The Gridiron Legends: Exploring NFL’s Best Fictional Character Nicknames

You're just in time for some great football history as we go into some of the greatest nicknames in NFL history.

In this edition we're going to talk about the fictional characters and comic book nicknames of the NFL.

And it's all coming up in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history on a day to day basis.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

So as we come out of the tunnel of the Sports History Network, let's take the field and go no huddle through the portal of positive gridiron history with pigskindispatch.com.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com hello my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And what a great opportunity we have.

Today to talk about some excell players from history that maybe we don't get to talk a lot about.

And we also have going to bring up some players that we've talked about before and go into our archives and see what some of our guests and maybe even myself said about them so many years ago when we did the the great numbers of the NFL.

And tonight's theme is our great nicknames of fictional characters and comic book characters.

And boy, we have a great list of some of them and we're going to stop and talk about two or three of them in a little bit more detail.

But you know, we have some of these great characters, you know, like Richard Sherman being called Optimus prime and Wayne Sherbet as your Green Lantern, you know, great image there that you have of him.

Robert Brazil of Dr.

Doom being called that.

Curtis Martin, my favorite Martin, Chris Berman of ESPN would always put those little spins on that.

And then we have this guy that played for the team down in Texas.

Now we transition.

Let's go to our Dallas Cowboys quarterback, came from Navy, Roger Staubach.

You know, all American quarterback back was Heisman winner at Navy, great quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys.

Absolutely talking about Captain America, Roger the Dodger.

He had more last second Rescues than Errol Flynn.

He would come back there with his scrambling ability.

He would come out of there and.

And the Cowboys were behind and Dallas and Roger had the ball.

You might as well just call it a day.

It's like he gonna figure out a way to get the Cowboy down if you don't score that last touch.

And he did it off over and over and over and over again.

One of the games that I remember watching was, I think it was, let's see, his very last regular season game.

I remember watching that as a kid and when he played Washington and he brought them back like two or three time, John Riggins was just running all over the, all over the Cowboys and he brought them down the field and he threw a last touch, the last second touchdown pass to Drew Hill in the corner of the end zone at Texas Stadium.

And with like, like nine seconds, nine seconds ago, that was his last regular season game.

And he brought them back down the field and he scored.

And if there was anybody that was Tom brady in the 70s minus the super bowl championships, it was Roger Starbuck because he was just that kind of guy that you gave him a chance, he was going to figure out to get it done.

You know what it means amazing about that.

And it's interesting you say, you know, have a little bit of comparison with Tom Brady.

You know, Staubach, after he won the Heisman, he served a four year commitment to the Navy before he could go in the NFL.

So he was a rookie at age 27 in the NFL.

And so losing those first four sort of learning seasons as a young NFL quarterback probably knocked some of the statistics down.

But he still had an awesome career.

153 touchdowns.

You know, Super bowl winner and MVP is Super Bowl 6.

Just had some great battles, you know, with those Raiders teams and the Steelers teams of the 70s.

Probably if it wasn't for the Steelers, he would have a couple more super bowl victories in there too because he, they, they were definitely Super Bowl 10 and Super Bowl 13 with the Steelers and the Cowboys both four point games.

And strawb, the Cowboys didn't lose because of Staubach.

He was just a tremendous player and you know, growing up a Steelers fan, you know, I remember the 70s pretty avidly.

That's when I started watching football.

But Roger Staubach and Ken Stabler were two of those quarterbacks that were just sort of the, sort of the pain in the butts for the Steelers, you know, and Stabler, you could, you could, you could, you know, dislike the Raiders because they just had sort of that aura about them, you know, and Stabler was sort of that, you know, buccaneer, swashbuckler guy on that Raiders team that, you know, were just the bad guys of the NFL and they sort of like that moniker.

But Roger Staubach, that you said Captain America, you just couldn't dislike the guy because he was just a solid football player and he was a pretty nice guy from everything I've seen.

You know, good, good Christian, very moral.

Dedicated to the Navy for four years since instead of going and making money in the NFL and after winning a Heisman, just.

I mean, there's nothing to.

But all respect for Roger Staubach.

And I could just never dislike the man.

But boy, I hated when the Steelers had to play against him though.

He was a great quarterback.

Well, let me tell you.

I mean, he had to get the hitch in the Navy, okay?

And not only that, he had to come back into the NFL and basically out gun, basically Craig Martin for the starting job.

Because when he.

Because Martin had led the Cowboys to this to Super Bowl 5, you know, and he had to sit behind Morton and maybe a little while behind when he came out of the Navy, I think Don Meredith might have still been playing.

So he had to sit behind 2, 1, 2, very decent quarterback to get his shot.

And he finally got his shot in doing the 71 season when Landry for some reason decided to play both of them at the same time, which was a disaster.

And he finally said it on Roger and the rest is history.

And everybody remembers his first, his very first miracle bringing the Cowboys back.

I think they were down by what, 17 points with two minutes to go against the 49ers one time at Candlestick in the playoffs.

And he brought them back and scored through like three quick, two quick touchdown passes within the span of like 30 seconds to win, you know, to bring them to descendant to the end of the NFC championship game.

And I think in 72 we ended up losing to Washington that year.

But, you know, but that was the.

Original Hail Mary pass his career from that point pass, it's called the Hail Mary against Minnesota in an NFC Championship game.

So great, great quarterback.

Well, another cowboy that had a great nickname was Marion Barber iii.

They called him Marion the Barbarian.

Sort of a fictional name off a Conan and Steve Mongo McMichael.

Another great player coming up there.

And then we have this guy that we talked about in our number 181 series.

On Sports History Network, Arnie Chapman, one of his fan favorites is Calvin Johnson Megatron.

You know, this man was just a beast among men.

And you know this, he had 130 starts in 135 games that he dressed for.

And the reason they called them Megatron, he was just a big guy for one, we just told you his size.

And he was very robotic like and very smooth and fluid in his motions and reminded whoever named him that I think it was some of his co players of the character in the Transformers movies and comic books from the years back that that was sort of the bad guy.

He was a big dominant player in those movies.

That's where Megatron got his name.

Still, he holds the Lions records for most receptions 731 and receiving yards 11,619.

You think about all those great traditions of, you know, awesome players with the Lions.

Calvin Johnson definitely right up there at the top, you know, very dominant player.

Tremendous player, Calvin Johnson.

And I think all of his opponents in the division were grateful when he took that early retirement.

But I always thought the football was made of some kind of metal and he had magnets in his hands.

That guy was just such an incredible receiver and we miss watching him play even though he was on the other side.

Gosh, what a beast he was.

Matt Megatron.

We had Josh Flash Gordon, great receiver, made most of his hay with the Cleveland Browns.

So he got himself in trouble.

And Super Cam Newton, Super Cam who had opened up his shirt into that Superman and always did that action like Clark Kent opening up the turn into Superman.

That was always kind of a cool thing to happen.

And here's a guy that came from long time ago, Howard Hopalong Cassidy.

Now, many people might not know who Howard Hopalong Cassidy was, but he had a brilliant college and professional career.

And he got his name because writer sort of made a play on words in one of his columns about the famous cowboy Hopalong Cassidy.

And them having the two last names that match, of course.

But this writer was writing about, you know, this great wide end and sort of tailback of the Ohio State Buckeyes that would jump over piles and sort of a hop over them.

Hop along, Cassidy.

Good.

That name and that name stuck with him for the rest of his career.

He played for Woody Hayes.

And you know, Woody Hayes always had some great things to say.

And when one practice that's reported that, you know, Howard Cassidy was having some trouble hitting the holes on a few occasions and, you know, was getting tackled and wasn't happy about it.

So Woody Hayes put in another back named Crochet and Croce hit the hole and went for some long gains.

And Woody Hayes pulled over Cassidy and said, see?

Hop along.

This is what happens when you hit the hole too fast.

Crochet is much slower than you and he makes it the thing.

So very good thing.

But a brilliant player, number 40 for most of his career and great nickname too.

So we thank you for joining us for this little look back at history using the fictional nicknames of some of.

These great players in NFL history.

And hope you join us again next time for some more great football history.

Till next time, have a great gridiron day.

We're taking a peek over at the.

Chains and the down marker.

It's fourth and long, we're have to punt the ball and get on out of here.

But we'll have another series tomorrow for.

Your football history headlines, so be sure to tune in.

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