Roman Gabriel: 'More Moves Than a Clock'

College Football and NC State Athletic Hall of Fame member Roman Gabriel.

This story was originally published at www.GoPack.com in support of Roman Gabriel's nomination for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It has been updated to announce Gabriel's death on Saturday, April 20, 2024. If you enjoy reading "One Brick Back" and would like to help offset research expenses for stories such as this one, please make a small donation to the cause and help keep posts like this free of ads.

By Tim Peeler
© NC State Athletics, 2011

ROMAN GABRIEL

• No. 18 (retired jersey)

• 1960, ’61 All-America Selection

• 1961 Academic All-America

• No. 1 overall pick of American Football League (Oakland Raiders)

• No. 2 overall pick of National Football League (Los Angeles Rams)

• Four-time Pro Bowl Selection 

• 1969 NFL Most Valuable Player, 1972 NFL Comeback Player of the Year

The day Roman Gabriel told head coach Earle Edwards he would attend NC State might have been the greatest day in Wolfpack football history, even though Gabriel’s announcement was secondary to the other events of that day.

It was Nov. 23, 1957, and the Edwards’ Wolfpack was playing South Carolina in Columbia, S.C., with an outside chance to win its first ACC football championship. Halfback Dick Christy turned in the greatest individual performance in conference history, scoring all 29 of his team’s points in the 29-26 victory, including a field goal with no time left on the clock. Before the team loaded the bus for the celebratory ride home to Raleigh, Gabriel sent word to Coach Edwards that he would play for NC State.

Earle Edwards and Roman Gabriel

Roman Ildonzo Gabriel Jr. (b. Aug. 5, 1940) chose NC State over the other 71 college scholarship offers because the coaching staff had no problem with him playing multiple sports. He wanted to play football, basketball and baseball for the Wolfpack, just as he had at New Hanover High School in Wilmington, N.C., with much success.

The tall, rangy quarterback – who died Saturday, April 20, 2024, at the age of 83 – was an all-state and All-America selection in football, an all-state pick in baseball and the conference and state tournament most valuable player in basketball. The New York Yankees came calling with a contract after his senior year. Legendary NC State basketball coach Everett Case wanted him to play basketball exclusively. Three Wolfpack coaches visited Gabriel and his parents for an in-home recruiting visit – football defensive coordinator Al Michaels, baseball coach Vic Sorrells and freshman basketball coach Lee Terrill.

It was Gabriel’s trip to campus that sealed the deal for the oversized quarterback. He met Case at Reynolds Coliseum during the 1956 Dixie Classic and knew immediately he wanted to be part of the excitement. The one place Gabriel never got around to visiting? Crumbling Riddick Stadium, where he eventually played all of his football games during a Hall of Fame college career. [Gabriel is in the College Football Hall of Fame and was an inaugural inductee into the NC State Athletic Hall of Fame.]

“One of the main reasons I went to NC State, other than to get a fine education, is that I did not know at the time which sport I liked the best,” Gabriel says. “I played all three and North Carolina State was one of the few schools that would allow me to play my freshman year, as long as I could keep my grades up.”

Gabriel played three sports at NC State.

Gabriel played on the freshman basketball team in 1958 and spent three years with the baseball team, leading the Wolfpack in home runs (5) and RBIs (18) as a junior.

It was on the football field where Gabriel became a record-setting All-America quarterback. He threw eight touchdown passes in five freshman games in 1958. As a sophomore in 1959, Gabriel quickly won the starting job at quarterback. An injury kept him out of three games, but he led the nation by completing 81 of his 134 passes, a school-record 60.4 percent.

Gabriel also became the first NC State quarterback to throw for more than 800 yards. As a junior, he had his best passing season, throwing for 1,182 yards and was 10th in the nation with 1,356 yards of total offense. Those numbers may not raise eyebrows in the current era of West Coast offenses, in which quarterbacks routinely throw for more than 500 yards per game. But in the 1960s, Gabriel’s arm was a weapon that few other schools could match. By himself, he accounted for more than 50 percent of his team’s total offense as a junior and senior and he was responsible for an ACC-record 34 touchdowns in his career.

The Wolfpack did not enjoy great success as a team during the Gabriel era, winning just 11 games during his three varsity seasons. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that the Wolfpack generally played only three home games a season at Riddick Stadium, a 20,000-seat, on-campus facility that dated back to the early 1900s. Edwards, instead, chose to take his team on the road, using the money he got from guarantees to fund the athletics program and raise the money needed to begin construction on what is now Carter-Finley Stadium.

Gabriel in action.

“Gabe had a terrific impact on the football team,” Edwards once said of his most famous player. “He sent us in a new direction and much of it he had to do on his own because we didn’t have the kind of supporting cast he deserved. He started us in a new direction and others followed.” 

Immediately after Gabriel’s career ended, under Edwards’ guidance, the Wolfpack won outright or shared four of the next seven ACC championships and moved from Riddick to its new football home, Carter Stadium, near the North Carolina State Fairgrounds.

The superstar signal-caller never played in a post-season bowl game with his teammates. He was, however, on the 1962 College All-Star team that played against the NFL-champion Green Bay Packers and he scored the winning touchdown in the second-annual East-West All-Star Game.

“He is going to be a great passer,” legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi predicted during Gabriel’s rookie season. “He has more moves than a clock.”

He was the prototype for today’s strong-armed, oversized quarterbacks who look more like tight ends or linebackers than signal callers.

Early in his career, Gabriel did play in the defensive secondary. As a junior, in the annual match-up against arch-rival North Carolina, Edwards told Gabriel, the biggest player on the roster, to play linebacker, as the team clung to a 3-0 second-half lead. The Tar Heels took advantage of him early in the drive, marching to the 1-yard line. But when the opposing quarterback tried to sneak the ball over the goal line, Gabriel hit him so hard that the quarterback fumbled into the end zone, where Pack defender Claude “Hoot” Gibson picked it up and ran to the 29-yard line. Later in the game, Gabriel halted another Carolina drive with a spectacular left-handed interception on the 4-yard line that secured the Wolfpack’s 3-0 victory.

“He eventually reached the point that he was too valuable for us to play on defense,” Edwards once said. “The one disagreement that I specifically remember was over how much defense he should play. Roman didn’t like sitting on the bench while the team was out there.”

Gabriel was the most celebrated college player of his era and every professional football team wanted the chance to have the quarterback of the future. He was the No. 1 pick of the American Football League by the Oakland Raiders and the No. 2 overall pick of the National Football League by the Los Angeles Rams.

For five years, Gabriel bided his time on the bench, looking for an opportunity to play. That finally came when George Allen took over as head coach of the Rams. In 1967, Gabriel and Allen led the Rams to a 17-1-1 record. In 1969, he was the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. And in 1973, he was named the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year.

He grew into one of the biggest celebrities in a town of celebrities, especially after he began his acting career. He had significant roles in two major motion pictures, “Skidoo” and “The Undefeated,” which co-starred John Wayne and Rock Hudson. He had minor roles on several television shows, including “Gilligan’s Island” and “Wonder Woman.” In the former, he played a native headhunter on a Pacific island; in the latter, he stretched out his acting skills to play a professional quarterback.

Throughout his 16-year NFL career, the outspoken Gabriel maintained a superstar’s presence with both the Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles. He passed for 29,444 yards, completed 52.6 percent of his passes and threw 201 touchdown passes.

After retiring from football in 1977, Gabriel focused on a variety of projects, primarily involved with sports. By his own accounting, he raised nearly $7 million for various charities, primarily through golf tournaments. For the last quarter century, he has participated in an event with his New Hanover High School teammates to raise mortgage money for the widow of a teammate who died of multiple sclerosis.

He has been a college and professional coach, and was involved in minor league baseball and football ventures in Charlotte and Raleigh. He has also spent time in the broadcast booth, as a radio and television analyst.

For the last two decades of his life, he lived in Little River, S.C., less than 45 minutes away from his hometown Wilmington.

Gabriel reconnected with his alma mater in retirement. Three close friends, including one of his former offensive linemen, Collice Moore, donated $150,000 in his honor to name the finishing hole at the Lonnie Poole Golf Course – No. 18, just like his retired jersey number – in Gabriel’s honor.