October 16, 1927: Red Grange Gets His Knee Wrecked

October 16, 1927: The Chicago Bears beat the NFL version of the New York Yankees, 12-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Hall of Fame center and (as we would say today) nose tackle George Trafton tackles his once-and-future Bears teammate, Red Grange, the biggest star in football at the time, and wrecks Grange's knee.

That tackle may have changed the history of football: "After that," the Galloping Ghost said, "I was just another straight-ahead runner, and the world is full of straight-ahead runners." The greatest player in the game missed the rest of the 1927 season and all of 1928, before going back to the Bears in 1929, and, like many great athletes forced to go both ways, changed his focus and improved his defense, making a game-saving tackle at the end of the 1933 NFL Championship Game, which his coach and team owner, George Halas, called "the greatest defensive play I ever saw."

But Grange was essentially done as a superstar at age 24, and played his last game at 31. And the reason was that tackle by Trafton. Although Trafton was considered a mean player, no one has ever suggested that this was a dirty play.

George Trafton

If Grange had failed in his rookie season of 1925, the NFL might well have folded. But, going in the other direction, if Grange had been able to do in New York what he'd done in Chicago, the NFL might have gotten much bigger much sooner -- and maybe, today, we'd have a surviving football team in New York named after baseball's Yankees, not one named after baseball's Giants. After all, it was going from Boston to New York that made Babe Ruth what he became. Instead of the greatest player of the early days of the NFL, Grange might have been recognized as the greatest player in the 1st 100 years of the League.

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October 16, 1927 was a Sunday. German novelist Günter Grass, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born on this day.

Baseball season had ended the week before, with the New York Yankees sweeping the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season didn't start until November 15. But these other NFL games were played that day:

* The New York Giants lost to the Cleveland Bulldogs, 6-0 at the Polo Grounds.

* The Pottsville Maroons beat the Providence Steam Roller, 6-3 at the Providence Cycledrome.

* The Frankford Yellow Jackets beat the Buffalo Bisons, 23-0 at Bison Stadium in Buffalo.

* The Green Bay Packers beat the Chicago Cardinals, 13-0 at Green Bay City Stadium.

* And the Dayton Triangles and the Duluth Eskimos each had a bye week.