DENVER — As the NFL celebrates its 100th birthday today, allow me to submit that era to era, no two players dominated the league more than Green Bay’s Don Hutson did in the 1930s-40s or Cleveland’s Jim Brown in the 1950s-60s.
Hutson was the Babe Ruth of the NFL.
In 1919, Babe Ruth hit 29 home runs to shatter the Major League home run record. Gavvy Cravath was second that year with 12 homers. The next year, Ruth hit 54 homers while next-best George Sisler had 19. This was after Ruth was among baseball’s most dominant pitchers during the World War I era from 1915-18.
In the fall of 1941 – the year Joe DiMaggio had his 56-game hitting steak and Ted Williams hit .406 – Hutson led the NFL with 58 catches for 738 yards and 10 touchdowns.
The second-best receiver that year, Dick Humbert, had 29 catches for 332 yards and 3 touchdowns.
The separation between Hutson and second-best was even greater in the next season of 1942. Hutson had an incredible 74 catches for 1,211 yards and 17 touchdowns in an 11-game season.
Second-best in receptions, Pop Ivy, had 27 catches for 259 yards and 0 touchdowns.
Like Ruth, Hutson multi-tasked. In that same season of 1942, Hutson had 7 interceptions as a defensive back. In 1943, Huston had 8 interceptions with league-leading 197 return yards. He again led the league by wide margins with 47 catches for 776 yards and 11 touchdowns in that 10-game, 1943 season.
Granted, those were the war years when many NFL players were fighting in World War II and there were no black players allowed during this period. But there were no black players in the major leagues during Ruth’s era, either, yet he is widely referred to as baseball’s all-time greatest player while Hutson – who was also a league-leading placekicker -- is largely ignored in essays and discussions about the best player in football history.
Brown is occasionally compared to Willie Mays in that they were not only the best black players in their respective sports at a time when TV sets were brought into Americans living rooms, but the best players, period. Or maybe Brown better compares to pitcher Sandy Koufax in that Brown only played 9 seasons but led the NFL in rushing eight times.
In 1958, Brown’s second season, he led the league with 1,527 yards and 17 touchdowns.
The second-best ball carrier, Alan Ameche, rushed for 791 yards and 8 touchdowns. (Never mind that Ameche would gain greater immortal fame at season’s end by scoring on a 1-yard, sudden-death touchdown plunge to cap the Greatest Game Ever Played.)
In 1963, Brown shattered the NFL record with 1,863 rushing yards in a 14-game season. Jim Taylor was way-back next with 1,018.
Some argue Washington’s Sammy Baugh from the late-1930s on through the 1940s was among the most dominant, but he had close rivals in Chicago’s Sid Luckman and Green Bay’s Cecil Isbell. Just as Tom Brady, the contemporary's choice for best-ever QB even though the great Bill Belichick (but greater than Vince Lombardi or Curly Lambeau?) was his coach, lost more than he won in postseason match-ups against Peyton Manning.
For the past decade or so, Jerry Rice has been widely proclaimed as the league’s G.O.A.T. And this is based on Rice’s career numbers of 1,549 receptions for 22,895 yards and 197 touchdowns that long seem unassailable – but now seem approachable if Larry Fitzgerald keeps playing through a couple 17-game seasons.
But from year-to-year, Rice was closely matched by the likes of Sterling Sharpe, Michael Irvin, Herman Moore and Cris Carter. Even in Rice’s most dominant season of 1995 -- when he had 122 catches for 1,848 yards and 15 touchdowns -- Moore had more catches with 123, and Carter had more touchdowns with 17, while Isaac Bruce was a close second with 1,781 receiving yards.
Today is a reminder that “greatest of all-time” is not restricted to the past 20 years or so. The NFL is 100 years old, all time. And the league’s greatest players ever were Don Hutson and Jim Brown.
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