The mid-'70s may have been an era of labor strife, but not enough to interfere with a lot of gridiron action.
Super Bowl IX is the Pittsburgh Steelers' first
Super Bowl victory; the AFC champs defeat the NFC champion Minnesota Vikings
16-6. Franco Harris is the game's MVP with 158 yards on 34 rushes,
including the first touchdown.
The game gets a rating of 42.3 and a share of 78. An
estimated 29.44 million households watch the game on NBC television Jan. 12,
1975.
It is the first Super Bowl in which a safety is made. Fran
Tarkenton is sacked in the second quarter to give the Steelers the first
points of the game.
These playoffs are the third in a row in which the Steelers
and Oakland Raiders meet and the first of three consecutive playoff
years in which the two teams play for the AFC championship.
What will be remembered as the game of the season is the Dec. 21 divisional playoff contest between the Raiders and the Miami Dolphins. The fourth-quarter play that wins the game for Oakland is a catch that running back Clarence Davis
makes despite the Dolphin coverage that will go down in history as "The
Sea of Hands."
The MVP according to the AP (and in the players' vote for
the Jim Thorpe Trophy) is Raiders QB Ken Stabler, who leads the league
with 26 touchdown passes.
The UPI Coach of the Year for the NFC is second-year St.
Louis Cardinals coach Don Coryell, who improved his team from a
4-9-1 record to a 10-6 record. For the AFC, it's Sid Gillman, who led
the Houston Oilers from a 1-13 record that even his skills couldn't
prevent to a 7-7 record in his coaching swan song.
Los Angeles Rams DT Merlin
Olsen, a 13-year veteran, wins the Bert Bell Trophy for MVP, presented by
the Maxwell Club of Philadelphia.
The AP names Steelers DT Joe Greene Defensive Player
of the Year and gives teammate Jack Lambert, a linebacker, the honor of
Defensive Rookie of the Year.
San Diego Chargers
running back Don Woods wins awards from UPI as AFC Rookie of the Year,
from the AP as Offensive Rookie of the Year, and from the Newspaper Enterprise
Association as overall Rookie of the Year. Woods has 1,162 rushing yards,
second-best in the NFL, and 10 touchdowns for rushing and receiving combined. UPI's
NFC Rookie of the Year is New York Giants offensive guard John Hicks.
Chuck Foreman of the Vikings is the
NFC Player of the Year according to The Sporting News. He has 777 yards
on 199 rushes, 586 yards on 53 receptions, and a league-best 15 touchdowns combined on runs and catches.
UPI's NFC Player of the Year is Jim Hart, the
Cardinal QB. The undisputed all-NFC signal caller, he leads two
game-winning drives, and he passes for 2,411 yards and 20 touchdowns, but he
also throws eight interceptions, or a league-high 2.1 percent of his pass
attempts.
Washington Redskins
quarterback and five-time Pro Bowler Sonny Jurgensen plays his last
season and leads the NFC in passer rating with 94.5. His final TD is in the
Skins' regular-season finale against the Bears, and he goes 6 for 12 with three
interceptions in Washington's playoff loss to the Rams.
The leading rusher in the AFC -- and the league -- is the Denver
Broncos' Otis Armstrong with 1,407 yards. In the two years before
and the two years after, that is Buffalo Bills back O.J. Simpson's
honor.
Besides Armstrong, Harris, Simpson, and Woods, Larry
McCutcheon of the Rams is also a thousand-yard rusher, the NFC's only one.
This time, Ken Anderson of the Cincinnati Bengals
is the leader in quarterback rating with a mark of 95.7, which is 1.2 better than
Stabler's.
The Baltimore Colts' Lydell Mitchell rushes a
record 40 times Oct. 20 in a 35-20 Colts win at Shea Stadium against the New
York Jets. Mitchell has 72 receptions this year, a record for a running
back thus far and the leading figure for any player in the season.
Emmitt Thomas of the Kansas City
Chiefs is the first since 1964 to get 12 interceptions in a season. By the
way, those INT's go for 214 yards.
An NFL franchise for Tampa is awarded April 24, and Seattle
joins that city June 5. The latter could have been the Seattle Kings, whose
ownership group felt it was guaranteed the franchise and promoted it greatly,
but the $16 million fee and the labor dispute are factors leading the
group to concede to Seattle Professional Football, a more local group of
owners, which gets the franchise Dec. 5.
A six-week NFLPA strike precludes the Chicago College
All-Star Game -- an event in which the Dolphins as reigning champs would have
played college all-stars, one that will only be held twice more -- but no
regular-season games are canceled or delayed. The point of contention is free agency, and
the slogan is "no freedom, no football." The union gets back to work
before the season starts.
This dispute will be settled by a federal ruling Dec.
20 that by one contemporary account puts "the game's structure in
doubt," ultimately ushering in free agency. District Court judge William
T. Sweigert rules in the Joe Kapp case that a team signing someone
who has played out his option is not obligated to compensate the team losing that
player, striking down a rule (named for Commissioner Pete Rozelle)
that had been in standard contracts.
This is the first season in which games outside of the
playoffs can go to sudden-death overtime. This might be prompted by the
use of overtime in the WFL.
Among other rule changes possibly influenced by the WFL's
rules: the moving of the goalposts to behind the end zone, kickoffs from the
35-yard line, and a new rule for missed field goals.
The Giants play at the Yale Bowl again this year. They will
play at Shea Stadium, also home of the Jets, in 1975.
With the first pick in the '74 NFL Draft, the Dallas Cowboys get Ed "Too Tall" Jones, a 6-foot-9 Tennessee State defensive end.
Throughout the season, the Dolphins maintain their home
winning streak, which started in 1971, and extend it to 27 games. That's where the
streak will be left when they lose their first regular-season home game in '75.
On Oct. 13, Dennis Morgan of the Cowboys returns a
Cardinals punt for a 98-yard touchdown. He is the third player to do so for
that many yards, and no one will go longer until 1994.
Mack Herron of the New England
Patriots breaks Gale Sayers's single-season record of 2,440
all-purpose yards in a season by accumulating 824 running, 474 receiving, and
1,146 returning. The new record, four better than Sayers', will last one year.
Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw only plays eight regular-season games. He is, however, the starter for all three playoff games, and as such he is credited with the fourth-quarter comeback and game-winning drive against the Raiders. His time to shine, though, will be '75.
With 2,598 passing yards, Tarkenton gets ahead of Y.A.
Tittle (33,070) on the all-time list. His 35,846 career yards are at this
time second only to the figure put up by Johnny Unitas.
Cowboys QB Roger Staubach's .528 completion
percentage is, and will be, his personal worst for a season of 200 attempts or
more.
Jets QB Joe Namath has 20 touchdown passes, a high level
he hadn't reached since 1967. Also, 22 of his passes are intercepted.
Harris, a third-year player who was the consensus Rookie of
the Year in '72, has 1,006 yards on 208 carries. He scores five rushing touchdowns
in the regular season and six in the playoffs.
After four games with the Chiefs, future Hall of Fame DT Curley
Culp is traded to the Oilers.
Norm Van Brocklin's
time as Falcons sideline general, which is in its seventh year, comes to an end
Nov. 5.
Ron Smith of the Raiders
finishes a ten-year career with 6,922 yards returning 275 kickoffs. Billy
Johnson of the Oilers begins a fifteen-year career of returning 282 punts
for 3,317 yards.
Raiders kicker George Blanda, who reaches the age of
47 early in the season, plays his next-to-last year and wins the Man of the
Year Award.
Far from being Man of the Year is Conrad Dobler, Cardinals offensive guard, who wears a cast on his left arm that he uses to strike opponents. This is in addition to the kicking and biting that opponents have come to expect after two seasons.
Speaking of meanness: In one of the Steelers' two meetings
with the Bengals, Pat Matson, Cincinnati offensive guard, tries to limp
off the field, but Greene approaches him and urges him to stay on the gridiron.
During the strike and a soccer-style kicker fad, Sal Casola is drafted by the Bills and gets cut. He lands a spot on the Chiefs, but he decides the NFL's not for him and gets his brother to assume his identity. John Casola looks different, as Bills head coach Lou Saban notices Aug. 12, and Saban tells his opponent, Hank Stram, about it before the preseason game. Saban's amused and Stram isn't. The Chiefs' head coach has to wait until the half to end this short non-career.
In his third year as Colts owner and with a reputation for
being meddlesome, Robert Irsay (during the Sept. 29 game against the Philadelphia Eagles) tells Howard Schnellenberger that quarterback Bert Jones should be
put in. The coach doesn't comply, so Irsay fires him.
At halftime of the Nov. 17 game in Miami, Simpson
encourages his fellow Bills to play a more physical game to hinder the Dolphins
later on in the division race. On the second play, he taunts linebacker Nick
Buoniconti and winds up having to limp off the field. With Simpson
ineffective for the rest of the game, Buffalo loses 35-28.
In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, Lance Rentzel
and Fred Dryer, members of the NFC runner-up Rams, pose as reporters,
complete with old-time clothing, and try to be funny. "Do you think the
zone defense is here to stay," Rentzel asks Steelers head coach Chuck
Noll, "and if not, where'd it go?"
Besides Lambert and Swann, other future Hall of Famers
making their debut this year are Raiders TE Dave Casper, Steelers WR John
Stallworth, Steelers center Mike Webster, and Steelers defensive
back Donnie Shell.
Besides Jurgensen, other retiring players this year include future Hall of Famers Bobby Bell, Deacon Jones, Bob Lilly, Jim Otto, and Dave Robinson. Coaching for his final year is another man to be enshrined at Canton, that being Gillman.
One of the latest Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees is
tackle and place-kicker Lou Groza. Another is defensive halfback and
cornerback "Night Train" Lane. The rest of the class consists
of two-way back Tony Canadeo and linebacker Bill George.
Roy Blount's About Three
Bricks Shy of a Load, a.k.a. About Three Bricks Shy... and the Load
Filled Up, is published. This is an acclaimed book about the '73 Steelers.
Former cornerback and current blaxploitation star Fred
Williamson has a short-lived gig joining Frank Gifford and Howard
Cosell on Monday Night Football. Former Detroit Lions DT Alex
Karras replaces Williamson on the program early in the season.
The NFL is reportedly intent on organizing a six-team league in Europe starting in 1975. That will come to pass in 1995.
Jack Kent Cooke
becomes the majority stockholder of the Redskins after the last of deceased
founder George Preston Marshall's stock is retired.
After her breast-cancer surgery in late September, the
Redskins present first lady Betty Ford with a football.
The Raiders' Bubba Smith, in his second year away from the Colts organization, sues for the incident
in Tampa two years before that led to him missing a full season (see NFL '73 entry). Official Ed Marion and the NFL are on
the other side of a $2.5-million lawsuit, as is local man Robert Lastra,
who had been hired to hold the first-down marker. One version of the story is
that Smith hit the marker and Lastra didn't let go.
Ed Meadows, who as a Chicago Bears defensive tackle in 1956 was infamous for a late hit on Bobby Layne of the Lions, one that ignited an already hot discussion about football violence, shoots and ends it all Oct. 22. He was 42, and he had played for four teams over six years.
Don McCafferty, the
Lions' head coach, dies of a heart attack July 28.
Does it feel a bit drafty? A selection of
hockey events from the '74-75 season is coming Sept. 27.
[EDIT 5:59-6:02 a.m.: A couple of sources seem to differ with the account of Schnellenberger's firing. I am removing a few details that Football Hall of SHAME may have embellished.]
[EDIT 9-8, 11:32-33 p.m.: Changed font size.]
[EDITS 9-9, 9:28-9:50 a.m.: The Super Bowl was on NBC that time, not CBS. Also, made some adjustments.]
[EDIT 12-8, 6:53-54 a.m: Gillman's name is in bold on first reference, so it doesn't need to be later on. Removed that boldface and the first name from the future Hall of Famers retiring item.]
