Monthly Archives: February 2015

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

[table width=”500px”]

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

[/table]

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

Six title games in 14 seasons

What does it mean, historically, to do what the Patriots have done in the 2000s: go to six Super Bowls in 14 seasons? How rare is a run like that?

In the free agency era (1993-), of course, no other team has come close to it. You’d have to go back to the ’70s and earlier to find clubs that had better stretches than New England’s. See for yourself:

SIX NFL TITLE GAMES IN THE SHORTEST SPAN OF YEARS

[table]

Team,Coach(es),Title Years,Total (W-L)

1950-55 Browns,Paul Brown,1950-51-52-53-54–55,6 in 6 years (3-3)

1960-67 Packers,Vince Lombardi,1960-61–62–65–66–67,6 in 8 years (5-1)

1956-63 Giants,Jim Lee Howell\, Allie Sherman,1956-58-59-61-62-63,6 in 8 years (1-5)

1933-41 Giants,Steve Owen,1933-34-35-38-39-41,6 in 9 years (2-4)

1936-45 Redskins,Ray Flaherty\, 2 others,1936-37-40-42-43-45,6 in 10 years (2-4)

1937-46 Bears,George Halas\, 2 others,1937-40–41-42-43–46,6 in 10 years (4-2)

1932-41 Bears,Ralph Jones\, George Halas,1932–33-34-37-40–41,6 in 10 years (4-2)

1929-39 Packers,Curly Lambeau,1929–30–31–36-38-39,6 in 11 years (5-1)

1966-77 Cowboys,Tom Landry,1966-67-70-71-75-77,6 in 12 years (2-4)

2001-14 Patriots,Bill Belichick,2001–03–04-07-11-14,6 in 14 years (3-2)

[/table]

(Note: Championship seasons are boldfaced. Also, the Packers’ 1929, ’30 and ’31 titles were based on their regular-season record. The first championship game wasn’t played until ’32.)

As you can see, the two Bears entries from the ’30s and ’40s overlap. If you combine them, Chicago went to nine title games in 15 years (1932-46). It’s the same with the two Giants entries from that period. Combine them, and the Giants played in eight championship games in 14 years.

As for the Cowboys, they didn’t go to the Super Bowl in 1966 and ’67, but they did reach the NFL championship game both seasons. That’s why I included them – because they the second-best team in pro football (with all due respect to the ’66 Chiefs and ’67 Raiders, champions of the AFL).*

At any rate, the Patriots’ accomplishment is quite a feat given the limitations of the salary cap and the comings and goings of players. Their closest competitors in recent decades are the 1986-98 Broncos (five Super Bowls in 13 years) and the 1981-94 49ers (five in 14 years).

*The 1967-78 Cowboys also went to six title games in 12 seasons.