He played for coach Bear Bryant and was a teammate of Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks Joe Namath and Ken Stabler.
[2] He played for the National Football League's Baltimore Colts as a wide receiver from 1967 to 1971, initially under coach Don Shula.
Perkins caught a 68-yard touchdown pass from hall of fame quarterback Johnny Unitas in the 1970 AFC Championship Game to lead the Colts to a 27–17 victory over the Oakland Raiders and a berth in Super Bowl V.[7] Perkins went on to win a Super Bowl ring after the Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V.[8] He came to the Colts during hall of fame receiver Raymond Berry's final season, and learned film study from Berry.
[4] After one year out of football, working in real estate, Perkins was hired as a receivers coach at Mississippi State University.
[11] Although this would be his only winning season, he helped build the team that his successor, hall of famer Bill Parcells, won two Super Bowls with in 1986 and 1990.
Some of his former college players got a chance to play for him in the NFL: QB Mike Shula, Kurt Jarvis, and linebacker Keith McCants.
After just one year, Perkins became the offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots, serving under Bill Parcells from 1993 to 1996, including Super Bowl XXXI.
[23] On December 20, 2011, he was introduced as the new head football coach at Jones County Junior College (JCJC) in Ellisville, Mississippi.
Jelks's charges resulted in a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) investigation of the Alabama football program.
[27] He is one of at least 345 NFL players to be diagnosed after death with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is caused by repeated hits to the head.
He received similar medical advice after his first year at Alabama, when he suffered a serious head injury in practice, just before the start of his sophomore season, in a head-to-head collision with one of the team's linebackers.