It used to be a league rule to play both ways. Now it’s a commercial break. Deion Sanders has turned the word “both” into a one-syllable enterprise. When he lines up on offense and defense for the Dallas Cowboys against the Bears in Soldier Field Monday night, keep in mind he will be standing on the memories of Sid Luckman, Don Hutson, Bulldog Turner, George McAfee, Sammy Baugh and hundreds of other great two-way players, gone but not forgotten.
Sanders will open the 1996 Monday night national television season as the first two-way player since Roy Green of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1981. Green was a defensive back who ran pass patterns so well in practice one day that coach Jim Hanifan said why not? By the 1982 season, Green was a full-time receiver.
What Sanders is doing will be packaged, promoted, praised and probed. Already, he wanted to change numbers from 21 to 2, as in two-way. He was turned down in a curious league decision, which somehow failed to notice the potential new revenue stream in jersey sales.
There will be worry about whether Sanders’ hamstrings and lungs will hold out. They wonder whether he can take a hit. He became an all-star defensive back without delivering many hits, so maybe he can avoid them too.
They will call Sanders one-of-a-kind and marvel over his many skills. What they can’t call him is ahead of his time. Sanders has a long way to go to catch up to the performers of old.
Consider what Luckman did in the 1943 championship game when the Bears beat the Redskins 41-21 in Wrigley Field. The quarterback threw five touchdown passes. He was the game’s leading rusher with 64 yards, 30 more than Bronko Nagurski. He intercepted two passes. Accounts show great Redskins quarterback Baugh was knocked out of the game in the first half trying to make a tackle. They fail to mention he was trying to tackle Luckman on a punt return.
“I could try to avoid him or run over him,” recalled Luckman, now 79 and still living in Chicago. “Unfortunately, my knee, which I was pumping as hard as I could, hit him in the head. Sort of knocked him out. Not a nice thing to do, but if I had a choice of scoring a touchdown, that’s one thing. If I could go over Sammy Baugh and slow him up a little, that was my choice because he was so good. Off the field, he wasn’t worth a darn.”
During the 1943 regular season, Baugh led the league in passing, punting and interceptions.
What made 1943 significant was that the league had adopted free substitution, so players weren’t required to play both ways. The Luckmans and Baughs were too good to sit out. In 1946, the league withdrew free substitution again, limiting subs to no more than three at a time. This forced two-way play until 1950, when the era of two-platoon football and specialization began.
It has developed now to such overspecialization that the late Jim Finks once proposed limits so fans could tell who was on the field. There are third-down rushers and nickel backs, first-down run-stuffers, field goal kickers and kickoff artists, “possession” receivers and receivers out of the backfield.
Green Bay’s Hutson was the Jerry Rice of his day. He caught 99 touchdown passes, still third-most in league history.
“One time, they switched Hutson over to my side and I was yelling to McAfee, `Hurry up, come over here. I got Hutson on this side.’ Man, I needed help,” Luckman said.
Turned out Hutson also was the Deion Sanders of his day. After playing defensive end for four years, he switched to defensive back and intercepted 39 passes by the end of his career. Hutson also found time to kick short field goals and extra points, not to mention bat .375 for the Alabama baseball team.
McAfee may have been the Bears’ most spectacular all-around player. In his second year, 1941, he became the league’s most feared runner, averaging 7.3 yards on 65 carries out of the backfield, 31.6 yards on punt returns and 31.9 yards on kickoff returns. He also led the club with six interceptions, averaging 13 yards a return. From 1942-45, he went to war.
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Of two-way practices, Luckman said, “It was more than tired; we were exhausted. But we got used to it.
“If players today started in high school to play both ways, they could possibly do it in the pros. But to come to the pros and play both ways, it’s difficult.
“I’ve always wondered why some of the great defensive backs aren’t on offense. They’d be tremendous. I guess they’re too valuable on defense. Deion Sanders is a tremendous athlete. But before the season is over, he’s not going to be in there all the time. He’ll be pretty much one or the other.”