Thanks for placing Bartkowski where you did. His big arm was worth the price of admission and is sort of forgotten around the NFL. When he was at Cal, I was at the Santa Barbara practice when he threw the ball 103 yards in the air -- Yes, it really happened -- and we are not talking desert air. It was a contest. Chuck Muncie finished second at 83 yards. Bart would have gone to baseball, but a young assistant coach, Paul Hackett (yes,that Paul Hackett) convinced Steve that he had quick feet to drop back. I was close to that Cal team and when Steve asked if he should get an agent, I mentioned a guy named Steinberg. His first contract, with Atlanta, was epic, including give-back money if they didnt sell out (I think that's how i went).
Wow! That's remarkable. We will be meeting Muncie in all his tragic snowblind glory in a week or two. I enjoyed watching Bartkowski when I was a kid and feel he has been memory wiped a bit.
Muncie remains one of the most gifted running backs I ever saw. He was big (sometimes too much so, say 265), fast (always faster than you would expect, like 4.5 at 265) could run over you but usually ran around and he had awesome (HUGE) hands. The coke addiction took him down, although he came around before he died and helped kids. If he had focused, he had the natural ability to be everything Jim Brown was and Jim Brown said so. I was at Cal-Army game and, I think it was third and 17, Bart unleashes a flaming fastball that appears to lead Muncie too far. After the ball passed him, Muncie reached out with his 11-something-inch right hand and snagged the very back of the ball. Unforgettable. Despite is rap sheet, Chuck was ALWAYS a nice guy.
Bartkowski was the third player of Polish heritage picked #1 in a four year span in the mid-70s, which was frequently commented on at the time. Too Tall Jones was the one exception in that four-year stretch; he joked after the draft that he might have to be known as Too Tall Joneski now.
Ryan's best HOF hope is the Pee Wee Reese route: keep your name alive by working as a broadcaster for years until the Senior Committee votes you in on the third try.
Good to see Scott Hunter mentioned in a Top Five recap. Surely wasn't going to happen in the Packers' Top Five recap.
Oh, so you got a phone bill and had to review your long distance calls. You were lucky! What we wouldn't have given in the 1980s to make our own long distance calls! When I was a young man in Moscow we had to walk down to the Central Telegraph building and book a long distance call several days in advance. You'd show up at the appointed time and an operator would call your target person and then connect you. If the target didn't answer, no call for you.
...and if you try and tell that to the young people of today, they won't believe you.
Jeff George is a tough one. Always was. He was an arm. No heart. No soul. No guts. No glory. His college oddessy was a clue. Wouldn't go to Miami unless Jimmy Johnson GUARANTEED a startng job. Colts traded up to get home-grown QB and watched him throw to opponents about as often as teammates. But OMG what an arm. Threw 60 yard lasers, sometimes catchable. He could have playe under a 12-foot ceiling. He whined that the pressure of playing in his home town got to him. REALLY? Home town disadvantage? After that I considered him an arm-for-hire with NO expectations.
Did he ever ask to have his salary declared as LLC compensation or a tax-free loan? Asking for a fellow named "Caleb" whose whole vibe is increasingly making my nose wiggle.
Ha. Remember well before the draft you thought I might have been a little rough on him in his profile and I was curious how an ultimate Gen-Z would assimilate. Still curious.
I know. He now reminds me of the rookie teachers who would come in an be like "Well, I don't see why I need to join some UNION. I'm my own person." So they refused to pay dues, and six months later the principal is giving them double cafeteria duties and they are like "Gosh why isn't anyone sticking up for me????"
"Van Brocklin was 42 years old going on 72. He certainly had some football acumen, but if he were alive today, he would post memes on Facebook like “in my day, we didn’t wear seatbelts and there were rusty nails sticking out of the monkey bars in our playground,” but then fly into an uncontrollable rage at the sight of a gay couple holding hands in an episode of NCIS."
😂😂😂😂😂 this is so accurately said yet hilarious simultaneously.
I think a big problem Ryan will have as a HOF candidate is that his 2016 season is going to be seen more as proof of Kyle Shanahan’s greatness then Matt Ryan’s greatness.
Also, the Falcons should really go back to the red uniforms. They look so much better than the all black ones. My memory is that they adopted those when they hired Jerry Glanville, and surely it's time to move on.
Agree on the uniforms. We gotta get Mike Shanahan in the Hall of Fame first. Which will start with all of the people he rubbed the wrong way to stop holding grudges. Which could take 50 years.
That’s interesting about Mike Shanahan, I remember reading Slow Getting Up and Nate Jackson paints him as the most sane and decent coach he came across in the NFL. Although I guess it could be a Bill Walsh clique thing.
That Eagles loss to the Falcons in the 1978 playoffs is somehow underrated as a truly awful Eagles defeat . Blew a 13-0 lead. Missed an XP. Missed a 34 yard field goal that would have won the game. 9 year old Ken was catatonic afterwards.
Mike Michel's miss was one of my earliest football memories. I cried. He was the punter, but the Eagles didn't bother replacing injured kicker Mick Nike-Mayer. They just stopped attempting field goals late in the season and let Michel kick XPs.
@Mike Tanier Question: The chapter of The Almanac "pregame show" used to be an article on football outsiders of axioms of all things debunked or proven by Aaron and the rest. I cant find it ar FTN need to share it to maybe convince a few to get the almanac. Can it be reposted? Maybe as a free substack post with some of your commentary using recent examples to share with uninitiated.
Early 90s, once I decided I needed to graduate from letter writing, my girlfriend and I decided we could stay up until midnight to make our once every 2-3 day phone calls because the cost dropped from 31 cents a minute to 23 cents a minute. Must have worked, we just had our 30th anniversary and that 3-4 bucks a call we saved meant... well nothing in the end, but a lot at the time!!
Mattie did throw the best pass in Super Bowl history: That on a line, center bullseye deep out to a blanketed Julio Jones that should've iced the Super Bowl for them.
That was an all-timer of a pass, but I'd have to grudgingly admit that the very most perfect pass I have ever seen was thrown by Ben Roethlisberger, who otherwise sucked in Super Bowls. But he picked the right time to make the best throw of his life. Two inches further right and Holmes can't reach it and get both feet down; two inches further left and it's tipped away and probably intercepted.
It's fitting that John Madden's final game was one of the greatest football games ever played. The only imperfect thing about it is that Goliath won.
Ryan's best HoF argument is that Kurt Warner got in with three great seasons (as defined by yards; two by QB rating) and a handful of good ones (while throwing double digit INTs every year he started at least 11 games) and Eli Manning will get in even though his career doesn't even rise to the level of “Fifth-to-ninth best quarterback in the NFL for over a decade."
Two-time Super Bowl MVP (even though one of those really belongs to Justin Tuck), beat Brady twice, played in NY, named Manning. He’ll get in even though he doesn’t deserve it.
I have covered MANY of these arguments in the past. I may rehash them in the Giants segment, but Eli might make the finalist cut this year, which will make me shift gears and call the voters. But I do need to say: Playing In New York Does Not Matter. At All. Just Ask Phil Simms, Tiki Barber, Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko (needed 20 years to get in) and many other medium-sized New York stars.
Mike Mamula gets all the credit for being the 1st workout warrior to get over drafted, but I always think about Jeff George instead. He got drafted 1st overall because he had a hand cannon. See his college stats below. As a comparision, his 1989 season had him 24th in passing yards, 11th in TDs, 51st in Y/A, and 7th in completion percentage.
Year School Conf Class Pos G Cmp Att Pct Yds Y/A AY/A TD Int Rate
1986 Purdue Big Ten QB 11 122 227 53.7 1217 5.4 2.7 4 15 91.4
1988 Illinois Big Ten QB 11 212 366 57.9 2257 6.2 5.7 9 8 113.5
1989 Illinois Big Ten QB 11 216 348 62.1 2417 6.9 6.6 19 11 132.
But he really had the Hand Cannon. It was a real skill.
Those totals are low, but I bet top prospects often have low "league-leader" numbers at the college level, because the top guys are playing in small-program recess offenses.
I'll shout out the phone bill. LA to Leeds, England with the other guys in the apartment also doing the line-by-line. I found a kind of scratchcard with a 16-digit code and you'd dial a local-ish number then type in the code for a local rate call almost as clear as standing on the roof and shouting across the Atlantic.
Thanks for placing Bartkowski where you did. His big arm was worth the price of admission and is sort of forgotten around the NFL. When he was at Cal, I was at the Santa Barbara practice when he threw the ball 103 yards in the air -- Yes, it really happened -- and we are not talking desert air. It was a contest. Chuck Muncie finished second at 83 yards. Bart would have gone to baseball, but a young assistant coach, Paul Hackett (yes,that Paul Hackett) convinced Steve that he had quick feet to drop back. I was close to that Cal team and when Steve asked if he should get an agent, I mentioned a guy named Steinberg. His first contract, with Atlanta, was epic, including give-back money if they didnt sell out (I think that's how i went).
Wow! That's remarkable. We will be meeting Muncie in all his tragic snowblind glory in a week or two. I enjoyed watching Bartkowski when I was a kid and feel he has been memory wiped a bit.
Muncie remains one of the most gifted running backs I ever saw. He was big (sometimes too much so, say 265), fast (always faster than you would expect, like 4.5 at 265) could run over you but usually ran around and he had awesome (HUGE) hands. The coke addiction took him down, although he came around before he died and helped kids. If he had focused, he had the natural ability to be everything Jim Brown was and Jim Brown said so. I was at Cal-Army game and, I think it was third and 17, Bart unleashes a flaming fastball that appears to lead Muncie too far. After the ball passed him, Muncie reached out with his 11-something-inch right hand and snagged the very back of the ball. Unforgettable. Despite is rap sheet, Chuck was ALWAYS a nice guy.
Bartkowski was the third player of Polish heritage picked #1 in a four year span in the mid-70s, which was frequently commented on at the time. Too Tall Jones was the one exception in that four-year stretch; he joked after the draft that he might have to be known as Too Tall Joneski now.
Ryan's best HOF hope is the Pee Wee Reese route: keep your name alive by working as a broadcaster for years until the Senior Committee votes you in on the third try.
Good to see Scott Hunter mentioned in a Top Five recap. Surely wasn't going to happen in the Packers' Top Five recap.
Oh, so you got a phone bill and had to review your long distance calls. You were lucky! What we wouldn't have given in the 1980s to make our own long distance calls! When I was a young man in Moscow we had to walk down to the Central Telegraph building and book a long distance call several days in advance. You'd show up at the appointed time and an operator would call your target person and then connect you. If the target didn't answer, no call for you.
...and if you try and tell that to the young people of today, they won't believe you.
In Soviet Russia, long distance called you!
(Seriously: that's a wild story, and thanks for sharing.)
"10. Kirk Cousins"
I laughed and laughed and laughed. But can't argue.
Jeff George is a tough one. Always was. He was an arm. No heart. No soul. No guts. No glory. His college oddessy was a clue. Wouldn't go to Miami unless Jimmy Johnson GUARANTEED a startng job. Colts traded up to get home-grown QB and watched him throw to opponents about as often as teammates. But OMG what an arm. Threw 60 yard lasers, sometimes catchable. He could have playe under a 12-foot ceiling. He whined that the pressure of playing in his home town got to him. REALLY? Home town disadvantage? After that I considered him an arm-for-hire with NO expectations.
Did he ever ask to have his salary declared as LLC compensation or a tax-free loan? Asking for a fellow named "Caleb" whose whole vibe is increasingly making my nose wiggle.
Ha. Remember well before the draft you thought I might have been a little rough on him in his profile and I was curious how an ultimate Gen-Z would assimilate. Still curious.
I know. He now reminds me of the rookie teachers who would come in an be like "Well, I don't see why I need to join some UNION. I'm my own person." So they refused to pay dues, and six months later the principal is giving them double cafeteria duties and they are like "Gosh why isn't anyone sticking up for me????"
"Van Brocklin was 42 years old going on 72. He certainly had some football acumen, but if he were alive today, he would post memes on Facebook like “in my day, we didn’t wear seatbelts and there were rusty nails sticking out of the monkey bars in our playground,” but then fly into an uncontrollable rage at the sight of a gay couple holding hands in an episode of NCIS."
😂😂😂😂😂 this is so accurately said yet hilarious simultaneously.
I think a big problem Ryan will have as a HOF candidate is that his 2016 season is going to be seen more as proof of Kyle Shanahan’s greatness then Matt Ryan’s greatness.
Also, the Falcons should really go back to the red uniforms. They look so much better than the all black ones. My memory is that they adopted those when they hired Jerry Glanville, and surely it's time to move on.
Agree on the uniforms. We gotta get Mike Shanahan in the Hall of Fame first. Which will start with all of the people he rubbed the wrong way to stop holding grudges. Which could take 50 years.
That’s interesting about Mike Shanahan, I remember reading Slow Getting Up and Nate Jackson paints him as the most sane and decent coach he came across in the NFL. Although I guess it could be a Bill Walsh clique thing.
Many of Shanny's colleagues wanted to smother him.
That Eagles loss to the Falcons in the 1978 playoffs is somehow underrated as a truly awful Eagles defeat . Blew a 13-0 lead. Missed an XP. Missed a 34 yard field goal that would have won the game. 9 year old Ken was catatonic afterwards.
Mike Michel's miss was one of my earliest football memories. I cried. He was the punter, but the Eagles didn't bother replacing injured kicker Mick Nike-Mayer. They just stopped attempting field goals late in the season and let Michel kick XPs.
Which is weird since Vermeil was the first ever ST NFL coach.
@Mike Tanier Question: The chapter of The Almanac "pregame show" used to be an article on football outsiders of axioms of all things debunked or proven by Aaron and the rest. I cant find it ar FTN need to share it to maybe convince a few to get the almanac. Can it be reposted? Maybe as a free substack post with some of your commentary using recent examples to share with uninitiated.
Early 90s, once I decided I needed to graduate from letter writing, my girlfriend and I decided we could stay up until midnight to make our once every 2-3 day phone calls because the cost dropped from 31 cents a minute to 23 cents a minute. Must have worked, we just had our 30th anniversary and that 3-4 bucks a call we saved meant... well nothing in the end, but a lot at the time!!
Mattie did throw the best pass in Super Bowl history: That on a line, center bullseye deep out to a blanketed Julio Jones that should've iced the Super Bowl for them.
That was an all-timer of a pass, but I'd have to grudgingly admit that the very most perfect pass I have ever seen was thrown by Ben Roethlisberger, who otherwise sucked in Super Bowls. But he picked the right time to make the best throw of his life. Two inches further right and Holmes can't reach it and get both feet down; two inches further left and it's tipped away and probably intercepted.
It's fitting that John Madden's final game was one of the greatest football games ever played. The only imperfect thing about it is that Goliath won.
Ryan's best HoF argument is that Kurt Warner got in with three great seasons (as defined by yards; two by QB rating) and a handful of good ones (while throwing double digit INTs every year he started at least 11 games) and Eli Manning will get in even though his career doesn't even rise to the level of “Fifth-to-ninth best quarterback in the NFL for over a decade."
Warner won more MVPs than Ryan did, and took two different franchises to a SB. Plus, if not for Spygate, he probably wins a second SB.
I am not sure Eli will get in.
Two-time Super Bowl MVP (even though one of those really belongs to Justin Tuck), beat Brady twice, played in NY, named Manning. He’ll get in even though he doesn’t deserve it.
I have covered MANY of these arguments in the past. I may rehash them in the Giants segment, but Eli might make the finalist cut this year, which will make me shift gears and call the voters. But I do need to say: Playing In New York Does Not Matter. At All. Just Ask Phil Simms, Tiki Barber, Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko (needed 20 years to get in) and many other medium-sized New York stars.
I will revise my anti-Eli arguments. But I'll never be convinced he had a HoF career.
Can someone explain this to me? Tried to google it. Why would stacking chairs be involved?
"Van Brocklin famously offered to “stack chairs” so he could rumble with the press pool."
I imagine to give him and the other guy room to fight.
Yep. The interview room almost certainly had chairs for the reporters. He wanted to stack the chairs so they had room to fight.
Mike Mamula gets all the credit for being the 1st workout warrior to get over drafted, but I always think about Jeff George instead. He got drafted 1st overall because he had a hand cannon. See his college stats below. As a comparision, his 1989 season had him 24th in passing yards, 11th in TDs, 51st in Y/A, and 7th in completion percentage.
Year School Conf Class Pos G Cmp Att Pct Yds Y/A AY/A TD Int Rate
1986 Purdue Big Ten QB 11 122 227 53.7 1217 5.4 2.7 4 15 91.4
1988 Illinois Big Ten QB 11 212 366 57.9 2257 6.2 5.7 9 8 113.5
1989 Illinois Big Ten QB 11 216 348 62.1 2417 6.9 6.6 19 11 132.
But he really had the Hand Cannon. It was a real skill.
Those totals are low, but I bet top prospects often have low "league-leader" numbers at the college level, because the top guys are playing in small-program recess offenses.
I'll shout out the phone bill. LA to Leeds, England with the other guys in the apartment also doing the line-by-line. I found a kind of scratchcard with a 16-digit code and you'd dial a local-ish number then type in the code for a local rate call almost as clear as standing on the roof and shouting across the Atlantic.
Heh. Getting yelled at by my mom seems easy by comparison.