Tag Archives: Bears

Barnstorming on Dec. 25

On Christmas Day 1932, the Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans played to a 6-6 tie before a sparse crowd of 2,000 in Cincinnati. I mention this because, well, they’d also met the Sunday before in the NFL title game — won by the Bears, 9-0.

You sometimes saw these championship rematches in the early days, before the league decided that maybe they weren’t such a good idea. After all, you want to be able to bill your title game as the be-all and end-all of your season. It was devalued a bit if the clubs played again a week — or a month — later in Los Angeles, Dallas or Miami, even if it was just an “exhibition tilt,” as The Portsmouth Times called it.

Rest assured both sides took the tilt seriously. That was the other thing about these rematches: They gave players a chance for retribution. Thus, the action at Redland Field, home of the baseball Reds, was “replete with vicious tackling and effective blocking,” the Times reported.

The Spartans scored first on a pass from Glenn Presnell to Harry Ebding. (I think. There was some disagreement about who the receiver was). The Bears tied it on a run by Red Grange. The score ended up 6-6 because both teams missed the extra point; Portsmouth’s was blocked and the Bears’ was wide.

Unfortunately, with so many empty seats, the game didn’t make enough money to cover the clubs’ guarantees. Instead, “the Spartans and Bears were offered 75 percent of the gate receipts,” the Times said. “The players received about 25 percent of their regular salary [for] playing this game.”

Portsmouth coach Potsy Clark had driven the 100 miles to Cincinnati, a trip that was much more adventurous than he’d planned. His car broke down and, despite Potsy’s best efforts, a mechanic had to be summoned . . . on Christmas Eve.

After the game “he said goodbye to all the boys,” according to the Times, “and then hopped into his automobile and left for Indianapolis, where he had Christmas dinner with his family.” Hitching a ride were fullback Ace Gutowsky and his wife, “who enjoyed the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Clark before leaving for Oklahoma City.”

As for the Bears, they caught a train to Nashville and played there the next day against the Boston Braves (the team that would become the Washington Redskins). It was the first pro football game ever played in the Music City, and the locals were in a festive mood. They spent most of the afternoon throwing firecrackers at one another.

The Bears weren’t the least bit distracted, though, Blinky Horn (yes, Blinky Horn) of the Tennessean wrote. “They long ago became accustomed to the rat-tat-tat of submachine guns in the Windy City.”

Fred Russell, the famed columnist for the Banner, poked his head in the Chicago locker room before the kickoff and was stunned to see players, quite a few of them, puffing away on cigars. “They can smoke any time up to an hour before the game,” he informed his readers. “But it’s taboo between halves.”

Fueled by nicotine, the Bears won easily, 25-0. But as in Cincinnati, the crowd was disappointing — only 2,000 to 3,000. Nashville was still very much a college town. (Indeed, the game was played at Vanderbilt’s Dudley Stadium). Some of the proceeds were supposed to go to the Community Chest to help the needy, but there was nothing left after the clubs took their cut.

That prompted this comment from Horn: “One of two things is certain — [either] pro football has no appeal to the citizenry of this township or the natives have poured out so much to assist charity that they have nothing left to give.

“There’s never been such a fullback in Dudley Stadium as [the Bears’] Bronko Nagurski. Nor such a passer as Johnny Doehring. Nor an end superior to Luke Johnsos. But all this sweetness was wasted in the desert air. For Nashville’s public is not pro football-minded. Or maybe they have too many headaches from Xmas ’nog and Xmas bills to take any acute interest in this visit of the champions.”

Sixty-eight years later the Titans would begin playing in Nashville — and things would change in a hurry. But in 1932 the NFL was still a rumor in large swaths of the country. That’s part of what the barnstorming was about: to plant the seed, even if it meant disrupting your Christmas holiday.

Football in Cuba

The normalizing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba should be a boon to major-league baseball. That’s the sport that immediately comes to mind, of course, when thinking about That Island 90 Miles South of Florida — baseball, then track and field, then maybe boxing.

Believe it or not, though, Cuba also has a football history — a distant one, perhaps, but fascinating nonetheless. In fact, in 1944, when the NFL was suffering from an acute manpower shortage, the Redskins had a Cuban player in training camp. Here’s the story that ran in newspapers across the country:

A later story corrected the spelling of Monoz’s name — it was Munoz, apparently — and claimed that, according to the Redskins, he was “the first Cuban-born athlete to play professional football in the United States.” There’s no record, after all, of Rivero ever playing for the Bears, though he was a star back at Columbia. That’s him in the photo below carrying the ball against Union College in 1930:

Wish I had a photo of Munoz to show you, but he disappeared from the Washington training camp without a trace. (He couldn’t have been too terrific. NFL clubs were so desperate in that war year — the Redskins included — that they suited up kids fresh out of high school.)

The University of Havana did indeed field a football team in those days, though, and continued to until the late ’50s. Havana also was the occasional site of a college bowl game, called at various times the Bacardi Bowl, the Cigar Bowl or the Rhumba Bowl. Some of these games pitted the University of Havana against a visiting American team. Check out the college scoreboard from Dec. 9, 1939:

(Georgia Teachers College, by the way, is now Georgia Southern.)

A few years earlier, on New Year’s Day 1937, Auburn and Villanova battled to a 7-7 tie in the Bacardi Bowl, held at Tropical Stadium. This is from The New York Times:

Half-a-dozen players in this box score — at least — went on to play in the NFL. I’m talking about tackles Herb Roton, Jim Sivell and Bo Russell for Auburn and left tackle John Mellus, left guard Bill Rogers and center Stan Galazin for Villanova.

I wouldn’t count on the University of Havana restoring its football program any time soon, but it’s always a possibility down the road. Alberto Juantorena, I always thought, would have made a heckuva wideout.

Last-minute gift ideas

With the holiday season upon us — and Festivus just a week away — I thought I’d throw out a few gift suggestions for That Special Someone (who also happens to be a pro football fanatic). Some of these items might be hard to come by but, trust me, it would be well worth the effort.

● A pair of Frenchy Fuqua’s fiberglass clogs with three-inch heels — complete with goldfish in the heels (air pump included).

Fuqua, a running back with the Giants and Steelers and the ’60s and ’70s, is remembered less for his ball carrying than for his cutting-edge fashion. His bright-red “caveman outfit” was a real head-turner. How he described it to the Pittsburgh Press in 1976: “It had a strap over one shoulder, and one leg was a bell bottom and the other had fringes on it. But the greatest thing about it was the purse. It was a white fur purse that was shaped like a club.”

Frenchy’s signature accessory, though, was the aforementioned shoes. They looked something like this:

Problem was, the fish lasted only a couple of hours before suffocating. “I was getting’ so much pub because of the goldfish, I hated to stop wearing the shoes,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, you kick up some dead goldfish at a banquet, and pretty soon you get a real foul odor. You start feeling terrible about it, too. When some people found out they were dyin’, they got on me about bein’ cruel to animals. I thought about running a tube down my leg with an air pump that would supply constant fresh water to the fish.”

The shoes also were potentially hazardous to the wearer’s health. As he once told The New York Times, they “were a little slippery to walk in, being glass, so you’d have to hold on to a rail when you went down stairs.”

● The Joe Namath Butter-Up Corn Popper. Namath hawked everything from shaving cream to pantyhose to this, which was popular in college dorms in the ’70s:

● A VHS tape of Sammy Baugh’s 12-part serial, “King of the Texas Rangers.” Slingin’ Sam could do more than just throw touchdown passes. Being a Texan, he also could ride horses, shoot guns and beat up bad guys.

● Rosey Grier’s “Committed” album (1986).

Grier, one of the tackles on the Rams’ legendary Fearsome Foursome defensive front in the ’60s, could sing a little. In 1965 he and the rest of the Foursome appeared on the TV show Shindig! (with the other three, as you’ll see, doing little more calisthenics behind him):

A year earlier, Rosey had sung solo on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Here’s that clip:

(I ask you: How did we get from that great musical moment to Redskins owner Dan Snyder buying Dick Clark Productions?)

● A Bronko Nagurski, Jr. football. (You’ve gotta like the 1937 price.)

● And finally, if you’re looking a stocking stuffer, there’s always the Red Grange candy bar.

Title games in December

Before 16-game seasons and 12-team playoff fields, the NFL played its championship game in the second or third week of December. Not much survives from those battles in the ’30s and ’40s, but there are a few clips available on YouTube. Here’s what I’ve found — from 1934, ’36, ’39 and ’41.

DEC. 9, 1934: GIANTS 30, BEARS 13

This was the celebrated Sneakers Game, so named because the Giants switched to “basketball shoes” (as they were called) in the second half to get better traction on an icy field. They then exploded for 27 points in the fourth quarter to ruin the Bears’ perfect season and keep them from winning a record-tying third straight title.

(It’s still the most points ever scored by a team in the fourth quarter of a playoff game. The ’92 Eagles are next with 26 vs. the Saints in this 36-20 win.)

We begin our film festival with back-to-back runs by the great Bronko Nagurski. Note the Bears are lined up in the T formation, with the quarterback taking the snap directly from center. They were only NFL club using the T in 1934. Everybody else opted for some variation of the single wing. Note also, on the first play, the man-in-motion flashing across the screen. That had been incorporated into the offense, too.

One more tackle-busting Nagurski run. What’s interesting about this play is that the Bears are in the single wing. They mixed it up, in other words — which must have been a nightmare for opposing defenses. Watch for the official slipping and falling at the end of the clip. The field was treacherous in spots.

Here’s a photo of Giants quarterback Ed Danowski (22) getting ready to crack the line. As you can see, he and his blockers are wearing sneakers, which were borrowed from nearby Manhattan College and rushed to the Polo Grounds by locker-room attendant Abe Cohen:

After the footwear change, it was all over for Chicago. The sneaks didn’t just give the Giants better footing, they enabled them to cut more sharply than the Bears could. Hall of Fame fullback Ken Strong scored the final two New York touchdowns — the first over the right side, the second up the middle. In the last part of the clip, he touches the ball down in the end zone, just like in the old days. (Thus the term “touchdown.”)

“Strong had been removed from the game in the first half with his left leg twisted,” Arthur Daley of The New York Times wrote. “He appeared out of it. But he came back in the second, apparently none the worse for wear.”

DEC. 13, 1936: PACKERS 21, REDSKINS 6

The ’36 title game should have been played in Boston, home of the Eastern champion Redskins. But the team didn’t draw well, so owner George Preston Marshall moved the game to New York’s Polo Grounds. (The next season, the franchise was in Washington.)

You’ll love the opening kickoff. According to the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Green Bay returner being picked up, carried back and slammed down is George Sauer (whose son, George Jr., starred for the Jets in Super Bowl III with eight catches for 133 yards, both game highs). Today, no doubt, Boston would have been hit with a personal-foul penalty.

The Packers led 7-6 at halftime thanks to this Hall of Famer-to-Hall of Famer heave from Arnie Herber to Don Hutson, good for a 48-yard touchdown:

Early in the second half Green Bay began to break it open. From the Sentinel: “Herber sent a long aerial down the field which Johnny Blood [another Hall of Famer] caught for a 51-yard gain, Don Irwin nailing him on the 9-yard line. After being halted three straight times on running plays, Herber found [end Milt] Gantenbein alone over the goal line and pegged one right in his arms for a touchdown.”

As the clip shows, Herber dropped back quite a ways before throwing the ball to Blood — 10 or 11 yards by my count. This was to give Johnny time to get downfield, but it’s also an indication of how unreliable pass protection was in that era. Linemen couldn’t use their hands yet, remember, and the concept of the pocket was still years off. (Plus, it was two years before there was a penalty for roughing the passer. Once the ball was released, the defense could pretty much whatever it wanted to the quarterback until the play was whistled dead.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t insert this last screen shot. It’s of the Packers’ Lou Gordon — No. 53 — running around without a helmet. In 1936 headgear was still optional.

I’d also be shirking my responsibility if I didn’t include the lead paragraph of the game story that ran in the Boston Globe. It was written by John Lardner — Ring’s son — then 24 and working for the New York Herald Tribune. Can you believe it? The Globe didn’t even staff the game (probably because Redskins were abandoning the city). Imagine the Los Angeles Times not covering Super Bowls XXXIV and XXXVI because the Rams had forsaken L.A.

“. . . championship of the universe, and points south.” Classic.

DEC. 10, 1939: PACKERS 27, GIANTS 0

Steve Owen, the Giants’ Hall of Fame coach, missed the game because of his mother’s death. That left the team in the hands of assistant Bo Molenda, a former Packer. The site was switched from Green Bay’s City Stadium to Milwaukee’s larger State Fair Park because this was, after all, the Depression. If a few more tickets could be sold . . . . And indeed, the crowd of 32,279 produced a gate of over $80,000, a record for an NFL title game. The winning Packers reportedly earned $703.97 each, the losing Giants $455.57.

Green Bay turned it into a rout in the third quarter after Gantenbein (yes, him again) picked off a pass and ran it back to the New York 33. A touchdown — one that made it 17-0 — soon followed. The Sentinel again: “[Quarterback Cecil] Isbell, faking and veering the ball nicely, slipped back, wheeled and passed downfield to [back] Joe Laws, who was all alone to take the ball on the 6 and romp over without a man getting within yards of him.”

Aren’t those goalposts the greatest? They were the new, improved version that moved the posts off the goal line, where they could be an obstruction on running plays. (The goal posts weren’t moved to the back of the end zone until 1974.) The post-TD “celebration,” by the way, is just beautiful. A teammate comes up and . . . shakes Law’s hand.

In the fourth quarter, Packers linebacker Bud Svendsen intercepted another Giants pass and returned it to the New York 15. This time Green Bay turned to trickery. “A double reverse, with [Harry] Jacunski carrying on an end-around, brought the ball to the 1 yards,” the Sentinel reported, “and [fullback Ed] Jankowski pounded over the New York right guard for the score.”

Here’s that sequence – interception/double reverse/short touchdown plunge — that gave the Packers their final points:

DEC. 21, 1941: BEARS 37, GIANTS 9

Once again, the Giants took a licking. Of course, this Bears club — just a year removed from the 73-0 evisceration of the Redskins in the title game — was nigh unbeatable. The game was played two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which might have had something to do with the disappointing attendance: 13,341.

Behind by four touchdowns in the final quarter, New York ran a gadget play in hopes of getting in a parting shot, but the Bears blew it up. The New York Times’ account:

Just before the end, 9 seconds away, [Steve] Owen inserted Andy Marefos into his lineup. The next play was the one that had worked against the Redskins in their first game with the Giants. Hank Soar rifled a lateral [pass] to Marefos, who was supposed to heave a long one down the field.

Before he could get rid of the ball, the entire Bear team hit him at once. The pigskin popped out of his hand and [end] Ken Kavanaugh picked it up and trotted 42 yards to the end zone.

And then America — and many of these players — went off to war.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Le’Veon Bell breaks out

Le’Veon Bell, the Steelers’ second-year running back, was having a nice little career for himself heading into the Titans game three weeks ago. Now, though, such adjectives as “nice” and “little” no longer seem to apply. Three straight games with 200-plus yards from scrimmage will do that for you.

It’s unusual enough, after all, for a back to have two games in a row like that. Only seven others have done it in the 2000s — and no back has had three in a row since Bears Hall of Famer Walter Payton in 1977. The details:

BACKS IN THE 2000S WITH 200 YARDS FROM SCRIMMAGE IN CONSECUTIVE GAMES

Year	Back, Team	Opponents (Yards)	Total
2014	Le’Veon Bell, Steelers	Titans (222), Saints (254), Bengals (235)	711
2012	Doug Martin, Bucs	Vikings (214), Raiders (272)	486
2007	Ronnie Brown, Dolphins	Jets (211), Raiders (207)	418
2003	Deuce McAlister, Saints	Falcons (237), Eagles (232)	469
2002	Ricky Williams, Dolphins	Bills (235), Bears (216)	451
2002	Marshall Faulk, Rams	Seahawks (235), Cardinals (235)	471
2000	Mike Anderson, Broncos	Seahawks (209), Saints (256)	465
2000	Eddie George, Titans	Bengals (214), Jaguars (209)	423

Now let’s compare Bell’s run to Payton’s. Le’Veon first:

VS.	Rushing	Receiving	Total
Titans	33-204-1	2-18-0	35-222-1
Saints	21-95-1	8-159-0	29-254-1
Bengals	26-185-2	6-50-1	32-235-3
Totals	80-484-4	16-227-1	96-711-5

And now Walter:

VS.	Rushing	Receiving	Total
Chiefs	33-192-3	1-29-0	34-221-3
Vikings	40-275-1	1-6-0	41-281-1
Lions	20-137-1	4-107-0	24-244-1
Totals	93-604-5	6-142-0	99-746-5

Awful close. Note that Payton set a single-game rushing record (since broken) when he went for 275 against the Vikes. But other than that . . . there isn’t much difference between them volume-

Le’Veon Bell cuts upfield.

wise. Walter had three more touches and 35 more yards.

Note, too, that both had a 100-yard receiving game during their streak. If you’re going to pull off something like this, it helps to have some pass-catching ability.

Thanks in large measure to Payton, by the way, the Bears made the playoffs that season for the first time in 14 years (when they won their last title under George Halas). And Bell, of course, has the 8-5 Steelers pointed in the same direction. (He’s also on pace to finish with 2,368 yards from scrimmage, which would be the fifth-highest total of all time.)

At any rate, the word is out about him now — if it wasn’t before. This is one dangerous (and durable) back.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

The last helmetless player — in 1965?

For years I’ve operated on the assumption that the last helmetless player in the NFL was Bears end Dick Plasman in 1941. Never have I come across anything to disabuse me of that notion. Until now. Sort of.

Last night — typically, while researching something else — I came across some amusing new evidence. It was buried in Roy McHugh’s column for the Pittsburgh Press on Jan. 22, 1967. McHugh’s subject, Carl Brettschneider, was telling tales about his days as a linebacker-enforcer with the Lions in the ’60s. Then he told one about Joe Don Looney, the free-spirited running back, that I’d never heard before.

To set the stage, Looney was the 12^th pick of the 1964 draft, a wonderfully athletic — if difficult — running back out of Oklahoma. The Giants, who picked him, traded him to the Colts before the preseason was over. Just didn’t want to deal with him. After a year in Baltimore, Joe Don’s act wore thin and he was dealt to the Lions. That’s where he crossed paths with Brettschneider, who by then was an assistant coach. This is from McHugh’s column:

One day in camp, Looney misplaced his helmet and refused to let the equipment man replace it. He practiced bareheaded and he “had that look in his eyes,” Brettschneider remembers.

“If Joe Don feels he is right, nobody’s going to change him,” Brettschneider said. “This equipment man was scared to death of him and the coaches couldn’t decide what to do. It was turning into a major problem — how to get a helmet on Joe Don Looney.

Brettschneider bet the coaches $100 he could fix everything up. In the dining room that night, he said to Looney, “I’ll meet you in the equipment room at 7:30.” Looney said, “I won’t be there.” But Brettschneider found him in the weight room at 7:30, “lifting 350 pounds like nothing,” and the weight room adjoined the equipment room.

“Let’s go get a helmet,” Brettschneider suggested. Looney walked over and tried one for size. It didn’t fit, but he said, “This is good enough.” Brettschneider said, “I’m telling you to get one that fits.” Looney got one that fit.

Brettschneider never collected his $100.

But at least he kept the kid from doing serious damage to his cranium. Anyway, there you have it, folks: the last NFLer to play without a helmet (even if it was only in practice) — in 1965!

Joe Don Looney: the gift that keeps on giving.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

The Lions' Joe Don Looney holding the helmet Carl Brettschneider talked him into.

Looney holding the helmet Brettschneider talked him into wearing.

Versatility revisited

Yes, the NFL has become more specialized over the decades, but I’m not sure I expected this: No player in the first 14 weeks of the season has had a game in which he scored a touchdown both rushing and receiving and returned a punt or kickoff. (A year ago, three did: Darren Sproles, then with the Saints, three times and the Vikings’ Cordarrelle Patterson and the Chargers’ Danny Woodhead once each.)

I bring this up because, well, who doesn’t enjoy seeing a player have one of those magical days in which he scores every which way — or, at least, more than two ways. Multitaskers such as the Eagles’ Sproles and the Lions’ Reggie Bush are capable of having a game like that, but they haven’t. In fact, the only player in the last 38 years to score three different ways in a game is the Jaguars’ Jimmy Smith in 1995, and that was kind of fluky. Smith’s 14-yard touchdown reception was conventional enough, but his other TDs came on blocked punt that he recovered in the end zone and a trick play that saw him take a lateral on a kickoff return and run 89 yards.

The last player before Smith to do it was the Dolphins’ Freddie Solomon in 1976 (run, catch, punt). Now that’s more like it.

Maybe I’m the only one who cares about this stuff, but the definition of an athlete used to be: a guy who can do pretty much anything. And it just seems that, over time, NFL teams have asked their best athletes to do less and less. There are reasons for this; I talked about them in Tuesday’s post (larger roster sizes, protectiveness of their assets, etc.). But that doesn’t mean the game is better because of it.

In 1941, the single-platoon era, Bears Hall of Famer George McAfee scored a touchdown five different ways (run, catch, punt, kickoff, interception). He also threw for a score. A bit more recently — 1959 — the Cardinals’ Bobby Joe Conrad completed another kind of pentathlon, scoring two TDs rushing, three receiving, one punt returning, and booting six field goals and 30 extra points. (Too bad they didn’t have the two-point conversion back then.) He, too, threw for a score.

Raise your hand if you’d like to see somebody do either of those things again.

It won’t happen, of course. With rare exceptions, players no longer play on both sides of the ball, and nobody moonlights as a kicker anymore. That said, coaches could stand to be less conservative in their use of star talent. Would it have killed, say, Wayne Fontes to have Barry Sanders run back a few more kicks for the Lions? Sanders could have been one of the greatest returners of all time. The same goes for Darrell Green during his lengthy career in Washington. Think about it: Green covered kicks, but he only returned one in his 20 seasons (though he did return 51 punts — a whopping 2.6 a year).

This “What if he gets hurt?” paranoia didn’t keep the Giants from having Emlen Tunnell run back more than 300 punts and kickoffs. The same goes for plenty of other Hall of Famers in pre-merger period. Granted, there was more of a necessity because of the smaller rosters, but coaches didn’t get nearly as caught up in the what-if as they do now. They were trying to win the game, and that, to them, meant putting their best players on the field.

It isn’t just the coaches. Many players, after they become established starters, seem to lose their appetite for returning. Can’t blame them. Pro football, with its partially guaranteed contracts, offers less security than other sports. Why take on additional risk when a less-burdened backup can handle the job (though not as well, perhaps)?

And so it’s left to the situation backs and by-committee types (e.g. Sproles and the Bills’ C.J. Spiller) to do what Gale Sayers, Hugh McElhenny, Steve Van Buren and other Hall of Fame runners routinely did. More’s the pity.

PLAYERS WHO HAVE SCORED A TD 3 DIFFERENT WAYS IN THE SAME GAME (SINCE 1960)

(And if anybody starts humming “The Way We Were,” I’m gonna slug him.)

● Bobby Mitchell, Browns, Oct. 16, 1960 vs. Cowboys — 46 pass from Milt Plum, 30 run, 90 kickoff return. Total touches (from scrimmage and on returns): 12.

● Bobby Mitchell, Browns, Oct. 8, 1961 vs. Redskins — 52 pass from Plum, 64 punt return, 31 run. Touches: 10.

● Abner Haynes, Dallas Texans (AFL), Oct. 15, 1961 vs. Bills — 69 pass from Cotton Davidson, 3 run, 87 kickoff return. All three scores came in the fourth quarter and almost brought Dallas back from a 20-3 deficit. Touches: 21.

● Timmy Brown, Eagles, Dec. 2, 1962 vs. Redskins — 99 kickoff return, 3 run, 10 pass from Tommy McDonald (the only one the Hall of Fame wideout threw in his career). Touches: 19.

● Gale Sayers, Bears, Oct. 17, 1965 vs. Vikings – 18 pass from Rudy Bukich, 25 pass from Bukich, 96 kickoff return, 10 run. The last three came in the final quarter, with the kick return putting

Gale Sayers on the loose.

Chicago ahead to stay. Just a classic game. The lead changed hands six times in the second half before the Bears pulled away to a 45-37 win. Touches: 22 (counting the 27-yard completion he threw).

● Sayers, Dec. 12, 1965 vs. 49ers — 80 pass from Bukich, 21 run, 7 run, 50 run, 1 run, 85 punt return. Touches: 16. This was Gale’s Game for the Ages. On a muddy field in San Francisco, he tied the single-game record by scoring six touchdowns. Note it was the second time that season — his rookie season — he scored a TD three different ways in a game. (One of his teammates had a funny comment afterward. The best thing about Sayers’ feat, he said, is that “We won’t have to listen to George [Halas, the Bears’ coach] talk about Ernie Nevers anymore.” Nevers was the first player to score six TDs in a game — for the Cardinals against the Bears in 1929. The other was the Browns’ Dub Jones, also against the Bears, in ’51.)

● Sayers, Dec. 3, 1967 vs. 49ers (again) — 97 kickoff return, 15 run, 58 punt return. (Too bad he didn’t catch any passes that day. He might have scored four different ways.) Touches: 15.

● Walter “The Flea” Roberts, Saints, Nov. 5, 1967 vs. Eagles — 91 kickoff, 27 fumble recovery, 49 pass from Gary Cuozzo. Touches: 5 (if you want to count a fumble recovery as a touch). Roberts’ performance came in the first victory in Saints history. How do you like them heroics?

● Travis Williams, Packers, Nov. 2, 1969 vs. Steelers — 83 punt return, 96 kickoff return, 1 run. Touches: 11.

● Freddie Solomon, Dolphins, Dec. 5, 1976 vs. Bills — 79 punt return, 53 pass from Don Strock, 59 run. Touches: 7.

● Jimmy Smith, Jaguars, Dec. 3, 1995 vs. Broncos — Blocked-punt recovery in end zone, 89 kickoff return (after receiving a lateral from Desmond Howard), 14 pass from Steve Beuerlein. Touches: 4 (if you want to count a blocked-punt recovery as a touch).

As the number of touches (average: 12.9) indicates, none of these players were being worn out by their coaches. They were just being put to a greater variety of uses. Why not give a dangerous back more chances in the open field (and a couple fewer chances, maybe, from scrimmage, where the traffic is heavier)? It all comes down to how you allocate your resources. Something to think about.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Curly Lambeau, the cartoon

Bear with me on this one. If you do, I think you’ll be entertained.

Once upon a time, newspapers told the story of a game not just with photos but with cartoons — elaborate, wonderfully drawn, often funny cartoons. This one, from the Oct. 1, 1944, Milwaukee Sentinel, might be my favorite. It laughs at Packers coach Curly Lambeau’s antics during a game against the Bears the previous Sunday. Green Bay won, 42-28, but only after blowing a 28-0 lead and having to rally in the final minutes.

I found it in an old scrapbook at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That’s why the quality isn’t the greatest. (What you’re looking at is a screen shot of a PDF of a photocopy of a microfilm of the original.) But if you blow it up a little, it’s easy enough to read along — and worth the trouble, if you ask me.

A bit of background: In the ’40s, Lambeau experimented with coaching the Packers from the press box instead of the sideline. He may not have been the first to do this — Lone Star Dietz, from what I’ve read, did it a decade earlier with the Boston Redskins — but he was certainly one of the first. (And others, like the Cleveland Rams’ Buff Donelli, followed him.)

Anyway, this enabled the surrounding journalists to overhear some of Lambeau’s rantings and ravings, particularly when he got really worked up. That’s what the cartoon is based on (along with the artist’s imagination, of course). As you’ll see, Curly nearly went nuts as the Bears — behind the passing of Sid Luckman, on leave from the Merchant Marine — pulled into a 28-28 tie with 5 minutes left.

Oliver Kuechle’s story in the rival Milwaukee Journal was a classic period piece. After falling behind by four touchdowns, he wrote, the Bears “snapped back like milady’s pre-war garter.” Then there was this: “The Packers experienced all the agony of Chinese torture as they saw their apparently safe 28-0 lead slip away through the second, third and fourth quarters.”

Note that Lambeau keeps in touch with the bench by telephone. (The headset, at that point, was used only by switchboard operators.) Note, too, the pack of cigarettes sitting on the table in front of him. (This was, after all, before the Surgeon General got involved.) Finally, note that the artist’s name is Lou Grant. How beautiful is that? (If you remember, that is, the famous TV newsman played by Ed Asner.)

A block that still rocks

In case you missed last week’s annotated play-by-play of the 1940 NFL title game — Bears 73, Redskins nil — here’s another shot at it. Since the game was played Dec. 8, I thought I’d zero in on another aspect of it today: a block thrown by Chicago’s George Wilson on the second play from scrimmage.

If Wilson is remembered for anything in pro football, it’s probably for coaching the Lions to their last championship in 1957. (He was also the first coach of the Dolphins and, in his playing days, a fine two-way end for George Halas’ Monsters of the Midway in the ’40s.)

But what Wilson should be remembered for, above all, is the aforementioned block. It came on a 68-yard touchdown run by fullback Bill Osmanski that got the Bears off to a quick 7-0 lead (and foreshadowed the avalanche of points to come). Osmanski did a nice job of bouncing outside and into the clear, but it was Wilson’s downfield boom-lowering that turned it into walk-in (had his teammate so chosen). George wiped out the last two Redskins pursuers — Ed Justice (13) and Jimmy Johnston (31) — with one well-placed shoulder:

Here’s just the clip of The Block, so it’s easier to watch it over . . . and over . . . and over. No wonder Halas called it the greatest he’d ever seen. And let’s not forget: Without it, Osmanski might not have scored — and the Bears might have won only 66-0.

Finally, this is as close as I can come to a freeze frame:

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Dec. 7, 1941

If you’re looking for some black humor on this Pearl Harbor Day, check out this story I unearthed a while back — specifically the lead. It showed up on commentary pages in 1991, the 50^th anniversary of Japan’s attack.

I call attention to it because, yes, the NFL did wrap up the 1941 regular season on Dec. 7. There were three games that day — in New York, Washington and Chicago. But the Packers didn’t play in any of them. They had completed their schedule the week before and were waiting to see if there would be a playoff with the Bears to decide the West Division title. (There would, indeed. George Halas’ team beat the crosstown Cardinals on Dec. 7 to finish tied with Green Bay at 10-1.)

Let that be a cautionary tale, all you J-schoolers out there. It’s always a bad idea to reminisce about things that never happened, especially when it’s so easy to verify whether they did. Even if you don’t get caught right away, you might get exposed 23 years down the road by some curmudgeon like me. (Assuming, that is, I’m the first curmudgeon to arrive at the scene.)

OK, where was I? Right, Dec. 7, 1941. For the record, this is what the NFL scoreboard looked like at the end of the day:

Dodgers 21, Giants 7 (at the Polo Grounds)

Redskins 20, Eagles 14 (at Griffith Stadium)

Bears 34, Cardinals 24 (at Comiskey Park)

To give you a feel for what it was like at one of the games, here’s the Brooklyn Eagle’s coverage of the inter-borough Giants-Dodgers battle:

Sportswriting in that period was just fabulous, wasn’t it? Now that I’ve read this, I can hardly wait to describe a player as “a dark-brown warrior from the Iowa corn belt.”

It was Tuffy Leemans Day, by the way, at the Polo Grounds. The Giants’ Hall of Fame back was given a silver tray inscribed by his teammates and $1,500 in defense bonds. Two years later, the Steelers and Eagles merged into the “Steagles” — just to keep going. The Rams, meanwhile, shut down for the season and dispersed their players — the few, that is, that weren’t in the military — among the other clubs in the league.

Dec. 7, 1941. The Packers, as I recall, were off that day.

Sources: Brooklyn Eagle, pro-football-reference.com.

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

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

Tag Archives: Bears

Barnstorming on Dec. 25

Football in Cuba

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Title games in December

DEC. 9, 1934: GIANTS 30, BEARS 13

DEC. 13, 1936: PACKERS 21, REDSKINS 6

DEC. 10, 1939: PACKERS 27, GIANTS 0

DEC. 21, 1941: BEARS 37, GIANTS 9

Le’Veon Bell breaks out

BACKS IN THE 2000S WITH 200 YARDS FROM SCRIMMAGE IN CONSECUTIVE GAMES

The last helmetless player — in 1965?

Versatility revisited

PLAYERS WHO HAVE SCORED A TD 3 DIFFERENT WAYS IN THE SAME GAME (SINCE 1960)

Curly Lambeau, the cartoon

A block that still rocks

Dec. 7, 1941