Gary “Big Hands” Johnson arrived in San Diego as the eighth overall pick in the 1975 draft out of Grambling, and the nickname stuck for a reason—a junior-high coach once told him to keep his big hands off a basketball. At 6-foot-2 and around 250 pounds, he wasn’t the biggest defensive tackle, but he was strong enough to bench-press 460 pounds and quick enough to chase down plays. He made the All-Rookie team right away, then really found his footing once defensive line coach Jerry Smith arrived; by 1977 he was up to 13.5 unofficial sacks and starting to look like a problem for opposing quarterbacks.

Everything clicked in 1980. Johnson led the whole league with 17.5 sacks—still the Chargers’ single-season record—and the defense piled up a league-high 60. He teamed with Fred Dean, Louie Kelcher, and Leroy Jones on a front four that got nicknamed the Bruise Brothers, and he walked away with First-Team All-Pro honors plus the AFC Defensive Lineman of the Year award from the players. One of those sacks, which knocked Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski out of a game, was so loud that someone called Chargers owner Gene Klein and threatened Johnson’s life. He followed it up with another First-Team All-Pro season in 1981 (10 more unofficial sacks) while the Chargers stacked consecutive division titles and Johnson stacked four straight Pro Bowls from 1979 through 1982.

The Chargers shipped him to the 49ers early in the 1984 season. By the time he left, he had racked up roughly 67.5 unofficial sacks in San Diego—a franchise mark at the time—plus a couple of interceptions and a handful of fumble recoveries, all before sacks even became an official stat in 1982.

The team finally put him in the Chargers Hall of Fame in 1999, a nice nod to the guy who spent nearly a decade making life miserable for quarterbacks in the middle of the Air Coryell era.