Seattle Sports Insider

Jack Tatum's hit on Sammy White, Super Bowl 11

Richard Sherman is the ONLY Seahawk defender who ISN'T a thug

Posted by

1/28/14

Here's the YouTube of Tatum's hit. Best view is the slo-mo at 0:38.

In his autobiography They Call Me Assassin, Tatum says that Oakland had the lead, but that Minnesota caught fire and was mounting a dangerous comeback. "We needed to cool them down," he wrote, and he'd been looking for a way to do that for half a quarter or so.

On the play to White, Tatum recalled, "I got my chance. The ball came over the middle ... I could have easily intercepted." Instead he delivered the hit.

Tatum gloated, "While Sammy was down, he kept screaming, 'I can't see! I can't see!' and I knew that he couldn't hear the things I was saying to him. His teammates, however, could."

In They Call Me Assassin, Tatum reveals that there is a subtext in every NFL game that runs this way. If one team can establish itself as the bully, can impose a factor of intimidation, then its chances of winning go wayyyyy up.

Understand, now. It's not that anybody in the NFL is a pansy. What happens is, per Tatum, "When you inflict enough pain on a man, eventually his will to win is going be warped." We all go out there wanting to win. But sometimes a broken bone, or a fractured eye socket, or whatever, can distract you from your pre-game intentions.

..........

I've seen a lot of analyses of Super Bowl 48 -- will Manning's noodle arm hold up in the wind? Will his audibles matter when the Seahawks play only two defenses? Will Russell Wilson finally start running? etc etc etc etc

etc etc etc

etc etc

But I haven't seen any that put their finger on the real issue. "Seattle needs to put somebody on a stretcher to win," says Bill Romanowski.

The 49'ers are completely outside this consideration. They suffered two gruesome injuries against the Seahawks, to say nothing of the spectacular losing play to Crabtree, and the 49'ers were still spitting and snarling as they left the field. When the Seahawks and 49er's play, it is the 1976 Raiders against the 1976 Raiders...

The Saints are not nearly AS hardcore as the 49er's are. And it showed in the results.

...

It's funny that Sherman reacts to the "thug" insult. That was exactly the word applied to the 1972-78 Raiders, but it wasn't applied to the Steel Curtain of that era (Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, etc.). The Raiders were called "thugs" precisely because of illegal and dirty play - their violence was often unrelated to the flow of the play on the field.

Richard Sherman is absolutely THE least violent member of the Seattle Seahawks' defense. Why is he a thug? Once again, the media has inverted the truth 180 degrees. That is the defining element of thuggery, the violence.

Still, if a "thug" is a criminal who takes what he wants confrontationally, and with violence ... well, except for the criminal part, that's exactly what the Seahawks do. It was Pete Carroll's plan, from the time he got here, to build a team of thugs. Sherman and Wilson are almost the only Seahawks who do not fit the description. Oh, and Hauschka :- )

The Seahawks have been putting the beatdown on NFC teams all year. All NFL teams are tough, but most teams' will to win can be warped. Not following the AFC, I have no "feel" for whether the Broncos' will to win can be warped by violence.

I doubt that they are impervious to intimidation. Do you know why? If they were, Romanowski wouldn't be characterizing this as a Raiders vs Vikings type game. I do know that Peyton Manning has lost a disproportionate number of playoff games.

...

One of the 3 or 4 things I'll be watching most closely, during Super Bowl 48, is whether the violence has any effect on the Broncos' will to win. According to Bill Romanowski, that factor will be not only important; it will be decisive.

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Comments

What's striking about the video?

The complete nonchalance on the part of the broadcasters, the refs, and the players. In those days nobody thought what happened was any big deal. Curt Gowdy says sort of off-hand that White is being helped off the field, but that he'll probably be back in a couple of plays.
I will say this, however. I'm sure there was some trash talking on the field, but public displays of trash talking were simply not tolerated. They were tolerated a whole lot less than hits like those Tatum delivered. It was a more genteel time, at least so far as public behavior goes.

Hauschka :)

Hauschka's plenty thuggish, just ask Darius Reynaud.

The more I see him, the more

The more I see him, the more I love Richard Sherman,

I'm with ya

I'm with ya. He's an interesting dude. And he knows exactly what he is doing. The merchandising via his website is a really neat angle. I might need to get one of those "You mad bro?" T-shirts.

True Grit

Rooster Cogburn- "You go at a man hard enough and fast enough, he don't have time to think about how many's with him; he thinks about himself, and how he might get clear of that wrath that's about to set down on him."

Manning vs. Brees revisited

In Docs excellent article, The Shield is Mightier than the Sword ..., he makes a brilliant observation that the Seahawks have faced a rough equivalent to Manning in Drew Brees. I looked at the defensive rankings, and shooting from the hip, guessed that if you were to substitute the Saints' games against the Seahawks and the Panthers with games against a 20th or lower ranked defense Brees' yardage total would equal Mannings.
Well I went ahead and pulled up some NFL stats and started punching a calculator. (Kindergarten stuff for you SABR guys) First up Manning amassed 5477 passing yards this season to Brees' 5162. The 315 yard advantage to Manning came while playing 68.75% of his games against #20 or worse defenses, only 2 or 12.5% against #10 or better defenses and zero against top five defenses.
Brees in contrast, played 37.5% of his games against #20 or worse ranked defenses. He played the same number against defenses number ten or better and 4 games or 25% of his season against top five defenses. Those teams in the top five are Seattle #1, Carolina #2 (Played twice) and SF #5.
Brees' Average for the season was 322.6 yards per game but his average for those top five defenses was 261.5 yards. His average against the rest of the defenses was 343. I substituted his totals for his games against the Hawks, the Panthers and the Niners with his average against the rest of the teams he's faced and it brought him to a hypothetical 5488 yards. For all intents and purposes exactly the same as Mannings 5477.

Bills-Chargers had a similar moment in their '64 AFL title game.

Check out minute 48 of this AFL documentary (3 of a 4 part series) for perhaps the most dramatic example of which you speak, Doc: http://youtu.be/FzV7fyjdWqs - the 1964 title game between the Bills and the Chargers. In fact, there are a lot of similarities between the two teams and Seahawks-Broncos. High flying offense vs.tough as nails defense and all that. But boy, what a hit by Mike Stratton.