Category Archives: 1960s

“Statistics are for losers”: an exercise in etymology

Earlier this week, I began a post about 400-yard passing games with the words, “Whoever coined the phrase ‘statistics are for losers’ . . . .” Naturally, this got me wondering: Who did coin the phrase, anyway? Could I possibly trace it back to its origin?

Search engines were invented for tasks like this. Alas, I didn’t turn up anything conclusive — just as I didn’t, a while back, when I researched “A tie is like kissing your sister.” If only there were a registrar for these pithy statements, somebody who could go to a file drawer, pull out a card and say, “Ah, yes. Amos Alonzo Stagg first said that after the University of Chicago’s game against Wabash in 1905.”

Anyway, I did come across a few things worth passing along. For starters, there’s Steve Spurrier’s updated version, uttered in 1998 when he was coaching at Florida:

Steve Spurrier

Steve Spurrier

“Statistics are for losers and assistant coaches. Head coaches worry about wins and losses.” 

(I’m not sure how assistant coaches like being lumped in with losers, but that’s The Ball Coach for you. He always shoots from the lip, collateral damage be damned.)

Three decades further back, in 1966, we have Jets coach Weeb Ewbank telling Arthur Daley of The New York Times after a loss to the Bills, “Statistics are for losers. Of course, it was encouraging that we could come back with 14 quick points in less than a minute during the last quarter. But getting in front early is much better than having to come from behind.”

That’s kind of the essence of Loser Statistics, isn’t it? The futile comeback that pads a team’s or player’s numbers and makes it look like they had a better day than they actually did.

Just a month earlier, the other pro coach in town, the Giants’ Allie Sherman, was quoted as saying, “Statistics are for losers. It’s the score that counts.”

So it’s clear that, by the mid-’60s, football folk were spouting the aphorism fairly regularly.

Four years before that, in 1962, The Associated Press reported: “The Cardinals outgained the 49ers, 314-215, [in a 24-17 defeat] but ‘statistics are for losers,’ [coach Wally] Lemm said.”

And two years before that, in 1960, columnist Ed Hayes of the Blytheville Courier-News in Arkansas wrote: “General Bob Neyland [the longtime University of Tennessee coach] . . . once cracked, ‘Statistics are for losers.’”

Unfortunately, when this “once” might have been is a mystery, though we do know Neyland was head coach of the Vols from 1926 to ’52. Still, there’s a good chance he might have heard it from somebody else. Coaches, after all, are notorious for stealing anything that isn’t nailed down — plays, drills, even handy sayings.

In the early days, when everything was up for grabs, the legendary Pop Warner tried to argue that statistics aren’t for losers. With college football plagued by low-scoring games in 1932,

Pop Warner

Pop Warner

Warner, then at Stanford, proposed that an additional point be awarded for each first down. His reasoning:

“The public likes a free-scoring game. Baseball men recognized this when they began to use a livelier ball. The change I suggest for football would make the games less common and would make the best team more likely to win. It would provide many more thrills — look at the cheers that go up now when the stakes are moved forward.

“The whole idea of the game would be to advance the ball, and by scoring a point for each first down it would make it advisable to take more chances on third and fourth downs, instead of always punting. I have advocated this change before, and some have said, ‘Oh yes, Warner wants to score first downs because he gains all his ground in the middle of the field,’ but I have no selfish motive in advocating this change. I firmly believe it would help the game, and we all know the game needs help right now.

“It would be advisable to except first downs resulting from a penalty of more than five yards and not count a first down made inside the opponent’s five-yard line, if a touchdown was scored on the next series of downs. This would prevent purposely downing the ball, say, six inches from the goal line on a long run.”

Pop sure had done some Deep Thinking about it, hadn’t he? But his proposal never gained much traction with the rules committee — probably because the vast majority of coaches were convinced, even if they hadn’t articulated it yet, that statistics really are for losers.

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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.

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The best and worst of kicking

On one side Sunday, you had the Bills’ Dan Carpenter booming a 58-yard field goal with four seconds left to give his team a come-from-behind 17-14 victory. On the other, you had the Lions’ Alex Henery missing all three of his boots — none shorter than 44 yards — and losing his job because of it.

That, friends, is all you need to know about the kicking profession in the 2000s. The NFL has kickers these days capable of knocking through a game-winner from 58 yards or longer, if need be. But the bar for them has been raised so high that missing more than a handful of boots a season — never mind three in an afternoon — is likely to put them on the unemployment line. They’re the victims of their own near-perfection.

Granted, Henery has had a rough go of it this year. In his two games for Detroit, he was 1 for 5 on field goal tries, a success rate that might have raised eyebrows even in the ’50s. But he also has a track record, and it’s pretty good. In his three previous NFL seasons, all with the Eagles, he converted 86 percent of his attempts. But now he’s gone because, well, that’s just the way it is in pro football.

As Lions coach Jim Caldwell put it: “There’s somebody out there for us that’ll do the job for us. We just got to see if we can track him down quickly.”

Translation: No biggie. We’ll just hold a tryout, open up another box of 86-percent kickers and see who performs best. (It turned out to be Matt Prater, the former Bronco.)

NFL soccer-stylers have become so accurate, even from great distances, that last year they were successful on 86.5 percent of their field goal tries (which made Henery, at 82.1, below average). There even have been kickers, two of them, who have gone through an entire season without missing. And, of course, Tom Dempsey’s 63-yarder, which had stood as the record since 1970, was finally topped  by Prater, who booted a 64-yarder in Denver’s thin air last December.

The field goal is becoming almost as automatic as the extra point. So it’s easy to forget, with all these footballs tumbling through the uprights, that, at late as the ’60s, it was a very hit-or-miss proposition. And earlier than that, it was more miss than hit.

Let’s pay a visit to 1939 for a moment, to a game between the Redskins and Pittsburgh Pirates (they weren’t the Steelers yet). The Redskins won easily, 44-14, but they also missed five PATs. The Associated Press’ account read like this:

“Jim German ran off right tackle to a touchdown. Washington missed the kick. . . . [Andy] Farkas knifed through for the score. His kick was blocked by Sam Boyd. . . . Frank Filchock stood in the end zone, passed to Farkas on the 4-yard stripe, and Andy galloped 96 yards for a touchdown — a total gain of 99 yards. Turk Edwards’ kick was not good. . . . [Dick] Todd . . . raced 60 yards for another touchdown. Bob Masterson’s kick was not good. . . . Ed Justice went around left end . . . for the final Redskin[s] touchdown. [Bo] Russell missed the kick.”

This is obviously an extreme example of what I’m talking about. The Redskins were so far ahead that day that they started goofing around and letting everybody kick. (Russell and Masterson were their main guys.) But it just shows how casual teams could be about kicking and how inexact a science it was — even though PATs were 10 yards shorter because the goal posts were on the goal line.

Pittsburgh’s kicker, Armand Niccolai, was one of the better ones in the league — so good that, after he retired following the 1941 season, the team talked him into coming back for one more year. Since he’d already taken a coaching and teaching job at a local high school and couldn’t attend the Steelers’ practices, he just showed up for the games.

“He will not even don pads,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, “but will be used exclusively as a placekicker.”

No practices and no pads! What a sweet deal. Alas, he made just 2 of 14 field-goal attempts that year and decided, wisely, to retire for good.

Niccolai’s final season is one of the worst of all time by a kicker. His competition:

WORST SEASONS BY KICKERS (10 OR MORE FGA)

Year Kicker, Team Made Att %
1965 Bob Timberlake, Giants      1 15 6.7
1955 Art Michalik, Steelers      1 12 8.3
1939 Clarke Hinkle, Packers      1 10 10
1963 Bob Jencks, Bears      1 10 10
1952 Joe Geri, Cardinals      2 18 11.1
1942 Armand Niccolai, Steelers      2 14 14.3
1963 Jack  Spikes, Chiefs      2 13 15.4
1950 Ted Fritsch, Packers      3 17 17.6

All of them, by the way, kicked in the Old Style, with their toes rather than their instep. By the ’70s, though, almost every club had a soccer-styler, and success rates started going up . . . and up . . . and up. It’s just a more reliable way to boot the ball.

Still, while you’re snickering at these percentages, keep in mind: Many of these guys played another position — back when rosters were smaller — in addition to handling the kicking. That certainly raised the margin for error. (Sonny Jurgensen once told me he never had receiver Bobby Walston run a deep route on third down when the Eagles were in field goal position because he didn’t want Walston to be tired if he was needed to kick.)

Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d find out which kickers have missed the most kicks — field goals or extra points — in a season. There are some interesting names on it, including two Hall of Famers.

MOST MISSED KICKS IN A SEASON (FG AND PAT)

Year Kicker, Team FG PAT Total
1964 Paul Hornung*, Packers 12-38 41-43 28
1961 John Aveni, Redskins 5-28 21-23 25
1976 Jan Stenerud*, Chiefs 21-38 27-33 23
1963 Lou Michaels, Steelers 21-41 32-35 23
1967 Bruce Gossett, Rams 20-43 48-48 23
1969 Tom Dempsey, Saints 22-41 33-35 21
1969 Roy Gerela, Oilers (AFL) 19-40 29-29 21
1969 Gino Cappelletti, Patriots (AFL) 14-34 26-27 21
1966 Bruce Gossett, Rams 28-49 29-29 21
1963 Jerry Kramer, Packers 16-34 43-46 21
1963 Tommy Davis,49ers 10-31 24-24 21
1960 Larry Barnes, Raiders (AFL) 6-25 37-39 21

*Hall of Famer

If you’ve ever wondered why Vince Lombardi’s Packers didn’t win the title in 1963 and ’64 — after going back to back in ’61 and ’62 (and winning three more from 1965 to ’67) — you can start with kicking. Kramer and Hornung missed 44 field goal tries in those seasons, and the Golden Boy’s 26 misses in ’64 are an NFL record that probably will last forever. After serving a one-year suspension in ’63 for betting on games, Paul simply lost it as a kicker.

It’s also worth noting that the kicker who has missed the most field goal attempts in a game since 1960 — the Cardinals’ Jim Bakken, six, vs. the Falcons in ’66 — turned around the next season and booted seven in a game, a mark that wasn’t broken for 40 years.

That’s what was so ironic about the Bills-Lions game. Henery got fired for going 0 for 3, right? Guess who the last kicker to have an 0-for-4 day was.

Carpenter, Buffalo’s hero, in 2010.

So maybe this isn’t the last we’ve heard of Alex Henery.

Armand Niccolai clothing ad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: pro-football-reference.com

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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+)*

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

*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 Nevers' 40-point game storyscored 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:

Walker's 24-point day, 1950

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: pro-football-reference.com

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Gronk vs. the greats

Rob Gronkowski scored another touchdown Sunday night in the Patriots’ 43-16 pasting of the previously unbeaten Bengals. That’s what Gronkowski does — at a rate never seen before by a tight end (and by few other receivers in NFL history). His latest, a 16-yarder over the middle from Tom Brady, was his 46th scoring catch in 56 games. Do the math, and it comes out to .82 TDs per game. Wow.

Only four receivers — all wideouts — have had more scoring receptions in their first 56 games. Their names should be pretty recognizable. Three are in the Hall of Fame, and the other, I’ve got to believe, will make it when he’s eligible.

MOST TOUCHDOWNS CATCHES, FIRST 56 GAMES

Years Receiver,Team TD
1962-66 Lance Alworth*, Chargers (AFL) 53
1985-88 Jerry Rice*, 49ers 50
1965-69 Bob Hayes*, Cowboys 47
1998-01 Randy Moss, Vikings 47
2010-14 Rob Gronkowski, Patriots 46
1957-61 Tommy McDonald*, Eagles 42

*Hall of Famer

It’s impressive enough that a tight end is keeping company with some of the greatest deep threats of all time. You get an even greater sense of the Magnitude of Gronk, though, when you compare him to Hall of Famers who played his position. (I threw in a few more who figure to reach Canton eventually — plus Jerry Smith, who held the TD record for tight ends for years and should never be left out of these conversations.)

TD CATCHES BY NOTABLE TIGHT ENDS, FIRST 56 GAMES

Years Tight End, Team TD
2010-14 Rob Gronkowski, Patriots 46
2010-13 Jimmy Graham, Saints 35
1961-64 Mike Ditka*, Bears 30
2003-06 Antonio Gates, Chargers 30
1979-83 Kellen Winslow*, Chargers 29
1965-69 Jerry Smith, Redskins 27
1963-66 John Mackey*, Colts 25
1974-78 Dave Casper*, Raiders 20
1978-81 Ozzie Newsome*, Browns 19
1997-00 Tony Gonzalez, Chiefs 19
1968-72 Charlie Sanders*, Lions 15
2003-06 Jason Witten, Cowboys 14
1963-66 Jackie Smith*, Cardinals 11
1990-93 Shannon Sharpe*, Broncos   7

*Hall of Famer

Sharpe, who finished with 62 touchdown receptions (a record since broken), is a reminder that some players, even future stars, take a while to establish themselves. That wasn’t the case with Gronkowski, of course. In just his ninth game he caught three TD passes against the Steelers and was off to immortality.

That is, if he can stay out of the operating room for a spell. He’s had a rough go if it of late with injuries, but he looked like the Gronk of Old on Sunday night. The Gronk of Old was a wonder to behold.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

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Coaching hires in the 2000s: the sequel

Fear of Information Overload yesterday caused me to hold back some of the data I’d gathered for my post on NFL coaching hires in the 2000s. Believe it or not, there are a few other things I’d like to share — if I haven’t worn you out on the subject.

The first one I’ve already touched on, but I want to go into it in greater depth: the increasing number of coaches who never played in the NFL or AFL. More and more, it’s becoming a game of Career Coaches, guys who might have been college players but, as soon as they were done, focused on climbing the coaching ladder.

The most extreme example is Todd Haley, the son of a former NFL cornerback and personnel man, who played golf in college before his father, then with the Jets, brought him into the family business as a scouting-department assistant. Todd, of course, later served as the Chiefs’ coach for nearly three seasons (2009-2011) and is now the Steelers’ offensive coordinator.

In the old days, there were no erstwhile college golfers holding down NFL head-coaching jobs. There were only ex-pro players and, occasionally, men who had coached on the college level. As late as the ’50s and even into the ’60s, it wasn’t unheard of for an active player to also be an assistant coach (e.g. Tom Landry with the Giants). Heck, in 1961, just months after he’d led the Eagles to their last championship, Hall of Fame quarterback Norm Van Brocklin was pacing the sideline as the coach of the expansion Vikings.

You don’t see that sort of thing anymore. Maybe it’s because the coach’s life, with its long hours and year-to-year uncertainty, has limited appeal to today’s players. Or maybe it’s because players, if they play six, eight, 10 years or longer in the league, feel they’re too far behind the Career Coaches, have too much ground to make up, to have a realistic shot at landing good coaching jobs. So they go into business, where their name recognition can help them, or perhaps they end up in the media, talking about the game instead of teaching it.

There are all kinds of reasons, no doubt, why the situation has developed the way it has. But the numbers are inescapable: In 1970, the first season after the AFL-NFL merger, 16 of the 26 coaches in the league were former players; this season, only six of 32 are (not counting the Saints’ Sean Payton, whose three NFL games during the 1987 strike were of the replacement variety).

The circle of life — or what used to be the circle of life in pro football — has been broken. It’s no longer, for those who might desire it: playing career, coaching career, possibly head coaching career (either pro or college). It’s now playing career (coached mostly by Career Coaches) followed Something Else (because the Career Coaches have gotten too much of a jump). The 49ers’ Jim Harbaugh, the Rams’ Jeff Fisher, the Titans’ Ken Whisenhunt, the Panthers’ Ron Rivera, the Cowboys’ Jason Garrett — erstwhile NFLers all — are rare exceptions these days. And in the years to come, the exceptions figure to be even rarer. That, at least, has been the pattern over the last 40-odd years.

Check out the difference between the first 24 Super Bowls (1966-89 seasons) and the second 24 (1990-2013). After Super Bowl I, which featured Career Coaches Vince Lombardi (Packers) and Hank Stram (Chiefs), the next 23 had at least one coach, and sometimes two, who were former NFL or AFL players. The rundown:

Former NFL/AFL Players Who Coached a Team to the Super Bowl, 1966-89

SB Coach, Team Opponent Result
II John Rauch, Raiders Packers L, 33-14
III Don Shula, Colts Jets L, 16-7
IV Bud Grant, Vikings Chiefs L, 24-7
V Don McCaffrey, Colts Cowboys W, 16-13
V Tom Landry, Cowboys Colts L, 16-13
VI Tom Landry, Cowboys Dolphins W, 24-3
VI Don Shula, Dolphins Cowboys L, 24-3
VII Don Shula, Dolphins Redskins W, 14-7
VIII Don Shula, Dolphins Vikings W, 24-7
VIII Bud Grant, Vikings Dolphins L, 24-7
IX Chuck Noll, Steelers Vikings W, 16-6
IX Bud Grant, Vikings Steelers L, 16-6
X Chuck Noll, Steelers Cowboys W, 21-17
X Tom Landry, Cowboys Steelers L, 21-17
XI Bud Grant, Vikings Raiders L, 32-14
XII Tom Landry, Cowboys Broncos W, 27-10
XIII Chuck Noll, Steelers Cowboys W, 35-31
XIII Tom Landry, Cowboys Steelers L, 35-31
XIV Chuck Noll, Steelers Rams W, 31-19
XV Tom Flores, Raiders Eagles W, 27-10
XVI Forrest Gregg, Bengals 49ers L, 26-21
XVII Don Shula, Dolphins Redskins L, 27-17
XVIII Tom Flores, Raiders Redskins W, 38-9
XIX Don Shula, Dolphins 49ers L, 38-16
XX Mike Ditka, Bears Patriots W, 46-10
XX Raymond Berry, Patriots Bears L, 46-10
XXI Dan Reeves, Broncos Giants L, 39-20
XXII Dan Reeves, Broncos Redskins L, 42-10
XXIII Sam Wyche, Bengals 49ers L, 20-16
XIV Dan Reeves, Broncos 49ers L, 55-10

Summary of the first 24 Super Bowls:

● 23 had at least one coach who was a former NFL/AFL player (95.8%).

● 7 had two coaches who were former players (29.2%).

● Super Bowl XX (Ditka-Berry) is the last one that had two coaches who were former players.

● 12 former players coached teams to the Super Bowl:

Coach W-L
Noll 4-0
Shula 2-4
Landry 2-3
Grant 0-4
Reeves* 0-3
Flores 2-0
McCafferty 1-0
Ditka 1-0
Rauch 0-1
Gregg 0-1
Berry 0-1
Wyche 0-1

*Had a fourth appearance (and loss) with the 1998 Falcons.

● 12-18 combined record (.400), 30 of 48 berths (62.5%).

● 6 former players won (Noll, Shula, Landry, Flores, McCafferty, Ditka).

On to the second half of Super Bowl history . . .

Former NFL/AFL Players Who Coached a Team to the Super Bowl, 1990-2013

SB Coach, Team Opponent Result
XXX Bill Cowher, Steelers Cowboys L, 27-17
XXXIII Dan Reeves, Falcons Broncos L, 34-19
XXXIV Jeff Fisher, Titans Rams L, 23-16
XL Bill Cowher, Steelers Seahawks W, 21-10
XLI Tony Dungy, Colts Bears W, 29-17
XLIII Ken Whisenhunt, Cardinals Steelers L, 27-23
XLVII Jim Harbaugh, 49ers Ravens L, 34-31

Summary of the last 24 Super Bowls:

● 7 had a coach who was a former player (29.2%).

● 0 had two coaches who were former players (0%).

● 6 former players coached teams to the Super Bowl:

Coach W-L
Cowher 1-1
Dungy 1-0
Reeves 0-1
Fisher 0-1
Whisenhunt 0-1
Harbaugh 0-1

● 2-5 combined record (.286); 7 of 48 berths (14.6%).

● 2 former players won (Cowher, Dungy).

Total for the 48 Super Bowls:

● 37 of 96 berths (38.5%).

● 14-23 combined record (.378).

● 6 former players won one of the first 20 Super Bowls (McCafferty, Landry, Shula, Noll, Flores, Ditka).

● 2 former players have won one of the last 28 Super Bowls (Cowher, Dungy).

You can see the trend, too, in the following list:

Former NFL/AFL Players Hired as Head Coaches in the 2000s

● 2000 (1 of 7 vacancies) — Jim Haslett/Saints.

● 2001 (3 of 8) — Marty Schottenheimer/Redskins, Dick LeBeau/Bengals, Herman Edwards/Jets.

● 2002 (4 of 8) — Steve Spurrier/Redskins, Tony Dungy/Colts, Marty Schottenheimer/Chargers, Mike Tice/Vikings.

● 2003 (1 of 5) — Jack Del Rio/Jaguars.

● 2004 (1 of 7) — Mike Mularkey/Bills.

● 2005 (0 of 3) — None.

● 2006 (4 of 10) — Herman Edwards/Chiefs, Art Shell/Raiders, Gary Kubiak/Texans, Jauron/Bills.

● 2007 (1 of 7) — Ken Whisenhunt/Cardinals.

● 2008 (1 of 4) — Jim Zorn/Redskins.

● 2009 (1 of 11) — Mike Singletary/49ers.

● 2010 (0 of 3) — None.

● 2011 (5 of 8) — Jim Harbaugh/49ers, Leslie Frazier/Vikings, Jason Garrett/Cowboys, Mike Munchak/Titans, Ron Rivera/Panthers.

● 2012 (2 of 7) — Jeff Fisher/Rams, Mike Mularkey/Jaguars.

● 2013 (1 of 8) — Doug Marrone/Bills.

● 2014 (1 of 7) — Ken Whisenhunt/Titans.

Note: Interim coaches not included.

● Total: 26 of 103 hires (25.2%).

● 1 has won the Super Bowl (Dungy).

● 3 have taken a team to the Super Bowl (Dungy, Whisenhunt, Harbaugh). Record: 1-2, .333.

● That’s 3 Super Bowl berths out of 28 (10.7%).

Where does this leave us? Well, I’m not convinced the NFL would be radically different if there were more former players serving as head coaches. But I am convinced the game would be better. Why? Because there are undoubtedly some very good football minds that aren’t going into coaching, many more than before. And just as there are never enough good quarterbacks, there are never enough good coaches. Remember: 12 of the first 20 Super Bowls were won by teams coached by ex-players.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

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Friday Night Fights V: Ernie Ladd vs. Wahoo McDaniel

Not sure exactly when Ernie Ladd and Wahoo McDaniel, two heroes of the early AFL, met in this tag-team match at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. YouTube says it was “the early ’70s.” That’ll have to suffice. Wrestling’s records, I’m afraid, aren’t nearly as exacting (or available) as boxing’s are.

Each man was legendary in his own way. Ladd was as enormous as he was talented — a 6-foot-9, 325-pound (at his heaviest), all-league defensive tackle for the Chargers. John Schmitt, the Jets’ Wahoo in headdresscenter, had a great quote about playing against him for the first time. “I looked up across the line of scrimmage,” he said, “and there was Ernie Ladd. His eyeballs weighed five pounds apiece.”

Ladd also had a prodigious appetite, and is said to have eaten 124 pancakes at one sitting in a contest. If you want to find out more about the “Big Cat,” as he was called, check out this piece I wrote about him in 2007, not long after he died. It only begins to do him justice.

McDaniel, a 6-1, 235-pound linebacker, was a novelty because of his Native American heritage. He came from Choctaw stock and would enter the ring wearing a feathered headdress. HIs celebrity skyrocketed when he was traded from the near-invisible Broncos to the Jets in 1964, the year before Joe Namath arrived. The Shea Stadium P.A. announcer would say, “Tackle by . . . guess who?” And the crowd would shout, “Wahoo!”

Bud Shrake wrote a classic portrait of him in Sports Illustrated 50 years ago. A must read (if only to be reminded of how great SI used to be).

It’s hard to say how many times Ladd and McDaniel met on the mat, but — wrestling being wrestling — it was certainly more than a few. Here’s an account of one bout in Dallas in 1966 that ended in a draw when “both were counted out on the ring apron.”

Wahoo Ladd double KO in '66

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guess it was part of their act, because they did it again in Lakeland, Fla., in 1978:

Wahoo beats Ladd 1978

 

 

 

 

In the following clip, McDaniel is teamed with Cowboy Bill Watts, a former teammate at the University of Oklahoma, where they played under Hall of Famer Bud Wilkinson. In fact, Wahoo still holds the Sooners record for longest punt: 91 yards. Watts, a defensive tackle, left school early and signed with the Houston Oilers, but was cut in camp in 1961 (something I never knew until I researched this).

Oilers drop Billy Watts

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ladd’s partner is the equally famed Billy Graham. You can watch the whole video if you want; I’ve just pulled out some footage of Wahoo and Big Cat going at it, a little over a minute’s worth. As you’ll see, they both do some damage.

“He was a wild, crazy Indian,” McDaniel’s daughter, Nicky Rowe, said when he died in 2002. “He was bigger than life. He was amazing.”

As we pick up the action, Graham, in trouble, is about to tag Ernie, who then climbs through the ropes to get at Wahoo. Brace yourselves.

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Ernie Ladd revisited

Since Ernie Ladd, the mammoth defensive tackle for the Chargers (and others) in the ’60s, is featured in this week’s Friday Night Fight, I thought I’d post my tribute to him when he died in 2007. Hopefully it’ll give you a better sense of the man — large in every respect.

“He was so big and strong, he didn’t have to be mean.”

— Billy Shaw, the Bills’ Hall of Fame guard

Everything about Ernie Ladd was supersized, from his height (6-9, same as Too Tall Jones) to his appetite (124 pancakes at one sitting). He was a 325-pound defensive tackle in an era, the 1960s, when a 250-pounder was considered strapping. The ground shook — and so did opponents — when Ladd walked.

He also hit Bobo Brazil over the head with a chair once.

This was in 1971, after his days as a quarterback cruncher for the Chargers, Oilers and Chiefs were over. Back then, you see, a fellow as large — indeed, mythic — as Ernie couldn’t simply be a Screen Shot 2014-10-03 at 12.28.21 PMprofessional football player. There was too much money to be made in the wrestling racket. As 49ers Hall of Famer Leo Nomellini, another moonlighting grappler, put it, “After you hit 30 or 32, football hurts your bones. A wrestler can go until he’s 45 or 50 and be good at it.”

Ladd, who died of cancer Saturday at 68, might have been the last of the breed. Sure, Lawrence Taylor and Fridge Perry did some rolling around, but no big name footballer since the “Big Cat,” as Ernie was called, has had anything resembling a career in the ring. (And none of them, of course, ever had to deal with Bobo Brazil’s dreaded Cocoa Butt.)

We forget how strong the connection was between the pro football and wrestling once upon a time. In the ’20s and ’30s, Jim McMillen, Gus Sonnenberg, Joe Savoldi, Bronko Nagurski and scores of other NFLers took to the mats and helped popularize the sport. Sonnenberg, the Providence Steam Roller’s 5-6 fireplug, introduced the flying tackle; Savoldi, the Chicago Bear by way of Notre Dame, gave us the dropkick. Nagurski, meanwhile, amazed the masses by keeping up a full ring schedule while playing for the Bears in 1937. In one 22-day stretch, he had five football games (from Green Bay to Pittsburgh) and eight wrestling matches (from Vancouver to Philadelphia).

Who knows how good these guys really were between the ropes? (A sportswriter once joked that Bronko was “one of the dozen or 15 world’s wrestling champions who flourished simultaneously a few years ago.”) In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. They put fannies in the seats — and turned the previously moribund mat game into the spectacular it is today.

It was in the cleat marks of Sonnenberg, Nagurski and the rest that Ladd followed. Pro football had never seen a behemoth like him when he joined the Chargers out of Grambling in 1961. In fact, he might still be the greatest extra-large player in the game’s history, a four-time All-Star who played in four title games in eight seasons before his left knee gave out.

“He was so big and strong, he didn’t have to be mean,” said Billy Shaw, the Bills’ Hall of Fame guard.

Courageous, too. After arriving in New Orleans for the 1965 AFL All-Star Game, Ladd and other black players had problems getting white taxicab drivers to pick them up. So they banded together and forced the owners to move the contest. Barely 15,000 showed up for the unplanned event in Houston, making it an embarrassment all around for the young league, but an important point had been made.

Ernie also played out his option that year and became a free agent, a rarity in those days. (Only the strongest of the strong dared to buck management like that.) He signed with Houston for Screen Shot 2014-10-03 at 12.31.24 PMmuch more money than San Diego was paying him but played just one more full season because of injuries.

There was still wrestling, though. And on the night of Sept. 14, 1971, after the tag team of Flying Fred Curry and the Stomper had fought to a draw with Mitsu Arakawa and Mr. Sato, Ladd tried to take Brazil’s U.S. championship from him. The end of the bout came suddenly, the local newspaper reported, when Bobo was “hit over the head with a chair . . . [and] counted out.”

Alas, because Ernie neglected to pin him — this is wrestling, remember — Brazil retained his belt. “A rematch,” the paper said, “has been set.”

The next time, you’ll be pleased to know, the Big Cat finished the job. After which he probably celebrated by eating “two shrimp cocktails, three dishes of coleslaw, three servings of spinach, three baked potatoes, eight rolls and butter, [a] half gallon of milk, three exotic desserts . . . and four 16-ounce steaks” — as he once did to impress a reporter.

It was just another meal for larger-than-life Ernie Ladd.

“You should see him eat when nobody’s watching,” a teammate said.

From The Washington Times, March 15, 2007

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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 . . .

DUI head in Detroit 1957

 

 

 

 

. . . and progressed to this . . .

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 9.15.41 PM

 

 

 

. . . conveniently ended up like this:

Layne acquitted with first graph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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The joy of stats, Week 4

The Vikings’ 41-28 win over the Falcons on Sunday produced not one but two intriguing statistics.

1. In his first NFL start, the Vikes’ Teddy Bridgewater completed 19 of 30 passes for 317 yards and . . . that’s it. No touchdowns, no interceptions. You might say it’s unusual to throw for 300 yards, average 10 per attempt (league norm: 7.1), avoid getting picked off and not have any TD passes. In fact, Bridgewater is just the third quarterback since 1960 to have such a game.

300 PASSING YARDS, 10 YARDS PER ATTEMPT, 0 TD, 0 INT IN A GAME

Date Quarterback, Team Opponent Yds YPA TD Int Result
9-28-14 Teddy Bridgewater,Vikings Falcons 317 10.6 0 0 W, 41-28
11-4-12 Matt Ryan, Falcons Cowboys 342 10.1 0 0 W, 19-13
12-10-00 Kurt Warner, Rams Vikings 346 10.8 0 0 W, 40-29

A big reason Bridgewater didn’t throw for any scores — except for a two-point conversion, that is — is that Minnesota ran the ball well when it got near the goal line. Matt Asiata pounded it in from 1, 3 and 6 yards out, and Teddy scrambled 13 for another touchdown. The four rushing TDs equaled the franchise record, first set in 1965.

Anyway, that’s how Bridgewater wound up with his unusual 30-19-317-0-0 line. (And it’ll probably never happen again.)

2. In defeat, the Falcons’ Devin Hester caught a 36-yard scoring pass from Matt Ryan. That gave Hester touchdowns rushing, receiving and punt returning in the first four games. Only five players have done that since ’60. The list:

RUSHING, RECEIVING AND PUNT-RETURN TD IN FIRST 4 GAMES

Year Player, Team Rush TD Rec TD PR TD
2014 Devin Hester, Falcons 1 1 1
2011 Darren Sproles, Saints 1 1 1
2008 Reggie Bush, Saints 1 2 1
1966 Mike Garrett, Chiefs 1 1 1
1961 Bobby Mitchell, Browns 1 2 1

Finally, one other performance popped out at me in Week 4. Frank Gore, at the tender age of 31, racked up 119 yards rushing and 55 receiving against the Eagles in the 49ers’ 26-21 victory. Since 1960, just nine backs 31 or older have had a 100/50 game. Five are in the Hall of Fame, so the feat must mean something, right?

100 YARDS RUSHING, 50 RECEIVING BY A BACK 31 OR OLDER

Date Running back (Age), Team Opponent Rush Rec Result
9-28-14 Frank Gore (31), 49ers Eagles 119 55 W, 26-21
9-10-06 Tiki Barber (31), Giants Colts 110 61 L, 26-21
10-31-04 Priest Holmes (31), Chiefs Colts 143 82 W, 45-35
11-9-86 Tony Dorsett* (32), Cowboys Raiders 101 64 L, 17-13
11-9-86 Walter Payton* (33), Bears Bucs 139 69 W, 23-3
11-10-85 Walter Payton* (32), Bears Lions 107 69 W, 24-3
10-13-85 Tony Dorsett* (31), Cowboys Steelers 113 82 W, 27-13
9-25-83 Franco Harris* (33), Steelers Patriots 106 83 L, 28-23
9-10-78 O.J. Simpson* (31), 49ers Bears 108 56 L, 16-13
11-11-73 Floyd Little* (31), Broncos Chargers 109 76 W, 30-19
12-10-72 Wendell Hayes (32), Chiefs Colts 104 55 W, 24-10

*Hall of Fame

By the way, that was the last 100-yard rushing performance of Simpson’s career. He outrushed Young Sweetness that day, 108-62, and outgained him from scrimmage, 164-65. Think he might have been up for the game?

Gore, though, looks like he might still have a little mileage in him. So we might need to update this chart at some point in the future.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

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