It Had to Be Stafford and the Rams, Right?

The “Lion King”

You just knew it would work out this way, didn’t you?

Detroit wins its first NFC North Division title and hosts the first-ever playoff game at Ford Field and the opponent will be the Los Angeles Rams who are quarterbacked by … Matthew Stafford the former face of the franchise.

When he was drafted first overall by the Detroit Lions in 2009 out of the University of Georgia, Stafford was to be the savior of a city’s bedraggled football team that had the ignominy of finishing 0-16 the year before and hadn’t won a division title in 25 years.

Alas, the best laid plans.

Rather than fully “Restore the Roar,” Stafford helmed the Lions to nothing more than three second-place divisional finishes and three road Wildcard Playoff Round losses. His final three seasons in Detroit – all under ill-equipped Coach Matt Patricia – resulted in successive last-place divisional finishes and a grand total of 11 wins.

On Sunday, Detroit beat Minnesota, 30-20, to put a bow on a 12-win season that saw a new banner ascend to the rafters.

The team’s success this season can be directly attributed to, you guessed it, Matthew Stafford. Or at least the Lions’ return on his departure.

When Detroit sent Stafford to the Rams three years ago this month it was anyone’s guess how it’d turn out. The only other player as part of the package – then-Rams’ quarterback Jared Goff– took Los Angeles to a Super Bowl three seasons earlier, but to much of the football world he appeared to be a serviceable quarterback. Nothing more, nothing less.

The bounty for this trade of Stafford was a third round and two first round draft picks.

Goff’s legacy in L.A.

In the interim, while Detroit waited to see what the new regime of General Manager Brad Holmes and Coach Dan Campbell would do with those picks, most of Detroit pulled for Stafford and lived vicariously through he and the Rams’ magical 2021 season that resulted in the 23-20 Super Bowl LVI victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.

It was not until April’s NFL Draft that the final tally on the Stafford Trade was known:

Thanks to Draft Day trades by Holmes, those three draft picks became five. Those picks became defensive back Ifeatu Malifonwu, wide receiver Jameson Williams, defensive lineman Josh Paschal, running back Jahmyr Gibbs, tight end Sam LaPorta, and defensive end Broderic Martin.

And, because the Lions were fairly devoid of talent that first year Holmes, Campbell, and Goff were in town, they wound up with the second overall selection which became Aidan Hutchinson. Add to the mix Lions’ Offensive Coordinator Ben Johnson and suddenly Goff was more than serviceable.

So it seems only fitting then that for the Detroit Lions – one of just four NFL franchises to never appear in a Super Bowl (Browns, Jaguars, and Texans are the others) – to move to the next round this post-season they must first vanquish the city’s once favorite son who returns wearing a decidely different shade of blue and a Super Bowl ring on his finger.

I haven’t a clue what sort of reception Stafford will receive from the Ford Field faithful Sunday night (I suspect it will be respectful gratitude for his time served), but I do know that for this franchise to fully shake the “Same Old Lions” label it will need to finally sever ties with any affinity it has for Stafford and a major part of that will be the fans making life miserable for he and his Rams’ teammates, thus enhancing the chances of a Lions victory.

Has one franchise ever witnessed its past, present, and future all converging at such a critical moment?

This piece was contributed by Doug Hill, who just happens to be a very nervous Lions fan. You can check out his blog and podcast here: https://thesportsfanproject.com

The Legend of Crazylegs Hirsch

Great halfback, outstanding receiver, and movie actor: all by a person named Crazylegs. It’s unlikely that anyone today would take seriously a person named Crazylegs, but everyone–especially opposing defenses–took Elroy Hirsch very seriously indeed.  He was an unmatched combination of physical prowess, skill, and charisma that revolutionized the game of football.

Elroy Hirsch got his nickname from his unusual style of running, with his left foot seemingly pointing to the side. The gait gave him a sense of wobbling while he ran, but it did not hurt his speed or cutting ability. “His legs were like the pistons of a car, that is a car with a tank full of Jack Daniels,” said one of his coaches. Hirsch came to prominence as a running back at the University of Wisconsin, and after he broke off a 62-yard touchdown run against an opposing team a sportswriter bestowed on him the name he would carry for the rest of his life. 

Hirsch joined the L.A. Rams as a halfback in 1949 but was almost immediately moved to flanker because of his explosiveness, enabling him to become the most exciting receiver of his time. It was his best season in 1951 when he caught 66 passes for 1,495 yards and helped the Rams win the NFL title 24-17 over the Cleveland Browns. Hirsch scored 17 touchdowns that season, six of which were outstanding 70 yards or more, and his accomplishments and success during that 1951 season remain almost unparalleled in NFL history.

Hirsch’s good looks and gridiron-generated fame led him into the movie business while he was still playing for the Rams and earned him the moniker, “Glamour Boy of the Gridiron.” So popular was he throughout the nation, and especially in Los Angeles, that Republic Pictures made a film, Crazylegs (1951) about his life. And who better to play the lead than Crazylegs himself? Hirsch said, tongue in cheek, “Hollywood made a movie of my life, and the film had me proposing to my wife on the football field – I would never misuse a football field that way.”

Hirsch was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1974 and gave perhaps the shortest induction speech in NFL history: If any of you think this isn’t tough, I wish it were a kick-off and I were being clobbered, believe me. Thank you very much, (presenter Hampton Pool), ladies and gentlemen. You know I’ve had a lot of wonderful things happen to me in my life. I’ve been married for 22 years to a very lovely woman. We’ve always gotten along, basically. I have a wonderful son, 18, who has never given me any trouble, and a very lovable daughter. I’ve even carried it so far; I have 22 in-laws and I get along with all of them. And I’ve made a lot of wonderful friends, both in college and professional football. And these are enough to enrich any man’s life. But, believe me, the biggest honor is today, and I thank you all for it.

The speedster became athletics director at the University of Wisconsin after his playing days until retiring in 1987. Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch died on Jan. 28th, 2004 in Madison, Wisconsin, the home of his alma mater.

Horns Cage the Cards in a Dive

“To flourish in the face of absurdity we have to become absurd ourselves.” –Albert Camus

A friend called, waking me from an afternoon siesta, and asked me if I wanted to go to a “saloon” to watch the game. This place looked like something straight out of the 19th century and had a Saints helmet on the roof which was essentially the husk of a VW bug painted gold with the famous fleur-de-lis added. We grabbed a few beers (noting the interesting bouquet of Pine-Sol and urinal cakes) and watched the end of the game in which the house favorite lost to their rivals, the Atlanta Falcons.

The clientele was already drunk so they drowned their disappointment on the dance floor, twisting, jerking, and swerving like intoxicated apes and spilling a bit of their drinks with every random undulation. A woman walked up to me and pointed an extended claw in the general direction of the cigarette machine, her perfume so dense it was making me dizzy. I had no idea what she was saying (cajun accent) but nodded my head and that seemed to pacify her for the moment as she smiled and pirouetted back to the now booze-slicked dance floor. 

The Horns dominated the Cards in the game I popped in to watch as Kyren Williams gave me Todd Gurley flashbacks and gained more yards than the entire Arizona team after 3 quarters. The young man from the Catholic school with the Golden Dome ran with a perfect balance of grace, power, and violence and paced the team with 204 total yards and 2 touchdowns. Matthew Stafford absolutely owns the team from the desert with a 5-1 record and had obviously bathed in the fountain of youth before the contest. The good guys win 37-14. 

As the game was coming to a close a clearly intoxicated woman asked me to dance, and I tend to follow the momentum of poor choices, so I agreed. She was an old-school scumbag in a way that she’s never had an e-mail address and she yearns for the original recipe for meth. We danced and slipped to “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner as my friend laughed uncontrollably in my peripheral vision. Of course, the Rams shirt I was wearing didn’t escape unscathed by the random and ongoing dance floor drink spillage as I disappeared into the sea of baseball caps advertising beer or heavy equipment.

We pulled out of the gravel parking lot in an area of town that had never even heard of the term gentrification, where the structures knew only a world of beige, rust, and shit-brown. There were two guys smoking cigarettes, wearing cowboy hats and matching flannels arguing about their favorite truck manufacturer. 

 “I’m sorry, man. I guess I expected that place to be something different.”

“Are you kidding me, I loved that place!”

Chuck Knox on the 1976 NFC Championship

The following excerpt was taken from former Rams coach Chuck Knox’s book, Hard Knox:

Pat Haden started the last five games of 1976 going 4-1 to help us finish our regular season at 10-3-1. We win the first playoff game in Dallas and then we’re back in Minnesota for another try at the Super Bowl. I’m thinking, Now is the time.  

It was the time, all right. Time for our third big game flop. During the heat of this championship game, on third-and-two from the Vikings two-yard line, we ran a reverse with Ron Jessie. He dove and landed in the end zone, but the officials say he bounced first. So we don’t score and stopped inside their five-yard line on third down, and we wind up going for a field goal. The kick is blocked, Minnesota’s Bobby Bryant scoops it up and runs 99 yards for a touchdown, and we lose again 24-13.

And now everybody is asking, How come you didn’t go for the touchdown? I answer. How was I supposed to know the kick would be blocked? How did I know that little mistake would occur? You go for a touchdown, any number of things can happen–fumbles, interceptions, anything. Football not being an exact science, a field goal is just about as exact as it gets. Either you make it or you miss it, period. (ed: Knox was heavily criticized for his decision by L.A. Times sports columnist Jim Murray)

Like I said before, I live a lot by history. I lived by it that day and it cost me. And it hurt. I was getting tired of being second-guessed. I was getting tired of having no answers. By this championship game, the criticism was coming down on me like bits of hail. What hurt the most though, was that after our third championship loss, I knew my players were having some of the same doubts as everyone else. 

I offer no apologies. Considering what I took over in L.A. the risk-free offensive philosophy only made sense. I had to teach some of these young guys to go to war with themselves before they could go to war with others. We had to worry about ourselves first. Without that confidence, we would never have advanced in any championship game in the first place. And I can guarantee one thing: these guys were a lot happier losing in the NFC finals with me than never playing past Christmas with other coaches.

The “Dark Ages” of Rams Fandom

If you’ve been a Rams fan for a while–as I have been for over 35 years–then congratulations, you’re still alive and kicking and hopefully your mental health is (sort of) intact. We’ve gone through some tough times, haven’t we? As philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche was quoted as saying, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” More specifically I’m referring to the infernal suffering of the “Tony Banks Years.”

Banks played for the Rams from 1996-98 and was unexceptional in every conceivable way, not once leading the Horns to a playoff spot, and sporting a horrendous 14-29 record. The quarterback was criticized for his poor decision-making and lack of leadership and was often booed by the fans. He was also known for his inability to make plays when needed most. (I must add that the transcendent and inspiring Kurt Warner was a third-string backup on the ‘98 team, sitting behind Banks and then 38-year-old, broken-down 49ers castoff Steve Bono. Yikes. Also, he was not related to Sonny.) 

Even today the words Tony Banks conjure images of mediocrity and little demons with pitchforks poking me in the ass. It’s almost uncomfortable to let the words roll past my tongue, like uttering his name is an evil incantation. I remember people would ask me what team I followed and when I’d respond they’d mostly just stare with a look of confusion and pity. A few even told me that they had never even met a Rams fan in person and then heckled without impunity even though the team was a bottom feeder that had been exiled into irrelevancy for almost a decade. 

There are other names, of course, that you may or may not know, all of them part of the Dark Ages: Robert Delpino, Lawrence Phillips, Chris Miller, and June Henley. Henley, only known to the most psychotic of fans actually led the team in rushing the only season he played in 1998 with an anemic 313 yards. The perfect metaphor for a sad sack organization, he retired with a toe injury and then got busted for stealing televisions and beer from WalMart.

The Rams have had a history of ups and downs, with periods of great success followed by years of disappointment. But through it all, Rams fans have remained loyal and resilient, cheering the team on no matter the outcome. ( also, despite being bamboozled by vivacious, bottle-blonde, black widow owner Georgia Frontiere) In the face of the darkness of the Tony Banks years, we could always take comfort in the fact that we were united by a common bond – our love for the Rams. We chose to be Rams fans, and we chose to be loyal no matter how crazy or irrelevant we seemed….and not always with mental health intact.

Isiah Robertson’s Demons and Redemption

The following excerpt was taken from Chuck Knox’s book, “Hard Knox.” Knox was head coach of the L.A. Rams from 1973-77 and 1992-94. 

Throughout my career, there was one player who brought out the uncommon in me. As in, the uncommonly stupid in me. Because of this player, I am no longer such an easy mark for troubled minds. His name was Isiah Robertson. He was called “Butch.” He was a linebacker, and he was a handful. 

Butch was an example of how, as hard as I coach them, a lot of times I flat-out don’t reach them. Let me tell you about one lovely Christmas Eve in Los Angeles. For some reason, Butch was eating at a restaurant this night, eating clam chowder. Bad chowder. It had a bug in it. He wouldn’t pay for it. 

The waitress told him he had already taken a couple of bites, and he had to pay. Poor waitress. You don’t tell a guy like Butch that he has to do anything. Even I knew that. He poured the chowder over the cash register, and then went outside and threw a brick through the window. 

Have you ever received a phone call from a troubled employee who is in jail on Christmas Eve? My wife loved this one. I was still young and dumb then. I went down and bailed him out, the first of several times. 

How I tried to reach Butch. I would sit him down–I had this one special chair in my office just for him–and he would sit there like an angel, very apologetic. Then he would leave my office and two weeks later he’d be back in that special chair. I’m sure he meant well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I later traded for him when I went to Buffalo because I thought he had matured and learned his lesson. Once there, he gets into a bar fight and bites off a piece of teammate Jim Haslett’s finger. (Haslett went on to coach the Saints and even Knox’s Rams for 12 games in 2008.) 

Editor: When Robertson retired from the league, crack cocaine unfortunately took over his life, and the six-time Pro Bowler found himself almost beaten to death, staring into the barrel of a shotgun wielded by a drug dealer. He’d lost his career, his family, his cars, and 14 homes. Robertson lived only because the weapon malfunctioned. Robertson eventually cleaned up and worked with recovering addicts at a residential recovery center, House of Isiah, which he founded in 1989 just outside of Dallas.

On December 6, 2018, Robertson sadly died after the limousine he was driving skidded on a rain-slicked curve on a dark Texas highway only hours after giving a motivational speech at a local high school. He was 69.

Ken Geddes… 1970’s Rams Linebacker and Educator

Isiah Robertson was sobbing silently, Ken Meyer was whispering consoling words into James Harris’s ear and Fred Dryer was calling the officials “donkeys.” The Los Angeles Rams were frustrated and they were angry.

But none felt the sudden pain that Ken Geddes, a Ram linebacker, felt when he received a telephone call after the 14‐10 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in the 1974 NFC Championship.

“A friend of his family called and said his dad died this morning,” a Rams’ executive said as Geddes cried uncontrollably in the shower, a pair of teammates holding him around his broad, soap-covered shoulders.

As the news spread around the locker room, the players’ voices became softer and their feelings turned, at least, for the moment, from the outcome of the game that ended their season instead of extending it to the Super Bowl.

********

Geddes grew up in Jacksonville, Fla., the fourth of 17 kids. Before he was a teen, he worked after school at a door manufacturer and a soda bottler. He picked blackberries and sweet potatoes. He helped his mom do other people’s laundry. “It was something that we did,” Geddes says. “I never thought about being poor.”

In seventh grade, he quit going to school every day. A math teacher suggested Boys Town, the Nebraska school mythologized in the film, with Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan, saying: “There isn’t any such thing in the world as a bad boy.” Geddes had seen the movie. He wanted to go.

At 13, he boarded a bus, alone. He arrived, west of Omaha, to discover Catholics were real. He’d never seen one — and figured the movie had made that part up. Once settled, Geddes flourished. He played on the basketball and football teams — state champions, both — and joined the student government, working his way up to commissioner. As a senior he ran for mayor of Boys Town, losing by one vote.

He went on to college, at Nebraska, where he played nose guard and linebacker, and earned a degree in education.

Geddes played eight years in the NFL; his biggest contract was $250,000, spread over three years. He worked the offseasons — in Seattle, as an assistant manager at Jack in the Box. He also secured a real estate license. He planned for life after football, determined not to lose all he’d gained. “I knew what it was like, not to have,” he says.

A foremost proponent of education, Geddes’ daughter is an assistant principal at a Seattle-area high school, and his son teaches math in Middle School. When Geddes himself retired as a middle school counselor in 2011, his school dedicated a bench to him, inscribed with his trademark greeting: “Good morning! Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours!”

The SOB’s Beat Us Yet Again

Breaking records!

“I don’t give a shit about no goddamn Rams”–my grandfather

If you don’t think the Rams/49ers rivalry is real then you haven’t been watching football for very long and I must petition you to read the above quote again. My grandfather was a die-hard 49ers fan and absolutely hated the Rams. For years, I would beg him to take me to a Rams game (The “Big A” was a mere 15-minute drive) and he outright refused until my grandmother finally demanded that he take me. It turned out to be a pre-season game against the Packers and we had terrible seats behind the goalpost. You couldn’t see anything if teams were driving on the opposite side of the field. The Rams won 16-13, in a butt-numbing affair and I believe the Packers QB was Don Majkowski (say that 3 times fast) slightly before the “Brett Favre Era.” 

My grandfather descended into eternal darkness in that same city where we saw that football game a little over a decade later. My family had called me in Sacramento and told me to hop on the next train because he wasn’t long for this earth. He died a few days later. I miss him, even though typically when someone has been gone for a long period of time they seem more like an abstract idea than an actual person. You only seem to remember quips and flashes of moments. He still oddly never speaks to me when he materializes in my dreams and his appearances are becoming lesser and lesser.

A friend came over to watch the game and I told him we could drink beer and, “re-organize my record collection,” with a wink and a nudge. Of course, that’s if you want to call two lousy milk crates a record collection. He asked me if I had anything that wasn’t over 20 years old, but I didn’t. Most of what I owned was gritty, stripped-down rock and roll and punk from the wilder reaches of the 70’s and 80’s–admittedly not very nuanced. 

 This time the game was played not in Anaheim but in Los Angeles proper, the city that lends itself to noir, from Skid Row to the Sunset Strip–that sex-fueled, quasi-paradise with a lobotomy where numbness is a virtue. The field was about as fake as half the vocations and breasts filling the crowd, (complete with cancer-causing rubber granules) but it sure did look nice on television!

Rams lose 30-23. This was a contest that seemed to be about the team of today versus the team of tomorrow. These squads have caused each other’s collective fan base so much trauma and dissonance as the Niners have beaten us 9 straight regular-season times even though we broke their decrepit hearts (and made Deebo Samuel cry on national television) in the 2021 NFC Championship. But today the heartbreak belonged to us…once again. 

When it was all said and done, I wasn’t angry. Nothing was broken or thrown and I was glad that we had hope, an optimistic outlook on the season and the future of this team. It was a thrilling, visceral time despite the loss, and isn’t that what sports are all about? If my grandfather were here today, (probably smoking a Marlboro and trash-talking) I would delightedly tell him, “I don’t give a shit about no goddamn 49ers.”

***

The namesake of this blog is now a follower on Twitter, (or X or whatever the hell you want to call it) and if you choose to do so you can follow me here. And remember proper ganja is better than propaganda.

Rams Send the SeaHags Back to the Deep

I love this card

“Oh My God!”–Seattle QB Geno Smith, quite audibly, as Aaron Donald found an open crease and came barrelling down on him.

Your favorite degenerate scribe spent a lazy Sunday swilling Lone Star beer and watching wily veteran Matt Stafford dissect the Seahawks’ defense as the good guys defeated the team from the land of Starbucks and Grunge 30-13. (I have nothing against Seattle by the way, it is a beautiful city and I enjoyed my time there hanging out with a pretty girl who had a penchant for cheap beer and even cheaper strip clubs. She also had a tattoo of a Nintendo controller on her inner arm. Alas, that is a story for another time.)

What caught my eye, however, towards the end of this fascinating game was a graphic stating that Puka Nucua and Tutu Atwell were the first Rams teammates under or at the age of 23 with 100 yards receiving since Del Shofner and Lamar Lundy. Wait a minute…Lamar Lundy!? Certainly whoever did this research was wrong because the Lundy I know was a legendary defensive end and a member of the much-heralded “Fearsome Foursome.”

Within seconds the invisible ether told me, to my amazement, that Lundy actually did catch 25 passes for 396 yards in 1958 and scored 6 career touchdowns. Absolutely astounding and impressive! I want to thank the probably underpaid technical graphics guy who did some splendid research, Mark from Retro Simba, (who so graciously gave me the above football card), and rookie sensation Puka Nacua. (I won’t quote his stats here because an exuberant amount of ink has already been spilled concerning it) Until next time, guys and dolls, remember to always pick up your dogshit, tip your bartender well, and if you find a toilet in your dream please don’t use it.

Ben Wilson RIP

I have a bit of somber news, readers. Sometime in early July, I sent a trading card to Ben Wilson (LA Rams fullback 1963-65) with a personal note asking him to autograph said piece of cardboard. I received a letter from his son, Alan, in late August with the following:

Dear Mr. Trujillo,

Thank you for your interest in my dad. He always thought fondly of the NFL and when he could, he autographed memorabilia. Unfortunately, he has been ill for the past year and recently passed away. I am returning your card. Good luck to you in your quest.

I want to thank Alan for his kindness, especially in his time of grief. I imagine his father was a classy individual and a good person if this letter was an indication of anything.

Ben Wilson only played one season with the Green Bay Packers, but he holds the distinction of being the leading rusher in Super Bowl II in Miami. Despite missing most of the fourth quarter, Wilson was the Packers’ workhorse, carrying the ball 17 times for 62 yards in Green Bay’s 33-14 victory over Oakland. That eclipsed the Super Bowl mark of 56 yards set a year earlier in the Packers’ 35-10 triumph over Kansas City in Los Angeles. “It was a peculiar decision by Coach Vince Lombardi to start Ben in the Super Bowl,” former Packers guard Jerry Kramer said. “The coach was playing a hunch.

Ben Wilson died in Hot Springs, Arkansas on July 29, 2023, at the age of 84

On a lighter note, below is a Burger King commercial featuring Roman Gabriel. Enjoy.