As both the Cards and Bills prepare for their Sunday game it struck me that both share a common somber experience.

Both franchises have lost a player in military combat.  While most casual fans remember Pat Tillman, the Cardinal Safety who gave up the NFL to serve as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan after 9/11, most are unaware of the Bills player.

James Robert "Bob" Kalsu was a Bills O lineman drafted in the 1968 draft as an OT out of Oklahoma who played guard the 1968 season and won the Bills Rookie of the Year award.  After the season he entered the US Army to fulfill an ROTC obligation and was sent to Vietnam in late 1969.  He was killed July 21st, 1970 two days before his second child, a boy named James Robert Kalsu Jr, was born.  He was the only recently active NFL player to have been killed in Vietnam.

He is honored on the Bills Wall of Fame at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

Please keep both these players and their families in your prayers and thoughts this weekend.

PS - Links to both players below