Jim Souhan: McDaniel made it, piece by piece

To calm his nerves as he awaited results of the Pro Football Hall of Fame voting on Saturday, Randall McDaniel busied himself with a jigsaw puzzle. When he received the fateful call, McDaniel should have seen the symmetry.

Even a superior player like McDaniel, the former Vikings guard, is an assemblage of happenstance and tutoring, parenting and coincidence.

Speaking at greater length Saturday than he ever did during his playing career, McDaniel recalled the people and moments that pieced together a Hall of Fame career.

The Foundation

"A lot of credit goes to my parents, the way I was raised," he said. "Growing up in Avondale [Ariz.], my parents instilled hard work and good values. We didn't have much growing up. I remember my folks moving from job to job, apartment to apartment, but my mom and dad always worked hard. They always said, 'As long as you work hard and bust your butt, good things will happen in the end.' "

The Seer

McDaniel grew up on the poor side of Avondale, and wondered if he'd ever leave. Saturday, his high school principal, O.K. Fulton, called.

The Fork in the Road

McDaniel grew up playing more baseball and basketball than football. He ran track and powerlifted and went to Arizona State as a tight end.

After his freshman year, with tight end "not working out that well" and the team's offensive line in shambles, McDaniel volunteered to play on the line.

His coaches later told him they had hoped he'd change positions all along. "So I practiced five days," McDaniel said. "And became a lineman."

The Drill Sergeant

"Then you find out in a year or two that he's doing it because he loves you and wants the best for you. I can't thank him enough.

"When we talk now, he still chews me out at the beginning of the conversation."

The Technique

"I admit it," he said. "I held. I always felt if I got my hands on you, I had you."

The Stance

After a teammate rolled onto his knee during his second season in the NFL, McDaniel was forced to wear a bulky brace on his right leg. For the rest of his career, he would splay out his left leg, making him look off-balance and unorthodox.

"I came back, and I wasn't supposed to play, and I'm sitting on the sideline, and Johnny starts screaming for me to go in," McDaniel said. "I go in with that brace on, and it was stiff, it wasn't comfortable, and the only way I could get down in my stance was to turn my other leg out a bit.

"I was doing that and a D-lineman made a comment, saying, 'I have no clue what you're doing. I can't tell if you're pulling, passing, coming at me. I thought, 'That wasn't very smart to say.' So I kept the stance, because if you can't read it, that gives me an advantage.

"It got uglier each year. It got to a point where I put my knee on the ground sometimes, just to see if I could do it. I got to a point where I couldn't get into a normal stance, and that came from that one little brace, that one accident along the way."

Putting It All Together

So it seems.