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What I learned about the late Forrest Gregg, the Hall of Fame tackle who Vince Lombardi once called the best player he ever coached, from a pupil who might have been better: Hall of Famer Anthony Munoz, who played for Gregg for the first four years of his career. Munoz on Gregg, who died in Colorado Springs on Friday of Parkinson’s Disease, in the presence of wife Barbara:

“So I missed most of my last year [1979] at USC with a knee injury. I played only in the Rose Bowl against Ohio State. After the season, there were questions about my knee and how it would hold up, and the only one who flew out to work me out before the draft was Forrest Gregg, the coach of the Bengals. Here he was, a Hall of Fame tackle, played for Vince Lombardi, Lombardi called him the best player he’d coached, and he put me through a two-hour workout at USC. You talk about the desire to show the guy I belonged. He was so intense, and I gave the effort in that workout that I’d give in a game. I didn’t know till after the fact that half the teams flunked me on the physical because of my knee. That workout might have been the only chance I had to show I belonged in the NFL. I can’t emphasize enough how important that workout was to my future. The fact that the number three team in the draft, Cincinnati, was sending the head coach to work me out … huge.

“I’ll never forget him that day: 6-5, maybe 245, had that Texas drawl—I was a California boy. A gentleman, but an intense, demanding coach. Then they drafted me. As an offensive tackle, to play for the man Lombardi said was the best player he ever coached, a man who exuded credibility, exuded discipline … He’d encourage you, but he’d hold you accountable at the same time.

“The best example of that, and one of the greatest things I learned from him, is when you don’t play well, you deserve to be called out. My rookie year, 1980, we went to Green Bay. Big game for him, because obviously he was a Hall of Fame player there. We lost. I had a horrendous game. So he called me out. He stood in front of the team and looked at me and said, ‘You played terrible. That guy going against you beat you all day, and he’s sitting on the bench late in the game, eating a hot dog.’ For him, it was embarrassing. And he was right. I was awful. I felt like, Thank you for doing that. I can guarantee that will never happen again.

“One other thing. After I got selected to the Pro Bowl [in 1981], he called me into his office. We walked outside. He put his arm around me. He said, ‘Congratulations. You’ve been selected to the Pro Bowl. Now you have to understand that every player you play in practice is going to measure himself against you because you’re a Pro Bowl player. Every player who plays you in a game is going to do the same thing. You’ve got to play every play like a Pro Bowler. You can’t relax.’ So I thought, okay, I’m going to hold myself accountable every play I ever play, for the rest of my career.

“Those two things helped me so much, as a player, and as a man. That’s why I owe him so much for what I accomplished.

“I remember how good he was getting us prepared to play big games. We were playing at Pittsburgh in December the year we went to the Super Bowl. If we win, we clinch the AFC Central. Before we left Cincinnati, he said to us, ‘If you’re afraid of games this big, you stay home. You stay in Cincinnati.’ Heck, I wasn’t afraid. But I was like, Let’s go! I couldn’t wait. We won. We clinched that day in Pittsburgh.

“After I retired, every time I saw him, I wanted to give him a hug. I loved who he was as a man—his credibility, his character, his discipline. One or two years after I retired, we were in New York together. The league put together a team for the first 75 years of the NFL, and Forrest and I were two of the tackles on that team. I kept thinking, ‘What am I doing here? With Forrest Gregg!’ Then I got into the Hall of Fame, and all I could think was, ‘I’m gonna have my bust with Forrest Gregg.’ ”

Pause. Munoz sounded emotional.

“It’s hard to put into words. But now we’re teammates forever. I just pray for Barbara and the family.”