Who is on the NFL's Mount Rushmore?
By Andy Davies
The NFL has been glittered with many great moments since its inception in 1920.
Founded in Canton, Ohio, the NFL has gone on become America’s favourite sport, and one that is watched worldwide as the sport continues to increase in global popularity.
There have been 59 Super Bowls, with 20 different champions, many MVP winners and lots of memorable moments.
Who can forget the Minneapolis Miracle, “the catch”, the New Orleans Saints’ decision to go for the onside kick in Super Bowl XLIV, or the record-breaking quarterback season from Peyton Manning. With iconinc moments comes memorable faces. There have been so many over the year, with an NFL Mount Rushmore often talked about.
Here is The Touchdown’s NFL Mount Rushmore.
Vince Lombardi
What better place to start than the man whose name resides on the most coveted prize the sport has to offer.
Vince Lombardi served as the head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers from 1950 to 1967. During this time, he won five NFL Championships, with the final two followed up by Super Bowls I and II.
Lombardi was known for his strong beliefs against homophobia, had a notorious coaching style and was part of one of the most famous games in NFL history, the “Ice Bowl”.
With a 96-34-6 record as a head coach, he will go down as one of the greatest to do it. His legacy beyond the field means he is a shoe in for an NFL Mount Rushmore.
John Madden
Noone lived and breathed the NFL more than John Madden. His impact on the sport is unmeasured. Whilst his playing career was cut short before it even began due to injury, he went into coaching and ended up winning Super Bowl XI with the Oakland Raiders.
After Madden’s coaching career came to end, he went into broadcasting, a venture that he is most known for. He helped revolutionise the coverage of sports, winning multiple Emmy awards as a result. Known to have a fear of flying, he used to travel to games in the infamous “Madden Cruiser”
Whether this be the use of words such as “boom”, his use of the telestrator, the Madden video games or introducing the turducken to sports fans all over the world on Thanksgiving, Madden is a key figure in the NFL’s history.
Tom Brady
There have been many great players in the NFL, such as Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor and Joe Montana. However, no player’s story is greater than Tom Brady’s.
Drafted 199th overall in 2000, not much was expected of Brady when he was taken by the New England Patriots, especially when starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe signed a ten year, $103 million deal a year later.
His scouting report did not put him high on people’s draft reports and with Bledsoe the starter for the foreseeable, Brady was seen as nothing more than the second or third choice QB in New England.
In the 2001 NFL season, the Patriots took on the New York Jets in Week Two for their home opener. In the fourth quarter, Bledsoe went off the field after a hit from Jets linebacker Mo Lewis. As a result, he suffered internal bleeding and Brady stepped in.
Brady did not look back and led the Patriots to a Super Bowl that season, after they beat the Los Angeles Rams and the “greatest show on turf”. He would then go on to win five more rings with the New England Patriots. He would have some iconic moments that live on in NFL history.
There was the ‘tuck rule” game in the 2001 Divisional Round game, the 28-3 comeback against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl 51 and arguably the greatest performance from a losing Super Bowl quarterback as he threw for 505 passing yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions in a 41-33 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles a year later.
Brady would go on to win a Super Bowl in his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, ending their playoff drought and winning his seventh and final ring. He would eventually retire and is seen by many as the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.
He has since gone into announcing and whilst it is to be determined whether he will succeed or not, it is hard to imagine there ever being another Tom Brady.
Paul Brown
The modern-day NFL that we all love, would not be the same without Paul Brown’s intervention.
For a long time, the Cleveland Browns have been perennial strugglers, arguably the worst performing US sports franchise in the past 50 years. This has not always been the case for the Browns.
Once upon a time, they were the dominant force in the NFL. They won four NFL Championships prior to the Super Bowl era, with three with Brown as head coach during a six-year spell. They would also win four All-America Football Conference championships in a row from 1946 to 1949.
Brown was head coach, part owner and General Manager of the Browns from 1946 until 1962, a franchise that is named after him. He would go on to become the Cincinnati Bengals president, owner and head coach in 1968. He would perform both roles until 1975, where he remained as president until his death in 1991.
Brown had a Hall of Fame career, with a 222-112-9 record as an NFL head coach, but his impact goes further than that. His coaching tree features Bill Walsh, one of the greatest head coaches in NFL history.
Brown introduced the idea of radio helmets for the head coach and quarterback to communicate, a method only adopted 40 years later. He created the idea of a practice squad, was the first coach to use classroom techniques to study plays and also introduced the use of intelligence tests to evaluate players and scout opponents by the use of game films. He invented the draw play and played a big part in developing the passing patterns, also breaking the trend by hiring a full-time staff of assistants. Legendary running back Jim Brown was full of high praise for Brown.
“Paul Brown integrated pro football without uttering a single word about integration. He just went out, signed a bunch of great black athletes, and started kicking butt. That’s how you do it. You don’t talk about it. Paul never said one word about race. But this was a time in sports when you’d play in some cities and the white players could stay at the nice hotel, but the blacks had to stay in the homes of some black families in town. But not with Paul. We always stayed in hotels that took the entire team. Again, he never said a word. But in his own way, the man integrated football the right way – and no one was going to stop him”
Quite simply, the NFL would be very different today had Brown not been around.
ANDY DAVIES
NFL ANALYST
ANDY IS A SPORTS JOURNALISM GRADUATE WITH OVER FOUR YEARS EXPERIENCE OF NFL WRITING AND PODCASTING. ANDY HAS BEEN TO EVERY NFL STADIUM AND IS THE HOST OF THE ACROSS THE POD PODCAST. HE HAS PRESS PASS EXPERIENCE AT THE LONDON GAMES AND MANY OTHER NFL BASED EVENTS SUCH AS THE SUPER BOWL, HAVING INTERVIEWED THE LIKES OF AARON RODGERS, JASON BELL, OSI UMENYIORA, PATRICK MAHOMES, TRAVIS KELCE, DERRICK HENRY, SAQUON BARKLEY AND JALEN HURTS.