Urban Legends: Beattie Feathers 1934 Rushing Stats

[TodMaher]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2520 ... ard-rusher

[Bob Gill]

That's a pretty rational look at the story. I like his mention of the Cincinnati team as a contributing factor in the inflated rushing totals for that season; it's something I've wondered about myself.

But he's simply wrong in one place, where he calls the St. Louis Gunners "a barnstorming team." The Gunners had been playing in St. Louis since 1931, which made them a more "established" team than several in the NFL: Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Boston, for instance. And they were a better team than Cincinnati in 1934. You'll note that there are no 64-0 games on their ledger.

Otherwise, though, a good article, as I said.

[BD Sullivan]

Surprised that no mention is made of the 1972 magic that turned Mercury Morris into a thousand-yard rusher, which allowed the NFL to hype the fact that the undefeated Dolphins had the first pair of 1,000-yard rushers in the same backfield.

[SixtiesFan]

Surprised that no mention is made of the 1972 magic that turned Mercury Morris into a thousand-yard rusher, which allowed the NFL to hype the fact that the undefeated Dolphins had the first pair of 1,000-yard rushers in the same backfield.

At season's end, Morris had 991 yards. The Dolphins went to the league office and claimed (as I recall) a 9-yard loss on a lateral shouldn't have been charged to Morris. The league than announced it was an even 1000 yards for Mercury Morris.

I've seen some film clips of Beattie Feathers and believe he did it. In a book on Tennessee football, I read that Feathers was an assistant coach at Wake Forest in the 1960's and coached a running back named Brian Piccolo.

[Bryan]

That's a pretty rational look at the story. I like his mention of the Cincinnati team as a contributing factor in the inflated rushing totals for that season; it's something I've wondered about myself.

I think the Colts/Yanks/Texans of 1950-1952 had a similar effect on offensive stats for that time period.

[conace21]

I perused PFR to find some notable individual performances against those teams.

Baltimore Colts:
In week 2, Dub Jones had touchdown runs of 60 and 11 yards. Ken Carpenter ran for 100 yards on 3 carries. And who knows how Motley did. That right there should have disputed Greasy Neale's complaints after opening night that all Cleveland could do was pass.

A week after setting an NFL record with 8 interceptions, Jim Hardy threw six touchdown passes. Bob Shaw caught five of them. Oh, and Chicago also had 272 yards rushing.

LA Rams: 70 points.

Eddie Price ran for 158 yards for the NYG.

Cloyce Box: 12 receptions for 302 yards and 4 touchdowns.


New York Yanks:
Obviously, Norm Van Brocklin's 554 yards passing. In the other Rams-Yanks matchup, LA ran for 371 yards.
Deacon Dan Towler ran for 155 yards on 13 carries.

Chicago ran for over 300 yards in each of the two games. Johnny Lujack ran for a total of 4 scores

The Dallas Texans:
"The King" of San Francisco had 170 yards on 7 carries. Pretty impressive yards per carry even when you take out the 89 yard TD.
Chicago's Babe Dimancheff had a 77 yard TD run. His 16 other carries in 1952 went for 29 yards.
Bob Waterfield threw 2 TDs against Dallas. What makes that notable is he only had 3 touchdown passes all year.
Cloyce Box had 7 catches for 202 yards and 3 TD's.

[TanksAndSpartans]

One thing I don't see mentioned much is that Feathers may not have been the NFL's first 1000 yard rusher. That may have been Tex Hamer for the Frankford Yellowjackets in 1924. 789 yards were verified, but figures from 12 of his 14 games are incomplete. He was 30-151 with a TD in his 2 complete games and 73-638 with 11 TDs in his 12 incomplete games. He was also the team's leading passer with just under 400 yards. He finished second in scoring behind Joey Sternaman and made second team on the Green Bay Press Gazette all-NFL team (also behind Sternaman). The Yellowjackets went a strong 11-2-1 in their first year in the league. They would go on to win the title in 1926 with a team that included rookie back Hap Moran. As far as Hamer goes, we'll probably never know what he did statistically as all of his prime years have a high number of incomplete games. Clearly he was an early star as the single wing Tailback on some very good teams. And finally of course, these are all unofficial statistics documented in the Football Encyclopedia by David Neft, Richard Cohen, and Rick Korch.

[luckyshow]

All this talk about awful teams in the past,....currently there are quite a few quite turkey defenses. Not sure if any records are being set, but the talent must be pretty diluted now or injuries too high...