A History of Bonehead Moves

Jim Marshall. The newer generation of football fans (read: the author and his contemporaries) hear the name Jim marshall, and they don't think of his 127 career sacks (unofficial, since the sack wasn't an official stat until 1982), or his former NFL record 282 consecutive games (he has only been passed by punter Jeff Feagles, so he's still the REAL Iron Man), or his NFL record 29 fumble recoveries. Well, they don't think of 28 of those 29 recoveries. They do think of this one, from a game against the 49ers on October 25, 1964:



When you hear someone say "Jim Marshall ran a fumble back the wrong way", you make a couple of assumptions. First, you assume that the play was around midfield, since players generally have some awareness of field position, but the recovery took place on the 49ers 35 yard line. Second, you assume that there was some kind of scrum, so there would be some kind of confusion as to which way either team was going, but the 49ers player was establishing forward progress in the open field right up until the time he fumbled the ball. You also assume that Marshall would have been spun around or in some way disoriented at some point during the play, but he just picks the ball up and starts running (the wrong way, that is). Finally, you assume that he was just running for his life, and never looked back, but he looked back several times, presumably thinking that his team mates were waving their arms, pointing the other way, jumping up and down, shouting "dear God, stop running the wrong way", burying their faces in their hands, punching themselves in the testicles, crying, vomiting, and getting a fix on him with their sniper rifles all in celebration of his apparent touchdown.

During the author's extensive research (searching for Jim Marshall on Wikipedia), it was discovered that Marshall redeemed himself by scoring a sack and a more conventional fumble recovery which would help the Vikings come back to win the game. Also, Roy "Wrong Way" Riegels sent Marshall a letter reading "Welcome to the club". Riegels's own wrong way incident occured in none other than the Grandaddy Of Them All, the 1929 Rose Bowl.