Dirtiest player in each franchise's history?

[sheajets]

I know he met his end in a tragic way but Sean Taylor I thought was a dirty player. Good player. But dirty

[JeffreyMiller]

The Bills were one team for whom I had trouble thinking of a good candidate off the cuff. I recalled that Merriman was mentioned in a Sports Illustrated poll of NFL players as being among the league's dirtiest, but that might have been when he was with San Diego.

Earlier years certainly did have rougher (or dirtier, if you like) play by today's standards. But guys like Hardy Brown and Don Paul seemed to stand out even under that different standard.

Leonard Smith ...

[JeffreyMiller]

For the Patriots, it might be Bull Bramlett

[7DnBrnc53]

Jack Tatum was a hard hitter, but I didn't consider him to be a dirty player under the rules at the time. Even the paralyzing hit on Stingley was legal. Atkinson was more of a cheap shot artist.

I know Atkinson was a cheap shot artist, but what about Skip Thomas?

[BD Sullivan]

The AFL Oilers had LB Johnny Baker, who had these incidents over a four-year period:

1963: Broke Len Dawson's nose
1965: Put his knee into Lance Alworth's chin, giving him a concussion
1966: Broke Rick Norton's jaw

When confronted with the "dirty player" charge, Baker offered the Curly Howard defense: "I was victim of circumstance."

[BD Sullivan]

According to Hall of Famer Elvin Bethea, CB Zeke Moore was a very dirty player with the Oilers.

The 10/3/76 game between the OIlers and Saints was an endorsement of Bethea's opinion:

[nicefellow31]

Tatum dirtier than Atkinson?

Yeah, I'd go with Atkinson ..

This is dirty.
https://youtu.be/TPELgi0MM0c?t=924

[Rupert Patrick]

Tatum dirtier than Atkinson?

Yeah, I'd go with Atkinson ..

This is dirty.
https://youtu.be/TPELgi0MM0c?t=924

I think Lynn Swann would agree.

[Saban1]

The Steelers had Keith Gary who in a 1983 MNF game against the Bengals, yanked Ken Anderson by the face mark, resulting in a neck injury. He then speared Turk Schonert, who had replaced him.

One typical mindset was that a guy was a dirty player--until he was on your team, which brings to mind Erich Barnes. When he was with the Giants, Browns fans thought he delivered cheap shots. After he was traded to Cleveland, he was "aggressive."

Sort of in the same vein, Vince Costello was a good middle linebacker for Cleveland, and I never got the idea that he was dirty. In 1967, at the age of 35, Vince was traded to the Giants. In the Browns-Giants game in New York that year, Costello knocked both Leroy Kelly and Ernie Green out of the game with clothe line tackles. The Giants won 38 to 34 and Costello made a key interception in that game. I think that he had it in for Cleveland owner Art Modell, who had traded him rather than give him a $500 dollar raise.

I wonder if Vince Costello got the game ball from the Giants in that game? Anyone know?



That loss to the Giants in 1967 may have hurt the Browns more than just in the loss column. Coming off of that loss, Cleveland played well the next week against Pittsburgh winning 34 to 14. If they had beaten the Giants, then they probably wouldn't have been in the same frame of mind for the Steelers game. A team like Cleveland usually played better coming off of a loss, and wanted to make sure that they didn't lose a second straight game to a lesser team.

I think that the Browns of that time had a grudging admiration for the Green Bay Packers, and took pride in the fact that they had been playing the Packers tough recently. I think that they liked the fact that the Packers would be watching films of the Pittsburgh game when the Browns looked pretty good.

The next week, Cleveland played Green Bay, and probably felt pretty self satisfied coming off the Pittsburgh game. Green Bay, in the mean time, was coming off of a last minute loss to the Baltimore Colts. The game turned out to be a disaster for the Browns, as the Packer romped, 55 to 7.

If Cleveland had beaten the Giants, and played Pittsburgh about the way they played against the Giants, maybe they would have played a little better against Green Bay and maybe the game would have been closer. Then again, maybe the Browns would have been slaughtered anyway.

Cleveland ended up in the playoffs anyway, playing in a weak division (Century Division). So, you could say that the losses didn't really matter. However, the Cleveland Browns lost a lot of prestige by losing so badly to the Packers that day. The Browns considered themselves about equal to Green Bay until that game.

That was actually two different posts (three if you count BD's post). The part where it asked, "I wonder if Vince Costello got the game ball from the Giants in that game? Anyone know?" was the end of one post. Where it says that "That loss to the Giants in 1967 may have hurt the Browns more than just in the loss column" was a reply to the Costello post, not an edit to that post.

I don't know how that happened.

[7DnBrnc53]

I agree with Hardy Brown as the dirtiest player in 49er history, but wasn't Dave Wilcox dirty as well (I thought I heard that somewhere). And, what about all the leg whippers that the Niners had on their O-line in the 80's and 90's? I know why they started that (it had to do with Jerry Glanville when he was DC of the Falcons), but they never stopped.

By the early-90's, the 49ers may have been dirtier than we know as a team. On an episode of NFL Primetime (after Cincy lost to SF late in the 90 season), David Fulcher went off on the 49ers and how dirty they were.