Former Cowboys wide receiver Golden Richards dies at age 73

Golden Richards (Vernon Biever, Google Images)

According to Sean Leahy of Yahoo! Sports on Saturday, former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Golden Richards of Salt Lake City, Utah passed away on Friday at the age of 73. The cause of death was congestive heart failure.

Richards played 86 National Football League games from 1973 to 1979. He had 122 catches for 2136 receiving yards and 17 touchdowns. Richards had single season career highs in receiving yards (467) and touchdown catches (five) in 1974.

Richards’s single season career high in catches came in 1978, when he shared his time with the Cowboys and Bears. Richards had 28 catches that season, as he had 27 catches with the Cowboys and one with the Bears. That season, he was traded from the Cowboys to the Bears for a fifth round pick in the 1979 NFL Draft and a third round pick in the 1980 NFL Draft.

Richards was part of the Cowboys team that won the 1978 Super Bowl. At the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Cowboys beat the Denver Broncos 27-10 in Super Bowl XII. Richards closed out the scoring with a 29-yard touchdown catch from Cowboys running back Robert Newhouse of Rochester, Minnesota for the only scoring in the fourth quarter. Richards finished the game with two catches for 38 yards.

In the later stages of his career, Richards suffered some injuries. On November 26, 1978, while delivering a block on a 65-yard Walter Payton touchdown catch in a 14-3 Cowboys win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Richards had a serious knee injury. Payton is our sixth best player in NFL history. Then in 1980, Richards signed with the Denver Broncos, but never played because of another injury before the season began.

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