Swarm To Daylight

Every year, when the professional football wars are over, Fuzzy Thurston, the old Green Bay left guard, gives a dinner for all the NFL backs who have gained 1,000 yards or more in a season. In the past, it has been a quiet affair, since there are usually about as many running backs who gain 1,000 yards as there are 25-game winners in baseball. But after this season Fuzzy may have to enlarge his restaurant.

It is appropriate that Thurston should give the dinner; he was one of the blockers who cleared the way for Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung in the days when the Packers were synonymous with the power sweep. Today, quite a few teams have a pair of runners on a par with Taylor and Hornung. The running game, long used primarily to give the receivers and isolated cameras a rest, is back.

A number of factors are involved in the dramatic reemphasis of the run, but two are most dominant. Bringing each of the hash marks 3 7/12 yards closer to the center of the field has made more difficult the defenders' job both on the pass and the run, and the almost universal use of pass-conscious zone defenses has opened the way for the exceptional runners who populate backfields today.

One of the best is Floyd Little, the bandy-legged, short-coupled water bug who is the key to the Denver Bronco offense. Though only 5'10" and 196 pounds, Little led the NFL in rushing in 1971 with 1,133 yards. This year, playing on a last-place team, he already has 573 yards on 123 carries.

Little is an intense, thoughtful man, and he has carefully considered the techniques and the problems of the running back. "Sure, moving the hash marks has made a difference," he said the other day in Denver, perched on a rubbing table in the locker room. "Used to be, when you had the ball on the hash mark, they would overload to the wide side, because they could use the sideline to contain you the other way. Now, they can't overload, so you can sweep either way."

He stretched his legs out and contemplated an arc that left a four-inch gap between his knees—even though his ankles were together. Little's physical eccentricity hardly impairs his efficiency, and, of course, there have always been many outstanding bowlegged or pigeon-toed athletes: Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Walker, Jackie Robinson, Johnny Unitas, Bob Hayes, Bobby Orr. "I think if my legs were straight, I'd be 6'2", not 5'10"," Little joked.

"You see," he went on, "with the new hash marks, the linebacker can't cheat over and the tackles have to spread a little wider. You can see it on a sweep. You get the extra step on the linebacker. Then the quick traps up the middle work better. Another thing, the sweeps make those big defensive linemen run a lot more than they had to and they tire out toward the end of the game."

Not everyone in the rushing profession agrees entirely with Little. Frenchy Fuqua, the black running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers who maintains that he was born a French count and spent so much time sunning himself on the Riviera that it changed his complexion for good, says, "I don't think the hash marks—just an extra three yards—make that much difference."

Frenchy, who outgains most backs in the league and outdresses them all, explains: "Your big backs, like Larry Csonka, are not heading for the sidelines. The sidelines might be a help to the quick backs like O. J. Simpson, Carl Garrett—the real quick backs—Mercury Morris. But to the average back, the hash marks don't make a difference."

Of course, it seems that there are no merely average backs left. Twenty-seven different backs on 20 different teams have rushed for 100 yards or more in at least one game this year. In just eight weeks of play there have been 43 100-yard performances as opposed to 48 all last season (14 weeks). About a dozen runners are setting a pace that would bring them in over 1,000 yards (and only once have as many as half a dozen hit 1,000. As recently as 1969 there was only one—Gale Sayers).