Call this class the Sting of Honor.
In the vote of season ticket holders announced Thursday, the physical and roughhouse style of Bengals greats Corey Dillon and Tim Krumrie were added to the Bengals Ring of Honor.
Dillon, the Bengals' punishing all-time leading rusher who met the media Thursday via Zoom from his Anaheim Hills, Calif., home, could recognize the same kind of grit in Krumrie, the Pro Bowl nose tackle Dillon knew as the Bengals defensive line coach.
"It's a double honor going in with Tim. He's one of the toughest SOBs on the planet, so it's fitting we're going in together," Dillon said. "We had conversations about life other than football. Good dude … Hell of a dude. Hell of a football player. He means a lot to Cincinnati as well."
Jim Anderson, the running backs coach who piloted Dillon to more than 8,000 yards in seven seasons in Cincinnati, spent 19 years with Krumrie watching him as a Bengals player and coach.
"It's a throwback class. Those guys were football football players. When you say tough, they were both tough," Anderson said. "One was a tough runner, the other one was a tough defensive guy. When (Krumrie) worked a guy out as a coach, you knew if he was tough or not. He was legendary working guys out. He tried to make them quit."
WILLIE ANDERSON: Other than Jim Anderson, no one had a better look at what Dillon accomplished in Cincinnati than fellow Ring of Honor member Willie Anderson. Anderson, the Pro Football Hall of Fame finalist and franchise anchor at right tackle, was on the field for all but 74 of Dillon's career yards.
"It means a lot to him. You know Corey. He wears his heart on his sleeve. His Super Bowl ring in New England is super great. But I think in his heart, the work he did in Cincinnati means a lot more because the team drafted him, believed in him, and where he sat behind a No. 1 pick (Ki-Jana Carter) and had to prove himself to the NFL …He felt like that was home. That's where he started. That's who made him who he was."
DAVE LAPHAM: Lapham, the Super Bowl guard, legendary radio analyst, and Ring of Honor candidate, actually suited up against the rookie Krumrie in his last training camp in 1983 when he was 31:
"I went against him every day. Training camp is like playing 1,000 games. It's true, he played every rep in practice like it was a game. I remember saying to him during a water break, 'Damn Krummy, I've got some years on me. I don't know if I can play 1,000 games.' It was light-hearted. He said, 'Why don't you just retire then?'
"Honestly, games were a vacation. There was no half-speed with Timmy. Dick Modzelewski was the defensive line coach and the coaches would say, 'OK, go half speed.' And Krumrie would look at Mo and Mo would look at Krumrie and they'd start laughing."
WILLE ANDERSON: When Dillon went for a then-franchise-best 1,435 yards in 2000, he averaged 4.6 yards per carry. His Opening Day quarterback averaged 4.69 yards per pass. Which sums up Dillon's Cincinnati career, where he never had an Opening Day quarterback who averaged seven yards per pass in a season.
No one lived it like Anderson, but it really hit home last month when someone posted a video on X that showed him blocking Hall of Fame safety John Lynch:
"I'm downfield like eight yards. Yeah, it was a great block, but more importantly, look at the defense Corey has to go through. I had to get Lynch because he was the frigging tenth guy. Count 'em. Ten guys in the box. My job was to get the tenth guy. Corey had to get the ninth. (Offensive line coach) Paul Alexander always told Corey, 'We can block this many. This one guy is yours.' A lot of running backs didn't face what he had to face. Give him a solid NFL passing game and we probably set two, three, four more records in our careers."
MICHAEL WELCH: Welch is a former Bengals doctor now retired in Michigan and the magician who performed the surgery on Krumrie's devastating broken leg suffered in Super Bowl XXIII. As Welch worked on what he calls a new technique, he thought, "It's like a hand grenade went off in there."
And yet Krumrie came back less than eight months later to play the very next Opening Day and never missed a game after the procedure in his final seven seasons while racking up the most career combined tackles by any defensive tackle, per Pro Football Reference.
On Thursday. Welch saluted his old patient's Ring honor. It was just a few weeks ago Welch hosted Krumrie and wife Cheryl:
"I swear the guy willed it to heal, It healed so much faster than I thought it could. His mind over matter, I've never seen anything like it. You know his story. It's just amazing."
After Welch saw what "the grenade," exploded, he inserted a 20-inch rod that from the top of the tibia to where the ankle joint begins. Before locking the rod in, Welch had to make sure the foot, ankle, knee, and hip were lined up properly:
"It was perfect for Tim because he had a high-energy injury. There were all these small fragments … which is amazing because it was a non-contact injury. He created all that energy himself."
JIM BROWN RE-VISITED: After running down two of the longest held NFL records, Dillon still holds two of the 13 biggest NFL rushing games of all-time. He broke the late Walter Payton's 23-year-old single-game rushing record with 278 yards against Denver in 2000 after breaking Jim Brown's 40-year-old rookie rushing record with 246 against the Oilers in 1997. Both have been broken since, but not Jim Brown's spell even after his death last year.
Dillon: "I wouldn't dare say I'm better than Jim Brown. Who would say that? Are you out of your mind? I wouldn't do that. Just to be mentioned along with that guy is crazy.
"I met Jim several times. You know what warmed my heart? He knew who I was and he said he loved my game, too. I was like, oh wow. Hearing that from the godfather of running backs made me feel good. He knew I broke the record and he said he was following me. I'm like, wow, the great Jim Brown knows who I am. They don't come any bigger. I was floored… I've got an autograph. It's his photo. 'To my man Corey.' It's here somewhere in one of my boxes. I have to find that damn thing."
Dillon may not have been as good as Jim Brown, but he certainly had that same exciting brew of skill.
Lapham: "Corey was probably as good with that combination of power and speed as the Bengals have had in their history. And in the NFL, you can count on one hand those guys. Jimmy Brown, obviously, comes to mind. This guy had that kind of combination of size, power, speed. He ran away from people once he busted. That's the thing about eight, nine in the box. Once you make somebody miss, which he did, or run over somebody, which he did, he could do anything. Do you sit there like a statue and take him on? If you're light on your feet, he'll run you over. He was as good as it gets."
HOMECOMING: Thursday's announcement seemed to complete Dillon's full circle with the team, but that actually took place seven years ago when Willie Anderson talked Dillon into returning for the club's 50th year celebration after some volatile final seasons.
Willie Anderson: "He thought they were going to throw batteries at him when he got off the plane. But he didn't realize how much the fans appreciated what he did. They knew he was running into ten-man boxes. When he got here, he really felt how the fans felt about him. None of us really knew. This was before social media. We just played and went back home."
Back in 2017, Dillon huddled with Bengals president Mike Brown during a practice and told Bengals.com, "He talked about the Denver game and how it was one of the best games he's ever seen. He said, 'Welcome back. We're glad to have you here.' That meant a lot."
Dillon on Thursday: "We'll have conversations and good ones. I don't think anybody is bringing up anything from the past. This gesture alone should let everyone know we've moved past a lot of stuff. I'm happy to start something new.
"I don't think the antics outweigh the production on the field. What I presented to the organization outweighs the little antics that went on."
Jim Anderson: "The Ring of Honor has made him smile. You can feel the joy. He's really in awe. People don't realize he's a very private person. He's not going to toot his own horn.
"What Corey did Sunday after Sunday was remarkable. The only other Pro Bowler we had was Willie. He was durable. He missed five games in seven years. That's quite a feat. He never missed practice. If he did, you knew you had to rest him.
"He was a heck of a kick returner. He had better hands than we probably gave him credit. He was a heck of a baseball player coming out of high school (when he was a 34th-round pick of the Padres in 1993).
"What set him apart was his determination. He wanted to be good."
