Logo honoring the 60th season of the Kansas City Chiefs’ existence as a franchise. The team started out as a charter member of the American Football League in Dallas as the Texans, and moved to Kansas City in 1963. The logo includes a football containing the initials of their founder and original owner, Lamar Hunt. The Chiefs’ 87 victories were the most of any team in the 10 year history of the AFL, and the franchise capped off the pre-merger AFL era by upsetting the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Legendary Chief players include Hall of Famers Len Dawson, Bobby Bell, Willie Lanier, Buck Buchanan, Jan Stenerud, Emmitt Thomas, Curley Culp, Johnny Robinson, Willie Roaf and Tony Gonzalez.
1964 Topps football card of a former pro football defensive lineman, Junious “Buck” Buchanan, who enjoyed a 13 year career, all with the Kansas City Chiefs. The NFL’s New York Giants picked him in the 19th round of the 1963 draft, while the Chiefs, who obviously had better scouts, made him the top pick of the AFL draft. Buchanan wisely chose to sign with Kansas City and went on to become one of the franchise’s most iconic defensive stars. He was also the first African American player to be the top pick of a pro football league. Buchanan went on to be a six-time AFL All Star and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990. Unfortunately, Buchanan died of lung cancer in 1992 at the young age of 51.
The NFL’s 100th season begins this week, and the regular season campaign for the Buffalo Bills will also be a historic one – the 60th in team history. Here is our preview of the Bills’ prospects for 2019, position by position:
Front Office/Coaching
After breaking their playoff drought in 2017, the Bills took a step back last season, laboring through a lot of changes at the quarterback position and falling to a disappointing 6-10 record. General manager Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott didn’t waste any time remaking both the coaching staff and the roster to try and improve the team’s fortunes in 2019. Beane was extremely active in free agency, not going after splash names but filling out the roster with solid pros at positions of need. McDermott kept his coordinators in place on defense and offense but made a change where it was needed, bringing in Heath Farwell as special teams coordinator in place of a holdover from previous regimes in Danny Crossman. He also brought in a true QB coach in Ken Dorsey to work with young Josh Allen and new coaches for the offensive line and wide receivers.
Quarterbacks
Veteran backup QB Matt Barkley
Unlike the beginning of last season, there is stability at the quarterback position for the Bills entering 2019. One positive outcome of the disappointing 2018 record was the establishment of Josh Allen as the starting signal caller. Not to be overlooked, however, is the presence of veteran Matt Barkley as the backup. He was signed almost as a panic move when poor play and injuries riddled the position last year, but he has settled in and been a revelation as the perfect complement to Allen. Allen still has a lot to prove, but by the end of last season was beginning to show that he “gets it”. It will be interesting to see how much faith Dorsey and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll show in their rising star.
Running Backs
Rookie RB Devin Singletary
Buffalo’s rushing attack was abysmal last season, save for Allen’s scrambling yardage, but it’s surprising that entering 2019 only fullback Pat DiMarco, who basically never carries the ball, is the only returning player in the RB room. The shocking release of LeSean McCoy puts the spotlight on rookie Devin Singletary, who the GM and coach seem to like a lot. Veteran Frank Gore was signed in the off-season and he not only should be a better mentor to Singletary than McCoy would’ve been, but still has enough left in the tank to provide some help for the run game. T.J. Yeldon, a veteran signed away from Jacksonville, was quiet in the preseason but is an interesting prospect. He has a lot of skill in the passing game and is a competent rusher also. The Bills’ 3 backs all have different, but complementary skill sets and should work together well as a unit.
Receivers
WR Cole Beasley
The receiving corps was another area of the team that needed upgrades from 2018 and GM Beane accomplished that by signing a couple of savvy veterans to help his young quarterback. They are John Brown, a legitimate deep threat, and Cole Beasley, longtime Dallas Cowboy slot receiver who should develop into Josh Allen’s security blanket. Brown was a favorite target of Joe Flacco in Baltimore last year, then fell out of favor when Lamar Jackson took over as starting QB. There are 3 holdovers from last season – Zay Jones, who found some chemistry with Allen last season and led the team in receiving and who should be poised for a breakout year, Robert Foster, who became a deep threat after being brought up from the practice squad, and Isaiah McKenzie, who had success as a “gadget” player, running jet sweeps and in the passing game. Another free agent signee, Andre Roberts, was brought in mostly to upgrade the kick return game but earned playing time as a receiver during training camp also. The tight end group was also completely changed. Four of them made the final roster, including veteran Tyler Kroft, a free agent from the Bengals. He is still recovering from a foot injury but should be a big part of the offensive plans when healthy. Veteran Lee Smith is strictly a blocking TE and is also valued for his locker room leadership. Rounding out the group are a pair of rookies with vast potential – third round draft pick Dawson Knox and seventh round pick Tommy Sweeney. Both looked like they belong in limited preseason appearances and should have bigger roles once the season gets rolling, or possibly sooner if Kroft misses significant time.
Offensive Line
New center Mitch Morse (Getty Images)
Buffalo totally revamped their offensive line group. They kept 10 on their 53 man roster, and only 3, guard Ike Boettger and tackles Conor McDermott and Dion Dawkins, are holdovers from last year. Boettger and McDermott had zero impact in 2018 so they are relative newcomers too. Dawkins, who holds down the starting left tackle spot he has manned since his rookie year in 2017, is the lone returnee who actually saw significant playing time on the O-line last season. Anchoring the new-look line this year will be the Bills’ prize free agent signee, center Mitch Morse. His veteran presence should help Allen with line calls, although his history of concussions could be an issue. He missed basically all of training camp while in concussion protocol. Luckily, the Bills looked for versatility when they went after replacements in free agency and the draft when it came to offensive linemen. Jon Feliciano won the starting right guard spot but can also fill in at center, just as his backup, Spencer Long, can. Starting at right tackle is rookie second round draft choice Cody Ford, who can also slide inside and play guard. Starting at left guard is another free agent, Quinton Spain, although he will have to eliminate the penalty issues he had in the preseason to hold his spot. Ty Nsekhe, a veteran reserve, is the swing tackle. He can move into either tackle spot if needed. Last but not least is rookie Ryan Bates. An undrafted free agent picked up in a preseason trade with the Eagles, he may be the most versatile of the 10 linemen the Bills kept. He can practically fill in at any of the positions along the line. The Bills seem well fortified to withstand a rash of injuries on the line if they occur.
Defensive Line
Pass rushing DE Trent Murphy
The Bills’ defensive unit was solid for the most part in 2018, except maybe for not coming up with a lot of turnovers and ranking low in red zone defense. Still, unlike the offensive units, the defense didn’t undergo as much change. Along the defensive line, the main change was losing veteran tackle Kyle Williams to retirement. However, they plugged that hole in a big way, drafting Ed Oliver in the first round in a move that eventually should lead to even more dominant play at that spot. The other starting tackle is Star Lotulelei, who has either underachieved or been quietly efficient in his tenure here, depending on who you ask. There is quality depth behind the starters in the two Phillips, Jordan and Harrison. The starting ends are Jerry Hughes, the team’s top pass rusher, and Trent Murphy, who should be playing at a top level this year now that he is a full year removed from recovering from a knee injury. The backups at end are Shaq Lawson, who could start on many NFL teams, and an intriguing rookie, seventh round draftee Darryl Johnson Jr. He wowed the coaching staff and fans with an impressive training camp, and coming from a small school (North Carolina A&T) he could be a major sleeper. In all, the Bills are deep and in a good place as far as their defensive line rotation is concerned entering the 2019 season.
Linebackers
LB Matt Milano primed for a big year
The Bills’ linebacking corps returns all 3 starters from last year in middle backer Tremaine Edmunds, flanked on the outside by Matt Milano and the ageless wonder, Lorenzo Alexander. Edmunds, a young stud with a great future, takes command of the defense this year as he will make the defensive calls. Milano, also a young vet, has shown a nose for the football during his short tenure here but coming back from an injury that prematurely ended his season in 2018, is primed for a breakout year. Alexander has already said this would be his final NFL go-around, but he hasn’t slowed down a bit. He is one of the most trusted leaders in the Bills’ locker room. The depth behind the starters is made up of Julian Stanford, Corey Thompson and Maurice Alexander. They are all expected to be top special teams contributors but if one of the starters is lost to injury, the drop-off will be more noticeable than anywhere else on the roster. Still, in today’s game, the linebackers play a reduced role, to the point where the slot or third cornerback is on the field to defend the pass more than all 3 LBs are.
Defensive Backs
CB Levi Wallace, a career “walk on”
The secondary was a major strength of the Bills’ team in 2018 and looks to be even deeper this season. Tre’Davious White, one starting cornerback, might be on the verge of a Pro Bowl season. The other starting corner, Levi Wallace, is a survivor. A walk-on in college at Alabama, he wound up starting in the defensive backfield of arguably the nation’s top program. He came to Buffalo last season as an undrafted free agent and eventually won a starting CB job. In this year’s training camp he fought off stiff competition to hold down that job. Behind the starters are a pair of Johnsons – Kevin, a former top draft pick of the Texans who has battled injuries, and Taron, the top slot corner who showed flashes of stardom last season in that role before getting injured. Buffalo kept 6 safeties on their 53 man roster, although one of them, Siran Neal, can fill in at corner in a pinch if needed. Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer, the starters, are one of the top safety tandems in the NFL. Veterans Dean Marlowe and Kurt Coleman both have extensive experience in Sean McDermott’s defense and are dependable backups. The sixth safety is rookie Jaquan Johnson, who made some plays and provided some big hits in the preseason and should be an asset on special teams.
Special Teams
Pro Bowl kick returner Andre Roberts
The Bills cut some of their top special teams players from last season, like Lafayette Pitts and Deon Lacey, but then again their bomb squads were nothing to write home about either. They have a new special teams coach in Heath Farwell, and gave him a present when they signed Pro Bowl kick returner Andre Roberts away from the division rival New York Jets in free agency. The specialists remain the same ones who started 2018 – long snapper Reid Ferguson, as dependable as they come, placekicker Stephen Hauschka, who struggled at the end of the season, and punter Corey Bojorquez, whose spot on the roster could be tenuous if he doesn’t improve on a woeful preseason performance.
For Bills’ fans’ enjoyment, here is the annual posting of the team’s popular fight song. LET’S GO BUFFALO!:
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This is a logo for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, commemorating their 60th year of existence in 2019. While the NFL is embarking on it’s 100th season, the Bills, and the rest of the American Football League, played their first games in 1960. The Bills were a bit of an enigma in those early AFL days, as they won back-to-back league championships on the strength of their defense in a league known for wide open offense. Founded and owned by Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. until his death, the franchise has a colorful history, and some of their top players over the years have been Jack Kemp, Tom Sestak, Billy Shaw, Cookie Gilchrist, Joe Ferguson, O.J. Simpson, Tony Greene, Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed, Bruce Smith and Darryl Talley.
1966 Topps football card of former pro football linebacker Mike Stratton, who played 12 seasons in the American and National Football Leagues, all but one of them for the Buffalo Bills. He was a six-time AFL All Star selection and helped the Bills win AFL championships in 1964 and ’65. His “Hit Heard ‘Round The World” on San Diego’s Keith Lincoln in the ’64 title game lives on in Buffalo sports lore as it put Lincoln out for the game and helped lift the Bills to their first championship.
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
Comments Off on NFL – Throwback Thursday: The Packers Are Derailed
This is a logo of a pro football team from Wisconsin, originally sponsored by the Acme Packing Company, that eventually evolved into the NFL’s only community owned franchise, the Green Bay Packers. There were many “small town” teams when the NFL was founded in 1920, in fact all of them were, but the Packers are the only one still surviving. Their 13 NFL championships won are the most of any franchise. They were founded by Earl “Curly” Lambeau, and boast 26 Pro Football Hall of Famers, second to only the Chicago Bears. They include Lambeau, Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Don Hutson, Ray Nitschke, Herb Adderley, Johnny “Blood” McNally, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor, Willie Davis, Tony Canadeo, Willie Wood, Dave Robinson, Brett Favre, Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo, Reggie White and most recently, Jerry Kramer.
1962 Topps football card of former NFL defensive end Doug Atkins, a massive 6’8″ man who enjoyed a long, successful 17 year career in pro football. He was a 10 time All Pro, made the Pro Bowl 8 times and was selected to the All Decade Team for the 1960s. He played most of his career with the Chicago Bears, helping them win a pair of NFL titles, in 1954 and 1963. He finished his playing days with the expansion New Orleans Saints, and despite playing only 3 seasons there, made the Pro Bowl in ’68 and had his jersey # 81 retired by the franchise. Atkins, who passed away in 2015, was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982.
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.
Logo of a team that plays in the National Football League, the Cleveland Browns. This “Brownie” logo has been associated with the team since 1948, but this particular version, with the Brownie elf wearing a champion’s crown, was used during their years in the All America Football Conference, when they won all 4 titles in the league’s existence, through 1959. They also won the NFL title in their first year being incorporated into the established league in 1950 under their founder and coach, Paul Brown.
