Before it involved nuclear physics, uranium, plutonium, and a world at war, the Manhattan project revolved around sneakers and an NFL championship.
Manhattan College is where, on a bitter December Sunday in 1934, a courier retrieved a basketball team's footwear to be used by the New York Giants to navigate the frozen Polo Grounds terrain and secure a championship, putting an end to the Chicago Bears' two-year hold on the NFL title.
"The sneakers gave them an edge," huffed the immortal Bronko Nagurski.
While the sneakers may have played a part in helping the 8-5 Giants spring a major 30-13 upset of the 13-0 Bears, Nagurski and his fellow "Monsters of the Midway" were up against something mystical, not rubber.
Dating back more than 85 years and through a timeline that includes teams from Decatur and Muncie, Rock Island and Duluth, Frankford and Pottsville, the NFL football has bounced in so many unpredictable ways that surprises have been a Sunday staple. Yet, one thing has remained constant since the days of leather helmets - the impossible quest of a perfect season.
OK, make that improbable, because there is one team that has attained perfection, the Don Shula-coached Miami Dolphins of 1972. They went 14-0 in the regular season, beat Cleveland and Pittsburgh in the AFC playoffs, then squeezed by Washington in the Super Bowl to finish 17-0.
Perfect.
And perfectly easy to remember, too, because Miami is the only team to succeed at something many have come close to, only to fall short.
Like those 1934 Chicago Bears, who steamrolled 13 opponents to the combined tune of 286-86 as Nagurski and Beattie Feathers rumbled behind the ferocious blocking of one George Musso, who was so big and strong he often chose to play without a helmet. George Halas extended the unheard-of sum of $90 per week for Musso's muscle, but those gigantic holes through which Nagurski ran made it a sound investment.
It's just that it wasn't enough to go undefeated.
Nothing, save for 1972, has ever seemed to be enough.
But that doesn't mean the attempts have dried up. To the contrary, there is yet another spirited run being made this year, the heralded New England Patriots sitting 9-0 at their bye week. Seven challenges to record the first 16-0 campaign? Then a three-game playoff roll to finish 19-0?
Unthinkable, perhaps. Yet it is what so many people are thinking about, though none of them wear Patriots uniforms or answer to "Bill Belichick." Ask him any question with the word "undefeated" in it and he'll shoot a frosty laser at you.
Because he is what he is.
Which is very much in tune with the unkind history bestowed upon teams in search of NFL perfection.
Trying, but tying
From the very start, NFL teams learned how difficult it is to record a perfect season. In 1920, when the NFL came into being, the Akron Pros were undefeated but not perfect. Three times in that 11-game schedule they were tied. The famed Canton Bulldogs, 10-0-2 in 1922, were seemingly on their way to a perfect 1923 campaign behind the magical foot of Wilbur "Fats" Henry. His drop-kick field goal squared things late in the game, 3-3, and seemingly put them in position for a 7-0 record, but Luke Urban, the two-sport star and onetime Boston College standout, helped the Buffalo All-Americans stand tall and secure a tie.
The Bulldogs followed that up with five straight wins to go 11-0-1 for a two-year run of 21-0-3 - but they weren't perfect.
Neither were Curly Lambeau's Green Bay Packers six years later, a dynamic team that featured Johnny "Blood" McNally, Mike Michalske, Cal Hubbard, and Jug Earp. For the first 10 weeks of that season, Lambeau's lads had crushed out 10 victories by a combined score of 148-22. In search of immortality, the Packers had one hurdle left, a Thanksgiving date in the greater Philadelphia area against the Frankfort Yellow Jackets.
Actually, there was a second hurdle, the Yellow Jackets' imposing lineman. "A monstrous man who could stand firm as Gibraltar or move like a cat," is how pro football historian Roger Treat described Russell "Bull" Behman, who in 1929 had accepted player/coach responsibilities of the Jackets. Before 15,000 holiday spectators, Behman was at his best, leading a rousing defensive charge near the end of the game to leave the Packers just yards short of the winning score in a 0-0 game.
Though they would roll to shutout wins in their final two games and capture the first of their three straight NFL titles, Lambeau's Packers (12-0-1) had not quite achieved perfection.
Tough to bear up
Seventy-eight years later, a handful of teams can relate to how daunting the attempt to record a perfect season is. On the surface, both the 1984 49ers and 1998 Vikings came close, but their 15-1 records overshadow the fact that perfection never was in the cards. Bill Walsh's 49ers had lost in Week 7, while Dennis Green's Vikings went down in Week 9. The other team since the advent of the 16-game schedule to go 15-1 was Chicago in 1985, though Da Bears are a shining example of how fickle is the gridiron.
For 12 weeks, they had had their way with helpless NFL opposition. An offense built around the great Walter Payton had scored 359 points, or 29.9 per outing. A defense built by Buddy Ryan and orchestrated by Mike Singletary had allowed just 127 points (10.6) and was coming off back-to-back shutouts when Dec. 3 rolled around and the schedule landed the Bears in . . . Miami.
Such symmetry.
"I don't know when we've had a bigger regular-season game, as far as people being excited," said Shula, who seemingly had two teams available that warm winter evening. The '85 Dolphins were there at 8-4 to continue to fight for their playoff lives; the '72 Dolphins were there to supply inspiration and a reminder of what was at stake.
"That was something, seeing Kuech worried and Zonk hitting you on the shoulder," said Shula.
Indeed, Bob Kuechenberg and Larry Csonka, members of the only perfect team in NFL history, prowled the Miami sideline that evening, as did teammate Jim Kiick. Other '72 Dolphins sat in the stands or in their living rooms, all of them proud of their prized possession, and outwardly selfish that they alone wanted to have it.
Csonka, the onetime bruising running back, had even been a little anxious a year earlier, when his beloved Dolphins had gone 11-0. "When I was a little kid," he said that night, "I didn't want to share my favorite toy, even with my own brother."
Da Bears were not his "own brother." At that point, they were just the third NFL team to go 12-0, but whereas the '72 Dolphins had ball-controlled foes into submission, Mike Ditka's crew had steamrolled them, delivering knockout after knockout. If Dolphin finesse was going to beat Bear fury, the home team was going to need help.
It was delivered in a fashion typical of pro football: with an injury to a star player. In this case, Jim McMahon, the rebel quarterback with the "Rozelle" headband, soft touch, and fiery demeanor. He had missed the previous three weeks with a shoulder injury, so Ditka turned to unheralded Steve Fuller.
Unfortunately for the Bears, a vintage Dan Marino turned Ryan's defenders inside-out and every which way, as his pinpoint passing to Mark Clayton, Mark Duper, and Nat Moore accounted for the bulk of his 270 yards. Three passes went for touchdowns, and with 31 points in their ledger by halftime, the Dolphins had created turmoil on the Bears' sideline, where Ditka screamed at Ryan, who, of course, screamed back, even though his worst fears had been realized.
"I'm scared of this game," Ryan had said in the hours leading up to the game. "Their strengths are our weaknesses."
Truthfully, despite the 38-24 setback, the Bears had no weaknesses, and when they rolled to three wins to finish off their 15-1 regular season, then capped off an overpowering playoff run with a 46-10 shellacking of New England in the Super Bowl, they rightfully had respect as arguably the greatest NFL team ever.
They just didn't have the holy grail.
"Nobody's perfect, and we proved it," groused Ditka after that encounter in Miami.
Not quite, because the '72 Dolphins forever will be. It's everyone else who has tried and failed.
Quest becomes footnote
Before there were Ditka's Bears, there had been George Halas's vaunted crews of 1934 and 1942, each of them undefeated in the regular season, each of them bitterly disappointed by the season finale, the NFL Championship.
With the sneakers, "Papa Bear" had been outsmarted by one of the era's great innovators, the esteemed Ray Flaherty. Years later, Flaherty would be credited with the introduction of the behind-the-line-of-scrimmage pass and run, or screen play, but in 1934, he had a more modest thought when he stepped out early onto the Polo Grounds.
"The field was frozen. I had come out in some tennis shoes for the warm-up and found I could do pretty good without slipping," said the onetime Gonzaga star, who relayed that information to coach Steve Owen, who worked with team official John Mara to secure sneakers through a connection at Manhattan College. They arrived just after the game started, but Flaherty told his team to wait.
"The other guys thought they'd try them, but I told them to hold off until the second half because the Bears might get the idea themselves, and too soon."
Down, 10-3, at the half, the Giants scored four touchdowns in the fourth period to roll, 31-13, and newspaper accounts told of Bear defenders slipping and sliding in futile attempts to catch New York quarterback Ed Danowski as he got free and found Ike Frankian for a touchdown pass. Nor could they get their hands on Ken Strong, whose running and kicking accounted for 17 points.
Sitting in a crowd that included baseball legends Casey Stengel and Mickey Cochrane, Manhattan College basketball coach Neil Cohalan - who years later would become the first coach of the New York Knicks - laughed and told friends, "I'm glad to hear our basketball shoes did the Giants some good."
What didn't do the Bears any good in 1942 was one of those fateful occurrences no team can plan for. In November, with his Sid Luckman-led Bears rolling along undefeated, Halas took a call from Uncle Sam. Entrusting his beloved team to co-coaches Hunk Anderson and Luke Johnsos, Halas had the title of Lt. Commander in the US Navy and went off to fulfill his military obligations.
In his absence, the Bears completed a six-game run at the end of the regular season in which they had four shutouts and yielded but two touchdowns. At 11-0, they were heavy favorites over a 10-1 Washington Redskins team that was still bruised by a 73-0 thrashing at the hands of the Bears two years earlier.
Halas seized upon that and came up with a motivating slogan: "Seventy-four or nothing."
Indeed, it appeared to be so much of a mismatch that bookmakers veered from the usual method for betting. If you wanted to wager on Washington, you got 14 points. If you favored Chicago, you gave 20.
The contentiousness that is reported in wide-ranging media outlets today is hardly new to pro sports, especially in the violent world of the NFL. Halas openly feuded with George Preston Marshall, the rambunctious owner of the Redskins who had enemies in Boston, too, for he had moved his football team out of that city years earlier. What precipitated the 73-0 fiasco in 1940 were Marshall's comments that the Bears were "crybabies," and "front-runners," so in the days leading up to the 1942 encounter, he stayed unusually quiet. That was OK, because Washington had another source of commotion, quarterback Sammy Baugh, who was determined to make amends, as was his coach, a certified Bears-killer, Flaherty.
The man who thought of the sneakers this time relied upon a patient offensive attack. He saw it pay a profitable dividend, too: A 14-6 triumph. That Halas was in attendance, having flown in from Norman, Okla., just for the day, made it even sweeter for Marshall, his club having halted Chicago's three-year run as NFL champs, not to mention its second bid for a perfect season in nine seasons.
Wrote Arthur Daley in the
Putting the goal in focus
It wasn't enough in 1953 that the Browns had the game's greatest championship quarterback, Otto Graham, or its best kicker, Lou Groza. Nor did it matter that Dante Lavelli and Ray Renfro were impeccable offensive forces on a juggernaut that had won all 11 games heading into the regular-season finale. None of that mattered to a Philadelphia Eagles team that hung a shocking 42-27 defeat on the Browns on Dec. 13.
Paul Brown did not say what Ditka would famously say 32 years later - "Nobody's perfect, and we proved it" - but neither did he rally his troops like Ditka. Wallowing in disappointment over a perfect season fumbled away, the Browns the very next week stayed in a funk and lost the NFL Championship game to the Detroit Lions for a second straight year.
All of which hits at the heart of Belichick's seemingly ignorant view of the hysteria his 9-0 Patriots are generating. To Belichick - and to his players - the Super Bowl is at the end of the rainbow. Never has it been about perfect seasons. Who in their right mind aims to do something that has been done once in almost 90 seasons?
Vince Lombardi's 1962 Packers understood that, which is why, while stunned by eight sacks of Bart Starr in a 26-14 Thanksgiving Day loss to a Detroit team spearheaded by Alex Karras, Joe Schmidt, Dick "Night Train" Lane, and Dick Lebeau, they did not lose sight of their mission. They won their next three to finish 13-1, then beat the Giants, 16-7, for the NFL Championship.
Obviously, the '85 Bears stayed focused, as did the 1998 Broncos, who got thrust into the national spotlight by virtue of becoming just the fourth team in NFL history to start 13-0. Unlike today's Patriots, however, they embraced the topic, coach Mike Shanahan hardly in synch personality-wise with Belichick.
"We have a goal and we think we can accomplish it," said wide receiver Ed McCaffrey.
"Why not talk about it?" said tight end Shannon Sharpe. "We may be able to do something special. I want to talk about it."
His window of opportunity quickly closed, because in Week 14 the Broncos were stunned by the 5-8 New York Giants. As they stripped away their pads and tape, nearly to a man the no-longer-perfect players conceded that there had been an inordinate amount of pressure.
"You can't help it," said Tyrone Braxton. "Every day, every week, people ask you about the streak. It becomes a part of you."
Seven years later, the Indianapolis Colts felt similarly when they reached 13-0. When they were blitzed by San Diego, 26-17, the RCA Dome was blanketed in a stunned quiet and the Colts struggled with their emotions.
"It leaves a really bad taste in your mouth," said quarterback Peyton Manning. "We've got to get it out."
He and his teammates failed miserably, because from 13-0 they lost two of three to finish 14-2, then in an AFC divisional playoff, their lethargic play carried over with a stunning 21-18 loss to the Steelers. The focus that had been present with the 1962 Packers, the 1985 Bears, the 1998 Broncos - all denied perfect records with late-season losses, yet all successful in winning the championship - seemed to leave the Colts that fateful December Sunday when their quest for a perfect season got sideswiped.
But if it stunned the Colts, it pleased members of that 1972 Miami Dolphins team. Shula and his trusty quarterback, Bob Griese, watched that Colts-Chargers game from a luxury suite while attending the Dolphins-Jets game and neither man denied that they smiled when the streak ended. "We're depicted as being happy about somebody's misfortune," said Shula, though one of his star players, Mercury Morris, expressed a different viewpoint to reporters at the time.
"If they had been able to go undefeated, then we could have someone to talk to who would understand the experience," said Morris. "It's like trying to describe to someone what it's like to walk on the moon. It's only a description. They'll never know until they go."
That latest NFL moonshot overhead? It carries your beloved Patriots.
Just don't ask them about it.
Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com.
