Sad to see this. Wilson on many occasions ran harder and with more hunger than the more heralded Rogers. Here’s an old game that showed how he ran. 34 totes for 160 yards against the Dolphins in 1983…
Dan, while Wayne Wilson was a hard-working, hard-nosed, angry runner for some mediocre-at-best, borderline terrible Saints teams of the early-to-mid 80's, what's even sadder and more regrettable is that his once-teammate, the now-deceased Chuck Muncie who began his career in 1976 and had some outstanding seasons here in N.O. but also in San Diego under "Air Coryell's" explosive offense until 1984 when Corryell got sick of Muncie's pathetic, ridiculous excuses that hid a much deeper, sicker personal drug problem and kicked him off the team, and his career collapsed after that. Muncie, easily, couldve been a HOF-caliber RB if he'd applied himself more, and displayed a better, more mature professional attitude during his playing career. Most of his former Saints, Chargers teammates like Wes Chandler, Kellen Winslow Sr., Tony Galbreath, Derland Moore, Dan Fouts have all echoed this sentiment. Muncie said himself he was a pure, natural athlete who rarely ever got injured, and if it werent for his drug/maturity issues (which were interconnected) he could've played for 15 years and when he sees great players inducted into Canton or duel-purpose RB's like Roger Craig who won SB's and had better overall statistics, he agonizingly knows he's as good as they are, intrinsically.
What's even more sobering is that if you set aside his intangibles, his strengths as a RB or WR out of the backfield, you see those factors at work and wonder why in the hell he never totally utilized those gifts. Jim Brown once remarked that Muncie's biggest problem "was that he didnt know where his own head really was".
I sort of have these same feelings for Led Zeppelin, although they were infinitely more successful, popular and influential in their chosen profession as one of rock's greatest acts, live bands, legendary, epic songs and album themes, as hallowed and revered as they were (and still were), I still believe they never completely reached their full, apex-predator height as a band, in essence, I believe that they still had 2-3, maybe more albums left in them before John Bonham died and well, the Ubermensch responsible for creating Jimmy Page's "Hammer of the Gods" dynamic drum sound can't be replaced or re-created and they wisely and morally broke up.