Monthly Archives: September 2014

Sound Bites III

As we’re seeing with the Browns’ Johnny Manziel, NFL teams sometimes break in rookie quarterbacks ver-ry slowly, putting in packages for them every week until they’re ready to run the whole offense. It’s been that way since Y.A. Tittle had hair.

If Manziel ever gets discouraged, he should read this quote from one of the top quarterbacks in the 1964 draft, Jack Concannon — who, like Johnny Football, was a dangerous runner. (Later that year, he threw two touchdown passes and rushed for 99 yards to help the Eagles beat the Cowboys.) Moral: Things can always be worse.

“I was at halfback for three weeks because of injuries to three of our running backs, and I didn’t care for it too much. As a matter of fact, in my first game I was at left halfback. It was against the Giants, and the Eagles had started me with three plays — a halfback pass, an end run and a fake end run with a reverse.

“That’s the way [Packers Hall of Famer] Paul Hornung started, with three plays. The only trouble was the Giants knew the three plays, and you can imagine how I felt when they started calling them [out to one another]. The first play was a reverse, and we lost about 20 yards. The next one was the end run, and I gained maybe two yards. The third was the halfback pass, and I was smeared.

“That was my introduction to pro football. I thought the league would be rough. It was even rougher than I expected.”

Talk about your Short Work Weeks

Thursday night NFL games are one of our better examples of Man’s Inhumanity to Man. The human body simply isn’t built to play pro football twice in five calendar days. It probably isn’t built to play pro football once every seven calendar days, but that’s another matter.

Anyway, as you watch tonight’s Redskins-Giants hostilities at FedEx Field, keep in mind how much worse it used to be for NFL players. Yes, worse. In the 1920s, for instance, games on back-to-back days were far from uncommon. When the Frankford Yellow Jackets won the championship in 1926, they had three weeks where they played on Saturday and Sunday and another where they played on Thursday and Saturday. Amazingly, they won seven of the eight games.

In the ’30s, the Portsmouth Spartans were fond of Wednesday home games under the lights at Universal Stadium. One season they had two Sunday-Wednesday-Sunday trifectas on the schedule — three games in eight days — and another week they played on Wednesday and Sunday. And this was the era, I’ll just remind you, of 20-man rosters and 60-minute men (not to mention looong train rides).

Even in the ’50s it could get a little crazy. The New York Yanks began the 1950 season with a Sunday/Friday week — on the West Coast — and later had two Sunday/Thursday weeks. Little wonder they wore down after a 6-1 start and finished 7-5.

So, yeah, Thursday night games are a raw deal. But the players of yore were treated even less gently.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

The Princes of Ties

This is as good a time as any to mention — in the wake of Sunday’s Seahawks-Broncos classic — that this week is the 40^th anniversary of the NFL’s first regular-season overtime game. Yup, until 1974, we would have had to settle for a 20-20 tie at CenturyLink Field . . . and done without Seattle’s eviscerating 80-yard touchdown drive in OT. Bummer.

(Actually, now that I think about it, there was no two-point conversion in ’74, either. So Denver would have trailed 20-19 after its last TD and been forced to onside kick. Amazing how much of an impact these rule changes have had.)

But back to the subject at hand: ties . . . and their virtual elimination. The Broncos, it turns out, were involved in the first regular-season overtime game, too. As fate would have it, things didn’t

Sept. 22, 1974

work out that day quite as planned. Despite 15 minutes of bonus brutality, neither they nor the Steelers could break the 35-35 deadlock. Here’s Vito Stellino’s story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about this Sorta Great Moment in NFL History.

Chuck Noll, Pittsburgh’s Hall of Fame coach, had a funny quote afterward. “I don’t like the idea of overtime,” he said. “I have a tired football team that has to get ready for a football game next week. If we’d have one of these every week, it’d kill our team.”

(One of the reasons it’s funny, in retrospect, is that the Steelers didn’t have another OT game for four years.)

Fortunately for the NFL, there have been only 18 more ties in the four decades since, a huge — and necessary — break from the past. In the ’60s, after all, there 72 (counting the AFL), and in the first four years of the ’70s, before OT came in, there were 29. Way too many.

In recent seasons, David Akers (currently team-less) has been the NFL’s Prince of Ties. Akers played a principal role in two of the last three deadlocks — as a 49er in 2012 and an Eagle in ’08.

Two years ago against the Rams, he kicked a 33-yard field goal with three seconds left to make it 24-24 and send the game to overtime. Then he missed a 41-yarder in OT to preserve the stalemate. (Attaboy.)

Four seasons earlier, he was good from 27 yards with 5:18 remaining to pull Philadelphia into a 13-13 tie with the Bengals. Once again, the overtime was scoreless (thanks to an errant 47-yard field goal try by Cincinnati’s Shayne Graham with seven seconds to go).

Not that Akers’ historical contribution figures to be remembered. That’s the thing about tie games; because they lack resolution, they usually don’t leave any footprints. Heck, for a long time, the league didn’t even count them when calculating winning percentage. (The 7-1-6 record, for instance, compiled by the title-winning Bears in 1932 was considered a 7-1 mark. It was as if their other six games never happened.)

So why don’t we pay homage to those forgotten heroes who shined brightest in tie games — even if, at the end of the day, they had to settle for half a loaf? The honor roll:

● QB Tommy Maddox, Steelers (Nov. 10, 2002, 34-34 tie vs. Falcons) — 473 passing yards (a record for a tie game and the highest total in the NFL that season) and four touchdown passes weren’t enough to avoid a Dreaded Deadlock.

● LB Ken Harvey, Redskins (Nov. 23, 1997, 7-7 tie vs. Giants) — Racked up four sacks, the most in a tie game since the NFL began keeping track of the statistic in 1982. Alas, they were overshadowed

Wall 1, Frerotte 0

by the antics of Washington quarterback Gus Frerotte, who celebrated his team’s only score — on a 1-yard bootleg — by bashing his head into the end zone wall and suffering a neck injury that knocked him out of the game.

● WR John Gilliam, Cardinals (Oct. 26, 1969, 21-21 tie vs. Cleveland) — Had four catches for 192 yards and all three St. Louis touchdowns. The first two TDs measured 84 and 75 yards; the third, a 15-yarder, came with just eight seconds to play.

● RB Gary McDermott, Bills (Oct. 12, 1968, 14-14 tie vs. Dolphins) — McDermott tied the game in the final seconds with an eight-point play, catching a three-yard touchdown pass from Dan Darragh and a two-point conversion toss from Ed Rutkowski. He’s the last player, by the way, to do that. (It was also, to give it its proper due, one of only two games that year that 1-12-1 Buffalo didn’t lose.)

● QB Sonny Jurgensen, Redskins (1967) — Threw four touchdown passes in a tie game not once but twice, in a 28-28 tie with the Rams (Oct. 22) and a 35-35 tie with the Eagles (Dec. 3). In the latter, Norm Snead, the quarterback Philadelphia acquired for Sonny in a 1964 deal, also tossed four TD passes. So for a day, at least, it was an even trade.

● FB Jim Taylor, Packers (Dec. 13, 1964, 24-24 tie vs. Rams) — Gained 221 yards from scrimmage (165 rushing, 56 receiving) and ran for a touchdown to knot the score with two minutes left. He accomplished this, moreover, against the Rams’ vaunted Fearsome Foursome (Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen et al.), which led the league in rushing defense.

● Lou Groza, Browns, and Jim Bakken, Cardinals (Sept. 20, 1964, 33-33 tie) — Only two kickers in history have booted as many as four field goals in a tie game: Groza and Bakken . . . in the same game. Groza connected from 32, 12, 37 and 25 yards, Bakken from 30, 51, 44 and 28 (his last with five seconds to go). That same afternoon, Lou scored his 1,000^th NFL point and Jim broke the franchise record for longest field goal. All in all, not a bad day.

● WR Charley Hennigan, Houston Oilers (Oct. 13, 1961, 31-31 tie vs. Patriots) — Set an AFL mark — never broken — for receiving yards in a game with 272.

● RB Larry Garron, Patriots — Nobody got up for the tie games like Larry. Check out his performance in four of them:

1. Oct. 13, 1961 vs. Oilers (31-31) — 89-yard kickoff return touchdown.

2. Nov. 3, 1962 vs. Bills (28-28) — 95-yard kickoff return TD and, in the fourth quarter, a 23-yard scoring grab to tie it at 28. (In case you’re wondering, the aforementioned kickoff return TDs are the only two of his career.)

3. Nov. 17, 1963 vs. Chiefs (24-24) — 47-yard TD run.

4. Oct. 16, 1964 vs. Raiders (43-43) — Three TDs (one rushing, two receiving), as many as anyone has scored in a tie game.

● QB-K Bobby Layne, Steelers (Nov. 8, 1959, 10-10 tie vs. Lions) — Fired a 20-yard touchdown pass to Tom Tracy in the last few minutes, then kicked tying extra point. And consider the backdrop: It was the first time the Hall of Fame quarterback had faced the Lions since they traded him in ’58. Talk about a clutch tie.

● QB Frank Filchock, Redskins (Oct. 8, 1944, 31-31 tie vs. Eagles) — Tossed five touchdown passes, the most ever in a tie game. How did the Redskins end up with only 31 points, you ask? Simple. They botched four PATs.

● WR Don Hutson, Packers (Nov. 22, 1942, 21-21 tie vs. Giants) — Caught 14 passes for 134 yards and two touchdowns. The 14 receptions tied the NFL record for a single game.

Other items of interest:

Miller Farr vs. Don Maynard

● In 1967, the Houston Oilers’ Miller Farr picked off three passes in a 28-28 tie with the Jets. According to my research, that’s the most in a tie game. A month later, his brother Mel Farr rushed for 197 yards for the Lions in a 10-10 tie with the Vikings — the biggest rushing day in a tie game since 1960.

● Little-known fact: Not once since 1974, when overtime was adopted, has a two-point conversion been the last score in a tie game. (The Broncos, in other words, would have been the first if Sunday’s game had wound up a draw.)

● Another little-known fact: Nobody has ever kicked a really long field goal to cause a game to end in a tie. The longest I’ve come across is a 41-yarder by the Chiefs’ Nick Lowery in a 10-10 defensive struggle with the Browns in 1989. His boot wasn’t a buzzer-beater, either. It went through with 3:48 still on the clock.

● Finally, the ’74 Steelers club that played the Broncos to a 35-35 standoff in the first regular-season overtime game went on to take the title — making it the last Super Bowl winner with a tie on its resumé.

Sources: pro-football-reference.com, National Football League Fact and Record Book, The Sporting News American Football League Guide, The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia.

Gadget plays galore

NFL teams channeled their Inner David Copperfield in Week 3. We saw the Bengals’ Mohamed Sanu, the Dan Marino of wide receivers, complete a throwback to QB Andy Dalton for an 18-yard touchdown, and we saw the Browns dust off the illegal-since-1954 Hideout Play against the Ravens — with Johnny Manziel split way, way out, almost far enough to sell hot dogs. (We covered that bit of subterfuge in a post yesterday.)

It’s probably only a matter of time before some special teams coach sells his boss on this beauty:

I wouldn’t mind seeing somebody run this one, either:

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

The Browns try to pull a fast one

Browns offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan couldn’t possibly have known this, but he ran an illegal Hideout Play against the Ravens on practically the 60^th anniversary of the last legal Hideout Play. Even better, the victim both times was a Baltimore team — the Colts in 1954 and the Ravens on Sunday.

The last legal Hideout Play (a.k.a. Sleeper Play) was run Sept. 26, 1954 — by the sneaky Los Angeles Rams on the first play of the season. The Colts defense didn’t notice wide receiver Skeet Quinlan hanging out near the sideline when the ball was snapped, and no one was near him when he caught an 80-yard touchdown pass from Norm Van Brocklin. After the Rams won 48-0, Commissioner Bert Bell said, in essence, “Enough of this crap. We’re not a Sunday morning touch-football league. Anybody who tries to run a Hideout Play again will be penalized 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct.”

(His actual quote was: “This thing never should have happened in the first place. No matter how many good rules we have, somebody also comes up with something that we have to correct.”)

Here’s the brief game summary that appeared in newspapers across the country:

And here’s Bell declaring the play illegal the next day:

Sure enough, the following was added to the rulebook in 1955 (under Rule 10 — Section 2): “If an offensive player lines up less than five yards from the sideline on [the] same side as his team’s players bench, and his teammates (even though they are outside of [the] field of play) are in close proximity to where he is lined up when the ball is snapped, it is Unsportsmanlike Conduct.”

If he were “in close proximity” to his teammates, of course, his uniform would blend in with theirs and he’d be harder to notice. That’s one of the reasons the play was so effective in the early days. (That and the fact that clubs would usually save it for late in the game, when darkness was closing in. Many stadiums back then didn’t have lights — or had inadequate lighting — making the sidelines less visible in the fourth quarter.)

Actually, quarterback Johnny Manziel, the focal point of Sunday’s shenanigans, was in closer proximity to coaches than players as he stood along the sideline in the second quarter, pretending to have a conversation with his offensive coordinator. He had just come out of the game after being sent in for one play – a run by Isaiah Crowell that lost a yard.

As you can see from the clip, Manziel and Shanahan did a great selling job — had any of the Ravens bothered to notice. Johnny had his back turned to the game, waiting for Kyle to tell him to “Go!” (which he clearly did), and wide receivers coach Mike McDaniel gesticulated in the background for good measure. Then Johnny took off, free as can be, down the sideline, and Brian Hoyer hit him for a 39-yard gain to the Baltimore 23.

Alas, the play was called back — not because it was illegal (the referee didn’t mention anything about that), but because running back Terrance West wasn’t set before the snap. The Browns ended up punting and went on to lose 23-21; but think about it: How “great” would it have been, after the two weeks the NFL has had, for one of its teams to win a game by running a bogus play? After all, had West not messed up, Cleveland easily could have gotten three and possibly even seven points out of that possession.

Beyond that, though, there’s always been something a little cheesy about the play. It just doesn’t seem like something pro football players should be doing. That, certainly, was the point Bell was trying to make. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for coaches reviving long-lost offensive and defensive stratagems. But to pull a stunt like this . . . . Come on, Kyle. With all the rules favoring the offense nowadays, you’re running a Hideout Play? What’s next, having Manziel stick the ball under his jersey?

Some other things about the last Hideout/Sleeper Play that might interest you:

● Hall of Famer Weeb Ewbank made his NFL head-coaching debut with the Colts that day. The Hideout Play, in other words, was the housewarming gift he received from the Rams (the rats).

● The Baltimore cornerback who got caught sleeping was Don Shula. Years afterward, he said, “I remember thinking: Where in hell is [Van Brocklin] throwing the ball?”

● When the teams met again late in the season, the Colts gained a measure of revenge by upsetting the Rams 22-21. How sweet must that victory have been?

Butch Gibson, Hercules of the latter-day Giants

With the Giants coming to Washington for a Thursday night game, the Redskins are facing the dreaded Short Work Week. But at least they don’t have to game plan for Butch Gibson, the all-pro lineman for the Giants in the ’30s. According to a Ripley’s Believe It or Not cartoon that ran in newspapers, the 5-foot-9, 204-pound Gibson was so powerful he could “tear a deck of cards into SIXTEENTHS with his BARE HANDS!”

Try that sometime. (Heck, try tearing a deck in half.)

There was something else about Gibson that was unusual: He didn’t wear a typical leather helmet. “He wore one of those boxer’s headgears,” one of his opponents, Glenn Presnell of the Portsmouth Spartans, once told me. Butch probably wanted to protect himself against head slaps — which were legal in that era — and also avoid developing cauliflower ears (another hazard of the early years).

Here’s the classic Ripley’s cartoon:

The Jaguars’ 8 quarters from Hell

We can only hope the worst is over for the Jaguars, that they’ll never again be as Horrifically Bad as they were from the second half of Week 1 through the first half of Week 3. But with a rookie quarterback, Blake Bortles, now running the offense, you can never been 100 percent sure.

To summarize the Jags’ miseries:

They lost the second half to the Eagles, 34-0.

Then they lost the game to the Redskins, 41-10.

Then they lost the first half to the Colts, 30-0.

Add it all up and you get: Other Guys 105, Jacksonville 10 — a point differential of minus-95 in the equivalent of two games.

Any idea how many NFL teams have been outscored by that many points over a two-game span? Answer: one (since 1940, at least).

Indeed, I turned up just 10 in the last 75 seasons who were minus-80 or worse over a two-week stretch. (Wish I could broaden it to eight-quarter stretches like the Jaguars’, but the search engine at pro-football-reference.com doesn’t let me to do that.)

Anyway, here are the Terrible Ten:

WORST POINT DIFFERENTIAL IN A TWO-GAME STRETCH SINCE 1940

Games	Team (W-L-T)	PF	PA	Diff
1-2	1961 Raiders (2-12)	0	99	-99
1-2	1973 Saints (5-9)	10	102	-92
6-7	1966 Falcons (3-11)	10	100	-90
8-9	1949 N.Y. Bulldogs (1-10-1)	20	107	-87
13-14	2000 Browns (3-13)	7	92	-85
7-8	1966 Falcons (3-11)	20	105	-85
1-2	1989 Steelers (9-7)	10	92	-82
5-6	2009 Titans (8-8)	9	90	-81
1-2	1978 Colts (5-11)	0	80	-80
4-5	1966 Eagles (9-5)	17	97	-80

What’s fascinating is that several of these teams bounced back after hitting bottom. The ’89 Steelers actually made the playoffs — and beat the Oilers in the first round. In fact, they nearly made it to the AFC title game, dropping a 24-23 heartbreaker to the Broncos in the semifinals. (And Denver, of course, reached the Super Bowl.)

Also, the ’66 Eagles finished 9-5, and the ’09 Titans won eight of their last 10 with Vince Young at quarterback to end up 8-8.

FYI: The ’66 Falcons were a first-year expansion team, so they can almost be excused. Still, that was a wicked three weeks they had, getting blown out 44-7 by the 49ers, 56-3 by Vince Lombardi’s Packers and 49-17 by the Browns.

Finally, a word about the ’61 Raiders: After beginning the season with back-to-back humiliations of 55-0 (Oilers) and 44-0 (Chargers), they fired coach Eddie Erdelatz and promoted offensive assistant Marty Feldman, “whose only prior head coaching was for Valley Junior College and the Stanford Frosh,” the Oakland Tribune reported.

I know what you’re thinking. But, no, it’s not this Marty Feldman, the guy who played Igor in Young Frankenstein:

It’s this Marty Feldman:

Two years later, Al Davis arrived on the scene, and Pride and Poise quickly replaced 55-0 and 44-0. If only the Jaguars could find an Al Davis of their own.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Friday Night Fights III: Vai Sikahema vs. Jose Canseco, 2008

Nothing like a football-vs.-baseball brawl to get the juices flowing. Of course, when Vai Sikahema squared off with Jose Canseco on July 12, 2008, both were well past their playing days. Sikahema, a two-time Pro Bowl return man with the Cardinals, had been out of the NFL for 15 years and was working as a sportscaster in Philadelphia. He was 45. Canseco, the power-hitting poster boy for MLB’s steroid era, had played his last big-league game 7 years earlier. He was 44.

For their celebrity bout in Atlantic City, the two former jocks wore headgear. Sikahema, 5-foot-8, tipped the scales at 205 — 24 pounds above his football playing weight. Canseco, 6-4, came in at 248, giving him a huge size advantage. Vai, however, had had scores of amateur fights when he was younger, while Jose’s background was mostly in the martial arts.

So much for the preliminaries. We’re about ready for the introductions:

Sikahema said it all after the fight:

As for Canseco, when he his head had cleared — sort of — he conceded the bout had been a blunder:

Poor Jose. He was so discombobulated, he didn’t realize it was a left hook that knocked him down the first time, not an overhand right.

Two years later, a story by Doug Robinson in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News revisited the bout. Apparently it was Canseco’s people who thought it would be a good idea. When his agent called Sikahema out of the blue one day and proposed that the two meet in the ring, Vai tried to dissuade him.

“You don’t want to do this,” Sikahema continued. “Canseco is going to be in trouble.”

The agent was surprised. How big are you, he asked?

“5-8. 200.”

“Well, Canseco is 6-4, 250.”

“I’m telling you he’s in trouble. Does he know what a Tongan is?”

“No.”

“Well, he’ll find out. I come from a warrior culture and we fight till one of us is lying on the ground. I grew up boxing.”

“Canseco has five black belts.”

“OK, we’ll see.”

Canseco and his backers didn’t know that boxing was the reason Sikahema had come to this country in the first place. They didn’t know that his father had brought his family from Tonga to live in a hellish hot garage in Arizona so he could train his son to be a fighter. They didn’t know that he spent his youth boxing around the West, living out of the back of a pickup truck, and that he might have fulfilled his father’s plans for him if he hadn’t discovered something better. There was one other thing they didn’t know: His father had trained him specifically to fight big men, because he knew all his opponents would be bigger than his son. He had been taught to weather blows to get inside, then pummel the body and unload that left hook.

Like the one that felled Canseco.

2-14 has stopped meaning what it used to mean

Until recently, a 2-14 season was a pretty deep hole for an NFL team to escape from. (Anybody got a pulley?) In the last few years, though, we’ve seen some of the quickest turnarounds in league history. Let me refresh your memory:

● After going 2-14 in 2011, the Colts changed coaches (Jim Caldwell/Chuck Pagano) and quarterbacks (Peyton Manning*/Andrew Luck) and earned a wild-card berth with an 11-5 record.

● Following a 2-14 bottoming-out in 2012, the Chiefs changed coaches (Romeo Crennel/Andy Reid) and quarterbacks (Matt Cassel-Brady Quinn/Alex Smith) and also earned a wild-card berth with an 11-5 mark.

● And now the Texans, 2-14 a year ago, are off to a 2-0 start with their new coach (Bill O’Brien) and new quarterback (Ryan Fitzpatrick). Looking at their remaining schedule — which includes home-and-homes against the Jaguars and Titans and only four games against clubs that made the playoffs last season — an above-.500 record, and possibly even a division title, seems within reach. (Assuming, that is, they continue to stay reasonably healthy, which is always a dicey assumption.)

Compare this to the first 33 years of the 16-game schedule (1978-2010). In those three-plus decades, only two 2-14 teams — two of 23 — posted a winning record the next season and only one made the playoffs: the Patriots in the ’82 strike year, when they got help from a snowplow operator to beat the Dolphins 3-0 in a crucial game.

That, basically, is what it took for a 2-14 club to go playoff-ing the next season: a guy to get work-released from prison so he could steer a tractor across a snowy field and clear ground for the home kicker. Leigh Montville’s column in The Boston Globe the next day was priceless. It began thusly:

He started to become famous when he hit the 20-yard line.

He was not famous when he started the little John Deere 314 tractor, still not famous when he put the automatic shift into drive, but by the time Mark Henderson reached the 20, the frozen hearts at Schaefer Stadium realized what he was doing, and he was on his way. Absolute strangers would be asking Mark Henderson, 24, of Walpole to “sign my forehead” before yesterday afternoon was finished.

“What made you do what you did?” this sudden, surprise hero was asked after he had helped the New England Patriots to their 3-0 upset win over the Miami Dolphins. “What started you going?”

“I just heard a voice,” Mark Henderson said. “Someone shouted to me to get out there and clear the snow. And I just went.”

Alas, most 2-14 teams don’t reach the postseason the following year by divine intervention, aren’t rescued by a convicted burglar hearing voices. Indeed, many of them go right on being bad, even worse. Like these four:

2-14 TEAMS THAT WON TWO OR FEWER GAMES THE NEXT SEASON

Year	Team (W-L)	Changes Made	Next Year
2008	Rams (2-14)	New coach	1-15
1985	Bucs (2-14)	New quarterback	2-14
1981	Colts (2-14)	New coach, quarterback	0-8-1
1978	49ers (2-14)	New coach	2-14

Keep in mind, though, that the Niners had the happiest of endings. Bill Walsh took over as coach in ’79, drafted Joe Montana in the third round that year and the rest, as they say, is history. Other 2-14 clubs also went to the Super Bowl not long afterward — four seasons later for the ’81 and ’92 Patriots and five for the ’85 Bills.

Maybe that will happen for Colts, Chiefs and/or Texans in the next few years. But regardless, it’s comforting to know the worm has turned. No longer is a 2-14 season like beginning of a lengthy prison term (where if you’re lucky they might let you out on Sunday afternoons to drive a snow plow around an NFL field).

At least, not necessarily.

*Granted, Manning didn’t play in 2011 because of a neck injury; Curtis Painter did (mostly). But the decision was between Manning and Luck, not Painter and Luck.

WHAT 2-14 TEAMS DID THE FOLLOWING YEAR

	1978-10	2011-12
2-14 teams	23	4
Above .500 the next season	2	2
Playoffs the next season	1	2

Speaking of smallish players . . .

Among the hopefuls at the Giants’ 1938 training camp was Doug Locke, a 145-pound back from St. Louis College in San Antonio. (It’s known as St. Mary’s University now.) Locke didn’t make the team, but he did last long enough to pose for this classic photo with muscular guard Tarzan White. The cutline reads:

“Where do you want him?” asks strong man Tarzan White, 205-pound guard on the N.Y. Giants pro football team, as he prepares to heave the team’s lightest member, quarterback Doug Locke of Texas. Locke weighs a mere 145. The two men tried this fancy passing while the Giants trained at Pearl River, N.Y.

By the way, had Locke gone to St. Mary’s a little earlier, his coach would have been former West Point footballer Dwight Eisenhower. The future U.S. president held the job there for a year (1916) while stationed at Fort Sam Houston.

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

The whole 100 yards — and sometimes the end zones, too.