Charlie Joiner Jr.

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1990

University: Grambling

Induction Year: 1990

Former San Francisco 49ers head coach Bill Walsh call Chalie Joiner Jr. “the most intelligent, smartest, most calculating receiver the game has ever known.

Joiner, who held National Football League career records for receptions (750) and yardage (12,146) when he retired in 1986, was born in Many and raised in Lake Charles.

He didn’t even try out for the W.O. Boston High football team until Coach Wiley Stewart finally persuaded Joiner to give it a shot in his junior season.

At Grambling State University, Joiner was one of James “Shack” Harris’ favorite targets—along with other future pros such as Frank Lewis, Bob Atkins, and running back Essex Johnson. Joiner had a career total of 78 receptions, and was selected on the All-Southwestern Athletic Conference team in his senior year as Coach Eddie Robinson’s Tigers were 23-6-1 in his last three seasons. His work habits impressed Robinson and former Cleveland Browns star “Dub” Jones, who worked with the Grambling receivers.

“Dub told me one day that Charlie Joiner ran some of the finest patterns he’d ever seen,” Robinson recalled. “Beating his man, that’s where he excelled.”

The admiration was mutual. “Playing for Eddie Robinson was one of the best experiences I ever had,” Joiner said. “You had to compete at Grambling, because Coach Robinson had enough good players that he’d bench you if you didn’t. But he taught you a lot more than how to play football. He taught you how to compete for a home, for a job, for a girl. If you listened to Coach Robinson, it was hard not to be successful.”

The Houston Oilers selected Joiner in the fourth round of the 1969 draft, but a broken arm hampered his progress in his first two pro seasons.

Originally drafted as a defensive back, Joiner was switched to wide receiver. For seven years, playing with the Oilers and Cincinnati Bengals, his statistics steadily improved. But the numbers didn’t have anybody talking about the Hall of Fame. He averaged 23.4 receptions and 420 yards per year in those seven seasons. His personal highs were 31 catches for the Oilers in 1971 and 37 for the Bengals in 1975.

Then he was traded to the San Diego Chargers in 1976, and his career blasted into orbit.

“Air Coryell made All-pros out of a lot of guys,” Joiner said, referring to the offense Don Coryell installed with the Chargers. Dan Fouts was the quarterback, throwing to wideouts Joiner, John Jefferson, and Wes Chandler, and tight end Kellen Winslow.

“It was a great system,” Joiner said. “There’s no way I could have had the success I had if I hadn’t been traded to San Diego. I caught fire when they started throwing me passes.”

Maybe so, but nobody else matched his numbers. The man who had averaged 23.4 catches per year in his first seven season averaged 53.4 receptions (and 836 yards) in 11 years with the Chargers. He caught 523 passes after he turned 30 years of age.

“By the time he took one step off the line of scrimmage,” said Walsh, who had worked with Joiner as the Bengals’ offensive coordinator, “he knew what the defense was.”

“He read defenses better than half of the quarterbacks in the NFL,” said Fouts. “I have never communicated with a player better than I did with Charlie. We always seemed to be on the same wave length.”

Joiner’s most impressive record wasn’t the number of receptions, the yardage, or 65 touchdown catches. It was his durability. Playing a position in which the average longevity is four seasons, he played in 247 consecutive games in his last 14 seasons (194 in the regular season and 53 more in exhibitions and 9 playoff games).

“You wanted to make sure you didn’t get hurt,” Joiner said. “When you get up in age and get hurt and miss time, the team finds younger guys and you get lost. I just competed and competed.

“You’ve got to be lucky to play as many years as I did. I had broken arms and a broken collarbone, but nothing that ever threatened my career. I had no ligament or knee damage. If you can save your knees and your legs, you can play.”

In one stretch of three seasons, after he had been in the league 10 years, he caught 70 or more passes each season and was over 1,000 yards in receptions all three years.

Six times in his last 14 years, Joiner finished seasons in the playoffs—two with Cincinnati and four with San Diego. Three of them survived their playoff openers, but none reached the Super Bowl. In two of the losses, to Miami in 1973 and the Raiders in 1980, his teams came closer to the eventual Super Bowl winners than the National Conference champions did.

Luck wasn’t the only factor in Joiner’s durability. He stayed in great condition with a rigid off-season conditioning program. “He took care of the gifts he was granted,” said former Chargers assistant coach Ernie Zampese. “No one ever came to camp in better shape than Charlie. He had a tremendous work ethic both on and off the field. He was always ready, whether it was in the game, in practice or in the classroom.

“He was the ultimate route runner. Playing his position at the age of 39 was unheard of. When you reach that age, you slow down and lose some of the physical edge you had when you were 22 years old. But Charlie had such a tremendous knowledge of the game and ran his patterns so precisely that losing some of his speed didn’t affect him.”

He never led the league in pass receiving, and led his own team only three times in 18 years. But Joiner outlasted everybody over the long haul.

Joiner led the Chargers in 1976, at the age of 29, and led the eight years later at the age of 37.

“He has a lot of class,” summed up Robinson.