rayonsports.com

When it comes time to list the greatest players in the 100 year history of the National Football League, Hardy Brown is hardly a name anyone would think of. But he is legendary among the players who helped build the game in the wild and wooly days of the 1950s, when player safety was an afterthought and an “anything goes” attitude was prevalent. The grainy footage of games played in that era contains Saturday night games played with a white football and tackles well out of bounds with players being driven into the benches of opposing teams and roughed up when they landed.

White football used in NFL night games in the 1950s

Hardy’s style of play epitomized that era, and he had a reputation across the league, and even on his own team, for knocking players cold with a tackle that involved him hitting an opponent with a flick of his right shoulder. Five of his 10 years as an undersized linebacker were played with the San Francisco 49ers, and the team’s archrivals, the Los Angeles Rams, were regular recipients of his hard hits. They once offered any player on their team a $500 bounty if they could knock Brown out of the game. The Rams’ future Hall of Fame quarterback, Bob Waterfield, was once hit by a car, and afterwards he jokingly responded “I didn’t know Hardy Brown was in town”. His own coach threw him out of practice a number of times for injuring his teammates. His bone-jarring shoulder hits were so effective that he once had his shoulder pads checked before a game by the officials to see if there was a metal plate or some other object hidden under them. His former 49er teammate, Y.A. Tittle, credited him with at least 20 K.O.’s during his time in San Francisco.

Hardy Brown was one of the NFL’s toughest characters for certain, and that toughness was forged by a hard life preceding his pro football days. He witnessed the murder of his father at age 4 and then was put into an orphanage, where he learned to play football. Later he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he served in World War II. He spent his later years after football in a mental institution, and died in 1991, suffering from dementia and ironically, from severe arthritis in the same shoulder he had used to deliver his knockout blows as a player. On paper, his career appears to be that of a forgotten journeyman. He played on 7 different teams in his 10 year career and was one of only two players to play in the All America Conference, the NFL and the American Football League (he came out of retirement after a 3 year absence to play one season with the Denver Broncos in 1960). But he did make it to a single Pro Bowl in 1952 and when NFL Network listed the top 10 “Most Feared Tacklers of All Time” he was number 5 on the list.

Hardy Brown about to unload on Browns’ QB Otto Graham

The National Football League as we know it today would not be the juggernaut that it is without the contributions of the men known as “The Foolish Club”, the owners who defied the established NFL and formed the upstart American Football League in 1960. And the AFL likely would never have gotten off the ground, or merged with the NFL in later years, without the stewardship of Lamar Hunt. The son of a wealthy Texas oil man, Hunt tried to convince the NFL to allow him to put a team in Dallas, and also attempted to buy the Chicago Cardinals with the intention of moving them to Dallas, but was rebuffed on both accounts. Determined to own his own pro football team, Hunt convinced a group of other millionaires, some of whom were also unsuccessful in buying NFL teams, to form a new pro football league. So, in 1959, the new eight team American Football League was born, to begin play in 1960. Hunt’s club would be located in Dallas and be known as the Texans. The new league had planned to put franchises in Minnesota and St. Louis also, but the established NFL torpedoed those efforts, and Hunt’s Texans’ team, by putting expansion teams in Dallas (to begin play in 1960 as the Cowboys) and Minnesota (to start in 1961 as the Vikings). Despite earlier refusing, the league allowed the Bidwell family to move the Cardinals from Chicago to St. Louis in 1960 to corner that market.

The new league persevered despite the setbacks. Unable to compete with the NFL’s Cowboys, Hunt relocated his franchise to Kansas City, where they were renamed the Chiefs, and the Minnesota franchise was replaced by Oakland. The AFL grew in popularity over the decade and with pro football gaining a major audience in America, they were able to land a television contract that put them on a near equal level with the older league, allowing the newer league’s teams to compete for top players. Hunt was the point man for the AFL in the secret merger talks between the leagues. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle mediated the talks between Hunt and the NFL’s representative, Cowboys’ executive Tex Schramm. Included in the merger of the leagues was an agreement to play an annual championship game that is what we now know as the biggest sporting event of the year, the Super Bowl. The “Super Bowl” name was coined by Hunt. He thought of it when he noticed his kids playing with a popular toy of the 1960s, the Super Ball. Hunt’s team, the Chiefs, defeated Buffalo in the AFL title game to earn the right to play in the first AFL-NFL championship.

The Super Ball, by Wham-O, made of Zectron, which I’m sure is totally safe 

As an owner, Hunt was savvy enough to hire a future Hall of Fame coach, Hank Stram, to lead his team. Stram won an AFL title in 1962 while the franchise was still in Dallas,  and got the Chiefs into 2 of the first 4 Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl IV against Minnesota in the last true AFL/NFL matchup, as the 2 leagues merged formally to form the AFC and NFC Conferences the next year. Hunt was the first person associated with the AFL to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame when he was inducted in 1972, and after his death in 2006 a bronze statue honoring him was erected at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. In another honor bestowed upon him, the winner of the AFC Championship game each year is awarded the Lamar Hunt Trophy.

AFL founder Lamar Hunt

The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, two of the NFL’s oldest franchises who will have the honor of kicking off the league’s 100th season this week, will appropriately also be the featured teams for our initial Throwback Thursday post for 2019. The game between these 2 rivals won’t go the full 100 years into the past, but rather to the opening week of the 1963 season, at Green Bay’s City Stadium, which would later be named in honor of Packer great Curly Lambeau. It was September 15 of that year, which nowadays would be considered a late date to start the season, but there were only 14 games on the schedule, with no byes, at the time. Green Bay was coming off back-to-back NFL championships but had received bad news in April. Their star halfback, Paul Hornung, was suspended by commissioner Pete Rozelle, along with Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras, for “betting on league games and associating with gamblers and known hoodlums”. Taking on the Bears’ “Monsters of The Midway” defense was a huge task in itself but the loss of Hornung put coach Vince Lombardi’s troops at a major disadvantage. Of course, the Packer defense was of championship quality also, and they battled tooth and nail all day to keep their team in the game.

Chicago’s defense swarmed the Pack all day. They held their opponents to 150 yards of total offense for the game, intercepting Bart Starr 4 times and forcing 5 turnovers in all, keying on the other Green Bay runner, fullback Jim Taylor, to limit the Packers to 77 yards on the ground. With Hornung out, guard Jerry Kramer took over the placekicking duties for Green Bay and supplied them with their only points, a 41 yard field goal, in a 10-3 defensive struggle defeat. There were little to no big plays in the game. In fact, the only touchdown came on a one yard plunge by Joe Marconi of the Bears in the third quarter. Chicago took the momentum from this hard fought win over the defending champions and rode it all the way to the NFL title that year, winning the title game using the same defensive strategy in defeating the New York Giants 14-10. Despite the loss of their premier player in Hornung, Lombardi’s squad still pulled together and gave the Bears a run for their money in the Western Conference race, finishing at 11-2-1 compared to the Bears at 11-1-2. The difference in the standings was the 2 wins Chicago managed over the Packers, the only time George “Papa Bear” Halas, Chicago’s owner and coach, ever got the better of his long time friend and rival.

Coach Halas and the Bears celebrate the big win

He played only 9 seasons in the NFL, but what an impactful 9 seasons they were. I’m talking about our next NFL 100 subject, former Cleveland Browns’ back Jim Brown. After a record-breaking college career at Syracuse, where he starred in both football and lacrosse (and reportedly was better at lacrosse than football), Brown was drafted by the Browns for the 1957 season. He won NFL Rookie of The Year that season and proceeded to 1.) lead the league in rushing 8 of his 9 seasons 2.) be named first or second team All Pro in all 9 seasons 3.) become the only player in NFL history to average over 100 yards per game for his career and 4.) be named NFL Most Valuable Player 3 times. Brown’s combination of size, speed and toughness were almost unheard of in the era he played, and it could be argued that he is one of just a handful of former players from earlier days who could play with the much larger, more athletic players of today. In fact, in 1983, Sports Illustrated did a story on the possibility of Brown making a comeback at age 47 with the Los Angeles Raiders, with the legend claiming he could dominate the players of the day even at his advanced age.

A Jim Brown comeback at 47? It didn’t actually happen but nobody doubted that it could’ve

Another amazing fact about Brown’s career, and a major difference between the game of the 1960s and today, is that he actually played fullback. That position is all but forgotten in today’s game, or at best considered a blocking back spot. There are 6 players considered to be true fullbacks in the Hall of Fame, the most recent being Larry Csonka, whose career ended in 1979. Brown was both charismatic and controversial as a player, but above all he was his own man. He was at odds with his coach, NFL legend Paul Brown, at times due to Paul Brown’s rigid coaching style, and reportedly was behind a player revolt that got the coach fired prior to the 1963 season. Determined to prove his team could win without that rigid coaching, Jim Brown led the Browns to the NFL championship in 1964, still the most recent title the Browns have won. There was a story that during his playing days Brown brought a brief case into the locker room and when reporters asked him what it was for, he replied “I’m a businessman.” He was ridiculed in the press for that remark, with football players mainly being considered Neanderthals at the time, but Brown wasn’t kidding around. He became involved, along with other black athletes at the time like Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, in the Civil Rights movement. He also became involved in movies. He was in a movie during his playing days called Rio Conchos, and in early 1966 was filming the movie The Dirty Dozen in London. Bad weather delayed the filming to the point that Brown would have to miss some of training camp, which angered owner Art Modell. When Modell threatened to fine his star fullback $1,500 a day for his absence, Brown abruptly announced his retirement from the game. He claimed the decision was easy, since he was making more money doing movies than playing in the NFL. He was in quite a few successful films, including Ice Station Zebra and 100 Rifles, where he actually had top billing over Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch.

Jim Brown in The Dirty Dozen

Jim Brown is still my favorite football player of all time, a childhood hero of many who grew up in the 1960s. He is still regularly named the greatest player of all time by various surveys over 50 years after his playing days ended. There’s an argument to be made for the likes of Jerry Rice and Tom Brady but for overall impact to the sport, Jim Brown tops my list of greatest players in the NFL’s 100 year history.

Another day at the office for Jim Brown

The National Football League is celebrating it’s 100th season in 2019, and Rayonsports.com, in addition to our annual weekly Throwback Thursday features each week, will publish articles, as many as 3 per week, highlighting topics and people that played important roles in developing the game that has grown into America’s Game, the true national pastime. This week, the opening week of the season, the NFL chose perhaps the 2 most iconic franchises, and long time rivals in the league, to open it’s historic season – the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers. Our initial “NFL 100” post will therefore feature the father of pro football, Bears’ founder, owner and coach George “Papa Bear” Halas. Halas’ daughter, Virginia McCaskey, is still the Bears’ principal owner to this day, and the Halas family name dates back to the origins of the pro football league.

At Hays’ dealership, you could buy a 1920 Hupmobile, or a pro football franchise

The legendary story of the founding of the NFL will be told many times by many media outlets during this 100th season. It all started with a meeting of representatives of various barnstorming football clubs of the era, who played in different regional leagues with different rules, at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio. The dealership was owned by Ralph Hays, who also owned the highly successful Canton Bulldogs football club. In a pair of meetings held at the dealership in August and September of 1920, the American Professional Football Association was formed. It would later evolve into what is now the National Football League. One of the 11 teams that was part of the newly formed professional league was the Decatur Staleys, and their founder and owner was Halas. After a hip injury ended a brief pro baseball career (17 games as a New York Yankee outfielder), he joined the Staleys as a player/coach. He moved the club to Chicago in 1921 and after baseball’s Chicago Cubs agreed to let the gridiron team use Wrigley Field as its’ home stadium, Halas changed his team’s name to the Bears as a tribute. To say this man was a giant of the game is an understatement. He was Bears’ owner for 63 years, and their coach for 40 of those years, winning 8 championships. He won his last title in 1963, and was a member of the inaugural Pro Football Hall of Fame class in 1963 also, even though the Hall generally has a 5 year waiting period for eligibility. Halas passed away in 1983, but gave the Chicago franchise one last gift in 1982 when he made a controversial hire to be the team’s next head coach – former Bear tight end Mike Ditka. Ditka turned out to be the right man for the job as he guided the 1985 “Super Bowl Shuffle” Bears to the Super Bowl championship, the team’s first title since Halas’ last in ’63.

Halas’ name is forever etched in NFL lore, as the National Conference champion each year is awarded the George Halas Trophy. Also, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton is located on George Halas Drive.

George Halas, NFL legend

The beginning of the growth of the National Football League into the popularity monster that it is today goes back to the 1960s and the birth of the AFL/NFL Championship game, orchestrated by the league’s commissioner at the time, Pete Rozelle. A true visionary, he refereed the battle between the old guard NFL owners and the renegade AFL owners, and out of the battle came the merger of the 2 leagues. The agreement spelled out that beginning immediately the rival leagues would hold a common draft of college players, thus ending the bidding war for players that had been going on. Another of the stipulations was that also beginning immediately, the champions of the 2 leagues would play an ultimate title game to decide who was the “world champion”. The merger agreement was made in 1966, but the actual merger itself didn’t begin until 1970. At that time, there were 16 NFL teams and 10 AFL, so 3 of the old guard clubs had to be transferred into the new American Conference. The Pittsburgh Steelers, longtime NFL doormats who perhaps saw an opportunity for more success among the AFL clubs, volunteered to go. Two franchises that had joined the NFL from another league, the old All America Conference, were natural clubs to make the move  – the Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns. Browns’ owner Art Modell balked at the idea, however, but eventually agreed when Rozelle promised him that his team could host the inaugural Monday Night Football game in that first merger season of 1970.

It wasn’t Modell’s agreement to shift that saved pro football though. It was the Browns team of the late ’60s that had a hand in moving the game forward, in a very weird way in fact. The Browns were a proud, winning franchise in the NFL since joining the league in 1950, and were regular participants in the playoffs most of the decade of the 1960s. In fact, they were in the NFL title game the last 2 seasons before the leagues joined together in 1970. That’s where their contribution to saving the NFL comes in to play. The NFL had always boasted that they were the superior league, and that the AFL was a “Mickey Mouse” league full of castoff players who couldn’t make it in the older league. When the Green Bay Packers dominated the best the AFL had to offer in the first 2 AFL/NFL Championship games, doubt began to creep in on whether the merger was a good idea. The NFL owners’ “Mickey Mouse” comments were appearing to be true, that is, until Joe Namath’s New York Jets and the Hank Stram-led Kansas City Chiefs won the next 2 title contests in what were considered to be massive upsets. Those games gave the AFL a bit of legitimacy, but were they really that great of upsets? Part of the reason the Colts team that Namath beat, and the Minnesota Vikings squad that the Chiefs dominated were considered powerhouses was because they had manhandled the proud Browns franchise in the NFL title games. The Colts shut the Browns out 37-0, and coach Don Shula’s defense was expected to totally crush what was considered to be an inferior Jets’ team in the Super Bowl. The next season, Bud Grant’s Vikings, with CFL reject Joe Kapp at quarterback, completely demolished the Browns in the title game. The final score was only 27-7 but the Vikings controlled play the entire game on a bitter cold day in Minnesota.

So even though the Colts and Vikings had very successful seasons on their way to those Super Bowls, it was their dominance of the Browns that established them as heavy favorites against their supposedly weaker AFL competition. Realistically, though, the Cleveland franchise was in the beginning stages of a gradual decline at that point. Jim Brown, considered the greatest player of all time, had long since retired. LeRoy Kelly had replaced him and was a very good back, a future Hall of Famer in fact, but he wasn’t Jim Brown. More importantly, the quarterback who had guided the Browns to the 1964 title, Frank Ryan, was also gone, forced to retire due to injuries. His replacement, Bill Nelsen, was a gamer who played through injuries and was enough of a leader to get his club into the playoffs, but he wasn’t an elite signal caller. The Browns’ offensive line was aging at the time also, and their defense was a mixture of aging players and  inexperienced rookies and young players. So, in a strange way, credit is due to the Browns for making the Colts and Vikings appear to be unbeatable behemoths, who would easily crush, as Vince Lombardi’s Packers had, their AFL opponents. What those Baltimore and Minnesota clubs didn’t realize was that the AFL was already in its’ ninth and tenth years of existence, and the Jets and Chiefs had been built into true championship contenders.

Browns’ QB Bill Nelsen (Getty Images)

Sometimes the choice of a Most Valuable Player in the Super Bowl is an obvious one, like Nick Foles in last year’s game or Terry Bradshaw in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 1970s dynasty’s last win in Super Bowl XIV. More often than not, though, the choice is controversial, a lot of the time with the winning team’s quarterback being picked instead of another player who really deserved it more, as in Super Bowl LI, when New England’s Tom Brady won over his teammate who had a dominating performance, running back James White. There are so many unfair choices over the years that it was hard to pin it down to 5, but here are our choices for the Super Bowl MVPs who never were:

1. Max McGee (Super Bowl I) – technically it wasn’t a Super Bowl, it was called the AFL/NFL Championship Game in the beginning, but even in the first one ever played their was a controversial choice. The Packers won over the Kansas City Chiefs handily, 35-10, and the team’s stellar quarterback, Bart Starr, was named MVP. Starr played brilliantly so it wasn’t a bad choice, but McGee may have been even better. He was a little-used past his prime veteran at the time and didn’t expect to play, and was hung over on game day after partying with a couple of stewardesses the night before. McGee was forced into action when Boyd Dowler separated his shoulder early in the game, and wound up catching 7 passes for 138 yards and a pair of touchdowns in the win.

2. Matt Snell (Super Bowl III) – since Joe Namath had guaranteed that his New York Jets would defeat the highly-favored Baltimore Colts and then delivered on his guarantee, there was no way anyone but Broadway Joe was going to win the MVP Award in Super Bowl III. But running back Matt Snell had a strong case to be the game’s top player also. He rushed for 121 yards on 30 carries and his team’s only touchdown as the Jets ran a ball control offense to shock the Colts 16-7.

3. Clarence Davis (Super Bowl XI) – this Super Bowl was a shining moment for the Oakland Raider franchise as they won their first championship after being one of pro football’s most winning teams for a decade, yet failing to “win the big one”. They manhandled the Minnesota Vikings 32-14 to give coach John Madden his first title. Running back Davis could easily have been picked as the game’s MVP. He rushed for 137 yards on 16 carries as the Raiders crushed the aging Vikings with a bruising run game. It wasn’t even a case of Davis being overshadowed by a quarterback. Ken Stabler played a fine game also in leading the Oakland attack but he wasn’t chosen as MVP either. The honor went to wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff, who made a series of key receptions during the game among his 4 for 79 yards, not exactly overwhelming statistics.

4. Thurman Thomas (Super Bowl XXV) – the precedent was set in Super Bowl V, when the Colts defeated the Cowboys but Chuck Howley of the losing team was chosen as the game’s MVP. Super Bowl XXV, between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills, was one of the most exciting ever played, and Buffalo’s Thurman Thomas, with 135 yards and a touchdown on 15 carries and another 55 yards on 5 pass receptions, was the dominant player in the game. When Scott Norwood’s last second field goal went wide right, giving the Giants a 20-19 victory, MVP voters decided that the Giants’ Ottis Anderson deserved the award instead. Giants’ coach Bill Parcells had employed a grinding rushing attack to eat up time on the clock and keep the Bills’ high-powered offense off the field, and Anderson was the main guy doing the damage, with 102 yards rushing and a TD. Still, Thomas’ performance was dynamic and one for the ages.

5. Dwight Smith (Super Bowl XXXVII) – there’s no question the MVP of this Super Bowl should have been a defensive player. For one thing, the quarterback duel was between a pair of journeymen, Oakland’s Rich Gannon and Tampa Bay’s Brad Johnson, not exactly a marquee matchup. For another, the Buccaneer defense absolutely dominated Gannon and the Raiders, forcing 6 turnovers, with 5 of them being interceptions, in a 48-21 rout. So Tampa safety Dexter Jackson, who had a pair of picks, was named MVP. Deserving, I guess, but not when you consider that his secondary mate, Smith, also had a pair of interceptions, but he returned both of his for touchdowns. The reason for the snub is that the second of Smith’s pick-sixes came with just a few seconds left in the game, when the MVP voting was likely already completed.

It’s officially Super Bowl week and we here at Rayonsports  wonder, on media day, how many more new questions can reporters have for the New England Patriots after 9 appearances in the Belichick/Brady era? We like to look at different angles having to do with the big game, so for starters we’ll revert to a staple of our site, the “list” post. Here is our list of five head coaches who in the 53 years of the game’s existence, despite winning football’s ultimate prize, have largely been forgotten:

1. Don McCafferty, Baltimore Colts – the Colts’ loss to the New York Jets in Super Bowl III was so shocking and embarrassing to the old guard NFL that it led to the firing of Don Shula as Colts’ head man. McCafferty, the loyal assistant coach, was promoted into the top job and in his first season rewarded team management with a win over Dallas in Super Bowl V. He guided the Colts to the playoffs again the next year but lost to the Miami Dolphins, coached by Shula, in the conference championship game. His third season started out badly, however, and McCafferty was fired. He had a short stint as coach of the Detroit Lions but passed away of a heart attack in 1974. It was a relatively short head coaching career but one that left him with a shining moment that a lot of successful coaches never achieve-a Super Bowl win.

2. Barry Switzer, Dallas Cowboys – when Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys and fired legendary coach Tom Landry, there was an uproar among Cowboy fans. That quieted down when Jones’ hand-picked replacement, successful college coach Jimmy Johnson, won a pair of Super Bowls in the early 1990s. Jones and Johnson both had huge egos, however, and the pair clashed to the point where Johnson left to coach the Miami Dolphins. Jones replaced him with another former successful college coach in Switzer, who guided the Cowboys for 4 seasons, including a win in Super Bowl XXX, giving Dallas their third championship of the decade and sealing them as the team of the ’90s. The Dallas dynasty of that decade is largely remembered as a product of Johnson’s “genius”, with Switzer’s success largely forgotten.

3. Brian Billick, Baltimore Ravens – after a very successful run as offensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, Billick was hired as the Baltimore Ravens’ head coach in 1999. He lasted 9 seasons and won the franchise a championship in Super Bowl XXXV. The Ravens’ success that season was largely due to their dominating defense, however, and that success landed the team’s defensive coordinator, Marvin Lewis, a head coaching job. Despite being a Super Bowl winning coach, when Billick was eventually fired by the Ravens he never was given another opportunity to coach again in the NFL, even though he interviewed many times for multiple organizations over the years. He works in broadcasting for the NFL Network these days, apparently giving up on trying to coach again.

4. George Seifert, San Francisco 49ers – this is a coach that was part of 5 Super Bowl winning teams in San Francisco, including 2 as head coach in 1989 and 1994. It’s hard to imagine a guy who won multiple championships as a forgotten coach, but unfortunately Seifert’s accomplishments are marred by 2 things: 1. He was overshadowed by the genius of his predecessor with the 49ers, Bill Walsh, and even though Seifert won 2 titles, it was largely assumed that he just inherited a team built by Walsh and that anybody could have won with those players. 2. He coached the Carolina Panthers after leaving the Niners and had a mediocre 16-32 record there, including a 1-15 season in 2001.

5. Gary Kubiak, Denver Broncos – after a successful career as an assistant coach at various stops, Kubiak served as head coach of the Houston Texans in their formative years for 8 seasons, producing mostly mediocre results. He revived his reputation as offensive coordinator in Baltimore after Houston fired him, and that led to his hiring as head coach of the franchise he had spent a large part of his career with, as both a player and assistant coach, the Denver Broncos. He was blessed with the addition of legendary quarterback Peyton Manning to his roster, and guided the Broncos to a Super Bowl win in the game’s 50th anniversary contest in 2015. Health issues forced him to step down as coach after only 2 seasons, however, and although he has returned to the game on a limited consultant basis, he will likely not be able to handle the stress of a head coaching position again.

On this, the final week of the National Football League’s regular season, two old rivals who date back to 1960 and the arrival of the American Football League square off – the New York Jets and New England Patriots. Our final Throwback Thursday post goes back to a divisional round playoff game these 2 franchises played on January 16, 2011. It was one of the few postseason setbacks the mighty Patriot dynasty suffered in the last 20 years, as the Jets and their bombastic coach, Rex Ryan, pulled off a 28-21 upset right in the Pats’ backyard at Gillette Stadium, where they’ve been practically unbeatable over the years. It was the game of a lifetime for Jet quarterback Mark Sanchez, at the time a bright, young prospect who was expected to become the team’s savior, the next Joe Namath. He threw for 3 touchdowns – to Ladanian Tomlinson, who was closing in on the end of his Hall of Fame career, to Braylon Edwards, another rising star at the time, and to Santonio Holmes, who would go on to have a memorable Super Bowl moment later in his career with Pittsburgh.

The real story of the game was Ryan’s Jet defense, which shut down the New England ground game and forced Pats’ QB Tom Brady to pass. Although that never turns out to be a negative result for the Patriots, on this day Brady, arguably the greatest signal caller of all time, couldn’t match Sanchez when it counted. New York sacked him 5 times and intercepted him once. Ryan, who had a habit of tweaking his nose at New England coach Bill Belichick, the dreaded evil genius in the hoodie, with lines like “I respect him but I’m not gonna kiss his Super Bowl rings”, was the surprise winner on this day. The Jets couldn’t sustain the success, however. They lost the AFC Championship game to Pittsburgh 24-19 the following week. Also, Sanchez regressed to the point where his Jet career ended with an embarrassing “butt fumble” play in later years, Tomlinson retired and both Holmes and Edwards became divas who were run out of New York for their attitudes, although Holmes, as previously noted, revived his career later on with the Steelers.

Tom Brady wasn’t the GOAT in the AFC Championship game for the 2010 season

(photo from NFL Memes)

The 2018 season is winding down for the National Football League, and on this, the second-last week of that season, a pair of Florida-based teams meet on the schedule, the Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars. For this week’s Throwback Thursday feature, we’ll venture back to an AFC playoff game played between these 2 teams on January 15, 2000. This game would turn out to be the final one in the illustrious career of Miami quarterback Dan Marino, but on this day the Jaguars didn’t exactly give him a royal sendoff. Marino retired after this game holding most of the league’s passing records, but he certainly didn’t add anything positive to his resume in this contest. Coach Tom Coughlin’s Jaguars dominated the game from the opening kickoff. Mark Brunell threw a pair of touchdown passes, to Jimmy Smith and Fred Taylor, and Taylor added a 90 yard scoring run. The Jags’ defense got in the act, also, with Tony Brackens returning a fumble 16 yards for a TD. In what amounted to a complete steamroll, Jacksonville piled up a 41-0 first half lead before Marino salvaged a little pride with a touchdown toss to Orande Gadsden to cut the margin to 41-7 at the half.

The Jaguars didn’t let up in the second half, even though they replaced Brunell with backup QB Jay Fiedler. The second-stringer added 2 more touchdown throws and Chris Howard scored on a short run to continue the carnage. Miami coach Jimmy Johnson mercifully pulled Marino from the game in the second half and the Dolphins’ backup, a non-entity named Damon Huard, was subjected to the same abuse as the future Hall of Famer he replaced. After the wreckage was cleared, the result was a monumental one-sided blowout. On offense, the Jags wracked up 520 total yards. Taylor carried the ball 18 times for 135 yards and scored twice, on the long run and a pass. Smith, the team’s top receiver, grabbed 5 catches for 136 yards and 2 scores. The defense dominated also, holding Marino and company to a paltry 131 total yards. They also sacked the Miami QBs 5 times, held the Miami rushing attack to 21 yards on 18 carries, and forced 7 turnovers. The final result on the scoreboard was as bad as the difference in the statistics – Jacksonville 62, Miami 7.

To be fair, for the 1999 season at least, this wasn’t an evenly matched game before it even started. Jacksonville was one of the AFC’s strongest teams, entering this game having amassed a 14-2 regular season record, while Miami limped into the playoffs at 9-7. Still, with a Super Bowl-winning coach in Johnson and an all-time great passer in Marino leading the offense, a defeat this epic in scope was a total shock.

For Dolphin QB Dan Marino, it wasn’t a pleasant goodbye