April 23, 2024

Tag: NFL

Sports

Happy Birthday Jim Brown!

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The Mighty Jim Brown Turns 85 Today

Here are highlights of his final game*

This is pro football the way it was meant to be played: a brutal contest of will and brawn, in a pit of black mud at near freezing temperatures. On January 2, 1966, the Cleveland Browns looked to repeat as NFL Champions when they took the field in Green Bay to take on Vince Lombardi’s Packers for the title game for the 1965 season.
*Not including the exhibition Pro Bowl that happened two weeks later.
Brown was the MVP that season, having rushed for over 1,500 yards for the second time in his nine year career. We’ve never seen his equal since.
I propose that the NFL add a new award that would be the pro equivalent to the Heisman Trophy . Where the current Most Valuable Player award goes to the player who meant the most to their individual team, it almost always goes to a quarterback. This new award would be be in addition the MVP and would be given the best player in the league. And I further propose it be named the Jim Brown Trophy.
Sports

Super Bowl Sunday

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“And so it has come at last, the distinguished thing.” — Casanova, Camino Real by Tennessee Williams.

This may very well prove to be the “greatest Super Bowl of all time.” But as usual my team won’t win, because none of my favorite teams are in the game.

“And so it has come at last, the distinguished thing.” — Casanova, Camino Real by Tennessee Williams.
This may very well prove to be the “greatest Super Bowl of all time.” But as usual my team won’t win, because none of my favorite teams are in the game.
After rooting fervently against the Chiefs during their blood feud with John Madden’s 1970s Oakland Raiders and Tom Flores’ 1980’s Oakland and LA Raiders, and rooting for the Giants against Andy Reid’s Eagles all those later years, it is just impossible for me to root for the Chiefs now, even if I can admire their ridiculous excellence.
Sure I still smart from the 2001 Raiders losing to Tom Brady on his way to his first Super Bowl, due to the non-existent Tuck Rule. But if today’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the odds with their ferocious defense and living legend quarterback, I will be happy for the old guys like Bruce Arians and Todd Bowles, who are terrific people by all accounts, and for the veterans enjoying what may be their one and only chance at a championship, like Leonard Fournette and Mike Evans.
If young phenom Patrick Mahomes prevails, and the amazing adaptable offense schemes of Andy Reid earn him his giant double cheeseburger, I will marvel at “the kid” going 26-1 over his last 27 starts, with a lot of help by one of the most talented squads ever assembled.
Then again, on the other side of the ball are the Buccaneers, who beat the Raiders in their last Super Bowl, souring Rich Gannon’s MVP 2002 season, ironically thanks to the Raider’s current coach having gone to Tampa Bay after being fired by the Raiders shortly before.
So, I shall remain neutral and marvel at what is a match-up of the best teams who peaked at the right time and who each will hopefully bring their best game.
But then there’s Trumper Tom and his enviable perfection. His personal life in no way diminishes his unmatched achievements as one of the greatest athletes of any generation. He keeps his politics totally out of his public life, and he is hardly the only pro athlete who was raised by Republicans to be a Republican or who has been chummy with Donald Trump over the years, along with other wealthy businessmen in the east coast jet set social scene. Babe Ruth would likely have been at those same dinner tables.
But I get it. I understand why people loathed Brady and the Patriots with the same emotional fervor as those who would root against the Yankees if they were playing North Korea, and for the same sort of reasons.
But seriously! Moving to a new team during a pandemic, which went 7-9 last season, and starting the year 7-5, and then with less than a 10% chance of getting to the Super Bowl, running the table to make it all the way to his TENTH Super Bowl?
Win or lose, he is still Tom Terrific. But winning this one will make him immortal.
The unscripted drama of world-class athletics is hard to beat when it comes to entertainment.
History / Sports

Mike Curtis Remembered

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My Mind Turns to Mad Dog Mike Curtis on Super Bowl Eve

The NFL Hall of Fame inductees will be announced tonight. One name that has faded out of sight is that of my childhood sports hero, Mike Curtis, the only linebacker to make All Pro at the Outside and Middle positions

Curtis died in April at the age of 77 years old. That week, Sports Illustrated ran an editorial lobbying for why he should be in the HoF.
After 11 years with the Colts, and the interception that sealed Super Bowl V, he was stolen away as the Seattle Seahawks #1 draft choice, back when expansion teams got to draft from other teams. Passed his prime, he was as much a teacher for the Seahawks and later his hometown Redskins, than a player.

Mike Curtis linebacker onemanz

One Sports Illustrated writer declared these 1970, ’71 Baltimore Colts the greatest linebacking core in NFL history. (Curtis, with Ted Hendrix, and Ray May who went on to captain the Broncos’ defense a few years later.)
Bart Starr played against Butkus twice a year, but said the only man he was ever truly afraid of was Mike Curtis, who was known as the Mad Dog.
A tall, skinny rookie named Ted Hendrix lined up next to him in 1969, and was so gangly the press nicknamed him the Mad Stroke as a joke.
Hendrix is in the Hall, as is Butkus, Willie Lanier, Bobby Bell, and Ray Nitchke. Many players of the time thought Curtis was their better. But he showed no interest in lobbying for the HoF and was pretty much forgotten, except when various Baltimore Ravens would seek him out at his favorite blue collar bar to buy him beer.
I still have his football card, now in a frame with an autographed photo I snagged off Ebay.
There’s gonna be some serious buzz saw linebacker play tomorrow to look forward too. “The human buzz saw” being his other nickname from back in the day.
Sports

Don Shula 1930 – 2020

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Remembering the exceptional American, and Ohioan, who was Don Shula

I rooted against his Miami Dolphins every single game, but boy where they great!

Don Shula died today at the age of 90.

As a little boy, I saw things very much in a all or nothing way. And I was stung by Coach Shula leaving the Baltimore Colts, the first sports team I connected with – probably because of the pretty cowgirls in their entourage. But also because their kamikaze rabid dog linebacker Mike Curtis. I didn’t realize (consciously) that they were the longtime rival of my dad’s Cleveland Browns, but he never said a discouraging word against it.

Shula jumping to the AFL was another snub, even if they were merging with the NFL. And he had the bad manners to move to a team in the same division as my Colts, and take the lowly Dolphins to the playoffs in his first season. At least my Colts won the Super Bowl that year – finally!

But  worst of all, he beat my Colts 21-0 in the AFC Championship in his second season on the way to losing the Super Bowl, preventing a rematch between the defending champion Colts and the eventual champion Cowboys. But then he went on to win the next two Super Bowls, including that “Perfect Season,” where I rooted against them every game they played.

But I always had tremendous respect for his Dolphins, and admiration for their rhino fullback Larry Czonka and the rest of those glory teams.

He was a tough S.o.G., some say a veritable alligator as a coach. And I always loved this story, recounted in his obituary at NFL.com.

“After the 1969 season, Shula moved to Miami, where he was given a 10 percent stake in ownership of the team (he later sold it). His first team made the playoffs. His second made it to the Super Bowl. His third and fourth teams won championships and established themselves as South Florida legends, complete with a famous story about the time former Dolphin Manny Fernandez captured an alligator from the Everglades and put it in Shula’s shower after practice. When Shula ran into the locker room, fullback Larry Csonka informed him that players had taken a vote — with Shula prevailing by just one — to decide whether to tape the alligator’s mouth shut.”

He was drafted by the Browns in 1951 as a Defensive Halfback, but spent most of his seven seasons with the Colts, who in 1963, made him the youngest coach in NFL history, at that time.

And the rest is very much history indeed. R.I.P. Coach Shula. It was a great 90 years.

 

Sports

2016 NFL Football Season Underway

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The NFL Football season is upon us.

Predictions and reflections

The first game prediction Denver 24 – Carolina 20

But really, I cannot remember a Week 1 where so few games seemed a sure thing.

Seattle at home against Miami, yeah. But anything could happen in the other games, given all the changes in personnel and people missing in action for one reason or another.

Out on a limb time: End of Season Rankings

NFC East – Cowboys

NFC North – Packers

NFC South – Panthers

NFC West – Cardinals

Wild Card – Giants, Seahawks

Dark Horse – Saints

AFC East – Patriots

AFC North – Bengals

AFC South – Colts

AFC West – Raiders

Wild Card – Steelers, Broncos

Dark Horse – Jets

Sports

James Harris 1st Black Quarterback in NFL – podcast

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Fascinating podcast about James Harris, the first black NFL quarterback who withstood Civil Rights era hate and ultimately led the LA Rams to the two NFC Championship Games in row.

One of the commentators makes a good argument as to why Harris starting at Quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and later the Los Angeles Rams was the most significant single feat in the desegregation of professional sports.
When a player falls off the TV screen it is easy to not notice where they went. I didn’t realize that after two very strong seasons, being voted team captain and MVP of the Pro Bowl he was traded away to San Diego where he became Dan Fouts’s backup. Not something that ever happened to a white all-pro quarterback at the height of his career.
I was surprised to learn that after old fashioned race attitudes forced him out of a starting QB role and later retired, he remained employed in a suit and tie by the NFL until 2015.
This is a podcast from Us & Them, Trey Kay’s Public Radio program that explores contentious social issues through the voices of the people who actually experience them first hand.
 
And while this one doesn’t so much take an Us vs. Them approach, I found this one of the most fascinating episodes. Not just because I am a football fan, but because of what I learned about the all-black colleges in the South and the very different priorities student athletes had there compared to the major predominantly white universities, etc.