rayonsports.com

This particular list is not a “best of” or a list ranking anything or anybody. It is a list of 5 NFL players whose contributions to the game of professional football were so unique that they actually changed the sport. There were 4 players considered but not included that deserve mention. Two of them are quarterbacks – Slingin’ Sammy Baugh and Joe Montana. I never saw Baugh play so he wouldn’t have made the list anyway, but he deserves credit for being an innovator in the passing game. He basically introduced the forward pass as a major weapon in the game. Montana perfected the offense that is a major part of today’s game, the West Coast offense.  Montana’s San Francisco teammate, Jerry Rice, revolutionized the wide receiver position, and Chuck Bednarik, as the last of the great two-way players, deserve mention also. Here are the five players, in no particular order, who changed the game of pro football:

1. Joe Namath – Broadway Joe did a couple of things to move the game into the modern era. He signed a $400,000 contract with the upstart AFL, which pushed the 2 leagues into merger talks, then solidified the credibility of the new league by first guaranteeing, then delivering, a shocking upset win over the Colts in Super Bowl III.

2. Deacon Jones – David “Deacon” Jones revolutionized the way defense was played in pro football during his career. He was the first to use the term “sack” to describe tackling the opposing quarterback for a loss while attempting to pass. During his playing days, the “sack” wasn’t kept as an official statistic, but in the 1967 and 1968 seasons he recorded 50 of them, an unbelievable total never matched since the stat has been kept officially. Jones, nicknamed “The Secretary of Defense”, also used the “head slap” on opposing offensive linemen trying to block him, a tactic that has since been outlawed from the game. He is, in my opinion, the greatest defensive player in the history of the game.

3. Jim Brown – Brown, as an NFL running back in the late ’50s and ’60s, was a physical freak of nature. His combination of size and speed had never been seen before, and he was a dominant force in the pro game during the 9 seasons he played, changing the way the game was played. Brown actually played the fullback position, which in today’s game is pretty much relegated to nothing more than a blocking back. Brown, with his size, is one player from his era who, if transported through time and dropped into today’s NFL, could easily not only thrive, but dominate. There is no question that he changed the game.

4. Pete Gogolak –  when he entered the pro game by joining the AFL’s Buffalo Bills in 1964, no one had any idea how much of an impact the Hungarian-born Gogolak would have on the future of the game. He was pro football’s first soccer-style placekicker. Before he arrived on the scene, kickers in pro ball were straight-on kickers, and usually played another position on the team, like George Blanda (quarterback) and Lou Groza (tackle). Gogolak introduced specialization to the placekicker position, and the game was changed forever.

5. Steve Tasker – in the late 1980s, Tasker joined the Buffalo Bills, became a terror on kick coverage teams, and revolutionized the “gunner” position on those teams. Tasker’s coach, Marv Levy, was a former special teams coach and made special teams just as important of a unit on those Bills’ teams as the offense and defense. It’s because of how Tasker revolutionized playing the “Bomb Squads” that today, a special teamer is added to the Pro Bowl teams every year, and for the first time ever, special teamers are being discussed seriously as Hall of Fame-worthy players.

The National Football League’s annual player draft is scheduled for later this week, and despite the fact that the league and its’ players are locked in a labor dispute, there is still plenty of excitement among fans as their teams add what are hopefully the missing pieces to becoming a competitive championship contender. Inevitably, some of the most hyped players in this year’s draft will turn out to be busts. Finding a franchise quarterback has been a hit and miss thing over the years. For every Peyton Manning and Phillip Rivers, there is a Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch or JaMarcus Russell. Teams like the Cincinnati Bengals, Arizona Cardinals and Buffalo Bills regularly blow it on high draft picks, so it’s not an accident that those teams are perennial losers. Look at the names over the years for these teams – for the “Bungles”, there’s Ki-Jana Carter, Peter Warrick, Akili Smith, Dan Wilkinson and David Klingler. The Cardinals have chosen Matt Leinart, David Boston, Eric Swann, Kelly Stouffer and Steve Pisarkiewicz. Buffalo’s picks have included Walt Patulski, Tom Ruud, Erik Flowers, J.P.Losman, Mike Williams and Tom Cousineau. When the Bills picked O.J. Simpson first overall in 1969, it turned out to be a pretty good pick. The second pick that year, made by the Philadelphia Eagles, was defensive back Leroy Keyes. Leroy who?

So when the NFL teams begin choosing college players this Thursday and then do interviews praising their picks as the greatest athletes ever, remember these names – Ryan Leaf, Brian Bosworth, Tony Mandarich, Todd Marinovich, Rick Mirer, Andre Ware, Jeff George, “Pacman” Jones, Art Schlichter, Lawrence Phillips and Todd Blackledge. This list of draft busts includes a combination of players who were over-hyped, self-promoted (remember “The Boz”?), chemically enhanced, emotionally immature and even prone to criminal activity.

ESPN has been running a series of programs titled “Jon Gruden’s QB Camp” and “Jon Gruden’s Rookie Camp” in which Gruden, a former Super Bowl-winning NFL coach and current Monday Night Football analyst, puts this year’s draft prospects through the paces, both on the field and in a meeting room/interview atmosphere where he looks at game film of each player, with that player, and asks for explanations of why they made a certain decision, on both good and bad plays. He asks tough questions about the player’s character, and how they’ll handle the media scrutiny when they are in the NFL. The programs offer terrific insight into the personalities and mindsets of each player, and changed my opinion of some players, both positively and negatively. The quarterback programs were especially enlightening, and showed me that some of these guys are a little too much style and not enough substance, while others who are considered second or third round picks might be getting short-changed. ESPN also ran another special that detailed the drafting of Tom Brady and the six quarterbacks who were drafted ahead of him. It included footage of Brady’s combine workouts, where he looked like a skinny, gawky junior high kid who had no business trying to pass himself off as a pro football prospect. It just goes to show you how hard it is to measure a potential player’s heart.

                                      March 28, 1984 – Colts flee Baltimore in the dead of the night.

March 28, 1984 was perhaps the darkest day in the sports history of the city of Baltimore. Twenty-seven years ago today, the people of that city woke up to the shocking news that in the middle of the night, Baltimore Colts’ owner Robert Irsay had packed up the team’s belongings on Mayflower moving vans and moved them out of the team complex to Indianapolis. Irsay had continually threatened to move if he didn’t get a new stadium, but the city’s politicians never really believed him, since the Colts were one of the NFL’s flagship franchises with a rich tradition. They had come into the league in 1953 as a replacement for the defunct Dallas Texans, and that horseshoe logo on the sides of their helmets had become one of the most recognizable symbols in pro sports. They had a long history of great players and coaches – John Unitas, Raymond Berry, Lenny Moore, Gino Marchetti, Don Shula, Bubba Smith, Mike Curtis, Bert Jones, Jim Parker, Art Donovan, John Mackey, Alan Ameche and Ted Hendricks. They had won four championships, including “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, their 1958 sudden death overtime win over the Giants. The team was so entrenched in the community that they had their own marching band and cheerleaders (see below). This was long before the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders existed.

                                                                 Baltimore Colts’ cheerleaders

Irsay became the most hated man in the city, not only for moving the franchise but for the sneaky, cloak and dagger manner in which it was done. When Irsay’s mother was contacted for her reaction to the move, this was her statement:  “He’s a devil on earth, that one. He stole all our money and said goodbye. He (doesn’t) care for me. I (haven’t) even seen him for 35 years. My husband, Charles, sent him to college. I made his wedding. Five thousand dollars, it cost us. When my husband got sick and got the heart attack, he took advantage. He was no good. He was a bad boy. I don’t want to talk about him.” Irsay’s son Jim is currently the owner of the team, and after his father passed away admitted that he’d had a difficult childhood, and that his dad had problems with alcohol and wasn’t the most rational person to deal with most of the time.

There was a program aired recently on ESPN chronicling the Colts’ cheerleaders and band, which stayed together even after the team moved, playing charity events around the city and hoping for another franchise, which finally happened, ironically, in an even more controversial move when the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore. The city of Cleveland sued and forced Browns’ owner Art Modell to forfeit the Browns’ name and all the team’s records, so the relocated franchise became the Ravens, and the “new” Browns eventually came back into the NFL as an expansion team. In the ESPN show, the old Colt cheerleaders admitted it was painful for a long time after losing the Colts, but eventually they were able to forgive and forget and were now Raven fans. The show was taped the year after the Indianapolis Colts had won the Super Bowl behind the play of Peyton Manning, and the cheerleaders said they had actually pulled for Manning and the Colts to win, because Peyton reminded them of a young Johnny Unitas. Franchises move all the time  in professional sports, but like the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to the west coast in 1958, this was a move that not only relocated a pro sports team but ripped the heart and soul out of a community. Those types of moves are stark reminders that professional sports really are, more than anything else, a “business”, and always subject to the cold, heartless tactics of the business world.

Bass drum from the Baltimore Colts’ band on display at the Football Hall of Fame in Canton.