National Football League - Legends: the best players, games, and teams in football

A LSO BY H OWARD B RYANT

Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball

PHILOMEL BOOKS

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Copyright 2015 by Howard Bryant.

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ISBN 978-0-698-17414-6

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For Simone Hughes, a great friend to the young people just starting their journey

A N OTE FROM H OWARD B RYANT

T his might come as a total shock, but when I was a kid, my favorite thing about playing football was... fear.

In a lot of ways, I loved being afraid. My friends and I used to play football, or when we had too many kids for that, a game called pig pile, where one person carried the football and all the other players chased and tried to tackle him. When he was finally brought to the ground, he would toss the ball up in the air and some other brave soul would pick it up and run for as long as possible before he was tackled.

When I was the one being chased, every second was filled with the fear of being taken down hard to the ground.

But heres the part that made being afraid fun. Are you ready? It was laughing at the fear!

I know that might seem odd, so let me explain: We all know the goal of football is to score touchdowns and prevent the other team from scoring. Defenses love trying to intimidate offenses. I played running back, wide receiver, and even quarterback sometimes. I remember how big some of the other kids were. I remember how they would stand on the other side of the line and try to scare me.

You are a dead man if you touch that ball. Im gonna squash you like a bug...

The quarterback would hand me the ball and I would see the defense race toward me, charging and snarling. Here they came, trying to make good on their promises to indeed squash me like a bug, and the fear would kick in.

So I ran.

And I dodged.

And I spun.

And I realized that I was fast! I would score a touchdown and the guys who told me I was a dead man would get mad because not only was I very much alive, but my team was winning and theirs was losing!

So yeah, big kids were stronger than me, but I was faster. Even so, sometimes I got hit, and they would smile and talk trash while I was down (Whos smiling now?), but I always got up. What started as an exercise in fear turned into a little game of me betting that I could be faster than everyone. And, when necessary, proving I could take a hit and still get back up.

These were the challenges of football. Speed against strength. Fear against courage. I loved it all. And it was just as much fun to watch on TV as it was to play, for so many reasons.

I loved the NFL uniforms, particularly the helmets. I grew up in Boston and the original Patriots logo was the hardest logo in sports to draw. Believe meI tried a lot.

Most of all, I loved the competition, the way the Steelers, Dolphins, Raiders, Vikings, and Cowboys ruled the game and always seemed to end up having to beat each other to get to the Super Bowl. My childhood team, the Patriots, could never beat those other guys, but I rooted for them just the same.

I rooted for players because I loved how they moved, how the really fast guys would just break away from defenders after a long reception, reach the end zone, and dance in celebration. The Dallas Cowboys became my adoptive team because I loved the great quarterback Roger Staubach and running back Tony Dorsett. Later, I couldnt help but admire the historic San Francisco 49ers dynasty of the 1980s, the way their innovative offense and always-cool quarterback Joe Montana seemed unstoppable whenever a game was on the line.

The game has continued to change over the years. When I was a kid, I used to come home from playing football with my shirt ripped and my clothing covered in dirt and grass stains. My friends and I played tackle with no helmets, and even if you banged heads with another kid, people just told us to shake it off. Today we know that the players are so strong that getting hit and tackled that many times hurts not just the body but the brain. There is no such thing as a minor injury to the brain. Because we understand more about these injury risks, because the game is potentially so dangerous, many parents no longer let their kids play football the way I used to. So while I still enjoy watching the game on TV, more than anything these days I hope that the skilled people playing it remain safe.

Other shifts in attitude have taken place, as well. Some of the sports traditions are no longer acceptable in todays society. For example, even though Redskins is still the nickname of the Washington football team, I do not use that word in this book because I consider it to be offensive to all people of Native American descent, as well as demeaning to the people using the term. Throughout the book, therefore, I refer to the team as Washington.

This is a book not only of football legendsbut of the legend of pro football. It is this countrys most popular sport. While the game has been played since the late 1800s, for the sake of this book we begin when two rival leagues, the National Football League and the American Football League, became one in 1970. The only exception to this rule can be found in the Timeline of Footballs Key Moments at the end of the book, which includes older events that were too important to leave out. Above all else, though, this book is a tribute to the Super Bowl, which began as a little-watched championship between the two leagues in 1967, only to evolve into the most popular sporting event in America. And it continues to evolve2016 marks the first Super Bowl that will be numbered with Arabic numerals (i.e. Super Bowl 50) instead of Roman numerals (Super Bowl L), which have been in use since the first Super Bowl.

Through the lens of the Super Bowl, this book is about the rise of dynasties and the fall of giants. If the book had been written thirty years ago, for instance, the Miami Dolphins wouldve been a really big part of it and the Patriots wouldnt have been mentioned at all, because back then Miami was so good... and the Patriots? The Patriots were gum on the bottom of your shoe, stepped on by everyone.