By Darin Hayes On September 1, 1903, a man named Ray Flaherty was born, and he was both a player and a head coach in the early NFL. He spent a total of 18 years in the Pro Football. Flaherty played college football at Washington State, and then he later transferred to Gonzaga, where he played a little ball there, too. After school, which was in 1926, he joined the original American Football League.
A team called the L.A. Wildcats played back then, and he played end. And shortly after that, he left them and joined the New York Yankees, playing alongside Red Grange. They were often referred to as Red Grange’s New York Yankees, both in 1927 and 1928, where he played.
After his Yankees franchise folded, Ray played in the NFL for the New York Football Giants. When his playing days were over, he took the job of coaching the Boston Redskins in 1936, and in his seven seasons at the helm of the team, his Redskins won two NFL championships and four division titles. Now, we have to keep this in perspective, that a guy by the name of George Hallis had a mighty team called the Chicago Bears back then.
They were the dominant team in the NFL in this era. And no matter how dominant they were, Flaherty and the Redskins met them three times in the NFL title game during those seven years. And Flaherty’s team triumphed two out of three times against the vaunted Bears.
So, after Flaherty left the Redskins, after the 1942 NFL championship game, he went to serve his country in World War II. After the war, Flaherty returned to coach the New York Yankees, a new brand of the New York Yankees, in the brand new All-American Football Conference, and quickly guided the Yanks to two straight AAFC titles. He coached his final season in 1949 with the AAFC’s Chicago Hornets, and closed a brilliant coaching career with a grand record of 80 wins, 37 losses, and 5 ties, an awesome 676 winning percentage.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrined this great coach in the entry class of 1976
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