1982 was easily the weirdest season in league history. 9 game season, a 16-team playoff brackett, in a 28 team league, making it so teams with 4-5 records got in. It's also weird how teams like the Browns, who were 5-11 in 1981, made the playoffs, while the 49ers, the defending Super Bowl champions, did not. It's also weird how the patriots, who went 2-14 in 1981, made the playoffs, while the Colts, who also finished 1981 with the same record, finished winless. Wes chandler had over 1,000 yards receiving it in 9 games. And how can we forget, a kicker winning the league mvp. Mark mosely had a fantastic year, but it was nowhere near mvp caliber
I absolutely think Ken Anderson should be in the HOF. As a player, he didn’t win a Super Bowl, but led his team to one in 1981. Compare his career numbers to some other HOF qbs (ex Bob Griese). He deserves to be in!
I’m his time, deciding between the NBA and Baseball wasn’t difficult. Baseball was king and the NBA was in its infancy. If you could get a contract with an MLB team then that’s where you were going.
At first glance you look at his career statistics and although impressive they're not eye popping but then you look and realize he only played 13 full seasons Which really is very impressive
Johnny U. did NOT participate in any of the drugs that season - according to the book, he wanted nothing to do with that crap and thats one of many reasons that he was one of the alltime best.
As a Dodger fan since 1967, it's great to see a Frank Howard video. When Frank hit 44 home runs in 1968, then 48 and 44 the next two seasons, I was bummed when I found out the Dodgers traded Howard after the 1964 season.🥵 In 1968, the Dodgers leading home run hitter hit 10 home runs, while Frank hit 44. Frank had to be taller than 6'7''. In 1968, Frank hit 10 home runs in a six game stretch.
Yeah, the Broncos didn't draft Elway, they traded for him. However, you make an interesting point. The Broncos had a good roster. If 82 would've been a normal season, they'd have probably finished around 500 which would have moved them back about 10-15 slots in the 1983 draft. Then they wouldn't have had the draft capital to trade for Elway. You could then argue, w/out the strike, the Broncos don't get Elway which completely changes NFL history. Maybe they draft Marino (they showed no signs of valuing him), but I think they'd have stuck w/DeBerg which means no SBs for Denver in the 80s.
I know you pegged the 1998 Jets as the best team to never make a Super Bowl. I always thought the 1999 Jaguars were. Crazy they went 15-3 with their only losses to one team. Division rivals, the Titans.
Bill Parcells had that team contending almost immediately. And I felt so bad for them in 1999 when Vinny went down Week One. They were Super Bowl favorites and in an instant it was over. They got a haul for the 2000 draft. And did well with most of those picks.
Man. Steve DeBerg was one of the great journeyman QBs. Blast from the past. By the time I was watching the NFL he was an elder. He hung around until 44 I believe.
The NFL Hall of Fame is so terribly reactionary putting in players like Lynn Swann bc of post season sucess while those are far greater numbers like Stanley Morgan and Isaac Curtis get no consideration. Play off on super bowl succession of course merit something federation but not nearly as much as the HOF gives. Football is after all a team sport
People seem to forget how close Anderson came to beating Montana in that super bowl, and then he defeated the 49ers and the regular season. If they taken that super bowl the legacies will be much different, but that's football
Anderson has some amazing timing as he came up right after Greg Cook, who Bill Walsh said was the greatest quarterback you've ever seen, was injured his rookie year in 69'
The Broncos also had a new owner in Edgar Kaiser and Reeves was a huge coaching prospect coming out after Dallas lost to the 49ers in the NFC Championship. Kaiser wanted his own coach.
Aah yes good old Frank Howard a tall drink of water. I grew up in D.C. and used to go to RFK for some double headers. I went to Milwaukee with my cousin to see a Brewers game and Frank was 3rd base coach at the time so I was able to yuck it up with him before the game started. I'll never forget his ten homeruns in 7 games.1968. I watched everyone of them his tenth homerun was at Tiger stadium cleared the roof I remember Al Kaline was another.
Ken Anderson was the most technically perfect player, I’ve ever seen. Wherever Bill Walsh went he took film of Anderson to show to his next quarterback. Hall of Famers Dan Fouts, and Joe Montana, were both taught by watching him. He carried the Bengals, for years. He led the NFL in passing 4 times, was the NFL MVP in 1981, NFL Man of the Year in 1975. 3x’s Ken led NFL in completion percentage (1974, 1982, 1983), he was also the passing yards leader 2x’s (1974, 1975), as well as yards/completion 2x’s, a wonderful athlete, he rushed for 2,220 yards while averaging 5.6 yards/carry. It’s been said he didn’t win a Super Bowl, but there are quarterbacks in the Hall who haven't. Anderson was poetry in motion, and a joy to watch, there is no way he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame. Bill Walsh, the genius who masterminded the West Coast Offense, thought he was perfect, I agree.
Saw Frank play in AAA in Spokane, the Dodgers farm team, in '60 along with Willie Davis, Ron Fairly and others. I was standing directly behind the backstop and someone threw him a high fastball. He hit a laser shot over the centerfield wall some 410 ft. away. I have never seen a ball hit so hard.
Regarding the drug thesis: I have always wondered to what extent cocaine use affected the Chargers during the Air Coryell years, which began 5 (seemingly long) years later. In addition to the well-cited defensive struggles of those teams from the late 70s to mid 80s, the Chargers were characterized by undisciplined and untimely offensive miscues and turnovers despite the offense’s legendary and innovative status in NFL history. Chuck Muncie’s struggles are well documented, and Miles MacPhearson, a cornerback, marginal player, current evangelical pastor in San Diego, and admitted former cocaine addict, has preached at length on how he “learned his bad habits” as a member of those early-80s Chargers, but he never names any names. After choking in the 79 playoffs, the Chargers had some of the highest odds to win the Super Bowl between 1980 and 1984, yet, in the words of Harry Kalas, would always “find a way to lose the big one.” Again, just a thought. Great video.
I appreciate your kind words and have no doubt about prolific drug use within the Charger organization. That’s how sports was back then, especially in football. Thanks for watching.
As a kid and Dodger fan in the early 60's, I heard Vin Scully recount what he said was "the furthest home run I have ever seen, and probably never will see again" off the bat of Frank Howard. I vividly recall Vin saying it happened at County Stadium, Milwaukee, and Frank was up against a knuckleballer, I'm guessing somewhere in the years between '61 to '63. The pitch fooled Frank so completely, he let go of the bat with his right hand, and swinging only with his left. Vin said the Braves shortstop told him later he only heard a loud crack, and a buzzing sound wizzing past his head, and that had he even tried to catch it it would have ended his career. The ball began as a low line drive, steadily gaining height as it went over the left-center bleachers, and out of the park into the parking lot. Later estimates based on witness approximations of the ball's landing spot initially put the distance at 600'. Later experts on MLB home runs claim the shot was impossible, and could have not been physically possible. I heard Vin Scully tell the story twice on old KFI(?) radio in Los Angeles in the old L.A. Dodger days. It was either the L.A. Times or our local Long Beach Telegram sports section placing Frank's shot on its front page, calling it "The Shot Heard Round the World" with a very cool graphic, as I recall. I kick myself for not saving the paper. Frank Howard was my boyhood hero.
He was the franchise QB for the Bengals, an athlete who should have been the first Bengal to receive consideration for enshrinement. He always enjoyed his contests vs. Bradshaw and the Steelers, faltering when a Steeler head-hunter exploited a missed blocking assignment to run straight at him, grabbing Anderson's face-bar while twisting Ken's head and throwing him to the ground. But Ken came back until yielding to Boomer (whose passing and scoring stats in their 2 Super Bowls don't even begin to compare with Anderson's). And it was Anderson who beat Fouts in the -55 degrees "Freezer Bowl" to bring the Bengals to their first Super (something not achieved by HOF QB Fouts). Anderson's leadership, passing (and running) skills, his poise and big heart clearly qualify him for the HOF--ahead of publicized QBs who were his contemporaries (Namath, etc.) but who fell short of Ken''s stats. Had Bill Walsh stayed in Cincinnati, after losing the coaching job to an equally qualified Bengal assistant coach, would his "project" Ken Anderson have had additional games like his record passing victory (450 yds) over HOF'er OJ Simpson and the Bills? (On Monday Night Football, '75). Probably yes. Would he be in the HOF? Probably years, if not decades, ago. Would the Bengals, Cincinnati, and Ken have been the better for it? (After reading Walsh's autobiography, I'm not so sure.)
I saw Frank Howard in dodger stadium hit three home runs in one game and the last one went through the triangle on the top of the left field foul pole!
You compare Ron Santo of the Cubs getting in the Hall of Fame with his numbers compared to Frank Howard and I wonder why Frank Howard is not in the Hall of Fame. My mother loved Frank Howard and took me to games as a dodger fan in the '60s.
I was at the game in Chicago where the (eventual champion) White Sox lit him up in the first inning for 6 runs on 4 home runs. It was actually quite sad to see.
It's said that nobody ever hit a home run out of old Yankee Stadium. But in the mid 1960's Frank Howard pulled a pitch that went over the top of the left field foul pole and out of the stadium. It was ruled foul but Yankees outfielder Bobby Murcer said it was a fair ball.
I think I got a clip of him smiling in the Yankee dugout. He always had his game face on, he was very serious whenever he pitched. Thanks for the comment and thank you for watching.
That Korean pitcher was 35 years old too. Koo Dae-Sung I think. Only picked up a bat 3 times in his professional career, and he last played in Australia in 2023.
This is a ridiculous comment and flat out wrong. Johnson was one of the top starters in the AL his first season as a Yankee in 2005. He was top 2 among AL pitcher's in strikeouts, WHIP, and WAR, 4th in strikeouts per 9(barely behind top 2 and less than 1 K per 9 behind the leader), and 5th in strikeouts to walk ratio. He carried the Yankees to win the tiebreaker and the AL East against the Red Sox. Seriously, Johnson went 6-0 with a 1.93 ERA his final 8 starts and was 5-0 against the Red Sox. His biggest moment was September 11th, 2005 when he held a powerful Red Sox lineup to 1 hit over 7 shutout innings and struck out 8 with his fastball reaching 99 mph and he had his killer slider. That was one of the great performances of his career in a must-win game 2 days after his 42nd birthday. How about his Yankee debut to open the season against the Boston? Very cold weather, but held them to 1 run and 5 hits. Watch Johnson get ahead of Manny with a couple of 96 mph fastballs and then fire a 97 mph fastball inside to strike him out looking and tell me he was washed up. In the 161st game at Fenway, Johnson didn't have his good stuff but still pitched into the 8th for another huge win. Sure, he had one bad start in the ALDS in bad weather after carrying them to get there, but came back and pitched 4 1/3 scoreless relief innings in the elimination game 2 games later with nothing left. Historically, Johnson was never as good in the division series; look at how he got hammered by St. Louis in 2002 after what Johnson felt was his best season. Excluding the start he left in the 2nd, Johnson had 1.45 ERA in his final 7 starts. Johnson's only struggles that first season were the first 2 months of summer from June 21st to August 21st when he gave up too many home runs on flat sliders because, partially because the AL was much tougher than the NL with Johnson himself noting that there were pretty much no breaks in the AL East. Johnson wasn't nearly as good in 2006, but that was mainly due to consistency with his share of games where he dominated, but too many where he was hit hard. But he was still not "washed up." In his final start as a Yankee in the 2006 ALDS, Johnson came out throwing 98 mph fastballs and 89-90 mph sliders at 43 years old.
I had a ticket to see randy go for his 300th win against the nationals and was so excited to get a chance to watch history but the game was rained out and I couldn't get off for the following game which he pitched and got hiss 300th win and to this day I get angry everytime I think about it...
As a kid, I remember watching Randy Johnson pitch in spring training in Arizona, before he made the major leagues. The guy could not control where the ball was going, and it was scary. Johnson was uncorking wild pitch after wild pitch, with a hit batsman thrown in every dozen pitches or so for good measure. It's amazing that he was able to harness his incredible power to become the best version of himself.
Absolutely. I left out a little detail that they were playing the Giants at Scottsdale stadium, and being a cocky 14 year old Giants fan I sometimes liked to heckle the opposing players. I remember shouting at Johnson: "Look how tall you are, and you can't even control your own body!" and it cracked up the whole section. I'm happy to say that in this case Randy definitely got the last laugh with a Hall of Fame career, and I certainly do not heckle baseball players any longer. Great piece!@@beauboone5332
To everyone who doesn't have an NFL commissioner on speed dial to change the rules so he never gets touched (you, TB 12); a "special new plymetrics regiment" from a chemist (you, Barry and Roger); or a third world Banana Republic birth certificate signed by some doctor from the Joe Biden School of Rememberance (you, Albert Pujols), the aging curve at 40 is all downhill.
I don't think Randy ever got a fair shake in assessments of his tenure with the Yankees. I always seem to see people say things like "Randy sucked as a Yankee." Yeah, he was pretty bad in 2006 when he was dealing with the bad back, but I don't think people appreciated just how important he was to the team's success in 2005. Yeah, he had dealt with inconsistencies, as he had a 5.91 ERA in his 17 losses and no-decisions. However, his other 17 starts were phenomenal, as he put up a 1.94 ERA. More importantly was how he did against the team's biggest rivals. In six starts against the Red Sox he went 5-0 with a no-decision in a game the Yankees lost. The two teams ended the season tied in the standings, and the Yankees got the division win from winning the season series 10-9. It was a margin that was possible thanks to their 5-1 record in Randy's starts against Boston.
