TWO OF A KIND
Meet Paddy Driscoll: the 1920s version of Kyler Murray
Berry Tramel introduces you to Paddy Driscoll, the 1920s version of Kyler Murray
Kyler Murray's Arizona Cardinals training camp is going well. The Valley of the Sun is all aquiver about the latest quarterback messiah.
Baseball seems a distant memory. A scintillating season with the Sooners. A Heisman Trophy. An Orange Bowl against Alabama. The first pick in the NFL Draft. Much has happened since Murray signed a contract with the Oakland Athletics last summer.
If Murray ever plays major league baseball,
he and we will be disappointed. It will have meant his NFL career went off the rails. Not likely.
And it seems unlikely that Paddy Driscoll was disappointed after never playing professional baseball again after getting 32 at-bats for the 1917 Chicago Cubs. Paddy Driscoll is the closest thing I've ever found to Kyler Murray.
They were born 102 years apart but are forever linked by uncommon accomplishment, remarkable skill and a similarity in size.
John Leo Driscoll was born Jan. 11, 1895, in Evanston, Illinois. Driscoll was a star athlete locally at Evanston Township and Northwestern University. Driscoll wanted to help support his widowed
mother, so he signed with the Cubs and played 13 games in 1917. Little more difficult to make the majors these days, but still, the National League was 43 years old in 1917. They weren't handing out uniforms to everyone capable of buttoning flannel.
Driscoll also played a little semi-pro football that year, joined the military during World War I and was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Air Station near north Chicago. He played military football, and in the 1919 Rose Bowl, Great Lakes Naval beat Mare Island Marines 17-0. Driscoll drop-kicked a 30-yard field goal and threw a 32-yard touchdown pass to a fellow Chicagoan. Fellow by the name of George Halas.
After the war, Driscoll got serious about football. In 1920, at the founding of what became the NFL, Driscoll played for the Chicago Cardinals. He became the league's first all-pro quarterback. Driscoll was its leading scorer in 1923 and 1926. He led the Cardinals to the 1925 NFL championship; they've won one since, 1947.
Driscoll moved onto the Bears in 1926 and played four years with and for his old Great Lakes pal. Halas was the Bears' end, coach and owner. Halas and the Bears would become the league's most regal of partners.
Driscoll went into coaching, including at Marquette University from 1937-40. When Driscoll left Marquette, he was replaced by OU's Tom Stidham, an excellent and oft-forgotten coach in Sooner history.
Driscoll then spent the last 28 years of his life with the Bears. Fourteen as an assistant coach, 1956-57 as Halas' successor as head coach and 12 in the Bears' front office.
Driscoll was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1965 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1974.
Halas told the Chicago Tribune that Driscoll was “the greatest athlete I ever knew.”
Like Murray, Driscoll wasn't very big — listed at 5-foot8, 155 pounds by baseballreference.com and 5-11, 160 by profootball-reference. com. Seems likely that baseball was closer to the truth.
Driscoll was a runner, a passer and a kicker — he holds the NFL records for most drop-kicked field goals in a career (40) and in a game (four). Beat that, Kyler Murray.
When Driscoll was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Tribune's David Condon wrote: “When Red Grange moved from Illinois to the Bears, there was only one other active football player whose name inspired similar awe. He was Paddy Driscoll. On days when Paddy wore his football uniform on the scales, he might weigh as much as 150 pounds.
“But every pound was dynamite. Walter Camp, who thought everything west of the Hudson was guns, gangsters and aborigines, called Paddy the greatest quarterback ever.”
A quarterback. A baseball player. A Cardinal. An athlete extraordinaire. Diminutive. Every pound dynamite. Sounds like Kyler Murray to me. Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman. com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:405:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok.com/berrytramel.