October 26, 1952: Wild Man Willey

October 26, 1952: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants 14-10, thanks in part to the efforts of Norm Willey, a 24-year-old defensive end from West Virginia. There appears to be no surviving film of this game, but Hugh Brown of the Philadelphia newspaper The Evening Bulletin
wrote, "Willey awed inhabitants of the Polo Grounds by dumping New York Giants quarterback Charlie Conerly 17 times as he attempted to pass."

The term "sack" hadn't yet been used to describe such a play. It would be years before Los Angeles Rams defensive end Deacon Jones came up with the term. Since passing ahead of the line of scrimmage is illegal, those 17 attempts could only have happened behind it -- therefore, they were sacks.

So unless Brown got it really wrong, "Wild Man" Willey sacked Conerly 17 times. In one game. To paraphrase a later Philly sports legend, "Not a season, not a season, not a season: We talkin' 'bout a game."

Interestingly, given what happened at that same stadium a little more than a year earlier, the name of the Eagles' starting quarterback was Bobby Thomason -- not quite "Bobby Thomson."

Willey wasn't huge, not even by the standards of his time: He was 6-foot-2 and 224 pounds. He must have been fast, though. At a time when seasons were 12 games long, he appears to have gotten 20 to 30 sacks a season.

Officially, the single-game record is 7, by Derrick Thomas of the Kansas City Chiefs in 1990; the single-season record is 22 1/2, by Michael Strahan of the Giants in 2001, and tied by T.J. Watt of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2021; and the career record is 200 by Bruce Smith, from 1985 to 2003. If Brown was even half-off with his account, Thomas' record goes by the wayside, and the Strahan/Watt record is probably wrong as well.

So, is the record legit? There is no surviving film of the game, so we can't check that way. The Bulletin was the only paper to mention it the next day. The Inquirer, the Daily News, the Trenton Times, the Camden Post (South Jersey's largest paper is now named the Courier-Post), The Press of Atlantic City, the News-Journal (Delaware's largest paper), and, covering the game for New York, the papers of New York City and North Jersey didn't mention it.

There is one noticeable backup: The next week, the Eagles were supposed to play the Green Bay Packers, and, in a preview, the Green Bay Press-Citizen credited Willey with 13 sacks, which would still be far and away the record. (The Packers won, 13-12.)

Paul Zimmerman, later to be Sports Illustrated's lead NFL writer for decades, was at Columbia University at the time, and claimed to have been at the game, covering it for the Columbia Spectator. He kept a play-by-play log, and, hearing the Willey story long after the fact, checked his own notes from that game. The Eagles, as a team, had 14 sacks according to him -- 8 by Willey, which would still be a record, and 6 by Pete Pihos, which would be 1 short of the official record.

Willey played for the Eagles from 1950 to 1957. He remained in the Philadelphia area, coaching at Pennsville Memorial High School in Salem County, on the New Jersey end of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. He died in 2011, outliving Thomas, a victim of a car crash.

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October 26, 1952 was a Sunday. These other NFL games were played that day:

* The Cleveland Browns beat the Washington Redskins, 19-15 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Chicago Cardinals, 34-28 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Detroit Lions beat the Green Bay Packers, 52-17 at Green Bay City Stadium. That should not be a shock: The Lions went on to win the NFL Championship that season, and the Packers went on to finish 6-6.

* The Los Angeles Rams beat the Chicago Bears, 31-7 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* And the San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Texans, 48-21 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. Contrary to legend, which says that the Texans became the Baltimore Colts the next season, the team was actually folded, this created a new place in the NFL for 1953, into which a new Colts team came in, replacing the one that played from 1947 to 1950.

A new Dallas Texans was founded in the AFL in 1960, becoming the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963. But the '52 Texans became neither the Colts, nor the Chiefs, nor any other team -- including a '53 Texans.

The NBA season wouldn't start for another 5 days. But there were 2 games played in the NHL that day. The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-2 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a 1-1 tie at the Chicago Stadium. The Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs were not scheduled.