Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

The 49ers gave up 5 draft picks for a broken down OJ Simpson. At least in hindsight a broken down OJ Simpson. Why did they do this?

MatthewToy wrote:The 49ers gave up 5 draft picks for a broken down OJ Simpson. At least in hindsight a broken down OJ Simpson. Why did they do this?

I watched an NFL Films Presents episode once where they talked about Joe Thomas. Somebody (I think that it was Randy Cross) said that Eddie D. knew the team would be bad, and he needed a reason to get fans to the games.

It became known as the Lawrence Welk trade..."A one and a two and a three," which was of course Lawrence Welk's signature line on his cheesey 60s/70s musical variety show when he would get the band started on a song. The Joe Thomas era as the 49ers' GM began with him burning all of the team's memorabilia...tragic. By then I think he had gone off the deep end, and did not achieve the same success he had building the Dolphins and Colts.

From a fan's point of view, the feeling I remember is that O.J. ran for more than 500 yards in a little more than six games in 1977, so he still had 1,000-yard form. After he passed 10,000 yards in 1977 (only the second runner to do so at that point), he seemed poised to eventually pass Jim Brown's 12,312 yards in two years or less, especially with the two extra games in the schedule starting in 1978.

And in the first few games of 1978, O.J. looked pretty good, rushing for 281 yards in the first four games, well over a 1,000-yard pace. He got injured in week 10 or he might have had those 1,000 yards, even with such a weak team.

Kind of staggering that from week 5 in 1976 through week 16 in 1979, O.J.'s teams went 4-36 in games he played in.

Also, I found out later in Chuck Knox's book "Hard Knox", the incredible snow job Knox persuaded O.J. to pull on the rest of the league before the Bills traded him. After being named Bills coach, Knox met with O.J. and basically told him that he wanted to trade him, but for that to happen O.J. had to say that 1) he was happy in Buffalo, 2) he didn't want to be traded, 3) his knee was 100 percent fine, and 4) he wanted to play at least three more years, which was the length of his current contract that was paying him $700,000 per year. That gave Knox bargaining power, and Joe Thomas of the 49ers fell for it.

I think it's truly amazing that the 49ers could give up so much for Jim Plunkett and O.J. Simpson, not get a whole lot out of them, and still win the Super Bowl a few years later.

It's sorta off topic, but is anybody else here watching the OJ 30 for 30 documentary series? I've been watching it and it is outstanding. The 30 for 30 series has always offered a high quality documentary, and this one is no exception. The first part showed a lot of his football career and I have to admit I don't think there has ever been another running back who had the moves he did, who could change direction or move laterally the way he could, but it is somehow politically incorrect to talk about what a great running back OJ was in his prime.

I have not been a fan of his since 6/11/94, but I followed the trial closely (it was impossible not to back in the mid 90's) and I'm learning things about OJ from this show even I didn't know. The documentary isn't trying to draw conclusions or try to paint him as being set up by the LA police or anything, it is just laying out all the facts and interviewing a lot of the important figures in the case; I was not aware that F Lee Bailey was still alive but he is among the interviewees. I would recommend this highly, and even if you are just interested in seeing his college and pro football highlights, just watch part one.

In terms of ability to change direction and run laterally, I think the most similar and possibly even greater back was Gale Sayers.

Evan wrote:I think it's truly amazing that the 49ers could give up so much for Jim Plunkett and O.J. Simpson, not get a whole lot out of them, and still win the Super Bowl a few years later.

Not to mention going from a pair of 2-14 seasons to 6-10 and then winning the Super Bowl. And what is probably more amazing is that the Super Bowl XVI win wasn't some sort of fluke, that the 49ers continued to build upon it and became a model NFL franchise, some might say THE model NFL franchise, in the 80's and 90's, until the franchise finally had to start over from square one once again in the middle of the last decade.

After winning Super Bowl XVI, I never expected the 49ers to become the team of the decade. At the time, they looked to me like a fluke; usually when a team comes out of nowhere they usually go back from whence they came pretty quickly. When a team comes on the scene to stay, like the Dolphins or Steelers in the 70's, there is a visible building process which takes 5 years or so and they get into the playoffs a couple times before they finally win it all. The 49ers cut that process to two years, and were the first team since the 1968 Jets to win the Super Bowl with no previous postseason experience.

On paper, they didn't have much going for them once you got past Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott and Freddie Solomon and Dwight Clark and Hacksaw Reynolds. Once you got past those guys, how many of the rest of the roster were on the Super Bowl XIX winning roster? Keena Turner is the only one who comes to mind but there must have been a couple others. For the most part, Walsh pretty much turned over most of the roster from the 1981 team by 1984.

Rupert Patrick wrote:

Evan wrote:I think it's truly amazing that the 49ers could give up so much for Jim Plunkett and O.J. Simpson, not get a whole lot out of them, and still win the Super Bowl a few years later.

Not to mention going from a pair of 2-14 seasons to 6-10 and then winning the Super Bowl. And what is probably more amazing is that the Super Bowl XVI win wasn't some sort of fluke, that the 49ers continued to build upon it and became a model NFL franchise, some might say THE model NFL franchise, in the 80's and 90's, until the franchise finally had to start over from square one once again in the middle of the last decade.

After winning Super Bowl XVI, I never expected the 49ers to become the team of the decade. At the time, they looked to me like a fluke; usually when a team comes out of nowhere they usually go back from whence they came pretty quickly. When a team comes on the scene to stay, like the Dolphins or Steelers in the 70's, there is a visible building process which takes 5 years or so and they get into the playoffs a couple times before they finally win it all. The 49ers cut that process to two years, and were the first team since the 1968 Jets to win the Super Bowl with no previous postseason experience.

On paper, they didn't have much going for them once you got past Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott and Freddie Solomon and Dwight Clark and Hacksaw Reynolds. Once you got past those guys, how many of the rest of the roster were on the Super Bowl XIX winning roster? Keena Turner is the only one who comes to mind but there must have been a couple others. For the most part, Walsh pretty much turned over most of the roster from the 1981 team by 1984.

What's ironic is that the 1979-81 drafts didn't bring in a boatload of talent (from a depth standpoint), but they obviously brought in a number of the cornerstones: Montana and Clark (a late round fluke because he happened to be around when they were checking on Steve Fuller) in '79; Earl Cooper, Jim Stuckey and Keena Turner in '80; Lott, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson in '81.

Two key decisions on the D-Line: they picked up Dwaine Board for nothing because he couldn't crack the Steelers D-Line in 1979, then traded for Fred Dean in 1981. Also in '81, they had the good fortune to pick up Jack Reynolds after the Rams cut him in a contract dispute--after he had made the Pro Bowl.

The 49ers had also a veteran and consistent offensive line in 1981: Keith Fahnhorst, Randy Cross, John Ayers and Fred Quillan all came before Walsh (and all of them were starters also in 1984), and Dan Audick was a key addition, and Bubba Paris, drafted in 1982, replaced very well Audick in 1984.

I remember that in OJ's final year in Buffalo, there was a joke about an OJ doll: You wind it up and it falls down. Some people got angry when hearing this joke because, "After all OJ did for the Buffalo Bills."

Things have sure changed since then.