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It’s a shame that a lot of younger football fans don’t even remember Don Meredith, who passed away on Monday of a stroke, as an original member of the Monday Night Football broadcast team, yet alone his playing career as a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. Meredith backed up Eddie LeBaron at QB in Dallas in the franchise’s first 2 years of existence in 1960 and ’61, split time with LeBaron in ’62, then became the full-time starter for coach Tom Landry’s team in 1963. He then proceeded to guide the ‘Boys into their first winning era, on their way to becoming “America’s Team”. It’s unfortunate that Meredith never won a championship in his career. He played 9 seasons and was retired by the time Dallas won their first Super Bowl in 1971. During Meredith’s era, the Cowboys gained a reputation as being one of those teams that “can’t win the big one”, and in Meredith’s two title game encounters with Green Bay, in 1966 and ’67, he didn’t play particularly well. In ’66, the game was played in Dallas’ home stadium, the Cotton Bowl, and Green Bay jumped out to an early 14-0 lead. Meredith led a comeback and made a game of it, even driving the Cowboys to Green Bay’s 2 yard line with a chance to tie the game late in what was a shootout style of game. Meredith threw an interception that sealed the win, 34-27, for the Packers. The next year, the same 2 teams played for the NFL title again, this time in Green Bay’s Lambeau Field in what would turn out to be one of the most memorable games in league history, the “Ice Bowl”. Played in horrid, frigid conditions, neither team mounted much offense in the game. However, Packer signal-caller Bart Starr is remembered for scoring the winning TD on a quarterback sneak, while Meredith totaled 59 yards passing for the afternoon.

What I remember about Meredith is that he was a gamer. He took vicious hits and kept bouncing back. He was a real leader of his football team, and the Cowboys’ reputation of not being able to win the big one had nothing to do with Meredith’s desire to win. His teammates always respected him and his inner drive to win. Following his retirement, he became an analyst on NFL telecasts, eventually joining the  ground-breaking MNF crew. Teaming with Howard Cosell as analysts,  he carved out his “Dandy Don” personna by playing off Cosell’s arrogance with his witty, country charm, as Keith Jackson, and then Frank Gifford as play-by-play announcers, played the straight man. It was really the first time a football announcing team brought entertainment to the booth, and became part of the story as much as the game was. Those early Monday Night Football telecasts, and the humor and entertainment Meredith and Cosell provided, were huge in helping to grow the NFL into the monster it is today – the real national pastime.  So now, to quote “Dandy Don” himself, “turn out the lights, the party’s over”, for Meredith on this earth. His legacy as both a player and analyst deserves to be mentioned, because it was a big part of the game. Rest in peace, Dandy Don.

On this day in 1931, legendary NFL head coach Bill Walsh was born in Los Angeles, California. I recently read a short biography of Walsh and it reminded me of a fact that seems lost in today’s NFL – that the greatest coaches of all time are the ones that are the best teachers, not the ones who rant and rave and put on a big macho act. Paul Brown was an innovator in that he was the first to introduce classroom training and film study to the NFL. Vince Lombardi has a reputation as a taskmaster but in reality he was one of the best “teaching” head coaches of all time. He was a teacher before he decided to go into coaching. Tom Landry was as stoic a figure on the sidelines as there’s ever been. His method was all about teaching and preparation throughout the week in practice, not yelling and screaming on the sideline on Sundays. Chuck Noll, who played for Brown in Cleveland, always had a reputation for being low-key in Pittsburgh. Noll was a no-nonsense coach, but like the others was all about having his team prepared. Joe Gibbs always had a Mr.Peepers persona, peering out through his eyeglasses, but he too was a great “teacher”. 

Walsh was the ultimate in football coaches who you’d never guess were coaches if you met them on the street. He was professorial to the point where he came across as arrogant. Old school football people always scoffed at Walsh’s “West Coast” offense, which substituted a short “dink and dunk” passing game for the running game. His offense took the opposite approach of the norm, which was that you had to run the ball effectively to set up the passing game. Walsh would pass the ball to set up the running game. It wasn’t a particularly physical style of football, which is what drove football purists crazy, but it was definitely an extension of Walsh’s personality – a scholarly approach to the game rather than the usual “three yards and a cloud of dust” approach. Walsh had the knack for bringing in players who fit his system and were mature to the point where they didn’t need constant babysitting and policing (see this year’s Dallas Cowboys or Minnesota Vikings for examples of that). Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, Roger Craig and Matt Millen were not only the team’s best players but also the hardest working. In his early formative years, Walsh was not a great athlete, or a top student either. Obviously he was a genius when it came to football though. When he worked at San Jose State as a graduate assistant coach, the head coach wrote this note in his personnel file: “I predict Bill Walsh will become the outstanding football coach in the United States.” There was a great quote in that biography on Walsh that sums up his scholarly approach to the game. ESPN analyst Beano Cook said this about him: “If Bill Walsh was a general, he would be able to overrun Europe with an army from Sweden.” Walsh was definitely one of the NFL’s greatest coaches of all time, and deserves the “genius” label that he used to seem to relish wearing. When he passed away in 2007 the league lost a great resource, and if there’s one thing current NFL owners can learn from him, it’s that every once in awhile when your team is struggling and your knee-jerk reaction is to blame the coach for “losing control of the locker room” and fire him, maybe a closer look at what kind of players are in that locker room should be in order.

                                            Inaugural Dallas Thanksgiving Game vs. Browns in 1966.

Detroit has had the honor of hosting the NFL’s annual Thanksgiving Day game since 1934, but in 1966, the league added a second Turkey Day game, awarding the honor to the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys played the Cleveland Browns in their inaugural game that year, and the game was pivotal in the young franchise’s development. The Cowboys entered the game with a 7-2-1 record while the Browns, who were 7-3, had played in the 2 previous NFL Championship games and were a powerhouse at the time. Tom Landry’s club won the game, 26-14, and would go on to have an astounding 20 straight winning seasons. The NFL’s move to put an annual game in Dallas was a good decision by commissioner Pete Rozelle, as the team, since that first game in ’66, has been a marquee franchise ever since. My daughter, who is now in her 30s, has fond childhood memories of family get togethers – she recalls them being Sunday afternoons – where the family was gathered around the televison and the Cowboys were always playing a late afternoon game. She distinctly remembers Landry, with his trademark fedora hat and stoic look, standing on the sidelines, with the large silver stars lining the walls of the old Texas Stadium behind him. I think she may actually be remembering Thanksgiving Day celebrations rather than Sundays, since the Cowboys have been Turkey Day fixtures her whole life.

The most memorable Dallas Thanksgiving game has to be the “Clint Longley” game, played on November 28, 1974. It was a matchup of the Cowboys and their most bitter division rivals, coach George Allen’s Washington Redskins. These 2 teams regularly battled it out for NFC supremacy in the 1970s, and this year was no exception. Allen’s “Over The Hill Gang”, a collection of veterans and old misfits that the coach fielded due to his disdain for playing rookies, were challenging Landry’s always strong team for first place in the NFC East. The ‘Skins were dominating this game, and when veteran linebacker Dave Robinson hammered the Cowboys’ star QB, Roger Staubach, with a tackle so vicious that it knocked Staubach out of the game, it looked hopeless for the home town team. Staubach’s replacement was 22-year old unproven rookie Clint Longley, who had not played in a game up to that point. Longley had earned the nickname “The Mad Bomber” from his teammates for his habit of throwing errant passes and hitting Landry’s coaching tower in practice. He came into the game with his team trailing, 16-3, and wound up throwing 2 touchdown passes, including the game-winner to Drew Pearson, to lead the Cowboys to an improbable 24-23 win. Longley had no expectation of ever playing in the game and entered it totally unprepared, and afterward lineman Blaine Nye, his teammate, sarcastically called the win “a triumph of the uncluttered mind.” The game turned out to be Longley’s 15 minutes of fame, as less than 2 years later, he sucker punched Staubach from behind in the locker room during training camp, leaving Staubach requiring several stitches to repair his face. The team immediately traded Longley to San Diego, where his career faded. It was reported recently on the NFL Network that Longley wound up selling carpeting out of his car back in Texas.

                                                            Clint Longley in 1974.

                                Green Bay’s Bart Starr is swallowed up by a swarming Lions’ defense.

On Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1962, the NFL staged its’ annual traditional game between the host Detroit Lions and the visiting Green Bay Packers, and the game was one of the most memorable ever played on the holiday. A year later, this particular date would forever become etched in history by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but in 1962 the Lions played one of the most inspired games in franchise history on the date – a game that lives on today in Lions’ team history as the “Turkey Day Massacre”. The Packers were the powerhouse team in the league at that time, having won the championship under coach Vince Lombardi in 1961. They entered the annual holiday game with a perfect 10-0 record, and had beaten the Lions 9-7 in Green Bay earlier in the season on a last-second field goal. That game had stuck in the Lions’ collective craw leading up to the Thanksgiving rematch, and the team was not the mediocrity they are in today’s NFL – they were 8-2 and second to the Packers in the Western Division at the time. Detroit’s defense, led by Roger Brown, Alex Karras and Joe Schmidt, played its’ best game of the season that day, harrassing and swarming Packer QB Bart Starr all game long, and sacking him 11 times for over 100 yards in losses. Brown, a 300 lb. defensive lineman, had 5 of the sacks himself, including one where he tackled Starr in the end zone for a safety. The Lions won 26-14, and although they won the battle that day, Green Bay won the war, as this turned out to be their only loss of the season. The Packers finished 13-1 and won their second consecutive NFL title, on their way to 5 championships in a 7 year period, a feat that earned the small Wisconsin town the nickname of “Titletown, USA”.

Lombardi didn’t easily forget this game, however. At the time, the annual holiday game was not only hosted by Detroit, but the annual opponent, from 1951 until 1963, was always the rival Packers. Lombardi lobbied the league complaining about having to travel to a road game on a short week every year, and how much of a disadvantage it was to his club, and eventually commissioner Pete Rozelle relented and the league began rotating the opponent for the Lions each year.  In 1966, the league added a second traditional Thanksgiving game in Dallas. Tomorrow, we’ll highlight a memorable game from the annual Dallas Thanksgiving series.

There was a story in the news recently accusing one of this year’s leading candidates for college football’s coveted Heisman Trophy, Auburn quarterback Cam Newton, of insisting on being paid to sign a letter of intent to attend school at the time he was being recruited. It involves his father supposedly insisting on his son getting “anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000” to sign with Mississippi State. Nothing has been proven but every day someone else seems to be coming forward implicating at least the father, not necessarily Cam himself, to the point where the story will most likely influence the outcome of the Heisman voting this year. With Reggie Bush just recently returning his trophy from 2005 due to the NCAA finding he had received improper benefits while playing at the school, the voters this year will certainly be scared away from voting for Newton, whether there’s any proof of wrongdoing or not. To me, this is all hypocrisy on the part of the NCAA. They run around handing out sanctions to players and schools supposedly defending the “purity” and “sanctity” of their sports, while at the same time pocketing millions of dollars marketing those same players and schools. College basketball has been watered down in recent years, starting when star players like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James went straight to the NBA out of high school. Under the guise of protecting young players who declared for the pro draft who weren’t really pro prospects, the NBA and NCAA devised a system where players now have to complete at least a year of college ball before turning pro. This has created the “one and done” phenomenon, in which NBA calibre players now enroll and play at a school for a year before going pro, instead of taking the direct route from high school. Last season, the University of Kentucky had a roster of players considered to be national championship material. Four of their five starters were freshmen. The Wildcats didn’t win the title, but all five starters declared for the NBA draft, including top pick John Wall and #7 choice DeMarcus Cousins. So now there are going to be NCAA programs, promoting “student athletes” and running ads during televised games hailing what a great education their school offers, who in reality are fielding teams of one-year “rental” NBA players. The success of Bryant, James and others in the NBA proves that elite players can jump directly to the pro level in their sport. Football should do the same thing, allow players to be drafted out of high school if they’re good enough. The argument used to keep football players in school is that they’re not physically ready to compete in the NFL, but if that’s true, then the NFL “practice squads” are the perfect place for these players to develop while they learn their team’s system and how to be professional. The NFL and NBA only go along with these NCAA rules regarding drafting underclassmen under the threat of the schools not allowing pro scouts to visit the campuses. It’s all about money, for the NCAA, not the players. Those NCAA administrators are not going to give up their cash cows without a fight, and it’s a fight they’re winning, to the point of these young athletes being denied the right to work and earn a living  in their profession. This is supposed to be a free country, but in this case, money trumps everything, including individual freedoms. It has created a system where sleazy agents work behind the scenes to get money and benefits for the players, and every once in awhile when it goes public, the high and mighty NCAA comes down hard with sanctions and fines and puts on a show that they are “keeping the amateur status of their sports programs clean”. Give me a break, please.

Writing the post on Tuesday about last weekend’s rash of violent hits got me to thinking about some of the hardest, most famous hits, and hitters, in NFL history. It sort of proves a point that the problem of vicious hitting in the league isn’t a recent problem. The NFL has actually done a good job of legislating dirty play out of the game, perhaps even going a little too far when it comes to protecting quarterbacks. I still feel the problem is with players not learning the fundamentals – both the fundamentals of hitting, blocking and tackling, and the art of being aware of your surroundings in a game and not putting yourself in vulnerable positions where injuries occur. The following is a rundown of hits and hard-hitting players in the NFL over the years:

During their 1960 championship season, the Philadelphia Eagles played a game against the New York Giants in which their hard-hitting linebacker, Chuck Bednarik, laid out Giants’ back Frank Gifford with a hit so vicious that it not only knocked Gifford unconscious, but sent him to the hospital with a severe concussion. It took Gifford a long time to recover from the symptoms of that concussion, and he didn’t play again in the league until 1962. The ferocity of the hit, along with the fact it involved a player who was a New York “Golden Boy” in Gifford, and a player nicknamed “Concrete Charley” in Bednarik, gave it legendary status. The photo below, of Bednarik standing over the prone Gifford like a predator admiring his prey, is also a stunning visual.

Bednarik admires his prey.

In a 1978 preseason game, Oakland Raiders safety Jack Tatum, whose nickname was “The Assassin”, hit Patriots’ receiver Darryl Stingley so hard on a pass play over the middle that Stingley wound up paralyzed from the chest down. Tatum also was involved in a hit during the Super Bowl, against the Vikings, that knocked the helmet off receiver Sammy White and left White lying whoozy on the ground. Amazingly, the Minnesota receiver actually held onto the ball.

Jack Tatum’s hit on Darryl Stingley.

During the Steelers’ championship era of the 1970s, quarterback Terry Bradshaw was involved in a hit that was so severe that it resulted in rules changes to protect quarterbacks. Cleveland Browns’ defensive lineman Joe “Turkey” Jones sacked Bradshaw by picking him up and “piledriving ” him head first into the turf, leaving the Steelers’ QB unconscious on the field. Bradshaw wound up with a concussion, and Jones was fined $3,000.

Jones piledrives Bradshaw into the turf.

In the 1964 American Football League championship game, Bills’ linebacker Mike Stratton hit Chargers’ back Keith Lincoln on a swing pass with a clean hit that injured Lincoln’s ribs and knocked him out of the game. The play became known in AFL annals as “The Hit Heard ‘Round The World”, as it turned momentum in Buffalo’s favor. The Bills won 20-7 for the first of back-to-back titles. The injury to Lincoln was unfortunate, but notice Stratton’s perfect tackling form below, leading with his shoulder and wrapping up the runner with his arms.

The Hit Heard ‘Round The World.

Hardy Brown was an obscure linebacker for the 49ers in the 1950s who became legendary for his hitting. There isn’t one incident involving Brown that is a lasting image, like Bednarik’s hit on Gifford, but Brown’s technique of winding up his shoulder and hitting opponents, knocking them back sometimes up to 10 yards, became legendary. He knocked out 21 players in the 1951 season, and once knocked out an entire team’s backfield in a single game. Playing in the era before the dawn of face masks, Brown also fractured an opponent’s face, almost took out a running back’s eye, and crushed another player’s vertebrae. He was banned from his own team’s practices by coach Buck Shaw.

Hardy Brown about to unload on Otto Graham.

For some reason, it was a particularly violent weekend in the NFL this past week, with a number of vicious hits to the head that caused concussions making the headlines. The NFL has made it a point to take extra precautions to help take the blows to the head out of the game. Quarterbacks are given extra protection, and blows to the head on a QB, no matter how minor they are, are penalized these days. Head blows to defenseless receivers are also being legislated out of the game. I don’t know what happened this weekend, but in a few instances, most notably in the Pittsburgh-Cleveland, Baltimore-New England, and Atlanta-Philadelphia games, players totally disregarded the league’s movement toward eliminating unnecessary head shots. Atlanta’s Dunta Robinson hit the Eagles’ DeSean Jackson so hard that the blow knocked both players out, but Jackson suffered a severe concussion that included loss of memory. There were a couple of questionable hits by Steeler players on Browns’ players that left those players unconscious. The Steelers were wearing their throwback uniforms on Sunday – maybe they decided to play the same style as the guys who originally wore those uniforms in the 1960s, mean, physical, and borderline dirty, a reputation the team had back in those days. In the Ravens-Pats game, New England’s Brandon Merriweather deliberately launched himself into Baltimore’s Todd Heap.

Now it’s being reported that the NFL office is going to start suspending players for these flagrant hits, and that’s a good thing, but I don’t know how much more the league can do as far as rules changes without turning the sport into flag football. On ESPN, a couple of their analysts had ideas on how to cut down on the head shots. Mike Ditka says that the helmets have become weapons to today’s players, and that the equipment is so good today that players feel invincible. He suggested that  face masks should be removed, that if that happened “these pretty boys playing today would never lead with the helmet for fear of ruining their looks and losing endorsement deals”. I love Ditka. I wish he were the commissioner. Of course, removing face masks is too radical, but maybe going back to the single and double bar masks instead of the robot-looking full cages isn’t such a bad idea.

Mike Golic, also on ESPN, says the league should study making form-fitted mouthguards, and make mouthguards mandatory for all players. His thinking is that a lot of the concussion problems come from the jolt that happens when the lower jaw hits the upper jaw when a player is hit under the chin. I was actually surprised to hear that mouth guards aren’t mandatory. Golic has a point. I’ve noticed over the years that it is now “cool” to wear your football pants up over your knees, with the knee exposed, as opposed to when the pants had thigh pads and extended below the knee, with knee pads  covering the knee joint. I don’t know if the NFL has an insurance policy that pays players when they are on injured reserve, or how their system works, but if I were the insurer I would refuse to pay claims on players that don’t wear the proper protective equipment.

If I had to name one reason that is the cause of all the concussions in the league today, I’d point the finger at the coaches. The fundamentals are so bad throughout the NFL today that it’s no wonder players are getting hurt. Everybody is trying to get himself on the highlight reel with a crushing blow, rather than squaring up, wrapping up and tackling the old-fashioned way. The officials should be instructed to penalize any player who attempts to tackle without extending his arms and trying to wrap up the opposing player. There’s no reason why any player needs to “launch” himself into another player in order to bring him down. Today’s players need to be reminded that the object is to stop the runner’s forward progress, not put him in the hospital. When I was growing up, I remember reading a pamphlet, written by then Chicago Bears assistant defensive coach George Allen and sponsored by the Milk For Health campaign if I remember right, that described and illustrated all the fundamental skills needed to be a football player – blocking, tackling, running, throwing, etc. with drills that a kid could practice to improve those skills. If I were NFL commissioner I would hand out copies of that pamphlet to every head coach in the league, and tell those coaches to either teach their players those fundamentals or find other players who will play with those fundamentals, since any player who doesn’t will be suspended continuously until they are all out of the league. Any coach whose players were being constantly fined and/or suspended would be suspended also. All these teams have elaborate training facilities with all kinds of modern equipment. Do any of these teams use tackling dummies or blocking sleds anymore? That’s where the fundamentals are learned.

 I would also direct the competition committee to implement stern sportsmanship rules, making it an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for any player who does anything other than get up and go back to his huddle after making a play. Do these guys really think the fans want to watch them dance for 5 minutes after making a tackle 20 yards downfield in a game they are losing 45-0?  It may not have anything to do with head injuries, but then again, if I’m a player and some guy acts like a jackass when he beats me on a pass play one time, I’m probably going to think about wanting to knock the guy’s head off on the next play.