Category Archives: 1950s

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

[table]

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

[/table]

*Lost game.

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.”

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

[table width=”400px”]

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

[/table]

*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

[table width=”550px”]

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

[/table]

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

[table width=”550px”]

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

[/table]

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

Great moments in NFL fandom

We had an NFL first in Week 5. A Lions fan tried to discombobulate the Bills by shining a green laser pointer into the eyes of quarterback Kyle Orton and holder Colton Schmidt, but — and this might be the best part — he got caught because he made the mistake of tweeting about it (something that never happens in Mickey Spillane novels).

Now Mark Beslach will have to pay a fine for disorderly conduct, and he’s been banned from Ford Field for all eternity. Of course, “all eternity” means different things to different people. To somebody from Detroit, the Lions’ 2008 season, when they became the only team in league history to go 0-16, might qualify as “all eternity.”

Fans have been trying to insert themselves into the fray for as the NFL has been blowing up footballs. Minersville Field in Pottsville, Pa., home of the Maroons, was a particularly inhospitable place to play. Don Thompson, a guard for the Los Angeles Buccaneers in 1926, once told the Los Angeles Times, “The spectators stood on the sidelines and threw chunks of coal at us through the entire contest.”

Here’s the first known video of a fan running on the field and interrupting the game. It wasn’t just any game, either. It was the 1958 championship game between the Colts and Giants — the famed Sudden Death Game won by Baltimore, 23-17. It also wasn’t just any fan. It was a business manager for NBC News, Stan Rotkiewicz, who on Sundays would stand on the sideline and keep statistics for the network.

Impulse didn’t spur Rotkiewicz’s mad dash, though. Technical Difficulties did. Late in the game, some of the crowd had come down on the field, and somebody “behind the end zone had kicked [NBC’s] cable and unplugged America,” Mark Bowden writes in The Best Game Ever. The Colts were at the New York 8, about to push across the winning score, but fans at home had no picture on their TV screens.

So the business manager caused a brief — and necessary — delay by doing this:

By the time police escorted him off the field, technicians had identified the problem and reconnected the cable. Rotkiewicz’s heroics kept millions from missing the last three plays, capped by fullback Alan Ameche’s 1-yard touchdown run.

Then there was the Baltimore fan who ran on the field and snatched the ball during a Colts-Dolphins game in 1971. It might have been Colts linebacker Mike Curtis’ most famous forced fumble:

Ball, hat, fan — everything went flying. Any list of the NFL’s Greatest Hits has to include this one. Curtis had no qualms about it, either, no Pulverizer’s Remorse. Decades later he told The Associated Press: “We were trying to win a football game, trying to get to the playoffs, and this guy [Don Ennis] shows up on the football field. My intention was to get him out of there as quick as possible. Usually they run around for 15 or 20 minutes, and you can lose concentration and momentum.

“If somebody busts into my office uninvited, it’s trespassing. Just because it’s a stadium, that’s no different.”

Can’t fault that logic.

Finally, there was this episode in Denver in 1965, one of my personal favorites:

Fan fined for throwing ice cubes

That’s right, a Broncos fan was fined $50 for throwing ice cubes at the visiting Chiefs.

From Ice Cube Man to Laser Guy. What a glorious tradition.

Paul Hornung’s forgotten streak

On this day in 1961, Paul Hornung did something that hasn’t been done since — and probably won’t be done again. The Hall of Fame running back, who doubled as a kicker, scored the Packers’ first 31 points in a 45-7 beatdown of the Colts. The highlights of his epic performance:

That was from a ’70s game show, by the way, hosted by Dick Enberg called “Sports Challenge.” The episode you were watching pitted three Packers (Hornung, offensive guard Jerry Kramer and Hall of Fame defensive end Willie Davis) against a team of Dallas Cowboys (quarterbacks Don Meredith and Eddie LeBaron and receiver Frank Clarke). All of them were retired by then (1972, I’m guessing).

Many of the questions were easy — nobody wanted to make the contestants look bad — but it was still funny to see how little some of them knew about the history of their own sports, never mind other sports. (Even recent history . . . like the previous season.)

But getting back to Hornung, he was one of the last of a breed: an offensive star who also kicked. There were a plenty of them in pro football’s first few decades, when rosters were smaller and players had to multitask. By the late ’50s, though, you started to see more and more kicking specialists, guys who did nothing else (except maybe punt, like the 49ers’ Tommy Davis). Paul managed to hold out as a two-way threat through the 1964 season, at which point coach Vince Lombardi replaced him with Don Chandler.

As you saw in the clip, Hornung could do it all — run, catch, kick and, because he’d been a quarterback at Notre Dame, even throw the occasional option pass. (That was the “run-pass option” Enberg referred to on the last touchdown, when Paul decided to run.) As a result, he scored tons of points for those great Packers teams — a record 176 in 12 games in 1960 (since topped only by LaDainian Tomlinson’s 186 in 16 games for the Chargers in 2006), 146 the next season (also in 12 games) and 31 straight that afternoon against the Colts (whose defense, let’s not forget, featured Hall of Fame linemen Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan).

Hornung’s consecutive-points streak was actually 32, because he’d booted the PAT after Green Bay’s final score the previous week. Think about it: What would it take for somebody to do that today? Answer: Kick 11 field goals — with no intervening touchdowns or safeties. It’s possible, certainly, but nobody has come close to pulling it off. In 2007, for instance, the Bengals’ Shayne Graham booted seven field goals to score all of his team’s points in a 21-7 win over the Ravens. But that was pretty much the extent of his streak (22, counting a point-after the game before).

Indeed, I’ve come across just five examples since World War II of players scoring 20 or more points in a game and having it be all the points their club scored. The list:

PLAYERS WHO SCORED ALL OF THEIR TEAM’S POINTS IN A GAME (20+)*

[table]

Date,Player\, Team,Opponent,Pts,How he scored

11-19-50,RB Doak Walker\, Lions,Packers,24,3 TD catches\, 3 PAT\, 1 FG

11-11-07,K Shayne Graham\, Bengals,Ravens,21,7 field goals

11-18-96,K Chris Boniol\, Cowboys,Packers,21,7 field goals

12-8-62,FB Cookie Gilchrist\, Bills (AFL),N.Y. Titans,20, 2 TD runs\, 2 PAT\, 2 FG

12-1-46,FB Ted Fritsch\, Packers,Redskins,20,3 TD runs\, 2 PAT

[/table]

*Since World War II.

(People forget what a talent Gilchrist was. Besides leading the league in rushing that season with 1,096 yards, he kicked eight field goals and 14 extra points.)

Still, the record for most consecutive points doesn’t belong to Hornung. No, it’s the property of another Hall of Famer, Chicago Cardinals back Ernie Nevers, who scored 59 straight over five days (Sunday/Thanksgiving Day) in 1929 — 19 vs. the Dayton Triangles and 40 vs. the Bears. (The latter, incidentally, remains the mark for points in a game.

Several other consecutive-points streaks in the ’20s also were longer than Hornung’s. Nevers had another lengthy streak — 47 points — in 1926, Hall of Famer Paddy Driscoll of the Cardinals scored at least 44 straight (there’s some uncertainty) in ’23 and Hank Gillo of the Racine (Wis.) Legion had a 43-point run in ’24.

Then there’s the streak put together by Ralph Kercheval of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1934 and ’35. That one might be the most remarkable of all. Over a span of eight games in those two seasons, Kercheval, a running back-kicker, scored every one of the Dodgers’ points — all, uh, 34. (Brooklyn didn’t exactly have a dynamic offense.) He extended his run to 40 the next week with two field goals, but then teammate Red Franklin ended it with a rushing touchdown. Hard as it is to believe — even for those low-scoring times — Kercheval’s streak (three touchdowns, six field goals, 4 PATs) lasted almost a year. It began Oct. 28, 1934 and ended Oct. 6, 1935.

It’s easy to cast aspersions on the early NFL. It was, after all, a much different game. But there’s one thing players did back then that today’s heroes will never match: score large numbers of points consecutively.

Hey, it’s something. One last screengrab:

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Michael Phelps and Bobby Layne

Michael Phelps’ second DUI arrest the other day got me thinking about Hall of Fame quarterback Bobby Layne, another member of the Drinking and Driving Club – and a classic example of how much attitudes toward such behavior have changed. In the ’50s and ’60s, when Layne was weaving down the road, an athlete getting pulled over was more likely to elicit eye rolls from fans than the condemnation being directed at Our Most Famous Swimmer. A different time, to say the least.

Like Phelps, Layne had multiple vehicular episodes — all coming not in his youth but toward the end of his career, when he was one of the most high-profile players in the NFL. Indeed, they seemed to happen every other year:

● A drunk driving arrest in Detroit in 1957, just before the season got underway.

● Another DUI arrest in Austin, Texas, after a 1959 exhibition game.

● And finally, an incident late in the ’61 season in which he drove into a stopped street car in Pittsburgh.

Nothing came of any of these screw-ups. Not a blessed thing. Layne ran a bootleg on the legal system the first two times — details to come — and talked his way out of it the third. And this being the boys-will-be-boys era in pro football, neither the league nor his teams (the Lions in the first instance, the Steelers in the other two) took any action.

You can imagine what the reaction would be today if, two weeks before the opener, a star quarterback was stopped at 2:10 a.m. for “traveling without lights . . . [and] straddling the center line,” then refused to take a breathalyzer test, according to reports. But Bobby skated because no jury in Detroit was going to convict the home-team QB, not one who’d led the Lions to two championships.

And so what started out with this . . .

. . . and progressed to this . . .

. . . conveniently ended up like this:

All you need to know about this Great Moment in Jurisprudence is that, according to The Associated Press, “One woman juror, leaving the courtroom, remarked, ‘Bobby ought to give us women a big kiss for letting him off.'”

A few years later, Dave Lewis, the sports columnist for the Long Beach (Calif.) Independent, wrote:

After [Les] Bingaman quit playing for the Lions following the 1954 season, he bought a half-interest in a bar, which immediately became a financial success.

When Layne was arrested on a drunk-driving charge a couple of years ago in Detroit, it developed during the trial that part of his tour that evening included Bingo’s watering trough.

Bingo gallantly took the stand and testified that the scotch he served had practically no alcoholic proof whatsoever, and he served it in glasses that measured less than an ounce.

After this was recorded in the newspapers, Doc Greene, one of Detroit’s top scribes, observed: “Greater love hath no man than he should ruin his business for a friend.”

As for the DUI case in Austin, it was dropped when the county attorney couldn’t get three key witnesses to voluntarily return to Texas to testify. (He couldn’t subpoena them because the charge was only a misdemeanor.) The three witnesses, by the way, were Steelers teammate Len Dawson and two Cardinals players, all of whom were in Layne’s car when he “struck a parked auto, then left the scene . . . and transferred to a taxicab,” AP reported.

Bobby’s lawyer suggested police officers “may have mistaken hoarseness for intoxication,” the wire service said. That was pretty funny, because in the Detroit trial, his lawyer argued that officers mistook his Texas drawl for intoxication. (Which is it, barristers?)

The run-in with the street car also happened in the wee hours: 2:30 a.m. Even better, the car Layne was driving belonged to Steelers running back Tom Tracy. Another teammate, Hall of Fame defensive lineman Ernie Stautner, once gave this version of the story to the Pittsburgh Press:

At Stautner recalled it, Layne got in the accident because he left a Thursday night “Last Supper” party at Dante’s [restaurant, one of Bobby’s favorite hangouts] earlier than everyone else. In fact, coach Buddy Parker later criticized Stautner for not being with Layne at the time of the accident.

Police said Layne lost control of his car on the street car tracks, which were wet, and hit the front of the trolley. Whatever. Anyway, that Sunday, the Steelers finished their season against the Cardinals in St. Louis, and Bobby — “playing with a patch over his left eye, which was cut in an auto accident last week,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported — was terrible, throwing two interceptions, fumbling twice and contributing mightily to a 20-0 loss.

He’d entered the game with 187 career touchdown passes, tying him with Sammy Baugh for the NFL record. But because he was blanked by the Cards, it wasn’t until the next season — the last of his 15 — that he overtook Slingin’ Sam, finishing with 196.

So ends the saga of Bobby Layne Behind the Wheel. But again, that was 50 years ago. In the 2000s, after two strikes, Michael Phelps might be left to twist in the wind. For one thing, it doesn’t sound like the Hoarseness Defense could be of much use to him.

Sound Bites IV

It’s accepted pretty much as fact that, until recently, no one paid much attention to concussions in the NFL. And by “no one,” I’m talking mostly about the league and the media who cover it. So it was a revelation to stumble across a newspaper story from 1953 that went into great detail about a player getting his bell rung.

The player was Billy Reynolds, a rookie running back for the Browns, who was making his pro debut in a preseason game against the 49ers. A summary of his day, according to UPI:

1. He ran head-on at full speed into [the Niners’] Hardy Brown, considered one of the hardest tacklers in the game.

2. He was picked up and carried off the field.

3. He was supposed to go into the game a short while later and never appeared, the Browns using only 10 men for one play.

4. In the fourth quarter, he ran on the field when he wasn’t supposed to, and the Browns were penalized for playing with 12 men.

Our sound bite, though, comes from Paul Brown, the Browns’ Hall of Fame coach, who had the following to say about the situation:

“Billy was completely out of his head after he and Hardy Brown collided. However, he is all right now. We could use him in the game against Los Angeles this weekend, but, just as a precautionary measure, we may not. He must have suffered some sort of a head concussion, although at the time we thought he was just shaken up.

“At the time of the crash, we didn’t think it was anything serious. But the shock to Billy’s system was such that he didn’t know what was going on. Guess we’ll just have to rest him up for a few days.”

The naiveté about head injuries is just stunning, isn’t it? That said, it’s interesting Brown even considered holding Reynolds out of the next game “as a precautionary measure.” Precaution and pro football didn’t always mix in those blood-and-guts years.

And sure enough, Reynolds suited up for the exhibition game against the Rams after just a four-day recovery period. He’s right there in the stats, carrying twice for minus-1 yard:

Sixty-one years later, here we are. Or rather, here the lawyers are, filing suits and working out settlements.

A fearsome foursome of NFL golfers

Since it’s Ryder Cup Sunday, why don’t we explore the following question:

Which NFL players, past or present, have been the best golfers?

Among current players, the consensus seems to be that the Cowboys’ Tony Romo — “with a handicap that’s been as low as plus-3.3,” according to Golf Digest — is Numero Uno (though two other quarterbacks, the Broncos’ Peyton Manning and Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, are deemed quite capable). Romo, you may recall, partnered with Tiger Woods in the 2012 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

A bit farther back, Al Del Greco, the Titans kicker, shot a 7-under 65 in the final round of the 2000 American Century Celebrity Golf Championship to win by three over former Dolphins safety Dick Anderson. Yeah, you might say Al could play a little.

But I’m going to start with the guy who finished third behind Del Greco and Anderson: John Brodie, erstwhile star quarterback for the 49ers. For starters, Brodie, a month shy of his 65th birthday, was much older than Al (38) and Dick (54). Aside from that, though, he was probably the best golfer the NFL has seen.

In his early years with the Niners, Brodie played in the occasional PGA Tour event during the offseason and even qualified once for the U.S. Open. In one pro tournament, the 1960 Yorba Linda (Calif.) Open, he had the low second round, a 5-under 67, which put him ahead of a couple of fellows named Arnold Palmer and Billy Casper. Alas, he faded the last two days and ended up taking home a check for . . . $112.50. But hey, he still finished tied with five players who had won or would win majors: Jack Burke (1956 Masters, ’56 PGA), Tommy Bolt (’58 U.S. Open), Dow Finsterwald (’58 PGA), Art Wall (’59 Masters) and Tony Lema (’64 British Open).

Here, for your amusement, is Brodie’s agate line in the newspaper (“winnings” and all):

After 11 seasons as an analyst on NBC’s NFL broadcasts, Brodie got serious about golf again and joined the Senior (now the Champions) Tour. He finally broke through in his 158th tournament, beating Chi Chi Rodriguez and 1969 Masters champ George Archer in a playoff to take the 1991 Security Pacific Senior Classic.

“Being able to play a game of this competitive level at over 50 years old is an even better feeling [than winning football games gave him],” he said after tapping in his winning birdie. “I enjoyed broadcasting, but I don’t think I’ll have too many people come up to me and say, ‘Why did you quit?’”

Three other golfing NFLers of note:

● Kyle Rote — Rote, the first pick in the 1951 draft out of SMU, could do just about anything. Before he even played for the New York Giants, he hit .348 in 66 at bats (with seven homers) for the Corpus Christi Aces of the Gulf Coast League. Midway through his NFL career, he moved from running back to wide receiver — something nobody does anymore — and had some nice seasons, catching 10 touchdown passes in 1960.

Rote was a terrific golfer, too. In June of ’51, before reporting to the Giants’ training camp as a rookie, he competed in a celebrity tournament in Washington, D.C. This is from The Sporting News:

“Rote was placed in the football division and easily took that prize with rounds of 75 and 70. There were 15 pros in the event, and Kyle’s total would have ranked seventh among them. His round of 70 was the best for the entire event except for a 69 shot by Cary Middlecoff.”

Middlecoff, of course, is a Hall of Famer who won two U.S. Opens (1949, ’56) and a Masters (’55).

● Joe Maniaci — It’s hard to say how Maniaci, a running back with the Bears in the ’30s and ’40s, compared to the others, but his golf exploits did get noticed. In 1939 this brief item ran in newspapers across the country:

Joe once said he picked up the sport because his brother Sam, who played football at Columbia, was pretty good at it, “and I just have the idea in my head I can beat him.”

“I became seriously interested in golf on the Pacific Coast. [The Bears] were out there to play a football game [against] the National [Football] League All-Stars. Jimmy Thomson and several other [pro] golfers were staying at the same hotel. Somehow, I outdrove Thomson a lot and was ahead of him for 14 holes in a match we got up one day. [Note: This is the same Thomson who finished second in the 1935 U.S. Open and ’36 PGA and was one of the biggest hitters in the game.]

“Thomson advised me: ‘If I were you, I’d take this game seriously.’ I’ve been hitting drives from 240 to 260 yards. I have broken four driver club heads without hitting the ground in getting power into my tee shots. Harry Cooper [another famed pro] told me that he’d like to tutor me in Chicago, said I’d make a pretty good amateur golfer.”

Maniaci must have added some distance to his tee shots, because this ran in Hugh Fullerton’s Associated Press column in 1944:

“Lt. Joe Maniaci . . . won the officers’ and chiefs’ golf tournament at the Bainbridge Naval Training Center, shooting a 77. Joe had a 335-yard drive on one hole and didn’t fumble once.”

● Joe Namath — OK, the Jets’ legendary quarterback wasn’t nearly as good with the sticks as Brodie, Rote and Maniaci, but he did give us one Memorable Golf Moment. Playing in an NFL/MLB event in Puerto Rico in 1973, he “overslept” and kept his partner, baseball great Willie Mays, waiting on the first tee for 40 minutes.

Willie was pissed — and threatened to walk out until he was repaired with Cardinals running back Donny Anderson. Broadway Joe wound up playing with Pirates pitcher Steve Blass.

“I don’t give a damn who it is,” Mays said. “I warmed up and was ready to play. My partner ought to be ready, too.”

The classic headline:

Namath’s apology rang a little hollow. After all, AP reported, the day before he’d “kept his partners — John Meyers, publisher of Sports Illustrated; Joseph Schroeder, clothing manufacturer, and columnist Buddy Martin of Gannett newspapers — waiting for close to two hours in the preliminary pro-am.”

Joe, Joe, Joe. Will you never learn? (Apparently not.)

Enjoy the golf today. When you’re not watching football, that is.

Why the Falcons eased up on the Bucs

One thing you never want to do in the NFL, funny as this might sound, is beat a team by too many points — by, like, 50 or more. The Falcons had that opportunity against the Bucs in Week 3, building a 56-0 lead through three quarters, and you could see they wanted no part of it. They basically said, “No mas,” put in backup quarterback T.J. Yates (who generously threw a pick-six) and gladly settled for a 56-14 win.

I say “gladly” because, well, look at the historical record. You’d think a 50-point margin would mean there’s a sizable gap between the two clubs. It’s the kind of blowout you might get if, oh, an expansion team had to play the defending Super Bowl champs in its NFL debut. (But only if the defending champs were total bullies.)

And yet, five times since 1940 a club that’s been clobbered by 50 or more points has beaten its clobberer the next time they met — either later the same year or the following season. (Hell hath no fury like a team that’s been annihilated.) Stunning, no? After all, there have been only 23 losses of this magnitude in the last 75 years, playoffs included; so we’re talking about 1 in 5 odds, roughly, that the squashed-like-a bug club will get immediate payback.

Heck, it almost happened last season. In 2012, you may recall, the Cardinals dropped a 58-0 squeaker to the Seahawks, committing eight turnovers and failing to advance beyond Seattle’s 37-yard line. As stinkers go, it was sulfur dioxide. But in Week 16 last year, in the Cards’ second meeting with the ’Hawks since the Great Embarrassment, they upset the Super Bowl winners-to-be, 17-10, at CenturyLink Field — Seattle’s only loss in its last 20 home games.

Without further ado, then, here are, arguably, the Five Greatest Extractors of Revenge in modern pro football history:

● 1977 Falcons — In the next-to-last game of ’76, the Los Angeles Rams steamrolled them 59-0 at the Coliseum (and outgained them by nearly 500 yards, 569-81). The Falcons — and their Grits Blitz defense — got even in the ’77 opener in Atlanta, handing the Rams a 17-6 defeat. The L.A. quarterback that day: Joe Namath. Margin of first game: 59. Point swing between the two games: 70.

● 1981 Packers — Late in the ’80 season, the Bears hammered them 61-7 at Soldier Field, the most one-sided game ever between the two ancient rivals. When the Pack returned to Chicago in Week 1 of ’81, they turned the tables on the Bears, 16-9. Margin of first game: 54. Point swing: 61.

● 1990 Houston Oilers — The feud in the ’80s and ’90s between Bengals coach Sam Wyche and Oilers counterpart Jerry Glanville was one of the most entertaining of all time. Wyche considered Glanville “probably the biggest phony in professional football,” and Jerry’s feelings toward Sam weren’t much warmer. So when Cincinnati got the chance near the end of the ’89 season, it poured it on Houston, onside kicking with a huge lead, booting a needless field goal in the final seconds and burying the Oilers 61-7 at Riverfront Stadium. The next time the clubs crossed paths, the following season in the Astrodome, Glanville was no longer in Houston. (He’d moved on to Atlanta and been replaced by Jack Pardee.) Too bad. He missed seeing Warren Moon toss five touchdown passes in a 48-17 rout of Wicky Wacky’s Bengals. Margin of first game: 54. Point swing: 85.

● 1979 Jets — In the second game of the season, the explosive Patriots pummeled the Jets 56-3 in Foxborough as Steve Grogan threw for TDs of 49, 37, 50, 44 and 28 yards. The rematch at Shea Stadium produced a much different result: a 27-26 Jets win that killed the Pats’ playoff chances. Margin of first game: 53. Point swing: 54.

● 1989 Steelers — Everything went wrong for Pittsburgh in its opener, a 51-0 loss to the Browns at Three Rivers Stadium. It gave the ball away eight times, managed just 53 offensive yards and watched in horror as the Cleveland defense scored three touchdowns (two on fumbles, one on an interception). Five weeks later, the Steelers rebounded to beat the Browns on the road 17-7, thanks to seven takeaways of their own. Margin of first game: 51. Point swing: 61.

Others of note:

● 1954 Baltimore Colts — It wasn’t just that the Rams obliterated the Colts 48-0 in Week 1 (in Baltimore, no less); it was that their first score, an 80-yard bomb from Norm Van Brocklin to Skeet Quinlan, came on a now-illegal Hideout Play. Quinlan stayed on the Los Angeles sideline until just before the snap, then stepped inbounds and darted downfield, uncovered.

The teams met again in L.A. in December. There wasn’t much to play for except pride; both were out of the championship hunt. The Colts had a little extra incentive, though, and avenged their earlier stomping, 22-21, on a late field goal. (I’d love to see Artie Donovan’s bar bill after that one.) Margin of first game: 48. Point swing: 49.

● 1981 49ers — In ’80, when the Niners were still a work in progress (and Steve DeBerg was still their quarterback), the Cowboys crushed them 59-14 in Dallas. But the next year, with Joe Montana at QB and rookie cornerback Ronnie Lott terrorizing receivers, San Francisco broke the Cowboys’ hearts twice at Candlestick Park — 45-14 in the regular season and 28-27 in the NFC title game – en route to winning the Super Bowl. Margin of first game: 45. Point swing: 76.

Finally, there are the 1961 Detroit Lions. Can’t forget about them. They got ambushed 49-0 in Week 3 when the 49ers unleashed their innovative Shotgun offense. In the Week 8 sequel, however, the Lions rose up in all their fury and . . . tied the Niners in San Francisco, 20-20. Ask yourself: Has there been a more satisfying deadlock in the annals of the game? Margin of first game: 49. Point swing: Ditto.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

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

Category Archives: 1950s

Russell Wilson, making some history

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

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

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

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Great moments in NFL fandom

Paul Hornung’s forgotten streak

PLAYERS WHO SCORED ALL OF THEIR TEAM’S POINTS IN A GAME (20+)*

Michael Phelps and Bobby Layne

Sound Bites IV

“At the time of the crash, we didn’t think it was anything serious. But the shock to Billy’s system was such that he didn’t know what was going on. Guess we’ll just have to rest him up for a few days.”

A fearsome foursome of NFL golfers

Why the Falcons eased up on the Bucs