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:
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.
It’s nice if an NFL quarterback can move around a bit, but being able to take off and run has never been a high priority. The position has always been, first and foremost, about throwing the ball.
The game evolves, though. And it’s reasonable to wonder, with the recent influx of several mobile quarterbacks, whether the definition of The Perfect QB will eventually change, too. A decade from now, will the paradigm be more of a hybrid player, a combination passer-runner who can throw darts and also operate the read-option?
The instant success of the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson, the 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick and the Redskins’ Robert Griffin III, all of whom made the playoffs in their first season as a starter, gave even more momentum to the 21st Century Quarterback idea. And last year Cam Newton, another dual threat, guided the Panthers to a 12-4 record and the NFC South title.
But in 2014 only Wilson has escaped the barbs of critics and the wrath of his fan base. Defenses have gotten better at dealing with some of the college-y stuff these quarterbacks do, and now it’s up to the QBs (and their coordinators) to adjust. Adapt or die.
The jury is very much out on whether they can . . . or even — as far as some coaches are concerned — want to. One of the problems with having a quarterback with unusual talents is that if you build a special offense for him, what happens if he gets hurt? Do you have a second QB with unusual talents who can step in, or do you have to go back to a more conventional attack? And can a team be successful switching gears like that?
You might be interested to know that the five running-est quarterbacks in modern history — I’m going by rushing yards per game — are all active, as you can see in this chart:
MOST RUSHING YARDS PER GAME BY A QB (SINCE 1945)
Years
Quarterback
Team(s)
Yds
YPG
2001-14
Michael Vick
Falcons, Eagles, Jets
6,010
43.9
2011-14
Cam Newton
Panthers
2,457
41.0
2012-14
Robert Griffin III
Redskins
1,461
40.6
2012-14
Russell Wilson
Seahawks
1,782
38.7
2011-14
Colin Kaepernick
49ers
1,513
32.2
1985-01
Randall Cunningham
Eagles, Vikings, 2 others
4,928
30.6
1969-78
Bobby Douglass
Bears, Chargers, 2 others
2,654
29.2
1999-09
Daunte Culpepper
Vikings, Dolphins, 2 others
2,652
25.3
1985-99
Steve Young
Bucs, 49ers
4,239
25.1
2006-11
Vince Young
Titans, Eagles
1,459
24.3
(Minimum: 32 starts.)
Granted, these averages usually decline as the quarterbacks get older, but they’re worth noting nonetheless.
Still, there’s no getting around the fact that 12 of the 14 Super Bowls in the 2000s have been won by QBs who weren’t much of a running threat at all. Only Wilson (2013) and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers (2010) have had wheels worth worrying about (or as I like to refer to them, WWWAs).
RUSHING YARDS PER GAME BY SUPER BOWL-WINNING QBS (2000S)
Years
QB (Super Bowl Wins)
Team
Yds
YPG
1999-14
Peyton Manning (1)
Colts, Broncos
678
2.7
2004-14
Eli Manning (2)
Giants
465
2.8
2001-14
Drew Brees (1)
Chargers, Saints
684
3.4
2000-14
Tom Brady (3)
Patriots
804
3.9
1994-08
Brad Johnson (1)
Vikings, Redskins, 2 others
657
3.7
2008-14
Joe Flacco (1)
Ravens
625
5.7
1994-07
Trent Dilfer (1)
Bucs, Ravens, 3 others
853
6.6
2004-14
Ben Roethlisberger (2)
Steelers
1,163
7.4
2005-14
Aaron Rodgers (1)
Packers
1,817
16.8
Note: Figures don’t include today’s games.
When you scan down these charts, you can understand why some coaches look at Wilson and the other passer-runners and say, “Who needs ’em?” The ones who don’t, though, the more open-minded types like Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh, have a chance to take pro football in a new direction. This is a healthy thing, of course. Without it, offenses would still be running the single wing and punting on first down.
Source: pro-football-reference.com
The 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick leaves the Chargers behind en route to a 151-yard rushing night Saturday.
Happened upon this the other day while nosing around the Internet. It’s gotta be, by at least five touchdowns, the worst movie that ever featured a former pro football player — in this case Rosey Grier, the Pro Bowl defensive tackle with the Giants and Rams in the ’50s and ’60s. (And believe me, there are a lot of candidates for this honor.)
For those of you who aren’t movie buffs, Ray Milland, Grier’s co-star in The Thing With Two Heads (1972), won the Best Actor Oscar in 1945 for The Lost Weekend, a film about a drunk who goes on a four-day bender. It might also have been during this “lost weekend” that the plot for The Thing With Two Heads was conceived. Here’s the trailer (and it’s perfectly all right if, at some point, you want to cover your eyes):
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the inspiration for Stuck on You, the Farrelly brothers’ 2003 take on conjoined twins. Unfortunately, neither Matt Damon nor Greg Kinnear ever played in the NFL . . . though they did play some high school ball:
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.
How much of a horror show was Johnny Manziel’s overhyped starting debut with the Browns? Pretty bad, to be sure — 54 net passing yards and zero points in a blowout loss to the Bengals. Still, I came up with three Hall of Famers who had a worse one, rating-wise, and various other legends and No. 1 overall picks who struggled mightily as well. That puts Manziel in the middle of this group:
HOW JOHNNY MANZIEL’S FIRST NFL START STACKS UP
Year
Quarterback,Team
Opponent
Att
Comp
Yds
TD
Int
Rating
Result
1983
John Elway, Broncos
Steelers
8
1
14
0
1
0.0
W, 14-10
2005
Alex Smith, 49ers
Colts
23
9
74
0
4
8.5
L, 28-3
1970
Terry Bradshaw, Steelers
Oilers
16
4
70
0
1
19.3
L, 19-7
1967
Bob Griese, Dolphins
Chiefs
22
11
101
0
2
25.0
L, 24-0
2014
Johnny Manziel, Browns
Bengals
18
10
80
0
2
27.3
L, 30-0
2009
Matt Stafford, Lions
Saints
37
16
205
0
3
27.4
L, 45-27
1989
Troy Aikman, Cowboys
Saints
35
17
180
0
2
40.2
L, 28-0
2004
Eli Manning, Giants
Falcons
37
17
162
1
2
45.1
L, 14-10
1979
Joe Montana, 49ers
Cardinals
12
5
36
0
0
49.3
L, 13-10
2012
Andrew Luck, Colts
Bears
45
23
309
1
3
52.9
L, 41-21
1998
Peyton Manning, Colts
Dolphins
37
21
302
1
3
58.6
L, 24-15
If you’re wondering how on earth Elway won that game — all the other QBs lost — the answer is: He sat out the second half with a bruised right elbow, and backup Steve DeBerg rallied the Broncos to victory.
As for Bradshaw, his first start wasn’t exactly well received by the Pittsburgh media. This how the Post-Gazette covered it. “I couldn’t hit the side of a building today,” Terry said. “I know I was late throwing the ball a number of times, which gave [the Oilers] a chance to cover up, but they were coming at me strong.”
But do the math. Elway, Bradshaw and Griese had worse days than Manziel did, and they went on to appear in a combined 12 Super Bowls, winning eight. I’m not in any way predicting similar success for Johnny Football. Just sayin’. First impressions can be deceiving.
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 12th 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
Looney holding the helmet Brettschneider talked him into wearing.
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 50th 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:
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.
You stumble across some strange things in the cobwebbed corners of pro football history. They don’t get much stranger, though, than this particular episode.
It involves the 1934 Chicago Bears, one of the greatest teams ever assembled. The Bears were 13-0 that season and had five future Hall of Famers — Bronko Nagurski, Red Grange, Bill Hewitt, Link Lyman and George Musso — not to mention the NFL’s first 1,000-yard rusher, Beattie Feathers. Heading into the title game against the Giants, they’d won 18 in a row (and the last two championships), the longest winning streak in league history up to then.
But after beating the Giants in New York on Nov. 18 to run their record to 10-0, they came home to the following story in the Chicago Tribune:How’s that for an off-field distraction? Both players were rookies. Masterson was just a backup, but Feathers was one of the club’s best-known players and averaged an incredible 8.4 yards a carry in ’34.
An accompanying story provided more detail. The woman, “known as Nell Walker,” was 26 years old and “a former showgirl.”
Miss Walker, before her eight-story leap, dramatically attracted the attention of passersby by screaming as she stood in the window. Her falling body narrowly missed two persons.
Police hurried to question the occupants of the eighth-floor apartment. . . . They included Miss Walker’s sister, Mrs. Thelma Walker Smith, 22 years old; Lucille Moyse of 820 Grace Street, Mrs. Alice Bennett, former Detroit nightclub hostess, and Mary Frances Smith, 6-year-old niece of the dead woman.
The women told of having been celebrating the 10 to 9 victory of the Bears over the Giants in New York. They said Miss Walker was especially happy because “she had a sweetheart on the Bears team.”
After the radio reports of the game had ended, Miss Walker dispatched a telegram of congratulation to Bernie Masterson, former University of Nebraska star.
Then, the other women told police, Miss Walker insisted on having a celebration, opened a bottle of liquor and became intoxicated.
Just before she took the fatal leap through the window she because hysterical and Miss Moyse, who is a trained nurse, gave her a shower bath. Then Miss Walker donned a pair of black pajamas, apparently more composed.
Walker was reportedly estranged from her husband and “had been brooding over it,” Bennett, her roommate, told police. Bennett also said Walker was, in the words of the Tribune, “inordinately interested in Miss Nolan’s tragic plunge” and “once before had tried to climb through the window.”
There were two games left in the Bears’ regular season — both against the Lions, their chief competition in the West Division. After disposing of Detroit, they began preparing for the championship game against the Giants. On Thursday of that week — 80 years ago today — this short item ran in the Tribune:
Temporary insanity due to excessive drinking. You don’t see that every day.
The Bears’ trip to New York didn’t end so well, either. The Giants, who switched to sneakers in the second half because of the icy field, outscored them 27-0 in the fourth quarter to pull a 30-13 upset. Feathers didn’t play because of an injury; Masterson, meanwhile, saw only brief action off the bench. The loss kept Chicago from winning its third straight title, which would have tied the league mark (one that still stands).
Nobody’s suggesting the “showgirl death” had anything to do with the defeat. It’s just my way of saying: Pro football has always been a circus — even in the 1930s, when hardly anyone was watching.
Giants tailback Ed Danowski (22) gets ready to buck the line in The Sneakers Game.
Passing (for 207 touchdowns) and running (for 4,928 yards) are what Randall Cunningham will be most remembered for in his NFL career. But what happened Dec. 3, 1989 — 25 years ago today — shouldn’t be overlooked, either. That’s when he got off a 91-yard punt, the fourth longest in league history, to help the Eagles beat the Giants, 24-17.
We’re not talking about a quick kick, either, though Cunningham was helped by a 25 mph wind that gusted to 35. As you can see in this photo, it was a conventional punt, with him receiving the snap just inside the field of play.
Early in the fourth quarter, the Giants almost broke the 17-17 tie when Erik Howard sacked Cunningham and drove him into the Eagles’ end zone. The officials spotted the ball on the 2-yard line, making it fourth down and 33 yards to go for a first down.
Usually, Max Runager would have punted for the Eagles. But Cunningham, an outstanding punter in college, told Coach Buddy Ryan of the Eagles he wanted to punt, and Ryan let him.
It was a good decision. The ball sailed to the Giants 39 and bounced to the 7 before an apparently baffled [Dave] Meggett picked it up and returned it 9 yards.
Two plays later, the Giants gave up the ball again. Golic sacked Simms and stripped the ball, and Mike Pitts recovered for the Eagles on the Giants’ 7-yard line. Three plays later, from the 2, Byars squirmed into the end zone for the winning touchdown.
And here’s how it looked in the play-by-play:
Cunningham was, as the Times said, a very good punter at UNLV, an All-American who averaged 45.2 yards for his career. But by the late ’80s the NFL had become so specialized — and rosters so large — that position players weren’t needed to punt. A pity.
There were, after all, quite a few passer-punters in pro football’s early days, including Hall of Famers Sammy Baugh, Sid Luckman, Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin. They grew up, remember, in the era of the single wing, and the best tailbacks were triple threats who could run, pass and kick. When Cunningham boomed his 91-yarder, though, the league hadn’t had a starting QB pull double duty since the Cowboys’ Danny White in 1984. We may never see another.
Oh, well. At least Randall reminded everybody of The Way It Used To Be. And if anyone needed a refresher course, he blasted an 80-yarder five years later. That one was a quick kick — out of the shotgun, on third and 12 from the Philadelphia 4.
Something just dawned on me: Cunningham’s 91-yard punt was exactly 90 yards longer than the one Redskins QB Joe Theismann shanked against the Bears in 1985. Washington’s regular punter, Jeff Hayes, had just gotten hurt, and Theismann — who hadn’t punted in college — volunteered for the job.
Wisely, coach Joe Gibbs never gave him another opportunity. The boot, from right around the goal line, veered out of bounds at the Washington 14. The Bears scored on the next play and went on to win, 45-10.
“They told me to kick it right,” Theismann said, “and I did. Dead right.”
Before 1960, few running backs had a season as good as Frank Gifford’s 1956. His 819 rushing yards were fifth-best in the NFL. His 603 receiving yards tied for seventh-best. His 1,422 yards from scrimmage were a league record for a back. He also threw two touchdown passes and, in his spare time, booted a field goal and eight extra points.
Not to go off on a tangent here, but I’ve always thought Gifford was a bit underrated. That might sound funny, him being in the Hall of Fame and all, but he wasn’t inducted until 13 years after he retired, and he was rebuffed five times as a finalist before the selection committee waved him through.
Frank Gifford was no New York Creation. Frank Gifford was a great, versatile football player — in the days when more of a premium was placed on such things. Aside from the aforementioned skills, he was a fine defensive back and played both ways early in his career. After the Eagles’ Chuck Bednarik sidelined him for more than a year in 1960, Frank reinvented himself as a (quite capable) wide receiver.
Did he have matinee-idol looks? Sure. But he was no pretty boy. Here he is playing without a facemask at Southern Cal:
OK, I’m done with my spiel. Anyway, late in that 1956 season, with Gifford en route to the MVP award and the Giants headed to their first championship since 1938, he appeared on the CBS game show “What’s My Line?” It was Sunday, Dec. 2, just a few hours after Giants had beaten the Redskins 28-14 at Yankee Stadium in a game that saw Frank account for all four New York touchdowns — two running, one receiving and one passing. You don’t see performances like that any more. In fact, nobody’s had a performance like that since — 58 years and counting.
What’s truly astounding, looking at this clip again, is that Gifford wasn’t instantly identified. After all, he’d already been to three Pro Bowls and was all-pro the season before. It just shows how much less visible the game was then, and how much less recognizable the players were. Frank was far better known for his work on Monday Night Football than he ever was as a footballer.
To try to throw off the panel a little, Gifford signs in as “F. Newton Gifford” from Bakersfield, Calif., his hometown. Bennett Cerf knows him on sight, but the others must not be very big football fans. My favorite line is when Arlene Francis says, “Well, it’s not Red Grange.”
No, it wasn’t Red Grange. (The Galloping Ghost was 53 at the time.) It was Frank Gifford, future husband of Kathie Lee.
Arlene was a hoot, wasn’t she? When she asked Frank, “Do you ever touch people that may come to you for services?” you just know she was hoping he was a masseur.
(Georgia Teachers College, by the way, is now Georgia Southern.)
