Tag Archives: Colts

DeMarco Murray’s odometer

Football folks have begun to worry about rushing attempts the way baseball people fret about pitch counts. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying these things aren’t important. It’s more a question of: How much weight do you give them?

The Cowboys' DeMarco Murray, stiff-arming all doubters.

The Cowboys’ DeMarco Murray, stiff-arming all doubters.

When evaluating the free-agent value of the Cowboys’ DeMarco Murray, for instance, observers are likely to mention his 392 carries in the 2014 regular season. For one thing, it’s tied for the seventh-highest total in NFL history. For another, it isn’t particularly conducive to a back’s long-term health and productivity — especially if he’s piling postseason carries on top of it, as Murray did (44 more).

In a piece for ESPN.com, Kevin Seifert pointed to the 392 figure and added: “All six of the most recent [backs with that many attempts] fell short of 1,000 yards in the following season.” This isn’t entirely accurate. One of the six, Eric Dickerson, did rush for 1,000 yards the next season (1,288 in 12 games). And another of the six, Ricky Williams, retired after the season and didn’t return to the NFL until two years later (and only after serving a drug suspension). I’m not sure Ricky should even be part of the conversation.

Then there are Eddie George (403 carries in 2000) and Terrell Davis (392 in 1998). To me, their drop-offs weren’t the result of one workhorse season, they were the cumulative effect of years of overuse. George had 1,898 rushing attempts in his first five seasons (playoffs included) — tops in the league in that period by 147. As for Davis, he had 481 carries in 1997 and another 470 in ’98 (again, playoffs included). Those are first- and third-highest totals of all time.

My point is simply this: There are other things that should be factored into the Murray Equation. Yes, he was a busy back last season, but that hardly means his decline in imminent — or even near. With him, it’s more a matter of “How good is he?” than “How much tread does he have left on his tires?”

Consider: 70 running backs since 1960 have had more rushing attempts before their 27th birthday than Murray (928) did. For a back at this stage of his career, he’s fairly low-mileage.

Just for fun, let’s look at the backs who’ve had the most carries before turning 27 (one final time: playoffs included) — and see how many attempts they still had in them:

MOST RUSHING ATTEMPTS BEFORE 27TH BIRTHDAY

Seasons Running back Team(s) Pre-27 High Post-27
1990-04 Emmitt Smith Cowboys/Cardinals 2,286 451 2,472
1999-09 Edgerrin James Colts/Cardinals 1,972 408 1,274
1993-05 Jerome Bettis Rams/Steelers 1,893 423 1,785
1989-98 Barry Sanders Lions 1,826 365 1,327
1995-05 Curtis Martin Patriots/Jets 1,792 418 1,908

(Note: “High” = most carries in a season before turning 27.)

Interesting, no? Smith and Martin actually had more rushing attempts after their 27th birthday. Bettis, meanwhile, had almost as many and it might have been the same for Sanders if he hadn’t retired at 30 (after a 1,491-yard season). At any rate, next to these guys, Murray’s workload seems pretty modest.

Note, too, that four of them had 400-carry seasons before turning 27 — but still had plenty of gas left in the tank.

Now let’s look at the backs who had the most carries after their 27th birthday:

MOST RUSHING ATTEMPTS AFTER TURNING 27

Seasons Running back Team(s) Post-27 High Pre-27
1990-04 Emmitt Smith Cowboys/Cardinals 2,472 366 2,286
1975-87 Walter Payton Bears 2,435 427 1,583
1971-85 John Riggins Jets/Redskins 2,239 462    928
2000-11 Thomas Jones Cardinals/4 others 2,064 376    739
1977-88 Tony Dorsett Cowboys/Broncos 2,050 380 1,188
1972-84 Franco Harris Steelers/Seahawks 1,984 374 1,365
1995-05 Curtis Martin Patriots/Jets 1,908 408 1,792
1982-97 Marcus Allen Raiders/Chiefs 1,871 259 1,418
1993-05 Jerome Bettis Rams/Steelers 1,785 355 1,893
1997-08 Warrick Dunn Bucs/Falcons 1,671 297 1,134

(Note: “High” = most carries in a season after turning 27.)

Eight of the 10 in this group had more rushing attempts before they hit 27 than Murray (978) did — in many cases a lot more. So why is everybody so concerned about DeMarco’s longevity? Sure, he had some nicks earlier in his career, but nothing major. He might have some very good years ahead, just as these backs did. Heck, Payton, Riggins and Martin still had a 400-carry season in their future.

It’s something to think about as free agency approaches. There isn’t anything ominous, necessarily, about rushing the ball 392 times in a season (436 counting the playoffs). But you certainly don’t want to do it year in and year out — and it’s doubtful Murray will, no matter what team he winds up with. Coaches these days are much more aware of human limits than they used to be.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

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Intra-division coaching moves

There are no non-compete clauses in NFL coaching contracts. If a coach gets fired and wants to take a job with another team in the same division — or even if he doesn’t get fired (see: Bill Parcells) — he’s free to do so. And so we have the Jets getting rid of Rex Ryan, and Ryan moving on to Buffalo, where he’ll have the chance to torment his old employer twice a year.

This is a rare happening in pro football, especially since there wasn’t any Cooling-Off Period — no season or two as a defensive coordinator, no tour of duty as a TV talking head — before Ryan got another head-coaching gig. He’s jumping right back in the saddle . . . in the AFC East. Don’t you just love it?

According to my research, there have been only six coaching moves like Ryan’s in NFL history — four in the modern era (since 1960), two in the early days. And get this: The four most recent ones all have been in the AFC East. (Or should we start calling it The Division of Eternal Intrigue?) This isn’t, moreover, the first time the Bills have been involved in such a switch, and it isn’t the Jets’ maiden voyage, either. The details:

● Rex Ryan, Jets to Bills, 2015.

Record with Jets (2009-14): 50-52 overall, 4-2 playoffs. High point(s): Lost AFC title games in 2009 (30-17 to Colts) and ’10 (24-19 to Steelers).

Comment: Ryan was 7-5 vs. Buffalo in his six seasons with the Jets, so for that reason alone it’s a good hire, right? Plus, he gets to continue his blood feud with the Patriots’ Bill Belichick, and that’s always entertaining.

● Bill Parcells, Patriots to Jets, 1997.

Record with Patriots (1993-96): 34-34 overall, 2-2 playoffs. High point: Lost Super Bowl 31 to Packers, 35-21.

Record with Jets (1997-99): 30-20 overall, 1-1 playoffs, 4-2 vs. Patriots. High point: Lost 1998 AFC title game to Broncos, 23-10.

Comment: This was one of the messier exits, with jilted New England owner Bob Kraft demanding compensation and getting it (including a No. 1 pick). Even Parcells has come to regret his decision. The Patriots, after all, were young and ready to win big. But Kraft wasn’t the man who’d hired him (previous owner James Orthwein was), so it was easier to bail out at the end of his four-year deal.

The Colts let this guy leave. Oops.

Three years earlier, the Colts let this guy leave. Oops.

● Don Shula, Colts to Dolphins, 1970.

Record with Colts (1963-69): 73-26-4 overall, 2-3 playoffs. High points(s): Lost 1964 title game to Browns, 27-0. Lost Super Bowl III to Jets, 16-7 (after beating Cleveland, 34-0, for NFL championship).

Record with Dolphins (1970-95): 274-147-2 overall, 17-14 playoffs, 36-17 vs. Colts. High point(s): Went to five more Super Bowls and won two, the first of which capped a perfect season (17-0) — still the only one in the NFL’s 95 years. Blanked Baltimore 21-0 in the 1971 AFC title game.

Comment: This might have been the last shot fired in the NFL-AFL war. The two leagues merged in 1970, with the Colts, Steelers and Browns joining the AFC to balance the conferences (that is, give each of them 13 clubs). Baltimore was reassigned from the NFL Coastal Division to the AFC East. But before the season began, Dolphins owner Joe Robbie lured Shula to Miami by giving him a piece of the franchise and the coach-general manager title.

The Colts were none too pleased, even though Shula had asked permission to speak to Robbie. Their general manager, Don Klosterman, accused the Dolphins of “tampering” and said, “I think this was handled in a subversive manner. . . . In pro football, you are supposed to follow protocol whenever you would like to hire an individual from another team. . . . This isn’t the way for members of the football fraternity to carry on.”

Baltimore ended up getting a first-round pick as compensation (running back Don McCauley) and actually won the Super Bowl that season under new coach Don McCafferty. But, well, look at the results. Shula went on to a Hall of Fame career in Miami — and routinely beat the Colts in his 26 years there. Baltimore, meanwhile, soon changed owners (from Carroll Rosenbloom to Robert Irsay), then changed cities (hello, Indianapolis) and didn’t regain its mojo until Bill Polian and Peyton Manning arrived on the scene in the late ’90s.

(Of course, you have to remember: At the time, there were questions — legitimate ones — about whether Shula could win the big one. That’s about the Colts’ only defense for letting him get away.)

● Lou Saban, Patriots to Bills, 1962.

Record with Patriots (1960-61): 7-12 overall, no playoffs. High point(s): Nobody died.

Record with Bills (1962-65 — the first of his two terms in Buffalo): 38-18-3 overall, 2-1 postseason, 4-4-1 vs. Patriots. High points(s): AFL titles in 1964 and ’65.

Comment: The Patriots fired Saban five games into their second season. Then the Bills job opened up and Travelin’ Lou went to Buffalo. With the quarterback tandem of Jack Kemp and Daryle Lamonica and the league’s best defense, he won two championships before ambling off to the University of Maryland in 1966 (one of the more puzzling coaching moves of all time). He lost a division playoff to the Patriots in ’63, but evened the score the following year with a 24-14 win at Fenway Park that put Buffalo in the title game (and kept the Pats out).

Dutch Clark card● Dutch Clark, Lions to Cleveland Rams, 1939.

Record with Lions (1937-38): 14-8 overall, no playoffs. High point(s): Finished second in the West both seasons with 7-4 records.

Record with Rams (1939-42): 16-26-2 overall, no playoffs, 4-4 vs. Lions.

Comment: Clark was a player-coach with the Lions . . . and only a coach with the Rams. That’s one of biggest reasons he wasn’t more successful in Cleveland. He really could have used a Hall of Fame back like himself (not that Parker Hall was any slouch). Dutch tried to makes a comeback as a player in 1939, but his old team wanted compensation (which the Rams were unwilling to pay). As commissioner Carl Storck explained it: “He was transferred to Cleveland as a coach by mutual agreement of the Lions and the Cleveland organization, as well as Dutch Clark. The only way he can play Sunday is to buy his full release.”

● Lud Wray, Redskins to Eagles, 1933.

Record with Redskins (1932): 4-4-2 (good for fourth place in the days before playoffs).

Record with Eagles (1933-35): 9-21-1 overall, no playoffs, 1-2 vs. Redskins.

Comment: Wray has the distinction of being the first coach of both the Redskins (when they were known as the Boston Braves) and the Eagles. He left Boston after one season — things were much more free-flowing then — because he and Bert Bell, his former Penn teammate, bought the Philadelphia franchise (which had been dormant since the demise of the Frankfort Yellow Jackets in 1931). The Eagles were absolutely dreadful in the pre-war years, though, and Bell eventually took control of the team (and, for a spell, coached it).

As you can see, it’s a mixed bag of outcomes here. Shula made the Colts look bad — as Saban did the Patriots — but there was nothing catastrophic about the other intra-division moves. Which side of the fence Ryan ends up on is anyone’s guess.

Bill Parcells and Patriots owner Bob Kraft pretending to get along at Super Bowl 31.

Bill Parcells and Patriots owner Bob Kraft pretending to get along at Super Bowl 31.

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A decade between championships

Hall of Fame quarterbacks tend to win titles in bunches. Terry Bradshaw won his four in six seasons. Troy Aikman won his three in four. John Elway and Bob Griese won their two back-to-back. It looked like it might be that way for Tom Brady, too. He won three championships in four years (2001, ’03-04) and then . . .

Until Sunday night, that is. Against the defending champion Seahawks, the Patriots’ living legend finally got his fourth ring — a decade after No. 3.  His 10-year gap between titles is the second-longest in NFL history for a quarterback. Indeed, only half a dozen QBs have had even a 5-year gap. The list looks like this:

LONGEST GAP BETWEEN TITLES FOR AN NFL QUARTERBACK

Quarterback, Team Won in Next Title Gap
Johnny Unitas, Colts 1959     1970 11 Years
Tom Brady, Patriots 2004     2014 10 Years
Norm Van Brocklin, Rams/Eagles 1951     1960 9 Years
Roger Staubach, Cowboys 1971     1977 6 Years
Tobin Rote, Lions/Chargers 1957     1963 6 Years
Bob Waterfield, Rams 1945     1951 6 Years
Sammy Baugh, Redskins 1937     1942 5 Years

As you may have noticed, I slipped in a seventh quarterback — Rote, who won with the ’57 Lions and ’63 Chargers (when they were still in the AFL). Tobin even spent some time in Canada between those titles. Gotta love that. Also, Waterfield and Van Brocklin shared the quarterbacking for the ’51 Rams. But since they’re both in Canton, I thought they should be included.

Of course, we’re dealing with a pretty small pool here. It’s hard enough, after all, to win one championship, never mind two (or more). Unitas, by the way, lost two title games between 1959 and ’70 (1964 plus the ’68 Super Bowl as a backup), just as Brady did between 2004 and ’14 (2007’11). So they have that in common as well.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

The one and only Johnny U, getting ready to throw a long one.

The one and only Johnny U, getting ready to throw a long one.

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The myth of Super Bowl distractions?

Tom Brady wasn’t in a very good place when he began his Super Bowl preparations. Deflategate — and its attendant tempest — blindsided him worse than any Terrell Suggs sack. Some people thought the Patriots cheated in their 45-7 AFC title game win over the Colts. Some of those same people thought Brady, as the quarterback, must have had something to do with it. The NFL, meanwhile, was conducting an investigation at its usual glacial pace. Oh, it was a mess.

A mess, of course, that’s still to be resolved — which may or may not have made it worse for Brady. This much we do know: He took it, “very, very personal” (as Sonny Corleone said to Michael in The Godfather). Or as Tom put it on a Boston radio show:

I personalized a lot of things and thought this was all about me and my feelings got hurt, and then I moved past it because it’s not serving me.

I think what’s serving me is to try to prepare for the game ahead, and I’ll deal with whatever happens later. I’ll have my opportunity to try to figure out what happened and figure out a theory like everyone else is trying to do. But this isn’t the time for that, and honestly I’m not interested in trying to find out right now because we have the biggest game of our season ahead.

Well, how to you like the way Brady “moved past it”? Against a Seahawks defense that’s the best in the league and possibly the finest since the 2000 Ravens (if not the 1985 Bears), he had the greatest of his six Super Bowls on Sunday night. Not only did he complete 37 of 50 passes for 328 yards and four touchdowns, each to a different receiver, he drove the Patriots to two fourth-quarter TDs, the second of which capped a rally from a 10-point deficit and won the game, 28-24.

In other words, after taking Deflategate “very, very personal,” he did to the defending champions at University of Phoenix Stadium what Michael did to Sollozzo and the police captain at Louis Restaurant. Not to get too graphic about it.

That’s how you win a record-tying four Super Bowls — by being able to compartmentalize; by taking the latest scandal, zipping it up in a bag with the rest of the semi-inflated balls and going about your business. What a talent to have, apart from the passing and vision and decision-making and all the other things that go into quarterbacking. It might be what puts Brady a little higher on the podium than other QBs, past and present.

You know what’s really strange? There have been a handful of Super Bowl quarterbacks in 49 years who have been caught in a storm, so to speak, and every one has ended up playing well in the game. Brady is just the latest — and probably the greatest. But look at some of these other guys:

● Len Dawson, Chiefs, Super Bowl 4 — Early in the week, Dawson’s name was linked to nationwide gambling probe involving a “casual acquaintance,” a Detroit restaurateur who had already been arrested. He admitted being “shocked” by the development, and the pressure on him going into the game was heavier than Buck Buchanan.

“If we lose Sunday and he throws some bad passes, you know what they’ll say don’t you?” Chiefs defensive end Jerry Mays said. “Winning or losing usually is going to fall back on 40 players, but this one would fall back on Lenny.”

The upshot: Dawson responded with an MVP performance, hitting 12 of 17 passes for 142 yards and a touchdown in a 23-7 upset of the NFL’s Vikings.

● Doug Williams, Redskins, Super Bowl 22 – Williams had to deal with a different kind of stress: He was the first black quarterback to start a Super Bowl. (You can imagine what that was like.) He was asked question after question about it in the days leading up to the game, and answered each time with great equanimity.

The upshot: Another MVP performance, one highlighted by a Super Bowl record four TD passes in the second quarter. Final score: Redskins 42, Broncos 10.

● Joe Namath, Jets, Super Bowl 3 — The loquacious Namath brought the controversy on himself by saying he would “guarantee” a victory over the NFL’s Colts. To stir things up even more more, he nearly got in a fight with Baltimore’s Lou Michaels in a Miami cocktail lounge. Here’s Michaels’ version of it (as told to The New York Times), which begins with Joe walking in and introducing himself:

I’m still resentful of the way it started out. I thought Joe was at fault. I never had the privilege of meeting Joe, but I knew who he was. I went to school with his brother at Kentucky. Joe walked up to me, and the first thing he said was, “We’re going to beat the heck out of you,” only he didn’t say heck. And he said, “And I’m going to do it.”

If you’re looking for a fight, that’s going to do it. Instead of saying, “Hello, I’m Joe Namath, how are you?” I think he was a little arrogant there. I said, “Suppose we beat you?” And he said, “I’ll sit in the middle of the field, and I’ll cry.”

I believe in that little thing called modesty. I asked him about that, and he said, “That’s not in my dictionary.” I don’t know why he came on so strong. It worked out fine. I have nothing against Joe. If I was in his shoes, I’d be a little down to earth.

The upshot: Yet another MVP performance. Namath picked apart the vaunted Colts defense, connecting on 17 of 28 passes for 206 yards as the Jets won, 16-7.

So there you have it: four quarterbacks, all under the gun — even by Super Bowl standards — and they all came away with MVP honors, Brady included. Maybe this business about avoiding distractions before big games is a bunch of hooey. It certainly didn’t do Brady, Dawson, Williams and Namath any harm, did it?

After a chaotic week in which he got caught up in a gambling investigation, the Chiefs' Len Dawson was MVP of Super Bowl IV.

After getting caught up in a gambling investigation, the Chiefs’ Len Dawson was MVP of Super Bowl IV.

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SI’s cover the week of Super Bowl III

If you want to know how far pro football has come in this country, consider what Sports Illustrated ran on its cover the week of Super Bowl III.

The issue before, after the NFL and AFL title games, SI had gone with this Colts cover — Tom Matte plunging for a touchdown against the Browns in Baltimore’s 34-0 win.

Screen Shot 2015-02-01 at 2.00.31 PM

It made sense. The NFL, after all, was the dominant league, and the Colts were a juggernaut that season. They were 17-point favorites to trample the Jets in the Super Bowl.

So what did SI put on its cover the week of the Big Game?

SI Swimsuit cover

That’s right, It wheeled out the swimsuit issue. (It wasn’t even that great a bikini.)

SI had done the same thing before the first two Super Bowls. I guess it figured its mostly male readership would be spending most of the week discussing beachwear and how the two-piece was at least a 17-point favorite over the one-piece.

Miscellaneous note: In January 1969, Elle Macpherson was 4 years old.

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The youngest QBs to win two rings

Not long ago I was marveling at Tom Brady’s historic staying power. Seems only fair to spend a little time gushing about Russell Wilson’s youthful accomplishments.

As I noted, Brady’s six Super Bowls with Patriots span 14 seasons, the longest such stretch for an NFL quarterback. But let’s not forget the Seahawks’ Wilson, who has a chance Sunday to become the second-youngest QB to win two titles, which would put him behind only . . . well, check out the chart:

YOUNGEST QUARTERBACKS TO WIN TWO NFL CHAMPIONSHIPS

Years Quarterback, Team Title No. 1 Age Title No. 2 Age
1940/41 Sid Luckman, Bears 24-017 25-023
2013/14 Russell Wilson, Seahawks 25-065 26-064 (?)
2001/03 Tom Brady, Patriots 24-184 26-182
1958/59 Johnny Unitas, Colts 25-235 26-234
2005/08 Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers 23-340 26-336
1952/53 Bobby Layne, Lions 26-009 27-008
1992/93 Troy Aikman, Cowboys 26-071 27-070
1934/38 Ed Danowski, Giants 23-070 27-072
1974/75 Terry Bradshaw, Steelers 26-132 27-138
1981/84 Joe Montana, 49ers 25-227 28-223

Quite a club. Only Danowski isn’t in the Hall of Fame — or headed there, in my opinion — and his is an unusual case. After all, he wasn’t the Giants’ main passer for most of that year; he took over at tailback (on a single-wing team) after original starter, Harry Newman, got hurt late in the season. But Eddie helped win the title game, the famed Sneakers Game, over the previous unbeaten Bears, so you certainly can’t leave him off the list.

In fact, here he is, ol’ No. 22, making a nifty throw under pressure that nearly went for a touchdown in that game:

Danowski, by the way, is the youngest quarterback to win the NFL title — in modern (1932-) times, at least. Wilson (25-065) comes in sixth in that competition, behind Eddie (23-070), Sammy Baugh (23-270), Ben Roethlisberger (23-340), Luckman (24-017) and Brady (24-184).

One last thing: Six of the 10 quarterbacks in the above chart won at least one other championship (Luckman 4, Brady 3, Unitas 3, Aikman 3, Bradshaw 4, Montana 4). That bodes well for Wilson, too — provided, of course, he and his mates can beat the Patriots.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

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When SI’s Super Bowl prediction was only off by 52 points

Predicting the final score of the Super Bowl is an invitation to make a fool of yourself. Every year, though, media folk — and even more non-media folk — give it a shot, just for “fun.”

The greatest of all NFL title game predictions is the one John Steadman made in the Baltimore News-Post before the sudden-death classic between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants in 1958. Steadman thought long and hard about it, may even have availed himself of a palm reader, and somehow came up with 23-17 — right on the money.

(What’s overlooked about this story is that 23-17 was, at the time, a very unusual score. There had been only four 23-17 games in NFL history before the Sudden Death Game — the first, interestingly enough, being the Packers-Giants championship game in 1938.)

At the opposite end from Steadman’s is the pick Sports Illustrated’s Tex Maule made a decade later when the Colts met the New York Jets in Super Bowl III. This, too turned out to be a historic game, because the Jets, 17-point underdogs, upset the Colts, 16-7, to give the AFL its first win over the established NFL. Anyway, Maule, SI’s pro football writer, miscalculated by just a shade. He had the Colts winning, 43-0.

But, hey, don’t take my word for it. Here’s a story that ran in the Oakland Tribune the week of the game:

MIAMI — Among Super Bowl writers, it’s Baltimore Colts, 49-6, with a lot of coward’s abstentions.

There are a record 367 credentialed working pressmen here covering the [Super Bowl], but a poll finds only 49 picking the Colts and a slim six writers going for the New York Jets. . . . Tex Maule of Sports Illustrated showed his NFL affection with a 43-0 Baltimore pick.

The results of the unscientific poll were no great surprise. The Colts had suffered only one loss all season, to the Browns, and had avenged it in the NFL title game with a blowout 34-0 victory at Cleveland. The Jets, meanwhile, had gone 11-3 in a supposedly inferior league and had barely gotten past the Raiders in the championship game.

But 43-0? The scores of the first two Super Bowls had been 35-10 (Packers over Chiefs) and 33-14 (Packers over Raiders). How on earth did Maule come up with 43-0?

Well, to be blunt about it, Tex was an NFL loyalist whose attachment to the league sometimes clouded his vision. A writer like that would have a hard time functioning today. He’d be crucified on sports talk shows, burned at the stake on Twitter and have his face ripped off on Facebook. But the world was a much different place in January 1969.

Before Maule went to work for SI, you see, he’d been a publicist for not one but two NFL teams. He was an assistant with the Rams from 1949 to ’51 . . .

1951 Rams co-Texes . . . and he was the head guy for the Dallas Texans in 1952 (after which they folded and the franchise moved to Baltimore).

Maule '52 TexansBy the way, did you notice the name above Maule’s in the Rams directory? None other than Tex Schramm, who helped turn the Cowboys into “America’s Team” in the ’60s and ’70s. Frank Finch of the Los Angeles Times thought the Schramm-Maule duo was so hysterical that he’d go around telling people the Rams were the only club in the league with co-Texes.

(It was all so cozy back then. Consider: When Schramm left his sportswriting job at the Austin American in the late ’40s to work for the Rams, it was Maule who replaced him. A couple of years later, Schramm needed help in the PR department and, you guessed it, brought Maule out to L.A. Then Maule returned to Texas to take the job with the Texans, and who did Schramm fill the position with? University of San Francisco SID — and future NFL commissioner — Pete Rozelle.)

But returning to Maule . . . his love for the NFL knew few bounds. And loving the NFL meant looking down on the scrappy, rival league that had sprung up to challenge it in the ’60s. In the issue of SI that was published before the Super Bowl, Tex laid out his worldview:

In evaluations of the two teams, most experts, for unfathomable reasons, have conceded the Jets an edge at quarterback. Both [the Jets’ Joe] Namath and [the Colts’ Earl] Morrall were selected Most Valuable in their leagues, but Namath certainly can claim no clear-cut superiority over Morrall. . . .

As usual, the AFL players base part of their hopes for victory on the rather tenuous claim that since football is a game of emotion, they will outemotion the NFL. But Las Vegas bookmakers, a group not known for emotional display, figure the Colts to be 17 points better than the Jets, which is probably conservative. . . .

Because the AFL had to compete with the NFL for the best of the college seniors during the first five years of its existence a kind of natural selection worked against the new league’s acquisition of players with the self-confidence and desire to excel against the best. . . . The rest of the AFL players in those formative years came over from the NFL. They were mostly athletes who preferred to switch rather than fight for their positions in the NFL.

This situation, of course, no longer applies. With the common draft of the last two years, the AFL is getting its share of the truly competitive, gung-ho athletes and it will soon achieve parity with the NFL. But that parity has not yet been reached, and the Colts should demonstrate this with an authority that may shock Jets fans.

To summarize: In the pre-Super Bowl years, the AFL was essentially populated by gutless losers who either signed with the league out of college because they “lacked the self-confidence and desire to excel against the best” or fled the NFL because the competition was too tough. Maule couldn’t even look at the two quarterbacks — Namath, a future Hall of Famer with a cannon arm, and Morrall, a 34-year-old journeyman who was 30-32-2 as a starter going into that season — and admit, yeah, the Jets might have the advantage there.

And SI actually printed this propaganda. Amazing, huh?

SI SB3 coverYou already know how it turned out. Morrall did the “unfathomable,” throwing three interceptions and getting badly outplayed by Namath. Indeed, the Colts might have been shut out if aging, ailing Johnny Unitas hadn’t came off the bench to drive them to a fourth-quarter touchdown.

Maule’s post-game piece was more complimentary of Namath and the Jets, but you could picture him typing the words with clenched teeth. “Broadway Joe is the folk hero of the new generation,” he began. “He is long hair, a Fu Manchu mustache worth $10,000 to shave off, swinging nights in the live spots of the big city, the dream lover of the stewardi — all that spells insouciant youth in the Jet Age.”

Toward the end there was this: “So the era of John Unitas ended and the day of Broadway Joe and the mod quarterback began. John is crew cut and quiet and Joe has long hair and a big mouth, but haircuts and gab obviously have nothing to do with the efficiency of quarterbacks.”

It was as if, in Tex’s eyes, the final scoreboard read: Hippies 43, Establishment 0.

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In the days before diplomacy

Before players became so well behaved — in terms of their public pronouncements, I mean — Super Bowl Week was a lot more entertaining. I was reminded of this the other day when I came across a story that ran after the 1968 AFL title game between the Jets and Raiders.

Joe Namath’s team rallied to win the game, 27-23 – then went off to slay the NFL champion Colts, the biggest upset in pro football history. The visiting Raiders, who thought they were the better club (and may well have been), could only go home and stew for seven months.

In the walk-up to the Super Bowl, Jets cornerback Johnny Sample was doing what he did best: mouthing off. Sample was one of the early trash talkers — not quite as quotable, perhaps, as Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, but heck, Fred was practically Oscar Wilde.

One day Johnny was holding forth about the cornerback position — and about the notebook he kept that had detailed information on every man he covered. The Raiders’ Fred Biletnikoff, a future Hall of Famer, was just “an average receiver,” he’d decided. “You can’t compare him to the great receivers.”

This was a strange statement coming from Sample. Biletnikoff, after all, had torn him up in the AFL title game, catching seven passes for 190 yards and a touchdown. (In fact, Raiders owner Al Davis told The Boston Globe’s Will McDonough, “Fred has eaten him up the last three times he has played against him, and every time he does, Sample says he’s had a cold.”)

An enterprising reporter for the Oakland Tribune called Biletnikoff to get his reaction to Sample’s remarks. Fred was in a Los Angeles hospital at the time recovering from a collarbone injury that Johnny, apparently, had something to do with.

“The way I feel about it,” he said, “[Sample] should write a new book. He was really trying to shake me up in the first quarter, slapping at me and trying to talk me out of my game.

“When I dropped one on the 1-yard line, he said, ‘That’s the way it’s going to be today.’ But after I started beating him he didn’t say much for the rest of the game. I figure the game went 25 percent his way, 75 percent my way.”

I’m saving the best for last. Sample was suggesting at the Super Bowl that he might retire after the game — and it did, indeed, turn out to be his last season. How did Biletnikoff feel about that?

“I hope he doesn’t,” Fred said. “I’d like to play 14 games a season against him. That way I’d know my family is secure for a long time.”

Anyway, that’s what happened one day before Super Bowl III. Anybody say anything interesting today?

Source: pro-football-reference.com

The Jets' Johnny Sample (24) and the Colts' Tom Matte (41) go facemask-to-facemask in Super Bowl III.

The Jets’ Johnny Sample (24) and the Colts’ Tom Matte (41) go facemask-to-facemask in Super Bowl III.

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Return of the tackle-eligible play

There’ll probably be some discussion this Super Bowl Week — that is, when people tire of Deflategate — about the tackle-eligible play. Bill Belichick’s Patriots ran it twice for touchdowns in Super Bowls 38 and 39, and they used it again in the AFC title game, when Tom Brady flipped a 16-yard TD pass to an uncovered Nate Solder. The sequence went like this:

First, the Patriots lined up in an unbalanced line — four men to the right of center, two to the left. This made the 6-8, 320-pound Solder (77) the left end, because Brandon LaFell (bottom of the photo) positioned himself a yard behind the line as a flanker.

Solder lined up

After the snap, Solder briefly blocked and then drifted into the flat, catching Brady’s throw at the Indianapolis 13. No Colt was near him.

Solder catch at 13

A few giant steps later, he launched himself across the goal line to increase New England’s lead to 24-7.

Solder scores

One of the things that’s interesting about this play is that the NFL actually outlawed it in 1951. According to The Associated Press, it had become “a nightmare to officials because various clubs tried illegal variations which loosed tackles, centers and guards for pass receptions.”

The year before, Eagles coach Greasy Neale went nuts after the Cardinals ran one such variation against his team. The pass, in this instance, went to “an ineligible guard for about 30 yards,” AP reported. “And while the Eagles argued with the officials, Cardinal[s] coach Curly Lambeau lifted the guard from the lineup and covered him with a blanket on the bench. The officials couldn’t even find the player on the field who the Eagles contended caught the pass. The gain stood.”

The season before that, the Bears, goofing around in their season finale, ran five tackle-eligible plays against the Cardinals in a 52-21 win. Afterward, Cards coach Buddy Parker said, “The tackle eligible is a cheating play. It should be ruled out of football. I’m not saying this because we lost, but it’s my firm conviction it violates the spirit of football. I’m not blaming the Bears for using it. Other teams do. But there is no defense for it, and it is a difficult play for the officials to call.”

At the January 1951 league meetings in Chicago, the owners decided to get rid of “the old bugaboo tackle-eligible play,” as AP called it. But in recent decades it has worked its way back into the playbook — as long as the tackle reports as an eligible receiver, as Solder did. This alerts the officials, who then alert the defense. It’s still a trick play, it’s just not as tricky — or maybe shady — as it used to be.

In the old days, teams lined up in all kinds of bizarre formations to create Surprise Eligible Receivers. Check out this alignment the Giants sprang on the Bears in 1934, one that made the center, Hall of Famer Mel Hein, eligible:

Giants center eligible play

Wilfrid Smith of the Chicago Tribune described it thusly:

The Giants shifted to a spread formation. Such a formation, with three eligible pass receivers [to] the right, always causes the defense to spread to meet a pass with secondary consideration for a run or plunge. The end men on the line of scrimmage and the backs are eligible to receive passes. Seven men must be on the offensive scrimmage line when the ball is passed by the center.

The Bears immediately dropped into a six-man defensive line and shifted three men to cover the Giants’ eligible receivers on the right side of the Giant[s] formation. Naturally, most of the fans watched these men, thinking a pass would be thrown to one of them. There was a Giant[s] end to the left of center Hein. Then, without warning, this end shifted one yard back from the line of scrimmage. This change made him a “back,” and to meet the rule specifying seven men on the line of scrimmage, a back shifted up to the line [indicated by the dotted line position].

As soon as one second had elapsed after this shift, another rule requirement, Hein passed the ball back between his legs to quarterback Harry Newman, directly behind him. Newman then handed the ball back to Hein, between Hein’s legs, and Hein ran with it, making 13 yards before he was downed by the Bears’ secondary.

When Newman handed the ball back to Hein it was a forward pass. Hein, the end man, was eligible to receive this pass and after receiving it to run.

George Musso, the Bears’ right tackle, had lined up approximately even with the Giants’ end, who later shifted into the backfield. Hein ran inside of Musso. The play was so unexpected that most of the Bears did not see the pass.

Maybe we’ll see a play like that in the Super Bowl. After all, the Patriots and Seahawks have shown plenty of creativity this season. Or maybe we’ll see a “Find the Ball!” play like the one the Bears ran against the Lions later in ’34. An artist’s rendering of it:

Bears trick play in 1934 vs. Lions

Now that would be fun.

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Cheating: an NFL tradition for 95 years

One of the many questions I was dying to ask Lions great Glenn Presnell when I interviewed him decades ago was this: How was your 1936 Detroit team able to run the ball better than anybody else in pro football history?

This is no exaggeration. The Lions that year had three of the top six rushers in the league: Ace Gutowsky, Dutch Clark and Ernie Caddel. (Presnell, in his final season at 31, was more of a role player.) Working out of the single wing, without much of a passing threat, they rushed for 2,885 yards in 12 games. No club before or since has topped their average of 240.4 yards a game, not even the handful of clubs with two 1,000-yard rushers. (Next best: the O.J. Simpson-fueled 1973 Bills at 220.6.)

Lions team photoThis was no grind-it-out, three-yards-and-a-glob-of-mud attack, either. The Lions averaged 4.9 yards per attempt, far above the league average of 3.5. So, I asked Presnell, “How did you do it? How did you set a record in 1936 that still stands today?” I shouldn’t have been surprised by his answer, I suppose — being a Veteran Scribe and all — but I was.

The Lions cheated. That is, their lineman fired out a split second before the ball was snapped.

“When we practiced our signals — hut one, hut two, hut three — the linemen charged on ‘hut’ and the center snapped the ball on ‘two,’ “ he said. “We always hit the defense first. [Coach] Potsy [Clark] expected those guys to explode off their marks on ‘hut.’ And of course, the center would be hanging on to the ball a split-second longer, but not enough for you to be called offside. I always attributed our good blocking to that. In fact, I coached that myself.”

With only four officials monitoring things, you could get away with plenty in the 1930s. With seven sets of eyeballs now — and TV cameras also helping to root out illegal activity — there are fewer dark corners of the field. Still, on most plays, if not all, you could probably find some act that didn’t conform to the letter of the law . . . and didn’t get penalized. A motion man ever so slightly angling himself toward the line of scrimmage. A defensive back bumping his man more than 5 yards downfield. A receiver pushing off or setting a pick. A D-lineman inching into the neutral zone. A blocker grabbing a pass rusher’s jersey. A center subtly moving the ball forward before the snap.

There are so many players milling about, so much mayhem and general mob behavior, that enforcement can seem almost arbitrary — like speeding tickets on the interstate. What we’re talking about here is a Culture of Cheating, a whatever-you-can-get-away-with mentality that’s as much a part of the game as the huddle and the touchdown celebration.

That’s why it’s hard to get worked up over what The Hysterics have dubbed Deflategate: the discovery that some of the footballs the Patriots’ Tom Brady threw in the AFC title game weren’t inflated to specifications. Sorry, but given all the stuff that goes on in every game, a pound of air pressure — or whatever it was — doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Certainly not as big as, say, the ’36 Lions’ offensive line beating the snap on every single offensive play. (I forgot to mention: They won the ’35 title playing that way, too.)

Maybe I’ve just seen and heard too much. Maybe if I were younger — and more naïve — I’d feel differently. But to me, all this huffing and puffing about Deflategate is just a bunch of hot air, something to fill the void during Pro Bowl week. Or to put it another way: If you really think this air-pressure story is stop-the-presses material, then you and I can’t possibly be watching the same game.

Here’s a column I wrote about cheating in 2007, not long after the Patriots were caught taping the signals of opponents (for which they and coach Bill Belichick were fined and stripped of a first-round draft pick).

You’ll find some interesting names in it — famous names. You might even come away feeling differently about this latest “crisis,” the one involving footballs, air pressure and Big Bad Patriots.


When George Allen was coaching the Redskins in the ’70s, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to win — trade the same draft pick twice, have his defense jam the opposing quarterback’s signals (also a no-no), grease his offensive linemen’s jerseys so they’d be harder to grab. (Or was that Al Davis?) The Cowboys’ Tom Landry was always accusing him of some kind of subterfuge or other. It’s doubtful George ever felt a twinge of regret.


Whenever the Cleveland Browns visited Wrigley Field in the old days, Paul Brown would give his team pre-game instructions in virtual pantomime. The legendary coach was utterly convinced that George Halas was bugging the visitors’ locker room. If an outsider had walked in on this scene, Cleveland Hall of Famer Mike McCormack said years later, he would have thought Brown “was coaching the State School for the Deaf.”

Not that PB was any angel. One of his favorite methods of gathering enemy intelligence was to send an underling to an opponent’s practice field posing as a newspaper reporter. No telling what useful scraps of information he might be able to pick up — particularly if the media were allowed to watch workouts. Maybe a club was working on a new formation. Maybe a star player was hurt more seriously than the coach was letting on.

There’s also the story, perhaps apocryphal, of a Cleveland scout being put through a course in climbing telephone poles — after which, equipped with spiked shoes, binoculars and a notebook, he headed off on a series of surveillance missions. The Browns won an awful lot of games back then, so presumably their spy did his job well.

Such espionage has been going on in football since Alonzo Stagg was in knickers. It’s the gridiron version of the Cold War. As Kathleen Turner told William Hurt in Body Heat, “Knowledge is power.” (Actually, the entire line was: “My mother told me knowledge is power” — leaving open the possibility her mother was a Halas.)

George Allen usually did play it "his way."

George Allen usually did play it “his way.”

So there’s a dog-bites-man quality to the breathless news that the Patriots got caught videotaping the signals of the Jets’ defensive coaches Sunday. Indeed, it’s the brazenness of the act more than the act itself that astounds. Especially because, according to reports, it wasn’t the first time the Pats had done it.

It’s also, let’s face it, an incredibly tacky thing to do — kind of like a billionaire cheating on his taxes. A team that’s won three championships in this decade — and may win a couple more before it’s done — pulling a stunt like this? To think New England had an image as a classy organization.

Still, as crimes and misdemeanors go, I don’t consider “illegal videotaping” as reprehensible as, say, circumventing the salary cap, which several clubs (but not the Patriots) have been penalized for. Inasmuch as the Pats’ camera was confiscated in the first quarter, their skullduggery certainly didn’t have anything to do with their whomping of the Jets. But it might have been a factor, I suppose, in their next whomping of the Jets.

Two things should be pointed out here. First, the Jets hijacked the Patriots’ top defensive assistant last year, Eric Mangini, who no doubt brought a lot of inside knowledge about New England’s operation. This isn’t against the rules, but it’s hardly the norm for a club to fill its head coaching vacancy by raiding the staff of its division archrival.

Then there’s Bill Belichick’s background — or rather, his military mentality. Belichick grew up in Annapolis, and his father Steve was a longtime scout for the Naval Academy. So much of Bill’s secretive, often quirky behavior, I’m convinced, can be traced to that. Probably the only reason he had somebody videotaping the Jets’ coaches was because he figured an observation balloon wouldn’t have had a good enough angle.

Belichick is one of those by-all-means-necessary types — like George Allen and Genghis Khan. He’ll try to beat you any way he can, rules or no rules. It’s one of the reasons his players appreciate him; he never pulls a punch. (And if he wants to rub it in a little by summoning 99-year-old Vinny Testaverde from the bench to throw a touchdown pass for the 20th consecutive season, he’ll do that, too.)

Getting back to Allen . . . . When he was coaching the Redskins in the ’70s, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to win — trade the same draft pick twice, have his defense jam the opposing quarterback’s signals (also a no-no), grease his offensive linemen’s jerseys so they’d be harder to grab. (Or was that Al Davis?) The Cowboys’ Tom Landry was always accusing him of some kind of subterfuge or other.

It’s doubtful George ever felt a twinge of regret. He just wasn’t wired that way. And it’s doubtful Belichick will lose much sleep over whatever sentence Roger Goodell metes out. Besides, it’s easy to rationalize such behavior in the kill-or-be-killed culture of the NFL. Allen might have had some Richard Nixon in him, but don’t forget, he would remind sportswriters, “The Cowboys had a dog run into our huddle one day in the Cotton Bowl when we were driving for the winning points.”

From The Washington Times, Sept. 13, 2007

Before a road game at Wrigley Field, Browns coach George Halas would deliver his pregame talk "in pantomine," fearful the locker room was bugged.

At Wrigley Field, Browns coach Paul Brown would pantomime his pregame talk, fearful the room was bugged.

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