jim Braxton perform with such distinction during the mid 1970s will find it hard to believe he has been taken from us at such a young age.” Braxton battled the dreadful disease privately for two years, seeking no sympathy or special attention for his ailment. He even coached an Amherst (N.Y.) midget football league team almost up to the time of his death, sometimes from his car on the worst of days. That was Jim Braxton. He worked with kids in a low income housing project with the goal of helping them make something of their lives. While he was playing for the Bills, Braxton coordinated a technical educational and counseling program in Charleston, W.Va. Braxton’s aim was to help youngsters cope with their problems in school and assist them in determining their occupational goals. It was a program he initiated by himself. Being a well-known professional athlete has its advantages and Jim Braxton used them. Braxton, a giant of a man standing 6-feet-1 and weighing more than 250 pounds, had a completely different persona off the football field. He was soft-spoken, amicable and caring. That’s why Buffalo Bills management often went to him to help solve personnel problems. “He had a rapport with the coaches,” said former NFL standout and Buffalo coach Jim Ringo. “Whenever there was a problem with a player, Jimmy would come to us and say, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll get it straightened out.’” Quarterback Jim Ferguson may have been the team’s field general, but Braxton was the man who took charge in the huddle and in the locker room. “Without taking anything away from Ferguson or Dennis Shaw or any of the other quarterbacks he played with,” said teammate Tony Greene, “Braxton was the field general out there.” Braxton came to Buffalo as a third-round draft pick out of West Virginia University. While in Morgantown, Braxton developed a reputation as a tough and dependable player. He finished second on the team in rushing in 1969 with 843 yards and 12 touchdowns. Braxton was also the team’s place kicker and finished the season with 113 total points to rank eighth in the country. West Virginia produced a stellar 10-1 record and defeated South Carolina 14-3 in the Peach Bowl during Braxton’s junior season. In 1970, he was asked by new Coach Bobby Bowden to move to tight end to make room for a large stable of running backs that included eventual pro Bob Gresham. Braxton unselfishly agreed to the switch and finished the season with 27 catches for 565 yards and eight touchdowns. That performance earned him a spot on the Associated Press All-America first team. As a part-time runner he also managed to carry the football 51 times for 347 yards and a TD that season. Jim rushed for a career-high 170 yards on 19 attempts in a 24-21 win against Colorado State, and later that year caught five passes for 138 yards in a 28-14 win against East Carolina. Those two performances gives Braxton the distinction of being the only player in school history to have produced 100-yard games both rushing and receiving in the same season. The Vanderbilt, Pa., native finished his WVU career with 1,462 yards and 16 touchdowns as a runner, and 906 yards and 11 touchdowns as a receiver. “You name it and he could do it – running , blocking, passing and kicking,” said Bowden. “Jim was probably the smartest player I’ve ever coached,” added Jim Carlen, who recruited Braxton to WVU before leaving to take the Texas Tech coaching job after the 1969 season. Braxton ran for more than 100 yards four times during his WVU career and finished with nearly 2,500 all-purpose yards. He was invited to the East-West Shrine game were he was noticed by the Bills. Even though Braxton was hampered by an ankle injury during the preseason in 1971, Jim made the Bills as a backup fullback and carried the football 21 times for 84 yards. He became the Buffalo’s starting fullback in the second game of the season in 1972, and soon developed a reputation as a powerful blocker capable of handling the league’s biggest offensive linemen. Braxton’s escort service led Simpson to two of the finest rushing seasons in NFL history in 1973 and 1975. Simpson became the NFL’s first 2,000-yard rusher and followed that up two years later with 1,817 yards in 1975. “What he meant to my career is impossible to calculate, but I know many of the things I achieved wouldn’t have been possible without him,” said Simpson. Braxton was also getting more carries in Coach Lou Saban’s grind-it-out running attack. Braxton rushed for 443 yards and five touchdowns in 1973, and added 494 yards and four scores during Simpson’s record-breaking ’73 season. On the day Simpson broke Jim Brown’s rushing mark in the snow at Shea Stadium against the New York Jets, Braxton nearly rushed for 100 yards himself. His best season came in 1975 when he rushed for 823 yards and scored nine touchdowns to help the Bills to an 8-6 record and a third-place finish in the AFC East. His signature game came on Nov. 27, 1975, when he rushed for a career-high 160 yards on 34 carries against the St. Louis Cardinals on national television. His 13 total touchdowns in 1975 ranked eighth among league leaders. The turning point in Braxton’s professional career came during the season opener in 1976 when he suffered a serious knee injury against Miami that sidelined him for the remainder of the year. Although he rehabilitated his knee, Braxton wasn’t the same player after that. He ran for only 373 yards in 1977 and saw even less duty when new Coach Chuck Knox took over the team in 1978. Braxton was traded to the Washington Redskins on Oct. 10, 1978, and was immediately swapped hours later to the Miami Dolphins for running back Benny Malone and a fifth-round draft pick. Braxton played a total of 10 games with the Dolphins in 1978, gaining just 48 yards on 20 carries before retiring at the end of the season. Braxton finished his career with 2,890 yards and 25 touchdowns. He also caught 144 passes for 1,473 yards and six additional scores. Following retirement, Braxton lived in Amherst, N.Y., where he was employed by a real estate management firm. He died on July 28, 1986. Three years later in 1989, West Virginia University celebrated Braxton’s life by naming one of the Towers dormitories in his honor, and established an endowed scholarship in his name for deserving African-American West Virginia students. He was inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. |
Jim
Braxton got the most out of his much-too-brief 37-year
life. |
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