Washington All-Time Top 5 QBs (Part 1): Sonny and Sammy

Part 1 of the Washington saga covers the greatest all-around player of his era and the best pure passer of his generation.

Washington’s quarterback history is so long and weird — especially once we reach the 1970s — that it must be split into two segments!

1. Sammy Baugh

Baugh was football’s Babe Ruth. 

The Bambino began his career as a pitcher in a sport that looked roughly like high school softball and ended it as the prototypical outfield slugger in a game modern fans would easily recognize. Baugh began his career as a tailback/safety/punter/returner for a sport that resembled a cross between rugby and modern high school football and ended it as a modern-ish quarterback.

Statistics from the start of Ruth’s career look archaic and almost alien. Statistics from the end of his career can be accurately interpreted by modern  fans. Statistics from the start of Baugh’s career are sketchy, paltry and confusing, with multiple “backs” sharing rushing/passing/receiving/kicking/defense chores, yardage/scoring rates low and some basic information nonexistent. Statistics from the end of Baugh’s career are not quite “modern,” but you can tell who played which position and whether or not they were decent at it. 

Both Ruth and Baugh were part of the vanguard of players who spurred the changes they played through. They were causes of their sports’ evolution, as well as products of it. 

Baugh, like Ruth, accumulated so many championships, awards and records that his greatness is unquestionable. It’s hard to parse how great Bronko Nagurski or Tuffy Leemans really were, but Baugh led his teams to two championships, won four MVP awards and led the NFL in important categories many times. 

If anything, Baugh’s encyclopedia page makes him look too dominant; no one was focused on completion percentages in the 1940s, when some teams were still using rudimentary A-formation passing tactics. The footage below shows Baugh (#33, moving left to right in the first quarter) against the 1948 Steelers, who were still using the A-formation. The tactical difference is stunning:

If you rank “greatness” by how much better a player was than some conceptual median quality for his era, then Baugh may have been the greatest player in NFL history: a combination Tom Brady/Ray Guy who was also Ed Reed for a few years. I don’t like that standard of greatness, which will always favor players from bygone eras before a sport “comes of age” in terms of scouting, popularity and tactics. What is undeniable is that Baugh, Sid Luckman and Otto Graham redefined the quarterback position to such a degree that football at all levels reshaped itself in their image. The same can be said about Ruth and a few of his peers. It cannot be said about many other figures in the history of professional sports.

2. Sonny Jurgensen

If we would have had Sonny Jurgensen in Green Bay, we’d never have lost a game. – Vince Lombardi, as told by Pat Peppler.

The Eagles drafted Christian Adolph Jurgensen out of Duke in 1957. They acquired Norm Van Brocklin in 1958, forcing Jurgensen to the bench for three seasons.

Van Brocklin quit when not named player-coach after the Eagles’ 1960 championship season, and Jurgensen threw an NFL-record 32 touchdown passes for a stacked 10-4 team in 1961. Note that George Blanda threw 36 touchdowns in the AFL that year, schedules had recently expanded from 12 to 14 games, and the new league brought rapid expansion which led to shattered offensive records. Still, Jurgensen had an excellent 1961 season, followed by two less-impressive ones as the Eagles roster collapsed.

Washington traded quarterback Norm Snead and cornerback Claude Crabbe to the Eagles for Jurgensen in 1964. The Washington franchise had been bottom feeders in the late 1950s, in large part due to their reluctance to sign black players. Team owner George Preston Marshall did not want to alienate white fans in the south (Washington’s “market” spread deep into Dixie in the era before the Dolphins, Falcons, Saints and other franchises existed) by integrating his roster, in part because he was an unrepentant racist himself. By the time Jurgensen arrived, Bobby Mitchell and Charley Taylor were in Washington. Still, reports from the era do not suggest that owner Marshall ran a paradise of diversity and even-handed treatment, and his team was a perpetual also-ran.

Jurgensen led the NFL in passing yards in 1966, 1967 and 1969 and passing touchdowns in 1967. He earned four Pro Bowl berths for Washington in the 1960s. Washington hovered around .500 throughout the decade, however, thanks to poor defenses. When interpreting Jurgensen’s stats, it is important to remember that the NFL and AFL were separate leagues and that teams rarely threw the ball when leading in the second half, so passing leaders were often drawn from so-so teams.

Jurgensen acquired a reputation as a night owl and ladies man, with a much-noted dad bod. As Bobby Mitchell began to fade, so did Jurgensen.

Jurgensen in 1975, from Wikimedia Commons.

Marshall died in 1969. Edward Bennett Williams, who had been serving as a de-facto general manager for a few years, inherited Marshall’s stake in the team. Williams coaxed Vince Lombardi out of Green Bay with an ownership stake and full control of football operations a few months before Marshall’s death. Lombardi added Larry Brown to the backfield, fumigated the lingering plantation vibe and paired up with Jurgensen just as the quarterback was undergoing other life changes.

Stories about flip, funny Sonny have always been lavishly garnished. Girls were supposed to be a cinch for Sonny Jurgensen. In all of Washington only Adam Clayton Powell was believed to set more hearts aflutter. Speed was big in Sonny Jurgensen's world, too—on his motorcycle or in his $6,000 Mercedes-Benz. And when a tire went flat he was said to be the first to grab the instruction booklet while his friends wrestled with the jack.

Naturally Jurgensen resented the exaggerations—"you have one drink and 10 people see you, and it gets around that you had 10 drinks"—but he did not make a serious effort to change because it was a mostly harmless reputation, and he really did have this fondness for Scotch. Until his second marriage, and the birth of a son he hates to leave, he did not think in terms of limiting himself. – John Underwood, Sports Illustrated, July 1969.

(You can read more about Adam Clayton Powell here. It’s a lot.)

Alas, Lombardi died in 1970. Control of the organization eventually fell to the brilliant-but-cantankerous George Allen, who immediately traded for Billy Kilmer, a journeyman with a hard-nosed attitude by day and some Jurgensen-like proclivities by night.

Jurgensen and Kilmer got along splendidly. Jurgensen and Allen did not. Jurgensen suffered a preseason shoulder injury in 1971 and settled into a role as Kilmer’s highly-effective, often-used and reasonably-content backup. He started a handful of games in 1972 season but suffered an Achilles, leaving Kilmer to lead Allen’s Over the Hill gang to a loss in Super Bowl VII. We will cover 1972 in a little more detail when we get to Kilmer tomorrow.

Jurgensen remained effective in relief until age 40 in 1975, when Allen essentially ousted him to give Joe Theismann a fighting chance to develop. It was Allen, not Jurgensen, who announced Jurgensen’s retirement.

Jurgensen was considered by many, including Lombardi, as the best pure passer of his era. Note the “pure passer” designation, which was critical at a time when quarterbacks were supposed to call plays and (in most cases) show up for work in shape and sober. Jurgensen was a lot like a tipsy version of Matthew Stafford.

Jurgensen became a beloved local legend inside the Beltway as a broadcaster and will remain in our tale as a Greek Chorus/Force Ghost/unreliable narrator as we pick up the thread of the Over the Hill Gang and its bizarre quarterback love triangle from another angle.

Tomorrow, in the king-sized conclusion of Washington All-Time Top 5 QBs:

• Jurgensen and Kilmer team up to ruin Joe Theismann’s life!

• Kilmer falls asleep behind the wheel!

• Theismann gets busy with Cathy Lee Crosby!

• George Allen trades ALL the draft picks!

• Kilmer falls asleep watching Theismann on television!

• Mark Rypien gets fat shamed!

And much more. For premium subscribers only, so you know what to do.