Author Archives: Dan

Yet another Dynamic Debut by a Redskins QB

The Redskins haven’t exactly been synonymous with quality quarterbacking in the past two decades. Oh, some guys have had their moments — Gus Frerotte, Trent Green, Brad Johnson, Mark Brunell and, most recently, Robert Griffin III, to name a handful — but they never seem to last very long on the job.

For some reason, though, the Redskins have had quite a few quarterbacks — an amazing number, really — who’ve played exceptionally well their first time out of the box, either as a starter or in long relief. (Note the word “long,” as opposed to late-game mop-up duty.) It happened again Sunday, when Colt McCoy came off the bench in the second half to replace struggling Kirk Cousins and rallied Washington to a 19-17 win over Tennessee.

Actually, the trend goes back even farther – to the mid-’80s, with Jay Schroeder, Doug Williams and Mark Rypien. It’s a phenomenon that’s hard to explain, but it’s definitely real. Is there another NFL team that can boast a dozen QB debuts like these in recent decades?

12 TERRIFIC DEBUTS BY REDSKINS QUARTERBACKS IN THE LAST 30 YEARS

Date	Quarterback	Opponent	Att	Comp	Yds	TD	Int	Rating	Result
11-18-85	Jay Schroeder*	Giants	20	13	221	1	0	119.0	W, 23-21
9-13-87	Doug Williams*	Eagles	27	17	272	2	0	121.2	W, 34-24
9-25-88	Mark Rypien	Cardinals	41	26	303	3	1	99.9	L, 30-21
10-23-94	Gus Frerotte	Colts	32	17	226	2	0	96.6	W, 41-27
9-6-98	Trent Green*	Giants	25	17	208	2	0	120.1	L, 31-24
9-12-99	Brad Johnson	Cowboys	33	20	382	2	0	121.0	L, 41-35
10-6-02	Patrick Ramsey*	Titans	34	20	268	2	0	103.6	W, 31-14
12-6-07	Todd Collins*	Bears	20	15	224	2	0	144.6	W, 24-16
12-19-10	Rex Grossman	Cowboys	43	25	322	4	2	93.4	L, 33-30
9-9-12	Robert Griffin III	Saints	26	19	320	2	0	139.9	W, 40-32
12-16-12	Kirk Cousins	Browns	37	26	329	2	1	104.4	W, 38-21
10-19-14	Colt McCoy*	Titans	12	11	128	1	0	138.9	W, 19-17
Totals			350	226	3203	25	4	113.1	Won 8, Lost 4

*Came off the bench.

Note: Seven of the quarterbacks (Rypien, Frerotte, Johnson, Ramsey, Collins, Griffin, McCoy) had never thrown a pass for the Redskins before, and two others (Williams, Green) had thrown only one. The remaining three (Schroeder 8, Grossman 7, Cousins 11) had thrown a few more, but not many. In other words, there’s no fudging here. It was the first significant playing time for all 12.

And yet they pulled five games out of the fire in relief appearances, posted a group passer rating of 113.1 and had all sorts of other fine-looking stats. If the Redskins had had quarterbacking anywhere near this good in this period, they’d probably have more than three Lombardi Trophies on display.

Not all of their quarterbacks, of course, have made first impressions like these. For every Schroeder, there’s been a John Beck, for every McCoy a Jeff George. But still . . . .

Maybe the answer for the Redskins is to just sign a bunch of journeyman QBs every year, plug each of them in for a game, then throw ’em away and sign a bunch more. There never seems to be any shortage of them.

Wait, I just had another idea. Maybe the Redskins could get that guy in Office Space to hypnotize their quarterbacks into believing it’s their First Game as a Redskin every week.

Just a thought. Like they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.

What once was Sammy’s is now Peyton’s

Tracing the history of an NFL record can be more fun than a barrel of Statue of Liberty plays. That was certainly the case when I researched the mark Peyton Manning broke Sunday night for career touchdown passes.

The Broncos legend — who’s at 510 and counting — is the eighth quarterback to hold the record since 1943, when the Redskins’ Sammy Baugh took possession of it. All eight — Baugh, Bobby Layne, Y.A. Tittle, Johnny Unitas, Fran Tarkenton, Dan Marino, Brett Favre and now Peyton — are either in the Hall of Fame or guaranteed to get there. The NFL isn’t as stats-driven as baseball, but this mark is probably the closest it comes to the home run record in baseball. (Once upon a time, the Holy Grail was the career rushing record, but that was before rule changes reduced the running game to a quaint sideshow.)

The year Baugh broke the mark, statistics-keeping was much less exacting than it is now. In fact, the league didn’t even know who held the record, much less how many TD passes he’d thrown. As proof, I offer page 43 of the 1943 Record and Roster Manual. As you can see, the Top 3 under “Most Touchdown Passes” at the start of that season are Cecil Isbell with 59, Baugh with 56 and Arnie Herber with 51. (Isbell and Herber, two former Packers, had retired, though the latter would make a comeback in 1944.)

Unfortunately, the figures aren’t accurate. Subsequent research revealed that Herber was No. 1 with 66 (not 59), followed by Isbell with 61 (not 59) and Baugh with 57 (not 56). Also, Arnie was actually tied with Benny Friedman, who’d thrown 56 of his 66 TD passes from 1927 to ’31, before “official” records were kept. (Or unkept. As I said, there were lots of mistakes that weren’t caught until later.)

Anyway, when Baugh tossed No. 67, there was no mention of the record in the newspapers. Instead, sportswriters gushed about another mark he broke that afternoon — by throwing for six scores in a 48-10 bludgeoning of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Thus, the headline in the next day’s Brooklyn Eagle looked like this:

“All the stunned crowd could see,” the Eagle’s Harold C. Burr wrote, “was Bob Seymour, Andy Farkas, Wilbur Moore and [Joe] Aguirre . . . taking all sorts of passes — long, short, high and low, leisurely and hurried from the sharpshooter behind the Redskin[s] line, who calmly looked over the field and picked out the man in the clear. Once they gathered in the leather, over their head, waist high or off their shoetops, on the gallop or standing waiting, the receivers whirled away from the Dodger[s] secondary like autumn leaves.”

As terrific as Manning was against the 49ers — and he carved them up to the tune of 318 yards and four touchdowns — he didn’t match Baugh’s 376 yards and six TDs against the Dodgers. So far, nobody who’s broken the record has had a game like that.

By 1962, when the Steelers’ Layne passed Baugh’s mark of 187 by throwing his 188^th and 189^th in a 30-28 win over the Cowboys, there was a little more awareness of these career achievements. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s headline:

“Layne and the immortal Sammy Baugh of the Washington Redskins had been tied for most TD passes at 187,” Jack Sell reported. “Slingin’ Sam finished his career in 1952.

“The tiebreaker came on a beautiful 38-yard play with Buddy Dial on the receiving end. It not only smashed the record but put Rooney U. ahead to stay in the second quarter.”

There wasn’t much exulting on Layne’s part, though. He’d had to leave the game briefly in the first quarter after he “got slugged,” he said, but didn’t offer any other details about the incident. [At 36 — and playing his final season — Bobby still didn’t wear a facemask.] It should have been one of his more satisfying moments, coming as it did in Dallas, where he’d played his high school ball. The game was even stopped so he could be presented with the ball. But his basic reaction was: “It warn’t nothing. . . . It didn’t feel a damn bit different from any other touchdown pass I’ve thrown.”

(Yes, he said “warn’t.”)

Less than 15 months later, in December 1963, the Giants’ Tittle went shooting by Layne’s mark of 197. He, too, did it against the Cowboys at the Cotton Bowl. (Meaning Dallas coach Tom Landry bore witness to both Layne and Tittle breaking the record. Bet he was thrilled.)

The game took place just nine days after the Kennedy Assassination. (How weird must it have been to play in Dallas that close to the tragedy?) TD No. 198 — a 17-yarder to Del Shofner with five minutes left — gave the Giants the victory, 34-27. The pass was released, The Associated Press noted dramatically, “just as the old boy was being slammed to the ground.”

Here’s what’s really funny: The New York Times was so nonchalant about the mark that reporter William N. Wallace didn’t mention it until the seventh paragraph of his story. And when he did mention it, it was only after mentioning first that “Don Chandler . . . kicked a 53-yard field goal for New York today. It was the longest in Giant[s] history and tied the third-longest kick listed in the NFL record book. [Chandler’s] kicking was a major contribution to the Giant[s] victory. So were two touchdown passes by Y.A. Tittle, who thereby set a record. The 37-year-old quarterback has thrown more touchdown passes than anyone else in the 43-year-old league — 197. Bobby Layne held the old mark of 196.”

Talk about burying the lead.

But then, there was something unusual about most of these history-making performances. For instance, when the Colts’ Unitas topped Tittle’s mark of 212 in 1966, the opposing quarterback was the Vikings’ Tarkenton — who in ’75 would break Johnny U.’s record of 290. What are the odds of that?

And when the Dolphins’ Marino blew by Scramblin’ Fran’s mark of 342 in 1995, the opposing quarterback was the Colts’ Jim Harbaugh — the same Jim Harbaugh who, as coach of the 49ers, got to admire Manning’s handiwork up close Sunday night. When he wasn’t gnashing his teeth, that is.

(A couple of other things also made Marino’s feat unusual. One, he had the same coach Unitas did in ’66: Don Shula. And two, he was the only one of the eight QBs who didn’t come away with a victory. Despite his four touchdown passes, which rallied his team from a 24-0 deficit, Miami lost, 36-28.)

Only Favre’s record day was utterly ordinary, devoid of strangeness or coincidence. When the Packers icon threw for his 421^st TD to overtake Marino in 2007, it was simply a case of catching the Vikings in a blitz and whipping a 16-yard pass to Greg Jennings on a slant. The middle had been vacated by the safety. Jennings, covered by the nickel back, had no trouble getting open. It couldn’t have been much easier.

And now we have Manning replacing Favre (508) atop the all-time list, firing for one, two, three, four scores to lead Denver to a 42-17 win. You may have noticed, too, that there was plenty of build-up before the game, exhaustive discussion of the record during it and the requisite amount of whoopee when the mark finally fell.

The NFL has come a long way from 1943 — from the days when Sammy Baugh, its most famous player, could break a major record and no one would be aware of it. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game story in Monday’s Denver Post mentioned Manning’s accomplishment before the seventh paragraph.

Russell Wilson, making some history

In today’s 28-26 loss to the Rams, the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson became the first NFL quarterback to throw for 300 yards and rush for 100 in the same game. Pretty cool (except for the defeat, of course).

You know what’s almost as cool? The QB who came closest before Wilson was Browns Hall of Famer Otto Graham, and the game Graham nearly did it in was the 1950 title game. Check out the box score for yourself. Otto had 298 yards passing and 99 rushing, which left him just 3 yards short.

This is from Harry Jones’ story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer the next day:

At a locker nearby, Graham was stripping off his jersey. It was plain to see that he had taken a physical beating from the huge Los Angeles linemen who had knocked him down repeatedly. His face displayed cuts and bruises, and he limped on a twisted knee.

“Somebody hit me in the back toward the end of the first half,” Otto said. “I thought I was going to fold up right there. My knee buckled, but luckily it didn’t stiffen up. It’s just getting stiff now. It’ll probably be plenty sore tomorrow.”

If you’re interested in a visual, here’s Graham scrambling for a 22-yard gain to the Rams 31:

Just a tremendous player — as is Wilson.

QBS WHO CAME CLOSEST TO 300 YARDS PASSING, 100 RUSHING IN SAME GAME

Date	Quarterback, Team	Opponent	Pass	Rush	Missed By
12-24-50	Otto Graham, Browns	Rams	298	99	3
12-18-89	Randall Cunningham, Eagles*	Saints	306	92	8
10-9-11	Michael Vick, Eagles*	Bills	315	90	10
12-9-12	Cam Newton, Panthers	Falcons	287	116	13
10-8-00	Rich Gannon, Raiders	49ers	310	85	15
10-12-14	Cam Newton, Panthers	Bengals	284	107	16
10-20-13	Robert Griffin III, Redskins	Bears	298	84	18
11-3-13	Terrell Pryor, Raiders*	Eagles	288	94	18
11-15-10	Michael Vick, Eagles	Redskins	333	80	20

*Lost game.

NFL punters: To infinity and beyond

Since they just let Ray Guy into the Hall of Fame — and since the name of the game, after all, is football — why don’t we kick around the subject of punting for a while? So much has been made in recent years about the increasing infallibility of kickers, but punters, in my mind, have become just as proficient. It just doesn’t show up, in bright lights, on the scoreboard.

What steered me onto this topic was my growing awareness of Tress Way, the Redskins’ undrafted rookie from Oklahoma, who has been booting the bejabbers out of the ball. Through

Rookie Tress Way

six games, Way is averaging a league-leading 51.2 yards with a 41.9 net. That first figure, if it holds up, would be second best in NFL history, behind only Sammy Baugh’s 51.4 in 1940 (which was inflated by a fair number of quick kicks).

Way, moreover, has been remarkably consistent, averaging 47 yards or better in each of the first six games. Only three other punters since 1960 have done that — Shane Lechler (twice), Donnie Jones and Mat McBriar.

It’s stunning, really, how the performance of punters has improved in the past decade. The 2007 season was the turning point. That was the first time a punter had a net average of 40 yards for a full season — Lechler and Andy Lee both did, in fact — and seven that year had a gross average of 45 or more. Since then, the numbers have just gone up and up.

Consider: From 1940 (when the league first started keeping the stat) to 2006, an NFL/AFL punter averaged 45 yards gross for a season exactly 100 times (minimum: 20 punts). In the seven-year stretch from 2007 to 2013, it happened almost as often: 95 times. Two seasons ago, 21 punters averaged 45 yards gross and 15 averaged 40 yards net. That’s ridiculous — as the following chart shows.

NFL PUNTING PERFORMANCE, 1940-2013

Years	45 Gross	40 Net
1940-49	9	NA
1950-59	8	NA
1960-69	25	NA
1970-79	5	NA
1980-89	6	NA
1990-99	30	1*
2000-09	45	13
2010-13	67	42
2014	14	13

*Punted for only seven games. Note: Net average wasn’t computed until 1991.

Heck, the Colts’ Pat McAfee is netting 44.8 yards this season. If that were merely his gross average, It would be good enough to lead the league every year from 1974 to 1980.

There are all sorts of reasons why punters are kicking the ball to the moon these days. For one thing, some of them are bigger than their predecessors. (Let’s not forget: 5-foot-9, 168-pound quarterback Eddie LeBaron doubled as a punter for the Redskins in the ’50s.)

As Danny Smith, the Steelers’ special teams coach, once told me, “When you’ve got a big, strong guy, their misses aren’t [usually] terrible punts. They don’t kill you. Sometimes, if you have little guys — and everybody misses ’em — their misses can hurt you, field position-wise.”

There’s also been an influx of Australian punters, guys like McBriar and Darren Bennett, both of whom made the Pro Bowl, as well as Sav Rocca and others. “That [Australian rules] game is a kicking game,” Smith said. “You’ve got guys kicking on the run, booting the ball from weird positions, kicking under pressure . . . and developing tremendous leg strength. Then they get over here, of course, and it’s all about perfect drops and [staying] stationary, that kind of thing.”

Then, too, coaches seem increasingly inclined to let punters boot the ball as far as they can, instead of focusing on hang time or trying to angle it one way or another. Throw in refinements in technique, which are always being made, and you have Tress Way, a punter who averaged 44 yards for his college career, averaging 51.2 in his first six games as a pro — and nobody blinking an eye.

Sources: pro-football-reference.com, NFL.com.

Adding fatality to injury

You might say the Baltimore Colts had a rough day on Oct. 18, 1953. The Packers pounded them 37-14 in Green Bay, but that was just the beginning. After the Colts’ plane returned home, an Air Force ambulance whisked three injured players — linebacker Bill Pellington, tackle Ernie Blandin and quarterback Dick Flowers — to Union Memorial Hospital. Or rather, it tried to.

The ambulance was racing through the streets of the city “with the siren wide open” just before midnight — according to Dr. Erwin Mayer, the team physician, who was along the ride — when it went through a red light and collided with a car at the intersection of St. Paul and Centre streets. The car “spun over several times, hurtling against [a man] who had been standing on the corner,” The Associated Press reported.

Unbelievable. The bystander — a 26-year-old Korean War veteran, Stuart Barrish — was “pinned against a building” and killed, the story said. “Nobody else was hurt.” (Actually, that last detail turned out to be inaccurate. It came out later in the Baltimore Sun that Blandin, who already had a fractured nose from the Packers game, “suffered an injury in the collision of the ambulance . . . with another automobile, spraining his arm.”)

The case dragged out in the courts for two months. A grand jury had refused to indict either of the drivers on a manslaughter charge, and the ambulance driver — an Air Force airman — had been acquitted of reckless driving. But the driver of the car had been found guilty of the lesser charge. He appealed his three-month jail sentence and $1,000 fine and, four days before Christmas, a Criminal Court judge overturned it.

“After listening to testimony,” AP reported, Judge James K. Cullen “said the case did not represent the type of emergency covered by law, and that there was ‘no evidence whatsoever’ that the ambulance had given sufficient siren warnings.’”

One last note: Flowers, a rookie from Northwestern, was the most seriously injured of the players, suffering a torn knee ligament in “a rough-and-tumble game which saw several players carried off the field,” the United Press said. In a brief relief appearance, he completed 2 of 4 passes for 18 yards.

It was the only game of his NFL career.

Friday Night Fights VII: Dick the Bruiser vs. Ivan Rasputin, 1955

Dick Afflis isn’t much remembered as a football player. A muscular 6-foot, 251-pound lineman, he spent four seasons with the Packers in the early ’50s, but the franchise was nigh invisible in those days. It wasn’t until Vince Lombardi arrived in 1959 that Green Bay got back on the radar screen.

After leaving the NFL, though, Afflis became famed in the Midwest as a wrestler — Dick the Bruiser. In fact, David Letterman, who grew up in Indianapolis, named his television show’s band “The World’s Most Dangerous Band” in homage to The Bruiser, who billed himself as “The World’s Most Dangerous Wrestler.” Afflis even won the heavyweight title — or one of them, anyway. (Of course, who didn’t?)

Jim Murray, the Los Angeles Times columnist, probably had the best description of him. “Combine the worst aspects of the Japanese fruit fly, the rose aphid, rabies or the giant spider, together with the best of Benito Mussolini, and you get an idea what kind of man Dick Afflis is,” he wrote. “. . . He wrestles for a living and hates for fun. He looks as if he eats people. He’s the kind of guy who would put Albert Schweitzer adrift in a lifeboat, then poke a hole in his canteen.”

One of Afflis’ more memorable episodes came in 1963, when he started a brawl in a Detroit bar owned by Alex Karras, the Lions’ Pro Bowl defensive tackle. Karras, who had just been suspended for betting on NFL games, was slated to wrestle Dick the Bruiser five days later. (Alex, it seems, had antagonized him by referring to him in a newspaper story as a journeyman football player. Then again, maybe they were just trying to build up the gate.)

This is from a book Bob O’Donnell and I wrote, The Pro Football Chronicle:

[Afflis] no sooner walked in the door than the punches started flying. The first two policemen arrived in no time, but they weren’t a match for the 6-foot, 250-pounder. One suffered a broken wrist, the other a torn elbow ligament. (Neither knew how to counter a body slam.)

Six more cops arrived, and only then was The Bruiser subdued. Nearby, a television set and vending machine lay in ruins. . . . They had to cuff his hands and feet.

Afflis also sustained a five-stitch cut under his left eye, which he attributed to a pool cue. He was fined $400 for his misbehavior, but the money wound up being refunded. Read the crazy explanation here.

When Afflis and Karras met in the ring, the wrestling pro — to no one’s surprise — pinned the amateur in 11 minutes, 21 seconds. Alex left the arena with teeth marks in his bicep. Said The Bruiser: “Football players should leave wrestling to wrestlers and go back to their betting.”

In tonight’s bout, Afflis takes on Ivan Rasputin, a.k.a. “The Mad Russian.” The date is June 10, 1955. The place is the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Afflis died in 1991 at 62. According to the obituary that ran in the Chicago Tribune, he “had been weightlifting at home [in Largo, Fla.] and ruptured a blood vessel in his esophagus.” His gravel voice, the Tribune said, was “the result of a football injury to the larynx,” but his wrestling career also took its toll.

“He broke both ankles, his nose and other bones,” the Tribune reported. “‘I’ve got so many stitches on my head that it looks like a baseball,’ he once bragged.”

For Rex Ryan’s eyes only

That was a tough way for the Jets to lose Thursday night — on a Hail Mary 58-yard field goal try by Nick Folk that failed to clear the big paw of Patriots defensive tackle Chris Jones. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rex Ryan, assuming he could get himself to sleep afterward, had a dream like this:

For the record, that’s one, two, three, four 1936 Green Bay Packers knocking through 50-yarders. This is from a promotional video filmed in Hollywood after the Packers beat the Boston Redskins to win the NFL title. No. 7 is Hall of Fame fullback Clarke Hinkle, No. 57 is tackle Ade Schwammel, No. 52 is guard Tiny Engebretsen and No. 59 is center Frank Butler. (I’m going by the all-time uniform numbers listed in the Packers’ 2014 media guide. It’s also possible No. 59 is tackle Ernie Smith, who did most of their kicking.)

As you can see, all of them are good-sized guys. Teams back then liked kickers with “a heavy leg.” They figured it helped get more distance. Note, too, the white footballs — which were used for night games because they were more visible and were used in this instance for the same reason, so the camera could pick them up in the distance.

Imagine having four players on your team capable of booting a 50-yarder. Of course, it was more of a kicking game in those days, so it was a skill you developed if you had the ability. It wasn’t unusual for a club to rotate several kickers — depending, perhaps, on the distance of the kick. Some kickers were better on the shorter ones, some were better on the longer ones.

Why today’s NFL players aren’t necessarily All That

The NFL has done a great job of making the past disappear. It’s accomplished this in two main ways: (1.) by lengthening the season from 11 games in the early ’40s to 16 now; and (2.) by tilting the rules, time after time, in favor of the offense. When you look at statistics from the ’60s and earlier, even the numbers put up by Hall of Famers, the players often seem diminished, not as good as the current crop.

Let’s see if I can disabuse you of that notion. In fact, why don’t I start here:

Only seven quarterbacks have thrown 40 touchdown passes in a season, all since 1984. Would it surprise you to learn that five QBs in the pre-merger days (1920-69) threw 40 TD passes in a 16-game stretch? The Fab Five:

5 PRE-MERGER QUARTERBACKS WHO THREW FOR 40 TDS IN 16 GAMES

Years (Games)	Quarterback, Team	TD
1961 (10)-62 (6)	George Blanda, Oilers (AFL)	47
1962 (8)-63 (8)	Y.A. Tittle, Giants	47
1943 (11*)-44 (5)	Sid Luckman, Bears	44
1959 (13*)-60 (3)	Johnny Unitas, Colts	40
1968 (2*)-69 (14)	Daryle Lamonica, Raiders (AFL)	40

*title game or playoffs included

Tittle’s and Blanda’s totals (47) would put them behind only Peyton Manning (55, 49), Tom Brady (50) and Dan Marino (48) on the single-season list. Nobody ever points this out, though, because the NFL prefers to push the idea – sometimes illusory – that the game, and especially the players, have never been better.

Now let’s look at the best 16-game stretches for some of the running backs and receivers of yesteryear.

BEST 16-GAME STRETCHES FOR PRE-MERGER RUNNING BACKS

Years (Games)	Running Back, Team	Att	Yds	Avg	TD
1962 (1)-63 (14)-64(1)	Jim Brown, Browns	336	2,087	6.2	16
1958 (12)-59 (4)	Jim Brown, Browns	362	1,964	5.4	19
1961 (3)-62 (13)	Jim Taylor, Packers	309	1,764	5.7	21

Note: Brown also had a 16-game stretch in 1964 (four games, counting the title game) and ’65 (12) in which he rushed for 1,855 yards, in case you’re wondering how great he really was. (The NFL record for a season, of course, is 2,105 by the Rams’ Eric Dickerson in 1984.)

BEST 16-GAME STRETCHES FOR PRE-MERGER RECEIVERS

Years (Games)	Receiver, Team	Rec	Yds	Avg	TD
1961 (14)-62 (2)	Charley Hennigan, Oilers (AFL)	100	2,093	20.9	16
1963 (3)-64 (13)	Art Powell, Raiders (AFL)	95	1,772	18.7	20
1966 (1)-67 (14)-68 (1)	Don Maynard, Jets (AFL)	85	1,766	20.8	14
1965 (11)-66 (5)	Lance Alworth, Chargers (AFL)	84	1,760	21.0	16
1941 (6)-42 (10)	Don Hutson, Packers	109	1,648	15.1	24
1960 (12)-61 (4)	Raymond Berry, Colts	98	1,639	16.7	10

Note: Five of the six yardage totals would be good enough to crack the single-season Top 10, and Hennigan’s (2,093) is well above the record held by the Lions’ Calvin Johnson (1,964 in 2012).

Yes, Charley, Maynard, Powell and Alworth all played in the AFL, which didn’t have the depth of the NFL (at least, not for the first five or six years). And yes, Hutson’s 1942 season was a war year (though the talent wasn’t nearly as depleted as it would be later on). But most of these guys, remember, are Hall of Famers. I just wanted to give you a sense of how much better their numbers would have been if their seasons had been longer — never mind if they’d been able to play under today’s rules.

Source: pro-football-reference

Boston Patriots 43, Oakland Raiders 43

It was nice of the Bengals and Panthers to battle to a 37-37 tie Sunday — the highest-scoring draw in the overtime era (1974-). It makes it easier to segue into this next post — about the highest-scoring tie in all of NFL/AFL history.

It took place 50 years ago today at Fenway Park, where the Patriots, then known as the Boston Patriots, played their home games from 1963 to ’68. The final score was Pats 43, Raiders, 43, and unlike today, when indifference, if not disappointment, tends to accompany these games, The Boston Globe called it “the most exciting pro football game in Boston history.” (Of course, there hadn’t been that many pro football games in Boston history at that point, but it’s the thought that counts.)

Part of the reason the paper felt this way was that the Patriots rallied from a 34-14 deficit midway through the third quarter to take the lead, 43-40, with 47 seconds left. The go-ahead score was set up by a play that went like this (according to the Globe’s John Ahern):

[Patriots quarterback Babe] Parilli was back on the Boston 8, and he threw to Jimmy Colclough at midfield. Colclough ran about eight yards with the ball before lateralling off to Gino Cappelletti, who went about five. Just as he was stopped he tossed it to Ron Burton, who got down to the Raiders 31.

That bit of razzle-dazzle led to an 11-yard TD pass from Parilli to running back Larry Garron that put the Patriots up by three. But in the final seconds — there was no OT, remember — the Raiders, aided by a pass-interference penalty at the Boston 30, moved close enough for Mike Mercer to kick the 38-yard field goal that tied it.

It was, as Ahearn wrote, “the dizziest game this old town has seen in years.” Parilli finished with 422 passing yards, which stood as the franchise record for 30 years (until Drew Bledsoe broke it with 426 in 1994). He and Cotton Davidson, the Raiders QB, each threw for four TDs. Also, it was only the fifth time in NFL/AFL history that both teams had scored in the 40s.

What’s particularly amusing is that three years earlier, on the very same field, the baseball All-Star Game had been called because of rain after nine innings with the score tied 1-1. So for a long time — until the 2002 debacle, when the American and National leagues ran out of pitchers — Fenway Park was the site of the highest scoring tie in pro football history and the only tie in All-Star Game history.

Ahern’s only misgiving about the game was that the Patriots had to “settle for a tie instead of a victory. Twice — in 1961 and 1962 — ties have cost the team the Eastern championship. And last year a tie caused a tie [in the standings] at season’s end [requiring a playoff with the Bills that the Pats won, 26-8].”

Fortunately for the Patriots, this tie didn’t end up costing them. In the final week, they still had a chance to go to the AFL title game. Alas, they lost at home to the Bills (who did go — and beat the Chargers). Half a century later, about all that’s remembered of that 10-3-1 Patriots season is their dizzy 43-43 tie with the Raiders, played under the lights at Fenway on a Friday night.

An old(er) back learns some new tricks

Ahmad Bradshaw’s days as a 1,000-yard rusher are probably behind him. He’s what you might call a complementary back now, rotating with Trent Richardson and giving the Colts, at the age of 28, A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That. It’s the Little Bit of That we’ll be discussing today.

Suddenly, Bradshaw, never much of a receiving threat before, has started catching touchdown passes. He had three TD receptions in his first seven NFL seasons; he has five in the first six games of 2014. That’s as many as any running back has had through six games since 1960. In fact, it’s been 31 years since a back got off to this good a start (Joe Cribbs, Bills). Two of the other backs since ’60 with five TD catches in the first six games: Hall of Famers Gale Sayers (1965) and Lenny Moore (1961).

Clearly, Andrew Luck has faith in Bradshaw as a receiver, because he keeps throwing him the ball in the red zone. (The five touchdowns have measured 1, 7, 6, 15 and 5 yards.) And if Luck keeps throwing him the ball in the red zone, Ahmad might well break the modern record for TD catches in a season by a running back — 9, shared by four players.

MOST TOUCHDOWN CATCHES IN A SEASON BY A RUNNING BACK SINCE 1932

Year	Running Back,Team	Rec	Yds	Avg	TD
1991	Leroy Hoard, Browns	48	567	11.8	9
1975	Chuck Foreman, Vikings	73	691	9.5	9
1964	Bill Brown, Vikings	48	703	14.6	9
1961	Billy Cannon, Oilers (AFL)	43	586	13.6	9
1960	Lenny Moore, Colts	45	936	20.8	9
2000	Marshall Faulk, Rams	81	830	10.2	8
1986	Gary Anderson, Chargers	80	871	10.9	8
1966	Dan Reeves, Cowboys	41	557	13.6	8
1949	Gene Roberts, Giants	35	711	20.3	8

Always fun to see Dan Reeves’ name pop up in a chart, isn’t it? “Choo-Choo” Roberts, by the way, had one of the great forgotten seasons in ’49 for a 6-6 Giants team. He finished fourth in the league in both rushing yards (634) and receiving yards (711, including two 200-yard games) and scored 17 touchdowns, one shy of Steve Van Buren’s mark (since erased).

I said “modern record” earlier because Hall of Famer Johnny Blood caught 10 for the Packers in 1931, the year before they began keeping Official Statistics. Blood was a hybrid back like Lenny Moore — or, more recently, the Seahawks’ Percy Harvin. He’d line up either in the backfield or on the flank (where his speed could be put to optimum use). Just a dangerous, dangerous receiver. Indeed, he had four scoring grabs of 40 yards or longer that year.

Let’s see Ahmad Bradshaw top that.

Postscript: There are a million Blood stories. Some are even true. He was one of pro football’s all-time characters, the kind of guy who didn’t waste a minute of his life. If you want to read more about him, check out this classic piece Gerald Holland wrote for Sports Illustrated in 1963.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

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