CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- In the days before the scouting combine, Bob Hayes changed the NFL.
An Olympic gold medalist as a sprinter in 1964, "Bullet Bob" was a seventh-round pick of the Dallas Cowboys and kept coaches up at night designing exotic zone defenses to keep him from beating them over the top.
“Scary,” then-Cowboys director of player personnel Gil Brandt said. “The speed he had was ... well, frankly, it was beyond belief.”
That kind of speed is much more prevalent in the NFL now, says the Hall of Fame executive, now 87 and a radio analyst.