Right Place Wrong Time: '52 Texans (Texas Monthly 3/22/19)

[fgoodwin]

Right Place, Wrong Time: How the 1952 Dallas Texans Flamed Out After One Lackluster Season of Football

https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texa ... as-texans/

The true story of my family’s brief ownership of the last NFL franchise to go bankrupt.

BY CONNELL MILLER DATE MAR 22, 2019

The author is the son of Texans' co-owner Connell Miller and the nephew of owner Giles Miller.

[rhickok1109]

Right Place, Wrong Time: How the 1952 Dallas Texans Flamed Out After One Lackluster Season of Football

https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texa ... as-texans/

The true story of my family’s brief ownership of the last NFL franchise to go bankrupt.

BY CONNELL MILLER DATE MAR 22, 2019

The author is the son of Texans' co-owner Connell Miller and the nephew of owner Giles Miller.

Thanks for that link, Fred. It's a really interesting article.

I saw what I believe was the last game the Texans played while they were still based in Dallas, when the Packers beat them 42-14 in Green Bay.

Their QB that day was Frank Tripucka. It was the last season of a not very successful NFL career for him, but he came out of retirement 8 years later to become the Denver Broncos' first QB. They also had two notable black players, Buddy Young and George Taliaferro.

[John Grasso]

Their QB that day was Frank Tripucka. It was the last season of a not very successful NFL career for him, but he came out of retirement 8 years later to become the Denver Broncos' first QB. They also had two notable black players, Buddy Young and George Taliaferro.

With Young (listed at 5'4") being among the shortest NFL players ever
and Taliaferro one of the first black quarterbacks.

[rhickok1109]

Their QB that day was Frank Tripucka. It was the last season of a not very successful NFL career for him, but he came out of retirement 8 years later to become the Denver Broncos' first QB. They also had two notable black players, Buddy Young and George Taliaferro.

With Young (listed at 5'4") being among the shortest NFL players ever
and Taliaferro one of the first black quarterbacks.

Well, sort of...but Taliaferro played HB much more than he played QB. His rookie year in the AAFC, he played tailback in the single wing, and that's the year that he did most of his passing. I saw him in 5 games against the Packers, and he never played QB in any of those. When he was with the Yanks and Texans, I did see him throw some passes as the tailback from a kind of spread formation that was similar to the shotgun. I wonder how many snaps he actually took as a T-formation QB?

[TanksAndSpartans]

Some offensive players really piled up the stats against the '52 Texans. PFR has McElhenny rushing for 7-170 in the first game and 5-93 in the second. Wish they had given him a few more carries, may have been able to put up a single game rushing mark with some staying power.

Agree with Ralph on Taliaferro - he probably didn't take a lot of snaps as a T QB, but I've seen Telra highlights that show him at that position but make it clear he wasn't there the whole game since the prior or subsequent series you'd see him at a different position. Pollard's biographer mentioned Pollard as a QB for Hammond, but ironically it wasn't necessarily a complement to be there - the TB played the pivotal role in a single-wing offense and in that sense I would say Pollard was the first black player to play the pivotal role in an offense.

I thought of Follis too, but the s-w didn't exist yet so the QB really was the QB and the HBs were really halfbacks (The post '07 box scores are trickier to look at because you can't tell if the LHB was a halfback or TB). Here's a game in '04 where Massillon blew out Shelby with Follis at right-half where he split time with Ted Nesser.

1904-Massillon-Shelby.png (120.21 KiB) Viewed 12654 times

[conace21]

A lot of players had career games against the 1950-52 Colts/Yanks/Texans

Baltimore Colts:
In week 2, Dub Jones had touchdown runs of 60 and 11 yards. Ken Carpenter ran for 100 yards on 3 carries. So much for 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 against Baltimore. Bob Shaw caught five of them. Oh, and the Cardinals 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 in the first game against. 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.