Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

How about Leo Nomellini? Was he ever a 2-way player during an entire game, or was it either strictly OL or strictly DL? Did he and Bednarik (or Art Donovan) ever have any notable clashes against each other?

74_75_78_79_ wrote:How about Leo Nomellini? Was he ever a 2-way player during an entire game, or was it either strictly OL or strictly DL? Did he and Bednarik (or Art Donovan) ever have any notable clashes against each other?

This is a topic I'm interested in too - the question of who played a significant amount of time on both sides of the ball in the same game in the 50s. Pihos comes to mind, but I think by the 50s, he was on one side of the ball or the other. I think I read an interview where Tank Younger mentioned playing 58 minutes per game, but I'm not sure what the years were.

Marion Motley was a great linebacker in addition to playing fullback.

Shipley wrote:Marion Motley was a great linebacker in addition to playing fullback.

Right - good one - I think he made some plays on a goal line stand in one of the championship games, but what I remember reading from Paul Brown was that he used Motley at LB situationally in short yardage. Speaking of championships, I read Elroy Hirsch got in at DB in '51, but what I was really looking for are examples like Bednarik in that '60 season - game after game playing both ways for the whole game or at least most of it in the 50s.

TanksAndSpartans wrote:

JohnTurney wrote:

bachslunch wrote:Question: which position did Bednarik play better? Just curious.

my opinion is linebacker. easier to see the big plays. I always list him more as LBer than center...I wish we had a snap count...as LBer played middle, played outside in a way with that "Eagle" defense, over a tackle...to me less a middle linebacker than an outside stack backer.

I looked into this years ago and came to the conclusion that some journalists were confused about the extent he played both ways or maybe it was just easy/convenient not to go into details like which seasons he played which positions, but you didn't have to dig too deep to see he wasn't doing so for his whole career. I'd consider him a linebacker who played some center. I think the 1960 season was a special case where they asked him to play Center too and hopefully film doesn't discredit the fact that he was an iron man for that season and for that reason I don't have a problem with him being called the last of the iron men. Plus, how perfect is it he wore 60, won a title in '60, played 60 minutes in '60.

For what it's worth, in Fatso, Donovan made a comment that Bednarik couldn't block his grandmother or something like that.

I recall that Donovan quote and also said that he and other retired players got tired of the "I'm Mr. Eagle" shtick.

I remember reading this article on Bednarik in a 1993 Sports Illustrated issue. Reading this enlightened me that he wasn't quite the full 60 minute man I thought he was. I'm not trying to take anything away from him but the tale is a little larger than the facts. Below is the link and I pasted some of the notable parts. And for my personal enjoyment I like how the author wrote this and especially the last sentence.

https://www.si.com/vault/1993/09/06/129 ... hia-eagles

He went down hard, left in a heap by a crackback block as naked as it was vicious. Pro football was like that in 1960, a gang fight in shoulder pads, devoid of the high-tech veneer its violence has taken on today. The crackback was legal, and all the Philadelphia Eagles could do about it that Sunday in Cleveland was carry a linebacker named Bob Pellegrini off on his shield.

Buck Shaw, a gentleman coach in this ruffian's pastime, watched for as long as he could, then he started searching the Eagle sideline for someone to throw into the breach. His first choice was already banged up, and after that the standard 38-man NFL roster felt as tight as a hangman's noose. Looking back, you realize that Shaw had only one choice all along.

"Chuck," he said, "get in there."

And Charles Philip Bednarik, who already had a full-time job as Philadelphia's offensive center and a part-time job selling concrete after practice, headed onto the field without a word. Just the way his father had marched off to the open-hearth furnaces at Bethlehem Steel on so many heartless mornings. Just the way Bednarik himself had climbed behind the machine gun in a B-24 for 30 missions as a teenager fighting in World War II. It was a family tradition: Duty called, you answered.

Chuck Bednarik was 35 years old, still imposing at 6'3" and 235 pounds, but also the father of one daughter too many to be what he really had in mind—retired. Jackie's birth the previous February gave him five children, all girls, and more bills than he thought he could handle without football. So here he was in his 12th NFL season, telling himself he was taking it easy on his creaky legs by playing center after all those years as an All-Pro linebacker. The only time he intended to move back to defense was in practice, when he wanted to work up a little extra sweat.

And now, five games into the season, this: Jim Brown over there in the Cleveland huddle, waiting to trample some fresh meat, and Bednarik trying to decipher the defensive terminology the Eagles had installed in the two years since he was their middle linebacker. Chuck Weber had his old job now, and Bednarik found himself asking what the left outside linebacker was supposed to do on passing plays. "Take the second man out of the backfield," Weber said. That was as fancy as it would get. Everything else would be about putting the wood to Jim Brown.

TanksAndSpartans wrote:

Shipley wrote:Marion Motley was a great linebacker in addition to playing fullback.

Right - good one - I think he made some plays on a goal line stand in one of the championship games, but what I remember reading from Paul Brown was that he used Motley at LB situationally in short yardage. Speaking of championships, I read Elroy Hirsch got in at DB in '51, but what I was really looking for are examples like Bednarik in that '60 season - game after game playing both ways for the whole game or at least most of it in the 50s.

I watched every Packer home game, plus every game they played in Chicago and several of the games they played in Detroit, from 1950 through 1955. I even kept track of substitutions and I don't remember anyone on any team playing both ways.

Forgot to add this in my previous post.

All five times the Eagles needed him to be an iron man that season, they won. Even when they tried to take it easy on him by playing him on only one side of the ball, he still wound up doing double duty the way he did the day he nailed Gifford. A rookie took his place at center just long enough to be overmatched by the Giants' blitzes. In came Bednarik, and on the first play he knocked the red-dogging Huff on his dime. "That's all for you, Sam," Bednarik said. "The big guys are in now."

Great posts. Thanks Ralph - I remember you and I discussed before about not making assumptions players played the whole game in any era.

nicefellow31, thanks for the article - that's different from what I remembered as he was playing Center and asked to add LB, not the other way around and just 5 games.

George Connor of the Bears may be a player playing both ways in the 50s...