The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Lou ‘The Toe’ and the days before soccer-style kickers
When Rob Gould (pronounced Gold) kicked the winning field goal, his sixth of the game, to give the 49ers a 25-23 victory over the Titans Sunday, I thought of Lou “The Toe’’ Groza. Groza was a headon kicker.
And I asked myself, what should we call Gould, who kicks soccer-style? Rob “The Instep’’ Gold, maybe? No. Too awkward. Besides, Rob’s already got nicknames, including “Solid Gold,’’ “Good As Gold,’’ and others.
It was Pete Gogolak who introduced instep kicking to the game in the mid 1960s.. An outstanding soccer player, Gogolak was born in Budapest, came to our country as a teenager and was educated at Cornell. (His younger brother Charlie, also a terrific kicker, attended Princeton and also went on to a good career as a pro football soccer-style kicker).
Pete was looked upon as kind of a novelty when first he appeared in games with the Buffalo Bills. Many people looked with doubt on the new-fangled automobile, feeling it would never replace the horse, when it first began to appear on the nation’s dusty streets in the early years of the 20th century. Skeptics felt the same about the new style of kicking.
But soccer was beginning to gain U.S. popularity and Gogolak’s efficiency couldn’t be questioned. When he moved to the Giants, and that team’s huge media market, soccerstyle really took off.
It took a while for the new way of kicking to dominate the game, but it did so, and in a decade or so after the arrival of Gogolak, there were no head-on kickers to be found.
They had had their day, though. Groza, who distinguished himself as a soldier in World War II, spent his entire pro career with the Cleveland Browns. It was a far different game in some ways back then. Groza was as good a kicker as one could find, but his main job on the gridiron was as an offensive tackle protecting quarterback Otto Graham and opening holes in opposing defenses for a backfield that featured Marion Motley. That was a championship era in Cleveland, with Graham passing to two great receivers, Mac Speedie and Dante Lavelli, and often carrying the ball himself.
When the Browns scored, Lou The Toe would kick the extra point and if Cleveland needed a field goal, well, he’d do that, and the next time the Browns had the ball, he’d be back in the trenches.
Groza was a well-liked figure in the Cleveland community, too. He died of a heart attack at age 75.
Other prominent kickers were also active in that era. One of these was Tom Dempsey, who was born with no toes on his right (kicking) foot and no fingers on his right hand. Playing for New Orleans against Detroit in early November 1970, he won the game 19-17 as time expired, with a 63-yard field goal. At the time and for many years thereafter, that was the NFL record.
The kick caused something of a controversy when some opponents objected to the special shoe, with a blunt toe, that Dempsey wore on his right foot. Oblivious to the complaints, Tom kept kicking.
And maybe you remember Ben Agajanian, who kicked for a total of 10 pro teams in his long career. Ben, born in 1919, was 20 years old when the toes on his right foot were crushed in an accident and doctors had to remove four of them. He became one of the greatest of pro kickers.
George Blanda was an Oakland quarterback who played for years, into his high 40s, and led his team to a championship. He was also the Raiders’ placekicker. One day, after he retired, I tracked him down at his home in the Midwest to ask him about the quarterbacking/kicking thing.
“Kicking, was something I was just pretty good at,’’ he said. “In those days, we never practiced that at all.’’