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                                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.

It’s long overdue, but on Sunday at Ralph Wilson Stadium, Booker Edgerson will finally be honored by having his name placed on the Buffalo Bills’ Wall of Fame. It’s safe to say that a lot of the fans in the stadium won’t have any idea who Edgerson is or what he meant to the Bills’ franchise when he played. Edgerson was signed by the Bills as an undrafted free agent out of Western Illinois in 1962 and became a fixture for the team at left cornerback for 8 seasons. He was a track star in college and used that speed to blanket the best receivers in the AFL during his career. When the American Football League came into existence in 1960, the game plan for the new league was to offer a wide-open, more exciting alternative to the “three yards and a cloud of dust” NFL. The league featured exciting offense and a lot of downfield passing and more scoring. The AFL’s biggest star in their first few seasons was Houston Oilers’ QB George Blanda, and in Edgerson’s first game ever in ’62, he intercepted Blanda twice, and had 6 picks in all as a rookie. In 1964 the Bills, coached by Lou Saban, dominated the AFL the old fashioned way – with a hard nosed running game featuring bruising fullback Cookie Gilchrist, and a stifling defense. Edgerson was a key player on that defense. Today, Darrelle Revis of the Jets, who is hurt and won’t be playing in the game on Sunday, is celebrated as the best defensive player in the league, as the NFL’s premier “lockdown” cornerback, whose job each week is to cover the opponents’ top wide receiver and take that player out of the game by not allowing him to contribute to his team’s offense. The term “lockdown” corner wasn’t used in the 1960s, but Edgerson was an early version of what Revis is doing in the NFL today. In those days the AFL was loaded with rifle-armed quarterbacks and fleet wide receivers, and the best of the best was Hall of Famer Lance Alworth of the San Diego Chargers. In 1963, the Chargers totally dominated the league behind a wide-open offense designed by coach Sid Gillman and orchestrated by QB Tobin Rote, throwing to Alworth and handing off to RB Keith Lincoln. The Chargers buried the Boston Patriots 51-10 in the title game, and were clearly the class of the new league. In 1964 the Bills proved the old adage that offense wins games but defense wins championships as they shut down the high-flying Chargers 20-7 in the AFL title game. Gillman complained afterwards that the bad field conditions at old War Memorial Stadium, plus the fact that Alworth was out with an injury, was the reason his team lost. Just to prove a point, in 1965 the Bills shut out the Chargers on their own home field, 23-0, to repeat as champs. Thanks mostly to Edgerson’s efforts, Alworth was a non-factor in the game. The San Diego speedster was widely regarded as the fastest player in the AFL, if not in all of pro football, but Edgerson is the only player to ever to catch Alworth from behind. Booker was also a nemesis of another AFL marquee player, Joe Namath of the Jets. In the season the Jets shocked the Colts to win Super Bowl III, the Bills were aging and on the decline, and only won one game. The win was over the Jets. They intercepted Namath 5 times and returned 3 for touchdowns, including one by Edgerson.

In an earlier post I documented players at each position that were not in the football Hall of Fame in Canton but deserved to be, and Edgerson was one of those mentioned. It’s not Canton, but the Bills’ Wall of Fame is still a great honor for the 71 year old Edgerson. He is active in charity work as the president of the Bills’ Alumni Association and can be seen around the stadium or in the field house on game days, talking to fans and just being a great ambassador for the team.  If you’ve seen him you’d probably agree with me that he still looks like he could suit up and play today. Congratulations on a well-deserved honor to one of the Bills’ all-time greats!

It was really sad to hear of the passing on Monday of one of the great legends of pro football, George Blanda, at the age of 83. He retired from the game in 1975 and still holds or shares at least 10 NFL records, but rattling off statistics wouldn’t do Blanda’s story justice. His journey in pro football is a remarkable one, and his 26 year career is almost, well, like 3 separate careers. After playing college ball at Kentucky under Paul “Bear” Bryant, he started with the Chicago Bears in 1949 and played with them until 1958. He was a quarterback, placekicker and also saw time as a linebacker, then in 1953 became the Bears’ regular signal caller. An injury forced him out of the lineup, however, and he never regained the starting position. While in Chicago he had a tempestuous relationship with owner/coach George Halas. Finally, he decided to retire in ’58 when Halas insisted that he give up quarterbacking and devote his career to  becoming a full time kicker. Those 10 years in Chicago would be considered a successful career for almost any player, but it turns out Blanda was just getting warmed up.

George Blanda with the Chicago Bears in the 1950s.

In 1959, the “Foolish Club”, a group of millionaires led by Lamar Hunt who were frustrated in attempts to acquire NFL franchises, decided to form a new league. Blanda came out of retirement to sign with the Houston franchise because, as he said, “I knew Bud Adams (Oilers’ owner) had a lot of money”. After battling over every dime with the cheap Halas in Chicago, George followed the money. He wound up becoming the new American Football League’s first star player, leading the Oilers to the first 2 AFL championships while orchestrating a wide-open, pass-happy offense that turned out to be the trademark of the new league. Despite his success, Blanda became the target of the media at that time who belittled the new league as a “Mickey Mouse” operation, and mocked the Oilers’ QB as an “NFL reject”. Blanda continued to be the face of the Houston franchise, as the AFL gained more respect into the mid-’60s, until he was released by the team in March of  1967. Again, had Blanda decided to actually retire at that point, his football career would have been considered a huge success.

Blanda with the AFL’s Houston Oilers in the 1960s.

However, Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis still saw a lot of value in Blanda, and signed him for the ’67 season as his kicker and backup quarterback to the “Mad Bomber”, Daryle Lamonica. With the Raiders, Blanda was pretty much relegated to the role that he had resisted in Chicago, as the team’s full-time kicker. He led the AFL in scoring in ’67 with 116 points. The 1970 season, however, turned out to be a magical one for the ageless wonder. It was the first season after the AFL and NFL merged so it was technically a return to the NFL for Blanda after 12 years. During that season, he had a remarkable run of winning games for the Raiders with clutch kicks and also as the quarterback, relieving Lamonica when he was injured or ineffective. His clutch play helped the team make the playoffs where they reached the AFC title game against the Baltimore Colts. When Lamonica was hurt in that game, Blanda replaced him and at 43 became the oldest QB to ever play in a championship game. He threw 2 touchdown passes and kicked a 48 yard field goal to almost single-handedly keep his team in the game, but the bubble burst when he threw 2 interceptions late in the game as the Colts pulled away and won. He continued on as the Raiders’ kicker, one of the last straight-ahead kickers in the game, before finally actually retiring in 1975, at age 48, after playing pro football in four different decades.  

Blanda quarterbacking the Oakland Raiders in the 1970s.

A humorous story that pretty much sums up Blanda’s career involves an episode of the 1970s television show Happy Days. The show was set in the 1950s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the episode, Richie Cunningham and his friend Ralph Malph are watching a Packers-Bears game on TV, and debating whether Blanda is any good as a quarterback or whether he is washed up and should just quit. If you were a football fan, of course you got the joke, because at the time the show aired Blanda was STILL playing in the NFL.

Rest in peace, George Blanda, a true American sports legend.

Monday Night Football opens its’ regular season tonight with the annual opening week doubleheader, a tradition started a couple years ago  that has become quite popular. MNF has become a tradition in itself after humble beginnings in 1970. NFL football in 1970 was completely different than the game today, but there was so much “newness” going on at that time that the game was really starting to become the nation’s real national pastime. At the point where the NFL decided to try the Monday night experiment, the league had just merged with the American Football League and realigned itself into the National and American Conferences. Three NFL teams – Cleveland, Pittsburgh and the Baltimore Colts – were transferred into the AFC to balance out the 2 conferences. So even though the first MNF matchup between the Browns and New York Jets was technically a game between 2 AFC teams, it was far from that. The NFL had long claimed superiority over the NFL until the Jets and Kansas City Chiefs pulled off huge Super Bowl upsets and cemented the AFL’s place as an equally-talented league. The Browns-Jets matchup opened the MNF season in 1970 after the Chiefs had beaten the Vikings in SB IV, and Namath’s Jets were already over a year removed from their upset win over the Colts in SB III that changed pro football forever. The Browns were a proud NFL team that was getting its’ shot at quieting the brash, young upstart quarterback from the AFL, Joe Namath. The broadcast team for the game was not the famous trio that put MNF on the map – Frank Gifford, Don Meredith and Howard Cosell. Keith Jackson was the play-by-play man in the first season, but the following year moved to doing college telecasts for ABC and was replaced by Gifford. Cosell, of course, became the star of the MNF show over time and was hated by fans everywhere for his pompous attitude, but that was all part of the show. In fact, ABC’s Roone Arledge completely changed the way games were covered, introducing more sideline closeups of players and coaches and microphones to catch what was being said on the sidelines. There was more drama and showmanship brought into the broadcasts, and interviews of famous people by Cosell in the booth became commonplace. Ronald Reagan and John Lennon were just 2 of the people Cosell interviewed during the games. You were nobody if you hadn’t been interviewed by Cosell on MNF back then. Also, Cosell’s halftime highlight show became hugely popular.

Howard Cosell

As for the first game itself, the Browns, with veteran Bill Nelsen at quarterback, future Hall of Famer Leroy Kelly having long since replaced Jim Brown as the featured back, and veteran split end Gary Collins running circles around a young, inexperienced Jet secondary, jumped out to a 14-0 lead. The Jets cut it to 14-7 at halftime, then Homer Jones made the biggest play of his career by returning the second half kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown to widen the Browns’ lead to 21-7. Namath rallied the Jets back to within 24-21, but late in the game threw an interception that LB Billy Andrews returned for a touchdown that climaxed a 31-21 Cleveland victory. The Browns gave the NFL old guard a small measure of revenge for the 2 previous Super Bowls with the win, but the sport was on its’ way to evolving into the entertainment giant it is today. Pete Rozelle’s vision of growing the game, with the merger, Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl, has grown beyond even his wildest dreams.

Since I wasn’t even alive yet when the 1946 football season began, the title of this post is a bit misleading. I don’t actually “remember” the 1946 season, but it’s worth a look back since this was an historic year for the pro game. For starters, the NFL made a change in the commisioner’s office, replacing Elmer Layden with Bert Bell. Bell presided over the league until his death in 1959, when Pete Rozelle took over. Bell’s tenure included the wild and wooly 1950s, when NFL games started to be televised and the league began to grow into the “monster” it is today.

A major rule change was made in 1946 also, as the “free substitution” rule  was withdrawn and changed to only allow 3 subs at a time. Another change made any forward pass which struck the goalposts automatically incomplete. The game changed for the city of Cleveland in a major way in 1946 also. At that time, the Rams were located in Cleveland, but the league allowed Rams’ owner Dan Reeves to move the franchise to Los Angeles. However, the All American Football Conference also began play in 1946, and Cleveland’s entry in this new league, the Browns, dominated play for the entire history of the AAFC and eventually became a dominant force in the NFL when the leagues merged.

The move of the Rams to L.A. was historic for 2 different reasons. First, it expanded the NFL to the west coast for the first time, opening up a whole new audience for the game. But that wasn’t the most important reason. For the 1946 season, the Rams signed the first 2 African American players to play in the modern NFL era, home-town UCLA stars Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. Other black players, most notably Fritz Pollard, had played in the NFL in its’ early years when the game was considered a “savage” sport, but league owners outlawed them from the league. So it was historic when Washington and Strode joined the Rams, a full year prior to Jackie Robinson, a gridiron teammate of Strode and Washington at UCLA, breaking the color line in baseball. Incidentally, that same season, Marion Motley and Bill Willis, also African Americans, played in the AAFC for coach Paul Brown’s Browns.

UCLA teammates, from left: Woody Strode, Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington.

The Chicago Bears won the NFL title game in 1946, 24-14 over the New York Giants, but not without some controversy. Two Giants’ backs were questioned about an attempt by a New York man to fix the title game, and one was suspended.

The 2010 NFL season begins tonight, with the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints meeting the Minnesota Vikings in a rematch of the NFC title game last season. Who would have guessed that a city where the fans used to wear bags over their heads and call their team the “Ain’ts” would win a Super Bowl? Will any history be made this season?