Sports Then and Now

The sports world lost one of the most accomplished coaches in modern history with the recent passing of longtime NFL coach Don Shula at the age of 90.

While Shula is recognized as the NFL’s career leader with 328 regular season coaching victories and 347 total including the playoffs, he was also a great tactician and innovator.

A former player under legendary coaches Paul Brown and Weeb Ewbank, Shula spent seven seasons as a defensive back for the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Colts and Washington Redskins. He finished his career with 21 career interceptions and four fumble recoveries.

After retiring following the 1957 season, Shula spent two years as a college assistant coach, first at the University of Virginia and then at the University of Kentucky.

In 1960 he joined the staff of NFL head coach George Wilson with the Detroit Lions. He was Defensive Backs Coach in 1960 and then served as the Defensive Coordinator in 1961-62. In 1962 the Lions posted an 11-3 record, which was the best record in team history.

Following three seasons in Detroit, the 33-year old Shula returned to Baltimore to replace Ewbank as head coach of the Colts. At the time, Shula was the youngest coach in NFL history and younger or a similar age to many of his players, several of whom were his former teammates.

After posting an 8-6 record in 1963, Shula led the Colts to a 12-2 record and the NFL Championship Game in 1964. The Colts lost the title game to the Cleveland Browns 27-0, the first of a number of disappointing losses by Shula coached teams in championship games.

In 1968 the Colts posted an NFL best 13-1 record and defeated the Minnesota Vikings 24-14 and the Cleveland Browns 34-0 to win the NFL Championship. Heavily favored in Super Bowl III, the Colts lost to the Weeb Ewbank coached New York Jets 16-7.

Shula spent one more season with the Colts, but a disappointing 8-5-1 record in 1969 as well as continued tension with ownership following the loss to the Jets the previous season led to his exit from Baltimore.

It didn’t take Shula long to find a new home as he, ironically, replaced his former boss George Wilson as head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Wilson had been the first coach of the AFL expansion team in 1966 and won only 15 games in four seasons.

In a career that started in 1956 and ended in 1976, the Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month was never really a leading man, but he seemed to be part of the supporting cast for many huge moments in NFL history.

The second overall pick in the 1956 NFL Draft out of Michigan State, Earl Morrall joined a San Francisco 49ers team that already included the famous “Million Dollar Backfield” of Y.A. Tittle, Hugh McElhenny, Joe Perry and John Henry Johnson.

Morrall started four games during his rookie season, but just before the start of the 1957 season was traded along with guard Mike Sandusky to the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for linebacker Marv Matuszak and two first-round draft picks.

Joe Namath dominated the attention prior to Super Bowl III, but few expected his team to win.

With apologies to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, the most shocking sports victory of the 1960s took place 50 years ago on January 12, 1969 when the underdog New York Jets lifted the fortunes of an entire league by defeating the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

Though the American Football League (AFL) was completing its ninth season and the champions of the AFL and National Football League (NFL) were meeting for the third straight year, most people did not consider the two leagues to be equal. In fact, it is reported that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle believed it might be another decade before the AFL would be an equal to the NFL and that a new format for the Super Bowl might be needed.

In hindsight, we know that the two leagues were indeed much closer in competitiveness than Rozelle believed, but at the time his reasoning was hard to argue against. The NFL Champion Green Bay Packers had claimed the first two Super Bowls by a combined margin of 68-24 and the current NFL Champion Baltimore Colts were perhaps an even more dominant champion than Green Bay.

While the Colts were an established NFL power, the New York Jets were an AFL upstart that had just completed the second winning season in franchise history and were making their first-ever trip to the playoffs.

However, one “ace in the hole” for the Jets was roaming their sidelines. Head Coach Week Ewbank had won two NFL Championships during his nine year tenure as coach of the Baltimore Colts. After moving to the Jets, he had taken the team from a basement dweller to league champions.

During both his time with the Colts and the Jets, Ewbank had the benefit of having an elite franchise quarterback leading the offense.

In Baltimore, he turned Johnny Unitas into an all-time great. Though New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath had not yet reached that status level, in 1967 he did become the first quarterback in pro football history to pass for more than 4,000 yards in a season. Read the rest of this entry →

During the days when the Colts ruled Baltimore, the Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month was one of the most exciting players in the NFL.

For 12 seasons with the Baltimore Colts, Lenny Moore was one of the most versatile and explosive players in the game. Read the rest of this entry →

Art Donovan was one of the great characters in NFL history.

The sports world lost one of the great characters of all-time with the passing on Sunday of football Hall of Fame defensive lineman Art Donovan at the age of 89. Not only was Donovan a Hall of Fame football player, but he was also an American Hero as he served with distinction during World War II.

The son of Hall of Fame boxing referee Art Donovan Sr., Art Jr. originally attended Notre Dame for one semester before leaving school in 1942 to enlist in the Marines. Stationed in the Pacific, he served as an anti-aircraft gunner on the USS San Jacinto during the assault on Leyte in the Philippines.

He later volunteered for the Fleet Marine Force, which landed him in the middle of combat on Okinawa. His citations, which included the Asiatic Pacific Area Ribbon and the Philippine Liberation Ribbon, are a major reason he was the first pro football player selected for the U.S. Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame.

After the war, Donovan played college football at Boston College before being drafted by the New York Giants as the 204th pick of the 1947 NFL Draft.

He did not actually make his NFL debut until 1950 playing for the original Baltimore Colts. After the team, which also included future Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Title folded, he then spent the next two seasons playing for the New York Yanks and the Dallas Texans. As luck would have it, both of those teams also failed and in 1953 he returned to Baltimore with the reincarnated Baltimore Colts.

With the new Colts, Donovan emerged as one of the top defensive linemen in the league. He was a Pro Bowl selection in 1953 and from 1954-57 was a first team All-Pro each season. He was a member of the championship teams for the Colts in 1958 and 1959.

Donovan remained with the Colts through the 1961 season and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968.

On the field Donovan was just another faceless lineman performing the grunt work in the trenches. But after his retirement, Donovan was anything but quiet and anonymous. His book Fatso was a best seller and he made many appearances on late night television with Johnny Carson and David Letterman. He was also featured one year in ESPN football ads and was prominent in some great NFL Films programs that remembered football in the 1950s and 1960s.

Below are a few of the great video clips featuring this American original. Enjoy!

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Drew Brees has matched the “unbreakable” record of Johnny Unitas.

With a touchdown pass in the New Orleans Saints game against the San Diego Chargers on Sunday, Drew Brees will break the NFL passing record most considered to be unbreakable. Yet while tossing a touchdown pass in his 48th straight game will eliminate Johnny Unitas from the record book, that it took more than 50 years and a complete change in offensive philosophy for the record to be approached makes the Unitas streak seem even more impressive.

When Johnny Unitas started his streak as a rookie for the Baltimore Colts on December 9, 1956, the passing game was used quite differently than it is today. The 1956 Colts ranked sixth in the NFL with 1,921 passing yards on 279 total attempts. By comparison, they were second in the NFL with 2,202 yards rushing on 432 attempts.

In 1956 the Green Bay Packers were the only team in the NFL to throw the ball more than they ran it (353 pass attempts, 337 rushes) and it wasn’t surprising that they finished last in their division with a 4-8 record. Overall in the NFL in 1956 there were 5,453 rushing attempts (37.9 per team per game) compared to 3,282 pass attempts (22.8 per team per game). There were a total of 162 touchdown passes thrown during the season (13.5 per team).

Fast forward to the 2011 season and the change is quite staggering. Drew Brees and the Saints attempted 662 passes in 2011 while running the ball 431 times. Only four teams in the NFL had more rushing attempts than passes. Interestingly enough, of those four teams (Jacksonville, San Francisco, Denver and Houston), three of them made the playoffs. Overall in 2011, there were 17,410 pass attempts in the NFL (34 per team per game) and 13,971 rush attempts (27.3 per team per game). There was a total of 745 touchdown passes thrown (23.3 per team). Read the rest of this entry →