Arthur “Tarzan” White was semi-famous even before he made his NFL debut with Giants in 1937. After all, not many players are nicknamed Tarzan — or have the personality White possessed. When his Alabama team went west to play in the Rose Bowl after the 1934 season, the Los Angeles Times couldn’t help writing about him, despite the fact he was just a “sub” on a line that had Don Hutson at one end and Bear Bryant at the other.
”Tarzan” weighs 200 pounds despite his abbreviated stature of 5 feet, 7 inches. His real name is Arthur, which sounds harmless and in direct contrast to the “Tarzan” nickname. As a youngster White became tremendously interested in the so-called comic strip, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, featuring the exploits of the famous man of the jungle. So impressed was the Alabama youth by these pictures and yarns that he built himself a house in the trees. He actually practiced swinging through the trees . . . and is said to have been very proficient. White also practiced with the bow and arrow and achieved such perfection that he could go out and bring down wild game with these primitive weapons. Whether he ever wrestled with a lion or tried to ride an alligator bareback is something they neglected to tell me.
Speaking of Burroughs, he once tried to stop White and other wrestlers from appropriating Tarzan’s name, believing they lacked the virtue, athleticism and unspoiled innocence normally associated with his character. (What do you suppose gave him that idea?)
“The other self-christened Tarzans are apes, all right,” he told the United Press, “only they’re muscle-bound and have broken noses. Tarzan is a copyrighted trademark, and if these plug uglies insist on using it, I’m going to insist on the right to license them and stencil the copyright number on their chests.”
Naturally, the “self-christened Tarzans” ignored him.
Tonight’s bout, from the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, pits Tarzan against the aptly named Chest Bernard. (As broadcaster Russ Davis says, “This guy is called The Chest, and with justifiable reason. Hel-looooo!”) If Bernard was The Chest, then White could just as easily have been The Back. The fur on it was so thick it could have been mistaken for the the Real Tarzan’s native habitat.
“Tarzan White sits around the dressing room and plays solitaire by the hour,” Davis says. “[I] walked in tonight to see him before the bout. There he was, playing solitaire and whistling a tune. . . . And he never cheats with himself.”
No, Tarzan always played the good guy in the ring. Bernard was the villain, refusing to shake his hand at the outset and constantly pulling his hair and grabbing hold of his trunks. (Davis: “Mr. Bernard, sir, you are a stinker, sir.”)
Tarzan gave away 37 pounds in the match, weighing 225 to The Chest’s 262, which wasn’t unusual, apparently. According to Davis, he was “one of the smallest of the heavyweights.” He was naturally strong, though, and dead-lifted Bernard — in the days, mind you, before iron-pumping was in vogue — several times.
Wrestlingdata.com says Tarzan’s career spanned from 1939 to ’64. The following bout took place Jan. 25, 1952, when he was 36 and had been out of pro football for six years. He spent his first three seasons with the Giants, the next two with the Chicago Cardinals, then returned to the Giants in 1945 after a serving in the Air Force during World War II.
Tarzan was never busier in the ring, in fact, than in ’52, wrestling (at least) 75 times. His bout with The Chest was one fall with a 30-minute time limit. All set? Here we go . . .
Broadcaster Davis was right. “He’s a mean one, this Bernard.”
Thought we could celebrate the holiday by setting the Wayback Machine for Nov. 27, 1930. Why Nov. 27, 1930, you ask? Oh, why not?
For the record, nine of the NFL’s 11 teams played on that Thanksgiving Day, which wasn’t the least bit unusual. It was, after all, the Depression. If a team could squeeze in an extra game before winter arrived, preferably one against a nearby opponent, it could fill the stadium with both fan bases and possibly break even for the season.
In Portsmouth, Ohio, the Spartans, in their first year in the league, faced the Ironton Tanks, an independent club and their fiercest rival. Spartans-Tanks games had an anarchy all their own. Here’s a link to a piece I wrote about their 1930 Turkey Day battle — memorable in every way — for Sports on Earth last year. (Reader advisory: At one point in the hostilities, a Portsmouth player has his pants torn off.)
But I want to do more with this post than just go over old ground. I want to give you a sense of what a day in the NFL was like in those times. So I’ve gathered newspaper stories about the other four games on Thanksgiving 1930 in case you want to read them. If you went to the newsstand the next day, this is the coverage you would have found in The New York Times, Brooklyn Eagle, Milwaukee Journal and Chicago Tribune.
Two of the games were in New York. The first, at Thompson’s Stadium on Staten Island, pitted the Giants against the Stapletons. The Giants, who were leading the league with an 11-2 record, had Benny Friedman, the greatest of the early passers. But the Stapes, 4-4-2 coming in, had a Hall of Fame back of their own: Ken Strong (who moved to the Giants after the Staten Island franchise folded and spent most of his career with them). The Times’ account:
The “Wilson” mentioned in the story, by the way, was Mule Wilson, one of the Stapletons’ running backs. Can you imagine leaving that out of the play-by-play – a fabulous name like Mule? Of course, Moran’s first name, Hap, also was omitted. He, too, was a back — for the Giants.
The difference in the game, as you read, was that the Stapes made their one PAT try and the Giants missed theirs. But the Giants, interestingly, didn’t attempt a kick. Instead, the Times reported, their “pass from Friedman to Moran for the extra point was grounded [meaning incomplete].” Teams sometimes did that back then. What would have been nice is if the paper had explained the Giants’ strategy. Was the field too torn up for a dropkick? Was there a problem with the snap that forced Friedman, the Giants’ primary kicker, to throw the ball instead? We’ll never know. But it proved incredibly costly.
The second game in New York was between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Providence Steam Roller, the 1928 champs, at Ebbets Field. As with the Times, the Eagle’s coverage was less than exhaustive: five paragraphs plus a box score that provided the starting lineups, scoring summary, substitutions and officiating crew. Note that only three officials worked these games: a referee, umpire and head linesman. Think a few penalties — if not felonies — might have gone unnoticed?
So in the Giants game we have Mule and Hap, and in this one we have Stumpy (Thomason, “the stocky little halfback who has become so popular with the Brooklyn fans”). What can I tell ya? They were big on nicknames in the ’30s. One of the reasons the Dodgers won by such a large margin — 21, which was a sizable spread in the NFL’s dead-ball era — is that the Steam Roller were playing shorthanded. After dropping out of the race, they’d released five players to reduce payroll (and Portsmouth happily signed them to load up for the Ironton grudge match).
Let’s move on to Philadelphia — and the Frankford Yellow Jackets-Green Bay Packers matchup. The Packers were a veritable all-star team with future Hall of Famers in the backfield (quarterback Arnie Herber, back Johnny Blood) and the line (tackle Cal Hubbard, guard Mike Michalske). They also had a center, Jug Earp, who was related to Wyatt Earp, the famous lawman (just in case there was any trouble).
The Frankford franchise, on the other hand, was in its death throes — yet another victim of the hard economic times. The Yellow Jackets had won the championship four years earlier and were one of the strongest teams in the ’20s, but 1931 would be their last season in the league (as it would for the Steam Roller).
This was a huge victory for the Packers. Not only did it stop a two-game skid, it enabled them — because of the Giants’ loss — to reclaim first place. They went on to win their second of three straight titles (an NFL record later tied by Vince Lombardi’s Packers in the ’60s). Despite their success, though, it looks like the Journal hired a stringer to cover the game in Philly. I’m guessing the paper didn’t have the healthiest travel budget the year after the stock market crashed.
My favorite passage in the story: “With the wind at their backs the Jackets kicked far into Green Bay territory. One of the many fumbles, all of which can be readily excused because of frozen fingers, occurred at this time.”
It wasn’t unheard of for players to wear gloves in the 1930s — even if some of them did disdain helmets. But it appears everybody toughed it out in the Packers-Yellow Jackets game. Thus, the “many fumbles.”
We finish this Day in the Life of the NFL at Wrigley Field, where the Bears and Cardinals collided with Chicago bragging rights at stake. The game is particularly notable because of a late addition to the Bears roster: fullback Joe Savoldi, who had been booted out of Notre Dame in midseason after it was discovered he was married. By week’s end, the Bears were $1,000 poorer — the fine they were assessed for signing a player before his college class had graduated. The Tribune’s take:
You’ll love this: The Wilfrid Smith who wrote the game story and the “Smith [De Pauw]” who served as the head linesman are the same person. A number of sportswriters in that era double-dipped as officials — and would sit in the press box afterward, still wearing their zebra outfits, and type their deathless prose. (The linesman in the Giants game was “J. Reardon.” That would be Jack Reardon of the Times. He may well have covered the game, too, but we can’t be 100 percent sure because the story didn’t have a byline.)
Smith, who also played some tackle in the NFL with the Cardinals and three other clubs, was one of the best football writers of his generation — knowledgeable, instructive and funny. Wasn’t it classic how he described Savoldi’s touchdown?
Red [Grange, the Bears’ halfback] carried within inches of the [goal] line. . . . Here, [quarterback Carl] Brumbaugh remembered his professional etiquette and Savoldi banged into the line, falling with the ball squarely on the final strip[e].
Did you catch, too, that the Cardinals completed six passes to their own receivers and six to the Bears? Putting the ball in the air could be a risky proposition in those days, much like plane travel.
So ends our field trip to Thanksgiving 1930. According to my calculations, the attendance at the five games was 37,500 — about half the capacity of AT&T Stadium, where the Cowboys will host the Eagles today. Eighty-four years later, the Stapes, Dodgers, Steam Roller and Yellow Jackets no longer exist, the Spartans have moved to Detroit and become the Lions and the Cardinals have relocated to Arizona after a stop in St. Louis.
Even worse, there’s nobody in the league named Mule or Hap or Stumpy.
The 1930 Staten Island Stapletons — all 19 of them.
The NFL has moved the Bills-Jets game to Detroit this week because the show, of course, must go on. Even when the president of the United States gets assassinated, the show must go on in pro football. In the current case, it’s due to an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Mother Nature, who dumped six feet of snow on Orchard Park and forced the Bills to find another venue. So the game will be played Monday night, not Sunday afternoon, and the site will be Ford Field, not Ralph Wilson Stadium.
It wasn’t always thus. In the days before TV mega-contracts, postponements and even cancellations were hardly unheard of. Sometimes all it took was slow sales ticket sales or the threat of bad weather to get owners to reschedule — or to bag the game entirely. Why don’t we revisit some of these episodes so you can get a better feel for The Way Things Were?
We begin with a couple of games in New York that were snowed out Dec. 5, 1926 — one between the Giants and Bears at the Polo Grounds, the other between the Brooklyn Horsemen and Duluth Eskimos at Ebbets Field. (And yes, I’m as surprised as anybody that a game involving the Eskimos could be snowed out.) Here’s how The New York Times reported it:
What’s interesting about the first game is that it was the second of back-to-backers for the Bears. They’d lost the day before to the Frankford Yellow Jackets in Philadelphia — their only loss of the season, it would turn out, and one that would leave them second behind the Yellow Jackets in the final standings. (This was before the league staged a title game to determine its champion.)
I’m kind of amazed George Halas, their owner/coach/end, didn’t insist that the game be played at a later date — for the New York payday as much as for the potential W. But as you can see from the Bears’ 1926 results, it was just canceled (though they did play twice more before calling it a season).
Then there was the time in 1936 the Eagles and Pirates (as the Steelers were called then) got the brilliant idea to move one of their games to Johnstown, Pa. Naturally, there was a flood that caused a postponement. Well, almost a flood. The Pittsburgh Press put it this way:
Two years later, Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney caused a stir by putting off a game against the Cleveland Rams because — brace yourself — he had too many players banged up. The Rams were none to pleased about it, as you can see in this Press story:
What’s interesting about this tempest in a leather helmet is that the teams wound up playing the game in December in New Orleans. It was the first NFL game ever played in the Big Easy. (Why New Orleans, you ask? Answer: During the Depression, clubs that didn’t draw well at home would play anywhere they could get a decent guarantee. The next year, the Rams played their season finale against the Eagles in Colorado Springs.
Moving along, in 1954 the Browns pushed their Oct. 3 home game against the Lions back to Dec. 19 because they weren’t sure if the Indians would need Cleveland Stadium for a World Series game against the New York Giants. (The Indians didn’t. The Giants completed their shocking sweep the day before.)
This created a bizarre situation. When the Browns and Lions finally did meet, all the other teams had completed their schedules — and Browns and Lions had already wrapped up their conference titles. So they played on consecutive Sundays in Cleveland . . . with the whole pro football world watching. The Lions won the first game 14-10, and the Browns won the one that really mattered 56-10. What’s that, a 50-point swing in the space of a week?
I could go on, but I’ll finish with the infamous Bills-Patriots postponement in 1961. The game was supposed to be played on a Friday night in Boston but, with Hurricane Gerda looming, was held over to Sunday. Almost predictably, Gerda ended up being the Brian Bosworth of storms — dozens of area high school contests went on as planned that night — and Buffalo coach Buster Ramsay was convinced the delay was “a deliberate attempt to upset my team. . . . A bush-league trick.”
The Patriots actually had to get the city council approval to reschedule to Sunday. They were using Boston University’s Field, you see, and BU didn’t have a permit for games on the Sabbath, according to The Boston Globe.
When the Bills and Pats finally did play, the weather — 35 degrees with 25-to-30 mph winds — was far worse than it had been Friday night. A mere 9,398 showed up to shiver, and Ramsey’s worst fears were realized: His club came out flat and fell behind 45-0 in a 52-21 loss.
At least we know Buffalo’s postponement this weekend wasn’t “a deliberate attempt to upset” the Jets. There’s real snow on the ground — alps of it. And it’s nice nobody had to go to the Detroit city council to get them to OK a Sunday game. Now Rex Ryan’s bunch just has to keep the Bills from running off to a 45-0 lead.
Tucked between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving on my football calendar (which would be available in our gift shop if this website had a gift shop) is another notable occasion: Chuck Bednarik Day. It was on this date in 1960 that Bednarik, uh, waylaid Frank Gifford at Yankee Stadium — a Hall of Famer vs. Hall of Famer collision that put The Giffer out of the game for more than a year.
If it isn’t the biggest hit in pro football history, it’s certainly one of the two or three finalists. When Frank returned to the Giants in ’62, it was as a wide receiver, not a running back.
Let’s relive that moment, shall we?
It’s amazing, after watching the clip, that Bednarik was accused by some — though not the Giants — of cheap-shotting Gifford. It was a clean, if high, tackle. The reason Frank was so vulnerable, running so upright, was that he never saw Chuck coming from behind.
Bednarik also got grief for his celebratory jig — with the concussed Gifford lying lifelessly at his feet — but he always claimed it was a victory dance. The Eagles, after all, recovered Frank’s fumble and were on the verge of a 17-10 win. It was a huge play in their (last) championship season.
Here’s some other footage of the hit that gives us a little more of the aftermath. You’ll notice, at the 1:33 mark, that Bednarik spends a fraction of a second exulting — if you want to call it that — then goes to the scene of the recovery. At the end of the clip he looks back at Gifford, who still hasn’t moved.
I side with Bednarik on this one. Why? Well, check out his very similar victory dance after the clock ran out in the title game against the Packers five weeks later:
Seems Bednarik, unlike most players in his era, was a demonstrative guy. Ahead of his time, you might say. So he was both a throwback (going both ways in ’60) and a Man of the Future. Interesting contradiction.
[Linebacker] was where Bednarik was always at his best. He could intercept a pass with a single meat hook and tackle with the cold-blooded efficiency of a sniper. ”Dick Butkus was the one who manhandled people,” says Tom Brookshier, the loquacious former Eagle cornerback. ”Chuck just snapped them down like rag dolls.”
It was a style that left Frank Gifford for dead, and New York seething, in 1960, and it made people everywhere forget that Concrete Charlie, for all his love of collisions, played the game in a way that went beyond the purely physical. ”He was probably the most instinctive football player I’ve ever seen,” says Maxie Baughan, a rookie linebacker with the Eagles in Bednarik’s whole-schmear season. Bednarik could see a guard inching one foot backward in preparation for a sweep or a tight end setting up just a little farther from the tackle than normal for a pass play. Most important, he could think along with the best coaches in the business.
And the coaches didn’t appreciate that, which may explain the rude goodbye that the Dallas Cowboys’ Tom Landry tried to give Bednarik in ’62. First the Cowboys ran a trap, pulling a guard and running a back through the hole. ”Chuck was standing right there,” Brookshier says. ”Almost killed the guy.” Next the Cowboys ran a sweep behind that same pulling guard, only to have Bednarik catch the ballcarrier from behind. ”Almost beheaded the guy,” Brookshier says. Finally the Cowboys pulled the guard, faked the sweep and threw a screen pass. Bednarik turned it into a two-yard loss. ”He had such a sense for the game,” Brookshier says. ”You could do all that shifting and put all those men in motion, and Chuck still went right where the ball was.”
From the Eagles media guide in 1960, the season Bednarik and Gifford intersected.
Everybody’s in love with the Jonas Gray story this week, and who can blame them? Few things are more fun than seeing a guy who’s worked his way up from the practice squad — in his case, multiple practice squads — have a breakout game on a national stage. And Gray’s 201-yard, four-touchdown performance in the Patriots’ 42-20 erasure of the Colts was certainly a stunner. (It made you grateful for names on the backs of jerseys, just so you could keep reminding yourself who was doing all this damage.)
A performance like that tends to produce a bunch of cool stats. Here’s one: Gray scored a TD in every quarter, making him one of just a dozen players to do that since the 1970 merger. (Note: In the chart below, the numbers represent yards, R = run and P = pass reception.)
PLAYERS WHO SCORED A TD IN EVERY QUARTER OF A GAME SINCE 1970
Date
Player, Team
Opponent
1st Q
2nd Q
3rd Q
4th Q
11-16-14
RB Jonas Gray, Patriots
Colts
4R
2R
2R
1R
10-29-06
RB Larry Johnson, Chiefs
Seahawks
3R
9P
2R
3R
12-14-03
WR Joe Horn, Saints
Giants
50P
13P
7P
18P
12-7-03
RB Clinton Portis, Broncos
Chiefs
11R
1R
59R
28R, 53R
12-18-00
RB Marshall Faulk, Rams
Bucs
2R
16R
27P
9R
10-29-00
RB Marshall Faulk, Rams
49ers
1R
1R
19P
16P
9-4-95
RB Emmitt Smith, Cowboys
Giants
60R
1R
1R
1R
11-24-94
WR Sterling Sharpe, Packers
Cowboys
1P
36P
30P
5P
10-14-90
WR Jerry Rice, 49ers
Falcons
24P, 25P
19P
13P
15P
9-7-80
WR Earnest Gray, Giants
Cardinals
10P
37P
42P
20P
9-16-79
RB Clarence Williams, Chargers
Bills
5R
1R
55R
2R
10-23-77
RB Wayne Morris, Cardinals
Saints
2R
9R
1R
12R
Would you look at Marshall Faulk? He did it twice in six games. (He missed two after his first four-touchdown day.) And really, who can get enough Clarence Williams in these charts? I know I can’t. I just wish it was the same Clarence Williams who played Linc on Mod Squad.
By the way, you know who else accomplished the feat — before the merger? Cowboys running back Dan Reeves.
Source: pro-football-reference.com
Jonas Gray, the Patriots’ off-the-practice-squad rookie, got to do this in every quarter Monday night.
Spent the better part of the morning trying to put together sets of Triplets — quarterback, running back, receiver — who share the same last name (even if they didn’t play on the same club or in the same era). There was no fudging allowed, either. For instance, you couldn’t try to team Kerry Collins with Cris Collinsworth or Trent Green with BenJarvus Green-Ellis or, heaven forbid, Rob Gronkowski with Bruce Gradkowski. The receiver could, however, be a wideout or a tight end. The rules weren’t totally inflexible.
Anyway, it was harder than I thought it would be. There just aren’t many surnames that are very common in NFL/AFL history. I almost hurled my laptop, Frisbee style, when I was two-thirds of the way to paydirt with Jim and Leroy Kelly — Hall of Famers both — but couldn’t come up with a receiver any better than Reggie, the underwhelming tight end for the Bengals and Falcons.
Smith is another one. You’d think that would be a gimmie — Emmitt at running back, Jerry (or Jimmy or Steve or Rod or Jerry) at receiver and . . . good luck finding a quarterback worth a darn.
If you work at it, though, you can dig up some nice threesomes. Here are my nominees for:
Only a few of these guys didn’t make at least one Pro Bowl or — in the case of pre-Pro Bowl players — all-pro team. Flipper Anderson didn’t, for example, but, hey, he holds the record for receiving yards in a game (336). In fact, he’s held it for 25 years, which is pretty remarkable considering how long receiving marks tend to last. And granted, Scott Mitchell was nothing special as a quarterback, but he did throw 32 touchdown passes one year for the Lions.
The first three listed are my gold, silver and bronze medalists. As for the others, you can order them however you like. I’m not sure it makes much difference. It’s kind of cool, by the way, that
Spec Sanders
Dub and Bert Jones are a father-son pairing. Dub, of course, is one of three NFL players to score six TDs in a game.
One last thing: I was fibbing about the no-fudging rule. Spec Sanders wasn’t technically a quarterback; he was a single-wing tailback for the New York Yankees of the All-America Conference in the ’40s. (He did play one season in the NFL, however, and intercepted 13 passes as a DB to lead the league.)
I included Spec because in 1947 he had one of the greatest offensive seasons of all time, throwing for 1,442 yards and 14 touchdowns and rushing for 1,432 yards and 18 TDs. (In his spare time, he ran a kickoff back 92 yards for another score.)
One day I spent a couple of hours on the phone with him, reminiscing about his playing days. He was utterly self-effacing, not the least bit impressed with his football feats. Just makes me want to keep his name alive.
From time to time, since we’re in the midst of The Great Concussion Discussion, I’ll post photos I’ve come across of helmetless NFL players from the early days. The league didn’t make headgear mandatory until 1943 — two years before socks were required, by the way. Which makes you wonder: How did we get from there to the Fashion Police?
I found this photo the other day while nosing around The New York Times’ archives. It’s from a Giants-Bears game at the Polo Grounds in November 1934. The big bareheaded fellow in the middle, watching Ken Strong score a touchdown for New York, is Chicago’s left tackle, Link Lyman. We know this because, if you blow the photo up, you can see he’s wearing No. 12. That was Lyman’s number, according to the Bears’ media guide that year.
So we have a Hall of Famer scoring and a Hall of Famer, sans helmet, unable to prevent him from scoring. Nice. (In Link’s defense, it looks like the play might have been run away from him.)
But here’s what’s even better: Lyman’s NFL career began in 1922 with the Canton Bulldogs, who won the title his first three seasons. (They were the Cleveland Bulldogs in ’24.) Strong’s career, meanwhile, ended in 1947, by which time he was 41 and strictly a kicking specialist. So when you’re looking at this photo, looking at Lyman and Strong, you’re essentially looking at the first quarter-century of the NFL.
Note, too, in the background, how every seat seems to be filled — in the depths of the Depression, no less. The Times put the crowd at 55,000.
“[Bears running back] Red Grange, who attracted professional football’s largest crowd of more than 60,000 back in 1925, did not even get into the game as a substitute,” the newspaper reported. “Giant[s} officials clamed that yesterday’s crowd was the largest, college or professional, to see a football game in New York this year.”
Pro football in 1934 wasn’t quite the colossus it would become in the postwar years, but it was getting there.
In an eye blink Sunday, Cardinals fans went from dreaming about winning a Super Bowl on their home field to wondering whether there might be room for them on the Arizona State bandwagon. That’s the usual reaction, gloom and doom, when a starting quarterback goes down, especially the quarterback of an NFL-best 8-1 team.
The Cardinals weren’t a lock to take the title, but the way Carson Palmer was playing — he was 12-2 in his previous 14 starts before blowing out his knee against the Rams — they were definitely on the short list. Their defense, after all, has allowed more than 20 points only once (and all but won the last game by scoring two touchdowns). But now they have to look to Drew Stanton for salvation, the 30-year-old QB who has thrown 280 career passes.
Wonders never cease in these situations, though, and that’s not just a phrase. It’s truly amazing how often a backup quarterback has either led a team to the NFL title or kept his club in contention until the starter returned to finish the job (or at least come close). We’re not talking about a miracle here and a miracle there. We’re talking one, two, three . . . a slew of examples.
Almost every decade has a story like this — beginning with 1934, the NFL’s third championship game, which was won by a backup quarterback wearing sneakers on the frozen turf. That would
Ed Danowski
be Ed Danowski, a rookie (and New York kid) who’d done more running than passing before the No. 1 QB, Harry Newman, got hurt with three games left in the season.
The Giants were so panicked by the loss of Newman that they arranged to borrow Warren Heller from Pittsburgh, which had completed its schedule. (Crazy, isn’t it? The Giants still had three games to play, and the Pirates, as they were called then, were already done.) But the league disallowed the transaction after some owners squawked, leaving the Giants’ fate in the hands of Danowski. He wound up leading them to a key win over the second-place Boston Redskins in his first start, and was one of the heroes of the victory over the Bears in the legendary Sneakers Game, throwing for one touchdown and running for another.
And that’s just one for-instance. Here are 11 others that come to mind:
● Tobin Rote, 1957 Lions — Rote had been splitting time with Bobby Layne when Layne broke his ankle in the next-to-last game. With Rote under center, Detroit caught fire in the postseason, overcoming a 20-point deficit to beat the 49ers and obliterating the Browns 59-14 in the championship game (the last of the Lions’ three titles in the ’50s).
● Earl Morrall, 1968 Colts — Ol’ Flattop stepped in for Johnny Unitas, who missed virtually all of the season with an elbow injury, and guided Baltimore to a 13-1 record and the NFL championship, winning the MVP award in the process. Alas, the feel-good story had a horrible ending: a 16-7 loss to the AFL’s Jets in the Super Bowl, due in large measure to three interceptions thrown by Morrall.
● Mike Livingston, 1969 Chiefs — Livingston didn’t exactly tear it up after Len Dawson was sidelined with a partially torn ACL, but he did win all six of his starts to help Kansas City get in the playoffs. By this time Dawson was operational again, and he quarterbacked the Chiefs to victories over the Jets and Raiders to win the AFL crown and the NFL’s Vikings to capture the Super Bowl.
● Earl Morrall, 1972 Dolphins — Ol’ Flattop was four years older, 38, when he did for the ’72 Dolphins what he’d done for the ’68 Colts. He didn’t just hold the fort until Bob Griese recovered from a fractured leg, he won 10 straight starts, including the playoff opener over the Browns. Then Griese came off the bench in the AFC title game against the Steelers, rallied Miami to a 21-17 victory and remained the QB in the Super Bowl, which the Dolphins also won to cap their perfect 17-0 season. But without Morrall, it might never have happened.
● Mike Kruczek, 1976 Steelers — Kruczek was the Eddie Danowski of ’76, a rookie quarterback who was suddenly thrust into a starting role because of injuries to Terry Bradshaw. He didn’t need to shoulder that much of the load because Pittsburgh’s defense was nigh impenetrable that year, pitching five shutouts, and running backs Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier both topped 1,000 yards. Still, he went 6-0 during Bradshaw’s absence, putting the Steelers in position for a record-tying third consecutive championship. They might have won it, too, if Harris (bruised ribs) and Bleier (sprained toe) hadn’t been sidelined for the AFC title game.
● Vince Ferragamo, 1979 Rams — A third-year QB, Ferragamo got his big chance when Pat Haden broke his finger in Week 10. He responded by winning six of seven starts, leaning heavily on a staunch defense, as the Rams advanced to their first Super Bowl. They even led the heavily favored Steelers in the fourth quarter, 19-17, but then Bradshaw and John Stallworth burst their bubble with this famous play:
● Jim Plunkett, 1980 Raiders — The 32-year-old former No. 1 overall pick had fallen completely off the radar until Dan Pastorini broke his leg in the fifth game. But with a better supporting cast than he had in New England, Plunkett became the quarterback he was always supposed to be, leading Oakland to the championship that year (and again in ’83). Say this for the guy: He was a finisher. In the AFC title game and Super Bowl, he posted passer ratings of 155.8 and 145
● Jeff Hostetler, 1990 Giants — Phil Simms’ late-season foot injury opened the door for Hostetler, who was pushing 30 and had spent nearly six years as an understudy. He made the most of the opportunity, playing steady, interception-free ball in the last five games, all victories, including memorable postseason stare downs of the 49ers (15-13) and Bills (20-19 in the Super Bowl). His mobility (200 rushing yards, two touchdowns) brought a new dimension to the Giants offense.
● Erik Kramer, 1991 Lions — Undrafted coming out of North Carolina State, this one-time CFLer took over for Rodney Peete (torn Achilles) halfway through the season and guided Detroit to seven wins in a row, the last a 38-6 horse-collaring of the Cowboys in the second round of the playoffs. On that one he completed 29 of 38 for 341 yards and three TDs, with no picks. The NFC championship game against the Redskins didn’t go quite as well, but it was still a heck of a run. (And of course, the Lions haven’t gotten that far since.)
● Kurt Warner, 1999 Rams — We might never see another season like Warner’s. He was like Bill Murray in Caddyshack (except he really did win the Masters — or the Super Bowl, at least).
It still seems incredible, all these years later. Warner, a product of the Arena League and NFL Europe, was slated to play behind Trent Green that season. But then the Chargers’ Rodney Harrison bent Green’s knee the wrong way in a preseason game, and Kurt proceeded to toss 41 touchdown passes, win both the NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP awards and take his first steps toward Canton (I’m guessing).
● Tom Brady, 2001 Patriots — Brady, the 199th pick in the previous year’s draft, had hardly set foot on the field when Jets linebacker Mo Lewis knocked Drew Bledsoe out of the lineup in Week 2 with this crushing hit:
That was the last game Bledsoe started in New England. Brady took the job and ran with it, winning an improbable ring that year — thanks to a couple of last-second field goals by Adam Vinatieri — and two more in 2003 and ’04.
And now we have Stanton trying to add his name to the list. He doesn’t have the crunching ground game Kruczek had at his disposal, the offensive talent that glittered around Warner (and others) or a Hall of Fame coach running the show (as Livingston, Morrall, Kruczek, Hostetler and, almost certainly, Brady did). But as we’ve seen over the decades, from Danowski on down, there are more championship quarterbacks in the NFL than we think. All they need, some of them, is a break — of a leg, an ankle or some other part of their competition’s anatomy.
In fact, here are two of them. The first is Stephen Gostkowski, who went over 100 points for the season in the Patriots’ ninth game. He’s only the second pure kicker in NFL/AFL history to get to 100 points — 101, actually — that fast. The other is Lawrence Tynes with the Giants two years ago (102).
But . . . three running backs and four multitaskers — guys who played an offensive position and doubled as kickers — also have accomplished the feat. Two of the seven did it twice. The details:
NFL/AFL PLAYERS WHO HAVE SCORED 100 POINTS IN THE FIRST NINE GAMES
Year
Player, Team
TD
FG
PAT
Pts (Final Total*)
2014
K Stephen Gostkowski, Patriots
0
34
29
101 (TBD)
2012
K Lawrence Tynes, Giants
0
26
24
102 (145)
2006
RB LaDainian Tomlinson, Chargers
18
0
0
108 (186*)
2005
RB Shaun Alexander, Seahawks
17
0
0
102 (168*)
1962
WR-K Gino Cappelletti, Patriots (AFL)
4
16
28
100 (128)
1962
RB-K Gene Mingo, Broncos (AFL)
4
18
23
101 (137*)
1961
RB-K Paul Hornung, Packers
10
12
34
130 (146*)
1961
WR-K Gino Cappelletti, Patriots (AFL)
7
12
32
110 (147*)
1960
RB-K Paul Hornung, Packers
11
11
30
129 (176*)
1958
RB Jim Brown, Browns
17
0
0
102 (108*)
1942
WR-K Don Hutson, Packers
15
0
29
119 (138*)
*led league
Notes: Hornung reached 100 in just seven games in 1960 (100 exactly) and again in 1961 (101). Cappelletti had 100 through eight games in ’61, and Hutson had 104 through eight in ’42. . . . Hornung missed two games in ‘61 because of a military commitment.
Anyway, that’s a pretty impressive bunch. Hornung, Brown and Hutson are in the Hall of Fame, and Tomlinson figures to join them soon enough.
The second kicker I wanted to call to your attention is Shayne Graham, currently with the Saints. I say “currently” because Graham has certainly been making the rounds lately. Since he left the Bengals as a free agent in 2010, he’s been with 10 different teams and played at least one regular season game with five of them.
● 2011 – Redskins (cut in camp), Cowboys (cut before season), Dolphins (2 games), Ravens (1).
● 2012 – Texans (16 games).
● 2013 – Browns (cut in camp), Steelers (on their roster for a game but wasn’t active), Saints (2).
● 2014 – Saints (9 games and counting).
How do ya like them frequent-flyer miles? But here’s the thing: Despite his job tenuousness, Graham has kicked the ball very well. In fact, in these five seasons — or parts thereof — he hasn’t missed a field goal try under 40 yards. The breakdown:
SHAYNE GRAHAM’S FIELD GOAL KICKING BY DISTANCE, 2010-14
0-19
20-29
30-39
40-49
50+
Made
Missed
%
2-2
22-22
22-22
18-14
10-5
65
9
87.2
(Numbers below distances are field goals attempted and made.)
To live out of a suitcase — well, practically — for five years and still perform at this level is . . . the definition of a pro. A guy like that deserves to kick in a dome at this stage of his career. He’s earned it.
Source: pro-football-reference.com
Much-traveled Shayne Graham has made 14 of 15 field goal tries for the Saints this season.
Five days after Veterans Day 1941 — and three weeks before Pearl Harbor — the Lions beat the Eagles 21-17 in Detroit. The winning score came with four minutes left on a pass from Dick Booth to Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a 6-foot-4, 210-pound end from Arkansas, “who sprinted in solitude for 45 yards,” The Associated Press reported.
It was the only catch of Britt’s NFL career. After the season he went into the army and became the first U.S. soldier to receive the three top combat decorations — the Congressional Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star — in the same war (a feat later duplicated by Audie Murphy).
Britt’s combat record was the stuff of legend. Whenever I’ve talked to players from that era about their war experiences, they’ve almost always mentioned Britt, everybody’s hero. The unspoken message was: Yeah, I served, but have you heard about what That Guy did?
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Disdaining enemy hand grenades and close-range machine pistol, machine gun, and rifle, Lt. Britt inspired and led a handful of his men in repelling a bitter counterattack by approximately 100 Germans against his company positions north of Mignano, Italy, the morning of 10 November 1943. During the intense fire fight, Lt. Britt’s canteen and field glasses were shattered; a bullet pierced his side; his chest, face, and hands were covered with grenade wounds. Despite his wounds, for which he refused to accept medical attention until ordered to do so by his battalion commander following the battle, he personally killed 5 and wounded an unknown number of Germans, wiped out one enemy machine gun crew, fired 5 clips of carbine and an undetermined amount of M1 rifle ammunition, and threw 32 fragmentation grenades. His bold, aggressive actions, utterly disregarding superior enemy numbers, resulted in capture of 4 Germans, 2 of them wounded, and enabled several captured Americans to escape. Lt. Britt’s undaunted courage and prowess in arms were largely responsible for repulsing a German counterattack which, if successful, would have isolated his battalion and destroyed his company.
And that was just one day in the soldier’s life.
Early in 1944, during the bloody battle of Anzio, Britt lost his left arm. He later recounted the episode in the Chicago Tribune in a series of articles chronicling his heroism — and that of Company L, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division.
“Our company command post was . . . in a house,” he wrote, “one of those standard Italian concrete or stone houses with the stairway on the outside. It stood on a knoll behind the lines and commanded a fine view of Cisterna and the network of roads behind the town. . . . Soon the Germans resumed shelling us. The roof and front of the house were now gone, and I stood at a window on the first floor, looking through my field glasses at German troop movements. Kneeling on the floor beside me was Lt. Carter of M company, who was assisting in directing mortar fire.
“I had just raised my arm to point out something to Lt. Carter when a tremendous blast shook the whole house. A shell had struck the casement of the window where we were standing.
The war took the lives of 23 NFL men — 21 active or former players, an ex-coach and a front-office worker. Among them was Al Blozis, a mammoth — especially for those times — 6-6, 250-pound tackle for the Giants. You can read his story, in comic-book form, here.
At first, the army wouldn’t take him because of his size. But in 1944, when the Allies were making their final push, he was inducted. I once asked one of his Giants teammates if he knew what had happened to Blozis on the battlefield. He gave me a sad expression, shook his head and said, “He stood up.”
As for Britt, he lived to be 76. After starting out in business, he went into politics, was twice elected Arkansas’ lieutenant governor, then settled into a post in the Small Business Administration. The New York Times, in his 1995 obituary, said he was “the first Republican elected lieutenant governor in Arkansas since Reconstruction . . . and paved the way for a new generation of Arkansas politicians, including Democrats in a new mold, like Bill Clinton.”
He was a veteran’s veteran, Britt was. Few soldiers had gone through what he had — and been able to tell about it later. I’ll end with another passage from his Tribune series, describing another battle in the Italian mountains:
We took the second peak and dug in again. We had been in action or ready for action two days and a night without sleep and without fresh supplies of food or water. That night it rained again, and some of the men tried to catch water in a blanket that they formed into a kind of trough. They managed to collect a little bit in a helmet by wringing out the blanket.
Our mouths were so dry that cigarettes tasted like dust. We tried to wet our tongues, but there was no saliva. Our lips were crusted and cracked. Our stomachs had an empty, drawn feeling. But there was nothing to be done about it. The only men we could spare to run supplies had to carry ammunition, not food and water.
associated with his character. (What do you suppose gave him that idea?)
