THE Game I'll Never Forget Chuck Bednarik

Football Digest, March, 2001 by Chuck O'Donnell

The Hall-of-Famer's legendary hit on Frank Gifford in 1960 is a keeper, as is the NFL title-game win against the Packers later that season

I DO 10 OR 12 CARD SHOWS A YEAR, and someone always wants me to autograph that famous picture of me standing over the New York Giants' Frank Gifford at Yankee Stadium in 1960.

It was one of those typically tough games between the Giants and Eagles in the middle of November. I had just hit Gifford when that picture was taken. He was doing a down-and-in pattern, and I saw him coming; I just hit him high in the chest about as hard as I could. His head snapped, and he went flying one way and the ball went flying another. Since I was following the ball, I didn't know where Gifford had gone. One of our linebackers, Chuck Weber, was scrambling to get the ball.

My eyes were closed and my hands clenched, and I just happened to turn around. Unbeknownst to me, Gifford was laying on the ground, unconscious. I had no idea he was there. There's another photo in which I'm crouching down to make sure he is all right.

But, anyhow, someone snapped that picture of me standing over Gifford. At a card show, someone once asked me, "Mr. Bednarik, what were you saying right there?" I replied, "I was saying, `This [bleeping] game is over.'" So now at shows, they want me to write that on the photo, but I won't. I'll just write "This f -- game is over" and then sign it.

You see, I was the offensive center for the Eagles that year, but then one of our linebackers, Bob Pellegrini, got injured. I rode to work every day with our coach, Buck Shaw, because he lived nearby--he was a great person. As we were driving one day, he asked me if I could try to go both ways. I said, "Sure, no problem."

And it worked out well. Nine times that season, I ended up going both ways for the entire game. People always ask me, "How did you do it?" Well, I did it because I knew how to. In sports, if you have the mental makeup, you can do it physically.

It wasn't like Deion Sanders, who thinks he's a two-way player. When you play center, you make contact on every play. When you play linebacker, you make contact on every play. And when you snap the ball on field goals, extra points, and punts, you get the crap kicked out of you.

In my opinion, linebacker was the toughest--and the most rewarding--of the positions I played. With offensive center, you're right there in front--you have to know how to block and so forth, but no one watches the center except the coaches. At linebacker, if you make a vicious tackle or an interception, you're standing out.

Like the hit on Gifford. People look at that and say it was one of the best hits ever. It will never die, and not because it helped us beat the Giants, 17-10, in an important game. (The Giants were right behind us in the Eastern Division, so we needed to win that game.)

People remember that hit for two reasons. First, I tell people that if you do anything big, do it in New York. And second, since it happened to a revered guy like Frank, it'll never die. If that tackle was against anybody else, in any other city, it would have been forgotten.

The other hit I made that people will never forget--and I won't, either--was against the Green Bay Packers' Jim Taylor inside our 10 in the final seconds of the NFL title game later that year. Taylor was not an easy man to tackle--he was a big, tough son of a gun. That whole team was big and tough. Hornung, Gregg, Starr, Ringo, Nitschke, McGee, Kramer--these guys came to beat you, and beat your brains in the process. And Lombardi was just the man to lead them into battle.

But we had a good team, too. I wouldn't say we were the best team that year, but we had the best quarterback in Norm Van Brocklin. He was very calm. Our running back, Clarence Peaks, got hurt that year, so rookie Ted Dean stepped in and played well. Van Brocklin had some good targets in Pete Retzlaff and Tommy McDonald. We had good players on defense too, including Marion Campbell, Pellegrini, Chuck Weber, Maxie Baughan, Tom Brookshier, and Don Burroughs.

Anyway, the game against the Packers was a seesaw affair. We led at halftime 10-6, then they took a 13-10 lead in the forth quarter, and then we went up 17-13. But all our fans in Franklin Field that day knew that with Bart Starr and Taylor, and all those other guys they had, the Packers still were going to take one more shot.

And they did, driving down the field with time running out. They got into our territory, and Starr dropped back to pass. Since there were only seconds remaining, everyone knew this could be their last play of the game.

I guess everyone was covered downfield, because he threw a little swing pass to Taylor, who caught it and then put his head down and started running. The clock was ticking. A couple of our guys tried to tackle him, but he was a big guy, and they just bounced off him. He must have run about 15 or 16 yards already when he came rumbling toward me.

I was the only one standing between him and the endzone, so I knew I had to tackle him. I gave him a big bear-hug tackle up high and wrestled him to the ground at the nine-yard line. Laying there on top of him, I could see the game clock ticking down: five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... zero.