Week Nine Crystal Ball - Weekend: A True Cast of Characters
"Where is The Ball?" - YOSTY, parts unknown, 2023
My friends, it’s late October in 1976 and THE GURU, age six, is new to America. A relaxed sort, he’s listening to Queen’s new hit, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” while enjoying a recent ice cream creation called Häagen-Dazs and salivating about his first chance to trick-or-treat.
Naturally, his thoughts turn to pigskin and the young man’s National Football League schedule shows that the expansion Seahawks meet the Los Angeles Rams for the first time.
Indeed, on Halloween of our bicentennial, rookie Seattle head coach Jack Patera brought his young charges to LA to face a well-seasoned group led by Chuck Knox, a man who would later lead the Hawks (1983-91).
The Rams entered the game with a 5-1-1 record and the Seahawks were at 1-6 so no one expected much of a contest, and they were right as LA waltzed like Fred Astaire to a 45-6 win, the most lopsided defeat the first-year team would suffer all season.
But, while the game wasn’t compelling on the field, it included some of the most intriguing characters and storylines that one could imagine…
…a coach who accidentally killed a hunting companion – and former teammate – while hunting deer…
…the defensive lineman who drove the white Bronco in the O.J. Simpson chase…
…a right-footed kicker missing half of his – you guessed it – right foot…
… a player once so gutted after a loss that he cut his car in half…
…and the first black quarterback to start at QB for two NFL teams.
And, as we’ll learn, that’s just the tip of this game’s iceberg.
The ’76 Seahawks got off to a rough start with five straight losses to open the season, but the year was tough well before the team played its first game as majority owner Lloyd Nordstrom, of the department store chain, died while playing tennis in January of that year.
Nordstrom was a driving force in bringing football to the Emerald City and, if he’d have had his way, the team’s first head coach would have been a Cincinnati assistant by the name of Bill Walsh. The owner was quite keen on the future Hall of Famer, but Bengals coach Paul Brown reportedly told Nordstrom (falsely) that Walsh was a bad alcoholic, sending the Seahawks in search of another leader.
Seattle instead landed on Patera, an acclaimed defensive line coach who led two of the best d-lines of all time: Minnesota’s “Purple People Eaters” and the Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome,” tutoring four future Pro Football Hall of Famers (Carl Eller, Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen and Alan Page) and a boatload of other stars in the process.
Patera starred at the University of Oregon1 as a collegian, graduating a year before a sports-crazed youngster by the name of Phil Knight arrived on campus. Next, was pro ball for seven years with the Colts, Cardinals and Cowboys, even becoming the first middle linebacker in Dallas history.
Still, it was likely Patera’s experience at handling adversity that best prepared him to be an NFL coach. Indeed, while at Oregon, Patera experienced enough tragedy to last a lifetime.
First, in the summer before his senior year of 1954, his teammate and fellow guard Doyle Higdon was killed in an explosion while working as a logger2. The tragedy continued in October 1954 on a deer hunt, when Patera accidentally shot and killed former teammate Ken Schweitzer, a guard who’d just graduated after an outstanding career. Schweitzer had become a father just two weeks earlier.
So, while coaching an expansion football team is surely stressful, it’s fair to say that Jack Patera didn’t view it as life and death.
His first Seattle roster was an eclectic one, but he had talent like quarterback Jim Zorn, a little-known rookie receiver named Steve Largent and stud defensive back Dave Brown, who still is the team’s career interceptions leader by a wide margin. The trio were the first three players inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor.
The defensive captain was Mike Curtis, the former star Colts linebacker most famous for decking a fan that ran onto the field of play in a 1971 game in Baltimore. And the team’s most promising player may have been defensive lineman Steve Niehaus, the #2 overall pick in the 1976 draft out of Notre Dame, and likely the apple of Patera’s eye3 given the head coach’s d-line experience.
In that inaugural season, the Seahawks were counting on d-line help from another player who started his career fast, a 6’5”, 255-pounder named Al Cowlings. A first-round pick by Buffalo in 1970 after a sterling career at USC, Cowlings had 16 ½ sacks in his first two seasons with the Bills while reunited with O.J. Simpson, his ex-college teammate4.
As a Seahawk, Cowlings witnessed two wins in 1976, but didn’t contribute much due to lingering injuries suffered while playing for the Rams the year before. Indeed, he played just one game for Patera and returned to the Rams in 1977 before closing out his career as a 49er two years later, once again a teammate of Simpson5.
The defensive end’s head coach for both of his tours with the Rams was a tremendous football man named Chuck Knox aka “Ground Chuck” due to his teams’ penchant for running the ball. A winner of 193 games, including seven postseason victories, Knox has the distinction of being the only coach in NFL history to win at least 10 games in each of his first five seasons.
Read that last that sentence again.
Belichick, Brown, Gibbs, Landry, Lombardi, Noll, Reid, Shula, etc. None of them were consistent winners like Chuck Knox over their first five years and, somehow, he did it with a quintet of starting quarterbacks.
Knox’s teams were loaded during his five seasons in LA (1973-77), and he produced with 57 wins and three consecutive NFC Championship game appearances as a Ram. How important is coaching? LA was a combined 5-23 in the two seasons before his arrival.
The 1976 LA squad was particularly star-studded with seven players making the Pro Bowl, including running back Lawrence McCutcheon, linebacker Isiah Robertson, and defensive end Jack Youngblood, who played three consecutive games in 1979 – the NFC Championship, Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl – with a broken leg.
The Pro Bowl!
Youngblood’s effort was courageous, no doubt, but not quite as impressive as the career carved out by the Rams kicker – yes, the kicker – Tom Dempsey.
You see, Dempsey was born in Milwaukee in 1947 with no toes on his right (kicking) foot and, for good measure, no fingers on his right hand. And, making his pro football odds even longer, he didn’t go to a four-year university, instead earning an associate’s degree at Palomar College, located in San Diego County.
Undaunted, the 255-pound kicker carved out a 12-year NFL career with six pro teams, earning first-team All-Pro honors in 1969 while earning passage into the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame. Still, it was what he did on November 8, 1970, that stamped his name in league annals forever.
With time running out and the Saints trailing Dee-troit, 17-16, interim head coach J.D. Roberts sent Dempsey out to try the impossible, a 63-yard field goal. But, heck, you’ll try anything when you want to win just your second game of the season.
A straight-ahead kicker, Dempsey reared back and struck the ball well enough for it to barely clear the uprights, sending the crowd and New Orleans players into hysterics. Indeed, a man born without a full right foot had bested the prior record, held by Bert Rechichar, by seven whole yards6! In football terms, that’s man-on-the-moon type of stuff.
Dempsey was a larger-than-life character, but he wasn’t alone on that front with these Rams. Two of the team’s defensive linemen – future Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen (“Father Murphy”) and Fred Dryer (“Hunter”) – would become television stars and a third, backup quarterback Ron Jaworski aka The Polish Rifle, is now known as one of the most respected analysts in the game.
And then there was middle linebacker Jack “Hacksaw” Reynolds, so nicknamed because he sawed his 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air in half after his Tennessee Volunteers were whitewashed by one Archie Manning and Ole Miss in 1969. Reynolds, a future two-time Super Bowl champion and two-time All-Pro, described it like this:
“I went to Kmart and bought the cheapest hacksaw they had, along with 13 replacement blades. I cut through the entire frame and driveshaft, all the way through the car … It took me eight total hours. I broke all 13 blades. When I finished, I got one guy from the dorm, Ray Nettles, to witness it. The next day we took the rest of our friends from the dorm up the hill to see it, and when we got there, both halves of the car were gone, with just the 13 broken blades lying on the ground. To this day, I don’t know what happened to that car.”
The quarterbacks for that 1976 Rams team weren’t nearly as eccentric as Reynolds but they are surely noteworthy. In addition to Jaworski, who started twice, LA employed a Rhodes Scholar in Pat Haden (seven starts), and the first black quarterback to start for two professional teams, Mr. James “Shack” Harris (five starts).
I could wax at length about all three men but let’s focus on Harris, who started 44 games for three NFL teams over 11 seasons. He didn’t win the Super Bowl like fellow Grambling alum Doug Williams, and wasn’t the first black QB to start in modern pro ball like Marlin Briscoe (see The Week Two Crystal Ball for more). But, he was the first African-American to start at quarterback in a season opener, as well as the first to start and win a playoff game.
Harris is also uniquely tied to some of the other folks we’ve discussed today as he teamed with O.J. and Al Cowlings on the 1970-71 Buffalo Bills. Far more impressive is his career winning percentage of .591, including playoffs. That’s better than HOFers like Troy Aikman, Fran Tarkenton, and Kurt Warner and current QBs like Joe Flacco and Jared Goff.
Bottom line: the man was a trailblazer whose play went a long way in dispelling the myth that black QBs couldn’t get it done.
Harris started and played the bulk of the October 31, 1976, rout of the Seahawks, giving way to Haden late in the contest. The relentless Rams defense sacked Seattle QBs five times and heldfuture HOFer Steve Largent to two catches for a meager 14 yards.
As for the postscript, the Seahawks beat Atlanta the next week before losing their final five games to end at 2-12. And the Rams dropped two straight before closing with five consecutive victories to get to the NFC Championship game, a loss to Bud Grant’s Minnesota Vikings.
Altogether, Patera lasted six full seasons in Seattle – winning ’s NFL Coach of the Year honors in 1978 for taking the third-year team to a 9-7 record – before being fired two games into the ‘82 campaign with players on strike.
Like I said, the game wasn’t competitive but it sure was good for a story or two, wasn’t it?
Looking at today’s game, we’ve got the Rams (3-4, 0-3 away) visiting the Seahawks (4-4, 2-3 home). Kickoff is at 4:25 pm ET on Fox.
I like LA in this game. Yes, Rams wideout Puka Nacua is hobbled like Paul Sheldon in “Misery” but he’s still likely to play. Plus, Sean McVay’s crew is on a two-game win streak and Seattle may be doubting itself a bit after getting boat-raced by Buffalo last week.
We’ll find out in a bit, won’t we?
I found out Thursday that I underestimated the Jets, who beat to drop THE GURU to 71-50 (.587) for the season. Let’s go to the games with the Steelers (6-2) and San Fran (4-4) enjoying the bye…
SUNDAY - 1PM - CBS
I’m all in on the Bills (6-2, 3-0 home) against the Dolphins (2-5, 1-2 away) in Orchard Park, N.Y. Tua Tagovailoa’s return provided a bit of a spark last week but, ultimately, they couldn’t close against Arizona…
…the Saints (2-6, 1-3 away) beat the Panthers (1-7, 0-3 home) in Carolina with Derek Carr back at the controls for NOLA. Let’s call this one the “Jake Delhomme Bowl” in honor of the hard-nosed QB who called the signals for New Orleans (1997-2002) and Carolina (2003-09) during his 15-year pro career…
…the visiting Chargers (4-3, 2-2 away) fall to the Browns (2-6, 1-3 home) in a battle of teams once coached so well by Marty Schottenheimer7…
…Sean Payton and the suddenly hot Broncos (5-3, 3-1 away) get their comeuppance in Baltimore (5-3, 2-1 home).
1 PM - FOX
I like the Cowboys (3-4, 3-1 away) at Atlanta (5-3, 2-3 home) in a pivotal game for both teams. Dallas seems to play its best ball away from the Metroplex and they’ll have too much juice for the improving Falcons, a team on pace for its best year since 2017’s 10-6 campaign…
…the Raiders (2-6, 1-3 away) lose to the Bengals (3-5, 0-4 home) in Cincy. The most consequential meeting between these two franchises? The January 1991 playoff game where Kevin Walker’s tackle of Bo Jackson prematurely ended the star running back’s career…
…the Patriots (2-6, 1-3) get win #3 in Tennessee (1-6, 0-3 home)…
…with THE TRE MAN and I looking on, My Beloved Commies (6-2, 2-2 away) beat the Giants (2-6, 0-4 home) at MetLife Stadium. I’ve experienced a lot of nice wins in the Meadowlands and plenty of pain as well. Today won’t be without its challenges vs. the tough NYG defense but this year feels like it could be a good one…
4:05 PM - CBS
The Eagles (5-2, 2-1 home) take down the visiting Jaguars (2-6, 0-4 away) as former Birds head coach - and Super Bowl LI champion - Doug Pederson returns to Philly for the second time since joining Jacksonville. Like the first return - a 29-21 Iggles win in 2022 - it likely won’t be a happy return for the coach…
…the Bears (4-3, 0-3 away) fall at the Cardinals (4-4, 2-2 home) in a battle of teams with Chicago roots. The Cards, of course, represented the Windy City from 1920-59, winning NFL titles in 1925 and 1947.
4:25 PM - FOX
The Lions (6-1, 3-0 away) travel to Green Bay (6-2, 3-1 away) and get a victory. This Dee-troit squad, folks, is a team on a mission.
8:20 PM - NBC/PEACOCK
The Colts (4-4, 1-3 away) upset the Vikings (5-2, 3-1 home) behind the intrepid Joe Flacco. The man ages like a jar of Cheese Whiz and that is a high compliment in these parts.
MONDAY - 8:15 PM - ESPN/ABC/ESPN+
The Chiefs (7-0, 3-0 home) handle the Bucs (4-4, 2-1 away) in a KC-based rematch of Super Bowl LV. I think Baker plays well but, in the end, Andy Reid & Co. will prevail. Reid, by the way, is just nine wins from becoming the fourth coach to win 300 NFL games8.
That’s all for this week, folks. Enjoy the games and God bless you and yours!
In those days, the Ducks were not officially the Ducks but were often called the Webfoots, which, though brutal, was actually an improvement from their previous moniker, the Lemon Yellow. “Ducks,” become common following World War II – thank you for your service, BROTHER BLUENIK – but didn’t become the official school nickname until 1978.
The Doyle Higdon Memorial Trophy is awarded each year to a sophomore athlete at the school for achievements in athletics, scholarship, and citizenship. Higdon also starred as a javelin thrower at U of O.
Niehaus played at Cincinnati’s famed Archbishop Moeller High for future ND coach Gerry Faust and started fast with Seattle, earning NFC Defensive Rookie of the Year honors and racking up 9 ½ sacks, likely a record for a first-year player at the time. Unfortunately, his career nosedived due to a shoulder injury and the lingering effects of two college knee surgeries, and he was out of the league by the end of the 1979 season.
Cowlings and Simpson were on the outstanding 1968 USC team with the backup QB none other than future Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren. Connecting the dots further, Cowlings’ head coach at USC, John McKay, was the first coach of the NFL’s other 1976 expansion franchise, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
After retiring, Cowlings was out of the spotlight until June 13, 1994, when he became infamous for leading police on a 60-mile chase in his white Ford Bronco with OJ in the backseat. Cowlings was never charged with a crime surrounding the event and, believe it or not, now has a large USC dorm named after him.
The mark stood for 43 years until Denver’s Matt Prater broke it in 2013, a feat which returned Dempsey’s longstanding record into the national limelight. The former Saints star, age 73, passed away due to Covid complications in 2020.
The late coach holds the second-best regular-season win percentage (.588) in Chargers’ history, trailing only Sid Gillman (.612) and ranks third in Cleveland annals (.620) among full-time coaches, behind Paul Brown (.767) and Blanton Collier (.691).
Including the postseason. Shula is first (347 wins), followed by Belichick (333) and George Halas (324).