What did Kenny “The Snake” Stabler look like at 38 years young? (1 Viewer)

[saintmdterps]

lol, this gets posted every once in a while and I probably say the same thing every time, that's a rode-hard-and-put-away-wet 38.

It ain’t the years baby, it’s the mileage

 

[jasonsw]

lol. im 44 and he looks old enough to be my dad

 

[dennisrwood]

I grew up in New Hampshire. Started following the Saints as well when Stabler signed with them. I read about it in Sports Illustrated.

I watched that last Monday Night Game Stabler played against the Cowboys.

 

[football]

I remember his wife was a weather anchor on channel 6 way back then. She was attractive. He may look old but he has good taste.

 

[Super]

Yep, I hate looking in mirrors, but everytime this is posted it makes me feel a little better about how I look when I do Even with the extra 20 yrs.

 

[Cage1]

It's not the years, it's the mileage. And died too young at 69. RIP, Kenny.

That's impressive considering that would be like 117 for most of us.

 

[sfidc3]

Knew some folks in the restaurant business that knew him (I worked at a Metairie restaurant with a bartender whose girlfriend was the sister of an NFL player), the prevailing rumor was that he swung both ways.....

 

[muddbug2]

At 62

 

[HattiesburgWhoDat]

People from back then look lot older than their age. Nowadays people look younger for their age.

My wife and I say that all the time. My grandmother looked "old" in her 50's and 60's back in the 1970's and 80's. My folks are now in their 70's and look like my grandparents did in their 50's. Maybe hair color? Or could be they just worked so much more outside. My grandad never bought a Tractor and farmed about 80 acres with a draft horse. That was in the 1960's-80's. My mom and her siblings had to pick cotton by hand with my grandparents back then. So I guess maybe the harder work aged people more. Or I guess it could me hitting 50 this year and me thinking everybody (including myself...lol) is looking younger these days. Lol

 

[football]

My wife and I say that all the time. My grandmother looked "old" in her 50's and 60's back in the 1970's and 80's. My folks are now in their 70's and look like my grandparents did in their 50's. Maybe hair color? Or could be they just worked so much more outside. My grandad never bought a Tractor and farmed about 80 acres with a draft horse. That was in the 1960's-80's. My mom and her siblings had to pick cotton by hand with my grandparents back then. So I guess maybe the harder work aged people more. Or I guess it could me hitting 50 this year and me thinking everybody (including myself...lol) is looking younger these days. Lol

It could be a factor. But could be the life style back then too.

 

[max]

It was the smoking.

It wasn’t just if you smoked or not, everywhere you went indoors you were inhaling cigarette smoke and just existing in a cloud of smoke … usually from the moment you got home from the hospital as a baby.

Add in the greater awareness of the effects of the sun along with the normalized use of sunscreen and most people aren’t prematurely aging their skin/hair.

In addition to smoking, I think they were more likely to drink hard liquor on a daily basis. I think that also ages a person.

 

[max]

I remember watching him drop back to pass for the Saints and he just fell down. I think he hung up his cleats not long after that.

Tip of the cap to him. He could hide Bo and Luke from Roscoe one day, belt out a duet with Miss Dolly Parton the next, and still have enough energy to lead Bum’s Saints on Sunday.

 

[Clintonrebel]

People from back then look lot older than their age. Nowadays people look younger for their age.

People who played for the Raiders definitely aged early. Read any of Maddens early books. Wow.

 

[Saintman2884]

While true, back then a lot of Saints players were with him doing the same thing. It's just how the team rolled in those days.

Actually Bill, considering how we had some on-and-off the field chemistry problems, a lack of discipline and more then a few players in the mid-late 70's/early 80's who developed alcohol and drug addictions like Chuck Muncie (who developed a cocaine addiction in college and it metastasized or got worse here by 1980), FB Mike Schleren (?), Don Reese (another player who had disciplinary issues in college as well as drug problems and became worse in Miami and later on here after IIRC, he was arrested for a drug bust in Miami and Shula released him, viewing him correctly, as a potential team nuisance; he later wrote an infamous SI expose about how prevalent drug issues were in the NFL and American sports in general in 1982), then you have Derland Moore, a huge, bulking enormous DT from Oklahoma who was known to roam the Quarter bars like Pat O'Brien's, bars owned by celebrities like Pete Fountain and Al Hirt (a minority Saints owner) during the year and occasionally stay at Pat O'Brien's after game-days until 2-3 in the morning, that wasnt always the best environment in the world for people who couldn't handle it.

Add to the long list of players like George Rogers who developed substance abuse issues in the early 80's and it became obvious we had players who liked to have a little too much fun until it became counterproductive and finally, toxic.

Stabler, interestingly enough, marketed his own soft drink while in Houston called "Venom" that according to Snake "tasted like it". He liked Bum Phillips as a person and got along with most of his teammates in Houston and in New Orleans, but he regularly criticized Bum's 1960's archaic run-based, conservative offense that worked because he had this battering ram for a RB in Earl Campbell but by the early 80's, NFL offenses were becoming more complex, nuanced, complicated and Blum's methodology seemed stuck somewhere in the mid-60's. He could draft and coach great players but he couldn't devise an effective, more thorough, creative game-plans that maximized their skill sets.