Bottom of the Bird Cage 4/20

It’s the 110th day of the year.

On April 20, 1912, the first game was played at Fenway Park in Boston and on April 20, 1916 the Chicago Cubs played their first game at Weeghman Park, which became Wrigley Field.

It’s Patriots Day in Boston, so they’ll be running the 113th Boston Marathon on Monday. There are 26,384 entrants in the race that will start in Hopkinton and roll through Framingham, Natick, Wellesley and Newton before arriving in Boston.

And born on April 20 was former player-Heisman Trophy winner-now coach Steve Spurrier, who arrived in 1945 in Miami Beach. One of his best lines of Spurrier’s colorful coaching career came when he heard that a fire burned 20 books at the dorm used by the Auburn football team.

Spurrier said: “But the real tragedy is that 15 hadn’t been colored yet.”

From the Associated Press: Felix “Doc” Blanchard, the 1945 Heisman Trophy winner and Army’s Mr. Inside in one of college football’s most famous backfields, has died. He was 84. Blanchard’s daughter, Mary Blanchard, told The Associated Press late Sunday night in a phone interview that her father died of pneumonia at home in Bulverde, a small town in central Texas, earlier in the day.

Mary Blanchard said her father had been living with her and husband for about the past 20 years and he had been in good health until recently coming down with pneumonia. “He’s been strong all his life,” she said.

The bruising fullback Blanchard, listed at 6 feet, 208 pounds, and Glenn Davis, aka Mr. Outside, helped Army win consecutive national titles in 1944-45. Notre Dame coach Ed McKeever was quoted as saying about Blanchard in 1944: “I’ve just seen Superman in the flesh. He wears No. 35 and goes by the name of Blanchard.”

A superstar from another era, when there were more important things for an able young man to handle. Makes you wonder if given the same choice today, how many young athletes would pick the NFL over military service. We know that Pat Tillman made a decision to serve his country. Of course, back in the 1940s a Heisman Trophy winner wasn’t getting paid enough by the NFL to take care of the rest of his life. Blanchard and Glenn Davis were two of the great figures in the history of American football. RIP Mr. Inside.

From the New York Times: As athletic teams create new ways to cope with the recession, there is one desperate example they would rather not follow. A team would need to dodge bill collectors and stop paying employees to set records for economic hardship. A team would need to become the second coming of the San Antonio Gunslingers.

Even with sponsors vaporizing faster than a 401(k), it seems unlikely that a current professional sports team will run out of money and force its coaches and players to go one-third of the season without compensation. But that was what happened roughly 25 years ago when cash-flow issues turned the most financially challenged team in the United States Football League, if not all sports, from professional to amateur. The rock-bottom moment for the Gunslingers arrived during their 1985 season when, after a game in Jacksonville, Fla., the team’s chartered plane sat on the runway because the owner had not paid for the flight home. “We wondered if we’d have to hitchhike,” recalled Bill Bradley, an assistant coach. “Or walk.”

Gunslingers paychecks, after bouncing throughout the season, stopped altogether with four games left. Strangely enough, the coaches and players voted to finish the 1985 season without being paid. They won two of the four remaining games.

MORE

Not sure what brought this story out of the basement of football history this past weekend but it was a great reminder of a different time and place. Twenty-five years ago when the U.S.F.L. was very successful in some cities, but obviously that group did not include San Antonio.

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
A few years ago, the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers would have been drooling at the sight of this year’s draft class, which is loaded with “hybrid” pass rushers. When the Patriots and Steelers were the only teams running 3-4 defensive systems, they had their pick of some of the supreme athletes who were considered too small to play defensive end but not athletic enough to play outside linebacker in a traditional 4-3 system.

These days, with as many as 12 teams expected to run at least some 3-4 schemes this year, the competition for first-round prospects Brian Orakpo, Aaron Maybin, Everette Brown and Larry English will be fierce.

“I think there’s an awful lot of teams playing the 3-4 defense now, certainly compared to 2000 when I came to New England, ” Patriots Coach Bill Belichick said at the NFL Scouting Combine. “Now you have teams in our division, many teams in the AFC, a couple of teams in the NFC. That’s made these positions, the outside linebacker position, the 3-4 nose tackle position, very competitive and very unique from the 4-3 complementary spots.

“Scheme has an awful lot to do with how those players are evaluated from club to club.”

MORE

The Chiefs will not be a classic 3-4 defense, but they will play a version of the scheme and that now puts them in the market for these hybrid players. It would seem to be an area where Pioli/Haley spends some time when considering players to select in the draft. At 2-14, the Chiefs could truly go best athlete available and help the team with every pick. But I would expect at least one of their seven choices to be one of these so-called tweeners.