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

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

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

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

Sikahema said it all after the fight:

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

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

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

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

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

“5-8. 200.”

“Well, Canseco is 6-4, 250.”

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

“No.”

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

“Canseco has five black belts.”

“OK, we’ll see.”

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

Like the one that felled Canseco.

2-14 has stopped meaning what it used to mean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least, not necessarily.

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

WHAT 2-14 TEAMS DID THE FOLLOWING YEAR

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

Speaking of smallish players . . .

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

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

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

If Pete Rozelle, one-time cub reporter, covered the NFL today

The question I’ve been wondering about all weekend is: What would Pete Rozelle, cub reporter, have written about Roger Goodell’s news conference Friday? Depending on who you’ve been reading lately, Rozelle either (a.) parted the Red Sea or (b.) landed a spaceship on the moon during his nearly 30 years as NFL commissioner.

But long before that he was an aspiring journalist at Compton Junior College whose dream job was to be sports editor of the Los Angeles Times. He even did some stringing for the Long Beach Press-Telegram while serving as the student-sports information director at Compton. Why don’t we flip through Rozelle’s clip file to get a feel for his prose style? All these stories are from 1947 and ’48, which would make him 21 or 22 years young.

Here’s Pete covering a pivotal JC football game in 1947:

And here’s Pete following up Michigan’s 49-0 wipeout of Southern Cal in the 1948 Rose Bowl:

And here’s Pete rhapsodizing about Compton, California’s own Duke Snider, who in 1948 was in the second year of his Hall of Fame career with the Brooklyn Dodgers:

And here’s Pete sitting down with Phog Allen, the legendary Kansas basketball coach:

And here’s Pete at the scene of a dramatic JC basketball game:

And finally, here’s ubiquitous Pete reporting on high school football — reporting, in fact, on his alma mater:

Two things are cool about this story. First, the Don Klosterman who played quarterback for Compton High is the same Don Klosterman who was later general manager of the Los Angeles Rams — the job Rozelle had when he became commissioner.

Second, Compton’s athletic teams were/are called the Tarbabes — short for Tartar Babies. Is this a great country or what?

So if we took in all this information and tried to come up with a Typical Pete Rozelle Lead Paragraph coming out of Goodell’s news conference, it might read something like this:

NEW YORK — Embattled Roger Goodell, his boyish red hair giving evidence to barely 40 of his 55 years, addressed Friday the scandal that threatens to sound a death knell to his commissionership and take a wrecking ball to the NFL’s image. Grilled by some of the nation’s top sports writers about his botched disciplining of “Rapid Ray” Rice, the Ravens’ will-o’-the-wisp Negro halfback, and “All the Way Adrian” Peterson, the Vikings’ jet-propelled, two-time rushing champ, Goodell admitted mistakes and promised to make things right during a tension-soaked session.

Rozelle took an amazing elevator ride after his byline stopped appearing in the Press-Telegram. Within a dozen years — at the age of 33 — he was NFL commissioner. The path he took:

May 11, 1948:

Feb. 22, 1952:

April 9, 1957:

And lastly, Jan. 27, 1960:

Not bad for a former Compton High Tarbabe.

A brief glimpse of the NFL in 1960

Every once in a while some old NFL footage pops up on YouTube. Today’s discovery: the first few minutes of CBS’s broadcast of a 1960 game between the Colts and 49ers at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. It’s mostly pregame chatter between Niners’ broadcast team, Bob Fouts and Gordy Soltau, the latter a former receiver and kicker for the team. Perhaps you’ve heard of their sons — Dan, the Hall of Fame quarterback, and Mark, who writes for and edits Tiger Woods’ website (and used to work for Golf Digest).

Anyway, maybe the best thing about the clip is the way the Colts offense is introduced. Check it out:

Classic, huh? They line up at their positions, one by one, then run a play before heading to the sideline. Four of the guys who trotted out, of course, are in Canton: receiver Raymond Berry (82), tackle Jim Parker (77), quarterback Johnny Unitas (19) and running back Lenny Moore (24). It was quite the offense.

By all means watch the whole video if you’re interested. I just pulled out the intros because they were so amusingly retro. Something else in the clip also is pretty funny. At the top of the show, Soltau refers to the 49ers’ 26-14 win the week before over the Dallas “Texans.” Uh, Gordy, that’s the Dallas Cowboys. You can excuse him, though, because (a.) it was the Cowboys’ first year in the league; and (b.) he’d actually played against a team called the Dallas Texans in 1952 — twice. (In fact, he caught a touchdown pass in both games.)

The Texans folded after just one season, and many of their players — such as Hall of Fame defensive linemen Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan — moved on to Baltimore, which was given a franchise in ’53. Three years later Unitas arrived, and the rest is history.

Here’s Gordy’s flub:

Little-known fact: This game was the Beginning of the End for the ’50s Colts. After winning titles in ’58 and ’59, they got off to a 6-2 start in ’60 and looked like they might make it three in a row, which would have tied the NFL record. But the Niners forced six turnovers and upset them 30-22 — the start of a four-game Baltimore skid that knocked Johnny U. and Co. out of the running. The team that ended up winning the Western Conference that year? The Packers in Vince Lombardi’s second season.

The Dallas Texans/Cowboys, meanwhile, finished 0-11-1. Their situation would eventually improve, though.

Bengals novelty Mohamed Sanu: He, too, shall pass

A wide receiver who can throw the ball. What football coach wouldn’t want one of those? In Mohamed Sanu, the Bengals have one of the best ever — and we’re not prone to historical hyperbole around here.

Sanu is in just his third season, so it might seem early to be making such pronouncements. But his stats say otherwise. After his 50-yard strike to Brandon Tate in a Week 3 win over the Falcons, the numbers look like this: 3 attempts, 3 completions, 148 yards, 1 touchdown, 158.3 rating. (That’s as high, of course, as ratings get.)

Put it this way: Only two wideouts in NFL history have thrown for more yards than Sanu, and both played a lot longer than he has. Heck, a mere nine have thrown for as many as 100 yards. The group Sanu has joined:

WIDE RECEIVERS WITH 100 CAREER PASSING YARDS

Years	Wideout	Team(s)	Att	Comp	Yds	TD	Int	Rating
2002-10	Antwaan Randle El	Steelers, Redskins	27	22	323	6	0	156.1
1973-83	Drew Pearson	Cowboys	7	5	192	3	2	113.7
2012-14	Mohamed Sanu	Bengals	3	3	148	1	0	158.3
1952-59	Bill McColl	Bears	6	2	138	1	2	81.9
1999-09	Marty Booker	Bears, Dolphins	10	3	126	2	0	118.7
1992-96	Arthur Marshall	Broncos	2	2	111	2	0	158.3
1969-76	Marlin Briscoe	Bills, Dolphins, Lions	9	4	108	0	1	49.5
1998-12	Randy Moss	Vikings	8	4	106	2	1	95.8
1981-92	Jim Jensen	Dolphins	7	4	102	2	0	141.4

Note: A team is only listed if the receiver threw a pass for it. Briscoe broke in as a quarterback with the Broncos, so only his passing statistics as a wideout are included.

One player who isn’t on the list is Hall of Fame end Bill Hewitt, who tossed three TD passes for the Bears — all in the 1933 season. The play Hewitt ran was dubbed the Stinky Special, not because George Halas was a stinker to call it but because Stinky was Bill’s nickname.

Years ago, I asked Ray Nolting, a teammate of Hewitt’s, where the nickname came from. “If we won a ballgame,” he told me, “he’d wear the same jockstrap until we got beat. Wouldn’t wash it. Our

Helmetless Bill Hewitt

trainer, Andy Lotshaw, would complain about how much he smelled. One time we were on a six-game winning streak, and Bill hopped up on the trainer’s table on Monday and asked Andy for a rubdown. ‘OK,’ Andy said, ‘turn over.’ So Bill turned over, and Andy took the scissors and cut the jockstrap off. Boy, was Bill mad. He chased Andy all around the locker room. Busted our luck, too. We lost the next one.”

Hewitt also was famous for playing without a helmet, as you can see in the accompanying photo.

Getting back to Sanu, he’s a natural for such trickery because he was an option quarterback in high school and, when he wasn’t catching passes Rutgers, ran coach Greg Schiano’s wildcat offense. “As a receiver, defenses can do things to take you out of the game if they want to,” Schiano said in 2009. “By putting him in the wildcat, we know he’s getting the touch. He may hand off to somebody, but when we want him to keep it, he’s keeping it.”

The Bengals have gotten the ball to Sanu a variety of ways. The first time he threw it, in his second NFL game, he gave the defense a wildcat look by lining up in the shotgun, then faked to running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis and fired a 73-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Green. Redskins DBs DeAngelo Hall (23) and DeJon Gomes (24) are still wondering what happened. You can watch the video here.

On his second attempt, Sanu was flanked wide left. He caught a lateral pass from Andy Dalton and completed a perfect cross-field throw to running back Giovani Bernard down the right sideline. The play set up his own 6-yard TD grab that put the Bengals ahead to stay against the Browns. You can watch that video here.

On attempt No. 3, Sanu again lined up left (though not as wide), took an end-around pitch from Dalton and hit Tate in stride along the right sideline. Another QB-quality heave. You can watch that video here.

(Sorry for the commercials. The NFL must need the dough for its defense fund.)

People would probably be more excited about this — well, some people would probably be more excited about this — if Sanu weren’t following so closely on the heels of Randle El, the gold standard among Throwing Receivers. Randle El, you may recall, was a dual-threat quarterback for Cam Cameron at Indiana. If you look at his NFL passing stats (27 attempts, etc.) they’re kind of what a QB might put up in a game — a really, really good game. Indeed, only three times since 1960 has a quarterback had that good a game: at least 6 TD passes and a rating of 156.1.

QUARTERBACKS WITH 6 TD PASSES. 156.1+ RATING IN A GAME SINCE 1960

Date	Quarterback, Team	Opponent	Att	Comp	Yds	TD	Rating
9-28-03	Peyton Manning, Colts	Saints	25	20	314	6	158.3
10-21-07	Tom Brady, Patriots	Dolphins	25	21	354	6	158.3
11-3-13	Nick Foles, Eagles	Raiders	28	22	406	7	158.3
Career	Antwaan Randle El, Steelers/Redskins	All	27	22	323	6	156.1

That’s how terrific a passer Randle El was. But let’s not forget: For Sanu, the future is not written.

Someday he might even catch a touchdown pass and throw one in the same game. (He came close Sunday with his 76-yard scoring reception and 50-yard completion.) The last 10 receivers to accomplish the feat (which takes us back to 1983):

THE LAST 10 RECEIVERS WITH A TD CATCH AND A TD PASS IN THE SAME GAME

Date	Wideout, Team	Opponent	TD catch (Yds, QB)	TD pass (Yds, Receiver)
11-11-12	Golden Tate, Seahawks	Jets	38 from Russell Wilson	23 to Sidney Rice
11-30-08	Mark Clayton, Ravens	Bengals	70 from Joe Flacco	32 to Derrick Mason
12-18-04	Antwaan Randle El, Steelers	Giants	35 from Roethlisberger	10 to Vernon Haynes
11-9-03	Rod Gardner, Redskins	Seahawks	14 from Patrick Ramsey	10 to Trung Canidate
10-06-02	Kevin Lockett, Redskins	Titans	23 from Patrick Ramsey	14 to Stephen Davis
10-21-01	David Patten, Patriots	Colts	91 from Tom Brady	60 to Troy Brown
10-7-01	Marty Booker, Bears	Falcons	63 from Jim Miller	34 to Marcus Robinson
11-13-88	Louis Lipps, Steelers	Eagles	89 from Bubby Brister	13 to Merrill Hoge
10-30-83	Harold Carmichael, Eagles	Colts	6 from Ron Jaworski	45 to Mike Quick
10-9-83	Mark Clayton, Dolphins	Bills	14 from Dan Marino	48 to Mark Duper

Source: pro-football-reference.com

When Barry met Emmitt

Can you imagine getting excited these days about a Running Back Duel — salivating at the prospect of two backs trying to match each other yard for yard, missed tackle for missed tackle, touchdown dance for touchdown dance? The position has been so devalued in recent years that I’m not sure such a thing is even possible anymore. Consider: The Eagles’ LeSean McCoy and the Bears’ Matt Forte, the NFL’s top two rushers last season, crossed paths in Week 16. Did anybody think twice about it during the run-up to the game?

I raise these questions because 20 years ago this week we had one of the all-timers. Under the bright lights of Monday Night Football, two Hall of Fame backs at the peak of their talents gave us an evening of thrills not likely to be duplicated. In one corner, wearing the white jersey, was the Cowboys’ Emmitt Smith. And in the other corner, decked out in Honolulu blue, was the Lions’ Barry Sanders.

It was a matchup to die for. Sanders, 26, was early in his sixth season and had already racked up 6,925 rushing yards. Smith, 25, was in his fifth year and not far behind with 5,960. It was pretty clear that, barring an asteroid striking the Earth or some other cosmic catastrophe, both were headed to Canton. The discussion was more: Where do they rank among the great backs in history and, just as important, who’s better?

In my own mind, they were certainly in the Top 10 — and moving up fast. Jim Brown, Walter Payton, O.J. Simpson, Gale Sayers and Earl Campbell occupied the highest rungs, but after that . . . Sanders and Smith were right there. In Barry, you had a back who never saw a tackler he couldn’t elude, even in a telephone booth. In Emmitt, you had a runner who seemed to wring extra inches, feet and yards out of every carry. For their careers to overlap as much as they did — so we could measure them side by side — was one of the great blessings of the ’90s, the running back equivalent of the Tom Brady-Peyton Manning rivalry today.

As for the “Who’s better?” argument, it was a matter of taste, really — like the Leno-Letterman debate or the boxers/briefs conundrum. Sanders might have made more Wow Plays, but Smith ran like a 5-foot-9 Hummer. It was hard not to love both of them (and to love, as much anything, how differently they went about their jobs).

One of the reasons you knew they were special was because they didn’t remind you of anybody but themselves. Joe Perry, the 49ers’ Hall of Famer, once put it to me this way: “Running is mostly instinct, and you can’t teach instinct. You can’t teach somebody to run like [Hugh] McElhenny or Perry or [Jim] Brown or John Henry [Johnson]. That’s their own, and it’s God-given. It’s like a fingerprint.” Barry and Emmitt left their fingerprints — and footprints — all over the league.

Smith had enjoyed more team success with the Cowboys — two Super Bowl rings (with a third to come) to Sanders’ none — but there’s only so much a running back can control. Besides, part of the backstory to their ’94 showdown was the Lions’ 38-6 destruction of Dallas in the ’91 playoffs, a game in which the two backs battled to a statistical draw (though Barry delivered the parting shot with a 47-yard touchdown run). Heading into the Monday nighter, Sanders’ Lions had won two of three against Smith’s Cowboys.

Then referee Bernie Kukar blew his whistle, Jason Hanson kicked off for Detroit and, amazingly, Barry vs. Emmitt actually exceeded expectations. A Hall of Fame quarterback (Dallas’ Troy Aikman), Hall of Fame receiver (Aikman go-to guy Michael Irvin) and assorted other luminaries also were on the field that night, but you couldn’t take your eyes off the two backs. Sanders struck first, breaking a 28-yard run in the second quarter to set up a touchdown pass from Scott Mitchell to Brett Perriman. But Smith, as was his wont, kept coming. If Barry was Muhammad Ali, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, then Emmitt was Joe Frazier, his head in your chest, throwing shot after remorseless shot.

With 4:09 left in the fourth quarter, Smith ran 6 yards around right end to send the game into overtime tied at 17. The outcome, though, was decided not by one of the Main Attractions but by Aikman’s sack-fumble at the Dallas 43. Five snaps later, Hanson booted a 44-yard field goal, and Detroit made off with a huge road win over the two-time defending champions.

The final stat sheet told the tale:

Sanders: 40 carries (his career-high by eight), 194 yards.

Smith: 29 carries, 143 yards, one TD, plus 7 receptions for 49 more yards. Yards from scrimmage: 192.

194 to 192. 76 combined touches. Two decades later, it still seems slightly unreal these legends could summon such a performance — especially in what would turn out to be their final head-to-head meeting. How rare was it? Well, the following chart puts it somewhat in perspective. (I say “somewhat” because none of the other games had nearly the Advance Buzz that Smith-Sanders IV did.)

OPPOSING RBS WITH 190+ YARDS FROM SCRIMMAGE IN A GAME (SINCE 1960)

Date	Back, Team (W/L)	Yards	Back, Team (W/L)	Yards
10-14-90	Barry Sanders, Lions (L)	225	Barry Word, Chiefs (W)	200
9-19-94	Barry Sanders, Lions (W)	194	Emmitt Smith, Cowboys (L)	192
11-26-00	Mike Anderson, Broncos (W)	209	Ricky Watters, Seahawks (L)	203
9-15-02	Edgerrin James, Colts (L)	220	Ricky Williams, Dolphins (W)	194
12-1-02	L. Tomlinson, Chargers (W)	271	Clinton Portis, Broncos (L)	193
12-28-08	Steven Jackson, Rams (L)	215	Michael Turner, Falcons (W)	208

Why the NFL Network doesn’t re-broadcast games like Barry vs. Emmitt on a regular basis is an eternal mystery. Then again, we all know the league’s mentality: Keep the focus on today’s players. We wouldn’t want anyone thinking they aren’t the greatest thing since the invention of the dropkick. At any rate, we’re all the poorer for it — those of us, at least, who enjoy time travel (and aren’t convinced that newer is necessarily better).

Sanders went on to lead the NFL in rushing that year with 1,883 yards. (His 2,000-yard season was still three years away.) Smith finished third with 1,484 — and also had a league-best 21 touchdowns. This, of course, was nothing out of the ordinary for either of them. You look at their numbers, season by ridiculous season, and you just shake your head.

Will we ever see anything like that again, two thoroughbreds — running backs who defined their position — galloping free across the, uh, artificial turf of pro football? I’m not so sure.

Which is why I wanted to spend a few minutes reminiscing about it. Just in case.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Ray Rice, Roger Goodell and journalistic hyperbole

The unconscionable conduct of a handful of NFL players — Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson most visibly — “has mushroomed into the biggest crisis confronting a commissioner in the NFL’s 95-year history,” ESPN.com reporters Don Van Natta Jr. and Kevin Van Valkenburg wrote the other day.

And they make that claim more than once in their investigative piece on embattled Roger Goodell — and how he and the league fumbled the handling of Rice’s domestic-violence case. Toward they end, they again call it “the worst crisis in NFL history,” adding, “some league sponsors, most notably Anheuser-Busch, are jittery.”

Worst crisis in NFL history. That certainly takes in a lot of territory. Also, if you’re going to use words like “biggest” and “worst,” it helps to define your terms. If by “biggest” and “worst” you mean “loudest,” you’re probably right. Nowadays, with social media and the 24-hour news cycle and nonstop sports chatter on TV and radio, everything is louder. But that doesn’t make the subject of the noise any more momentous. Our airwaves are a huge vacuum. Something has to fill it. The beast must be fed.

But if by “biggest” and “worst” you mean “most threatening to the league” — as far as its financial well-being and/or place in the sports hierarchy are concerned — the current crisis doesn’t even make the Top 5 all time, and pales in comparison to a few. You want a crisis? How about these:

● The Great Depression. When Black Thursday struck in October 1929, the NFL was in just its 10^th season. Its success was by no means assured. College football was still far more popular, and baseball, of course, was king. On top of that, the pro football player wasn’t exactly considered a Shining Example of American Manhood. (More like a mercenary lout.)

Then the stock market crashed and, well, what do you think that was like? Do you suppose it might have been a bigger deal than what’s going on now with Rice, Peterson and the rest? By 1932, the league had shrunk to eight teams — three in New York, two in Chicago and one Boston, Portsmouth (Ohio) and Green Bay. Five cities, that’s it. And two had populations of less than 50,000.

In the late ’30s things began to get better for the NFL — as they did for the rest of the country — but it was touch and go for a while.

● World War II. Yeah, let’s not forget that. With so many of its players in the military, the league thought about shutting down in 1943 — only the Cleveland Rams did — and some franchises were merged to keep them viable. As the war went on, teams were so hurting for manpower they suited up a few 18-year-olds and talked retired players like the Redskins’ Tiger Walton, who had been out of the game since 1934, into making a comeback. (Only 12 of 330 draft picks in 1944 played in the NFL that season.)

“If the war had lasted a little longer,” Bears Hall of Famer Sid Luckman once said, “the NFL might have gotten down to the level of semi-pro ball.”

● The American Football League. Sorry, but a decade-long battle with a rival league (1960-69) — a league that mounted the most serious challenge to the NFL’s monopoly — strikes me as a much bigger crisis than L’Affaire Rice. Competition from the AFL increased salaries dramatically, forced the NFL to expand earlier than it would have (to Dallas, Minnesota, Atlanta and New Orleans) and hurt profit margins. And in the last two seasons before the merger, the AFL’s Jets and Chiefs won the Super Bowl. The horror.

● Steroids. We tend forget what a stir the steroid epidemic created in the ’80s. It wasn’t just a health issue, it was a competitive fairness issue. Let’s face it, nothing riles fans quite like the idea of cheating – and it’s damaging when such a cloud hovers over a league. Once the problem came to a head, Commissioner Pete Rozelle dealt with it quickly and decisively, but only after years of whispers and denial.

● Concussions. When all the votes are in, I wouldn’t be surprised if this crisis — which is far from over — turns out to be far worse for the NFL than the recent rash of misbehavior. Indeed, if anything brings down pro football, it will be the growing suspicion that the game is simply too dangerous, that the physical cost isn’t worth the financial gain. That doesn’t mean the league won’t continue to exist in some form; but it’ll be seriously diminished, and it won’t attract nearly as many of the best athletes.

One other crisis is worthy of mention, even if it doesn’t crack the Top 5. In 1946 New York police uncovered an attempt to fix the NFL championship game. This led to two Giants players being banished from the league and, naturally, much negative publicity — at a time when the rival All-America Conference was trying to gain traction. As difficult as life is for Goodell, I doubt he’d swap places with Bert Bell, the commissioner in ’46. (The AAC, after all, was a worthy adversary that gave us the Browns and 49ers.)

Anyway, that’s six crises in the NFL’s 95-year history I’d rate ahead of the one we’re now obsessing about. And I’m sure I could come up with several more if I wanted to think about it a bit longer. But I’ve got other blogs to throw on the fire, other fishy statements to fry.

So I’ll finish here: Crises aren’t bigger nowadays because the NFL is bigger; they’re actually smaller, generally, but for the same reason: because the game is so firmly established. It was in the early years that you had to worry. A crisis back then was like a baby running a temperature. The league hadn’t built up the immunities it has now.

Stat of the Day, Sept. 15, 2014

The Redskins’ highlight reel is pretty short since Joe Gibbs first retired in 1993. Two playoff wins, to be exact — one less than in their ’91 championship season. Even their 41-10 win over the Jaguars on Sunday was marred by injuries to Robert Griffin III (serious) and DeSean Jackson (less so), which tells you all you need to know about the franchise’s Overall Karma.

But the victory did produce one cool stat. The Redskins became just the second team since 1940 to (a.) score 40 points; (b.) rack up 10 sacks and (c.) outgain their opponent by more than 300 yards (in their case, 301 — 449-148). The other team? The ’61 Bears in their season finale against the expansion Vikings. Here’s the box score of that game if you want to look it over.

A couple of things jump out at you. First, the quarterback the Bears sacked 10 times was Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton. Yes, Scramblin’ Fran was more like Scrambled Eggs Fran on that day. But he picked himself up off the ground, again and again, and threw four touchdown passes, one in each quarter. Has any quarterback ever thrown four TD passes in a game in which he was sacked 10 times? Not that I can find. This was one tough guy. (Oh, and by the way, he was a rookie that year.)

Second, another Hall of Famer, the Vikes’ Hugh McElhenny, opened the scoring with an 81-yard punt return for a touchdown. Hurryin’ Hugh was just two weeks shy of his 33^rd birthday. How many players that old have had a punt return that long for a TD? Answer: three. (The others were the Raiders’ 35-year-old Tim Brown in this game and the Redskins’ 33-year-old Eric Metcalf in this game.) So at the time, McElhenny was the oldest — and would remain so for almost four decades.

The most interesting thing about this game, though — for our purposes, anyway — can’t be found in the box score. One of George Halas’ assistants on that Bears’ coaching staff, you see, was George Allen. And who is the general manager of the Redskins team that just whacked the Jaguars? His son, Bruce. You can’t make this stuff up. Only two 40/10/300 games in the last 75 seasons, and they’re both in the Allen family.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

About Adrian Peterson . . .

As you’re pondering the child-abuse charge brought against the Vikings’ Adrian Peterson, check out this passage from a story that ran in Sports Illustrated in 1964. The speaker is Hall of Fame wide receiver Tommy McDonald, who grew up on a farm in Roy, N.M.

“If I needed a whipping, Dad would let Mother whip me. But when he really wanted to get a point over to me, he would take me out himself. He used to just grab me by one hand, and we would go in a little circle, and I would get the old strap.”

File this one, I suppose, under: Times Sure Have Changed. (And aren’t we all glad they have?)

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

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

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

2-14 has stopped meaning what it used to mean

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

WHAT 2-14 TEAMS DID THE FOLLOWING YEAR

Speaking of smallish players . . .

If Pete Rozelle, one-time cub reporter, covered the NFL today

A brief glimpse of the NFL in 1960

Bengals novelty Mohamed Sanu: He, too, shall pass

WIDE RECEIVERS WITH 100 CAREER PASSING YARDS

QUARTERBACKS WITH 6 TD PASSES. 156.1+ RATING IN A GAME SINCE 1960

THE LAST 10 RECEIVERS WITH A TD CATCH AND A TD PASS IN THE SAME GAME

When Barry met Emmitt

OPPOSING RBS WITH 190+ YARDS FROM SCRIMMAGE IN A GAME (SINCE 1960)

Ray Rice, Roger Goodell and journalistic hyperbole

Stat of the Day, Sept. 15, 2014

About Adrian Peterson . . .

“If I needed a whipping, Dad would let Mother whip me. But when he really wanted to get a point over to me, he would take me out himself. He used to just grab me by one hand, and we would go in a little circle, and I would get the old strap.”