When the name Ernie McMillan is mentioned, the words inspiration and quiet come up. A lot.
How quiet was McMillan? His brother Shellie McMillon played in the NBA from 1958-62. That was the proper spelling of their last name. However, as the story goes, Ernie’s birth certificate said McMillan and years later, he simply never bothered to have it corrected.
The longtime Cardinals tackle passed away on Nov. 25 at the age of 86 and just as this gentle giant lived his life doling out inspiration to many while being quiet and low-key about it, his death came quietly three days before Thanksgiving. His funeral service was Saturday (Dec. 7).
There wasn’t even a mention in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, which stunned Cardinals Hall of Fame tackle Dan Dierdorf. However, after noting his shock, Dierdorf paused and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Ernie wanted it that way.” The paper did publish a column by Ben Hochman Sunday, the day after his funeral and 13 days after his death.
Ernest Charles McMillan was born in Chicago on Feb. 21, 1938, and played football and basketball at DuSable High School.
He was a blocking tight end at Illinois, but asked to play tackle after being selected by the Cardinals in the 13th round of the 1961 draft, the team’s second year in St. Louis after playing in Chicago since the birth of the NFL in 1920.
It was a prescient decision. After becoming a starter at right tackle during his rookie season, he didn’t miss a start while he was with the team (more on that later) until suffering a knee injury in 1973.
Playing for the Cardinals from 1961-74 (and then finishing his career with the Green Bay Packers in 1975), McMillan’s 162 consecutive starts is the most in franchise history by any position player. The 178 games he played was the most in Cardinals history, just ahead of safety Larry Wilson (169) at the time. Fifty years later, he is still ninth on that all-time list.
He was a two-time second-team All-Pro and played in four Pro Bowls. In 1967, he was one of four Cardinals offensive linemen (plus tight end Jackie Smith) to play in the Pro Bowl along with guards Irv Goode and Ken Gray, and center Bob DeMarco. In 1972, McMillan’s teammates named him their Most Valuable Player.
DeMarco played in three Pro Bowls and was a two-time first-team All-Pro and one-time second-teamer.
Gray played in six Pro Bowls and was a first-team All-Pro once and second team three times. Goode played in two Pro Bowls.
Smith once said of McMillan, “He’s a professional football player’s football player.”
Chicago Bears defensive end Ed O’Bradovich said of McMillan, “He’s one of the best. You can’t get rid of him. You go left, he goes with you. You go right, he’s clinging to you. It’s like he’s wallpapered to your uniform.”
Brothers in arms
In 1961, the year McMillan was a 13th-round choice (176 overall), DeMarco came to the Cardinals after being selected as a future choice the year before in the 14th round (157 overall).
McMillan played only six games with three starts as a rookie while Demarco played four. The reason: they both were in the service together as the Berlin Crisis raged, which led to construction of the Berlin Wall.
DeMarco, born six months after McMillan in 1938, remembers fondly those days because of his time with McMillan. There was basic training in Corpus Christie, Tex., being stationed at Fort Polk (now Fort Johnson) in Louisiana and then on to helicopter school at Fort Eustis in Newport News, Va.
DeMarco laughs when he recalls suggesting to McMillan that they tank the tests by giving wrong answers because they wanted nothing to do with helicopters.
He said, “We got called to see the captain, who said, ‘I got two college graduates in this class and I’m looking at you both. You didn’t even get (a score of) 40 combined. You’re not getting out of this class.’
“Ernie said, ‘That’s what I get for listening to you.’ Man, we had some good times together.”
Including when they left the service the following July and headed to training camp and DeMarco didn’t care for who was going to be his roommate.
So he went to head coach Wally Lemm and said, “I want a new roommate. I want Ernie. He and I became roommates.”
He insists, “We were the first (interracial) ones. Not Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo. But they never wrote about it.”
When it’s noted that he and McMillan didn’t have quite the same story as those Chicago Bears teammates, DeMarco laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s true.”
He also told a tale of how when they would drive together in Leesville, La., near Fort Polk, “I’d go from the driver’s seat when we parked, opened his door for him and say (as if I was his driver), ‘Here we are, Mr. Ernie.’ To which, he’d say, ‘Bob, you’re going to get us killed!’”
Both players started all 14 games in 1962 and DeMarco played 107 games with 102 starts for the Cardinals through 1969. He went on to play two seasons with the Dolphins, three with the Browns and one with the Rams.
DeMarco, who attended McMillan’s funeral service along with several other former Cardinals, concluded, “Ernie was a technician. He used to study all the time. He was a leader by example. He was good people.”
Unselfish Ernie
His final season with the Cardinals was notable for an act of graciousness and team-first mentality.
Dierdorf had been selected in the second round of the 1971 draft and played guard as a rookie, then left tackle for two seasons including the first under head coach Don Coryell and offensive line coach Jim Hanifan in 1973.
Prior to the ’74 season, believing it would be best for the team, Hanifan approached the 36-year-old McMillan and asked him to move to left tackle so Dierdorf could flip to the right side. That’s where he stayed for the remainder of his career.
In his book, “Beyond Xs & Os: My Thirty Years in the NFL,” Hanifan wrote, “I asked him to think about it, and he said, ‘I don’t need to think about it. I can give you an answer right now. Sure, I’ll do it.’”
Hanifan said at the time, “The offensive line has a lot of pride in Ernie and they love and respect him. He’s a super human being. The guy’s got so much character that it’s really hard to believe.”
Said Dierdorf, “He taught me a lot about how to be a professional football player. He was the only guy I ever played with … when you make a mistake in a game you know you’re all going to be together watching the film. During my rookie year and my first couple years, (head coach) Bob Hollway used to make the whole offense watch the film together. That way he could call someone out in front of the whole team instead of just by position groups. When you knew you had a bad play, you would just kinda slide down in your chair a little bit and disappear.
“And Ernie McMillan was the only guy I ever played with when he had something go wrong in front of the whole team, he’d go, ‘Can I see that again?’ I just admired his professionalism. He was a pro’s pro.”
As for the year when McMillan agreed to move to left tackle even though it wasn’t “natural” for him, Dierdorf concluded, “I became the right tackle I was because of how unselfish he was.”
Father Ernie
McMillan’s son Erik, born in St. Louis in 1965, played at Missouri and then spent five seasons in the NFL with the Jets and then parts of the 1993 season with the Eagles, Browns and Chiefs.
Erik was a third-round pick of the Jets in 1988 and that year he had eight interceptions and was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year. He currently lives in the Atlanta area and works in the pharmaceutical business while coaching at Woodward Academy.
He once said, “My father has always been there for me on every level as a mentor, teacher, and friend. He taught me to always follow through, to never quit and always give my best effort. Then, at the end of the day, I could always feel good about myself.”
Uncle Ernie
Prior to that, in 1981, St. Louis Southwest High and Mizzou product Howard Richards (also a tackle), who is McMillan’s nephew, was selected in the first round of the NFL draft by the Dallas Cowboys. Richards’ father, Howard Sr., married McMillan’s sister Shirley.
Injuries limited Richards’ career to seven seasons and he’s currently the color analyst on Mizzou football radio broadcasts. But Richards believes he might not have had an NFL career without the relationship he had with McMillan.
Richards credits his uncle along with youth football coach Michael Jones for opening the door to football.
“Without his inspiration, I don’t know that I would have even got into football or stayed with it without having both of them in my life,” Richards said. “Ernie was the gold standard.”
Most important, Richards said, was the encouragement he consistently received from him while with the Cowboys.
He said, “When I was struggling at Dallas with some little technique things and I wasn’t getting the type of coaching that I felt I needed and that I thought I should be getting, I would reach out to Ernie secretly and send him game tapes. He would evaluate them and give me a few pointers of what to do and what not to do.”
At one point, Richards said the left-side linemen were being coached to play with their right hand down instead of the left, which “didn’t make sense.” McMillan told him to “stand up for yourself” and he did. Richards said, “I finally won out. Those were the things he helped me with. I’m forever grateful to him for his advice and guidance.”
The nicknames
Smith and running back Johnny Roland have fond memories of their relationship with McMillan.
Smith came to the Cardinals as a 10th-round pick in 1963 and was born in Mississippi, went to high school in Louisiana and went to college at Northwesterm (La.) State.
“I got to play right next to him for years because the tight end lined up right by him,” Smith said. “Being from down South, I hadn’t played with many black guys, but I just took to Ernie right away. He was such an easy-going guy. We’d kid each other all the time and he called me ‘Chump.’ That was an endearing name. That mean I knew he liked me.”
Smith said there were often times that he and McMillan were responsible for blocking the defensive end, but he’d get caught in the middle and McMillan would block him and the end.
“I got mashed, Smith said. “So I figured out it was better for me to let Ernie take it on himself. So, I’d go downfield and see what’s going on down there. I counted him as a real friend for a long time.”
As for the way McMillan handled the request to switch to left tackle, Smith said, “I’m sure he liked the challenge.”
Roland was a fourth-round future draft pick by the Cardinals in 1965 and joined the team the following year. He played seven seasons for the Cardinals and one with the Giants. Roland was then an assistant coach for 27 NFL seasons, including seven in Arizona from 1997-2003.
“I was a young kid coming to the NFL and I needed some mentoring,” Roland said. “He was the guy. I would always seek him out to get advice both on the field and off the field. There weren’t that many players of color back then and I’d always go to Ernie for advice. He was the quiet old vet.”
As for his nickname, Roland said McMillan would “always tell me, when you break the line of scrimmage get behind me and I’ll give you a quick read. He always called me ‘Quick read.’”
After St. Louis
McMillan started 11 games for the Packers in 1975 in his final NFL season and Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr was in his first season as the franchise’s head coach. Two years later, McMillan came on board as the offensive line coach and was there until Starr was fired after the 1983 season. Coincidentally, while with the Packers, McMillan worked out Richards when he was preparing for the draft.
McMillan then went back to the Cardinals and was a line coach in 1985 when Hanifan was head coach and also worked as a scout from 1984-86. He later was an assistant coach at Sumner High School in St. Louis in 1990 and 1991, years that the school won the state championship.
Always active in the community and with youth sports, McMillan was also the president and publisher of Proud, a magazine that was “designed to give the black community in St. Louis a voice and a focus.”
Perhaps the epitome of Ernie McMillan’s football life was expressed by former Cardinals guard Conrad Dobler, who was also a Chicago native. A fifth-round pick in 1972, Dobler had a rocky beginning to his career. At an awards dinner that season, McMillan referenced Dobler having been cut but then coming back and earning a starting job. He said Dobler’s determination had been “an inspiration to me.”
Dobler was incredulous. He later said, “I’d been an inspiration to him? How could I be an inspiration to a guy who has put out like Ernie McMillan and who has been an inspiration to every guy on the team? When I heard him say that, I said to myself, ‘I just saw a man up there.’”
Now that man is “up there,” resting in peace, while knowing and being proud of the legacy he left behind.
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