A response to comments on a recent post:
I’m not punishing Singletary for not doing what he’s not required to do. Yes, the way teams attacked the bears, he looked great. No argument there. I’m just saying that if teams threw short over the middle, he would have looked bad. You can’t punish him since teams didn’t do this, but at the same time, people should recognize that he would have been a weak link if teams did do this. Teams did not need the personnel to do this. It looks that way because only Miami did it in 1985, and Miami had a very good team. Washington was the only team to do it the next year, and they were a playoff team. Was Jay Schroeder the right personnel? I watched all those games in 1985, and whenever a team did this, and granted they didn’t do it a lot, it worked. Regardless of what team did it. Don’t forget the Patriots did it on the first two plays of the Super Bowl, and Stanley Morgan was wide open behind Singletary and dropped the touchdown pass. Any receiver could get open behind Singletary.
Let me give you an analogy. Before the hashmarks were moved in, very few runners ran for 1000 yards. I believe it was something like 14 in history, and the first year the hashmarks were moved in (1972), 11 guys did it. Something like that. Guys like O.J. Simpson and Dave Hampton, who had done nothing, became stars overnight. I don’t think O.J. did much his first three years in the league, they moved in the hashmarks, and he becomes an immediate star. Now, does anyone recognize that if the hashmarks weren’t moved in, these guys wouldn’t have been nearly as good? You’re right, you can’t punish them for playing under the new rules, but you still need to look deeper. Have you ever heard anyone talk about the fact that O.J. was not a star until the hashmarks were moved in? Again, I’m looking deeper than just how the games went.
We agree that based on how the games went, Singletary should be in the HOF. That doesn’t mean he was one of the greatest players, it just means he played great based on the way teams attacked them and based on the guys in front of him.
Scottie Pippen is on the list of the 50 greatest basketball players. Here’s my take on him. Scottie was one of the best defensive players ever. I don’t undervalue this at all. Offensively, he wasn’t a leader, and when the 4th quarter came around and teams tightened their defense, he didn’t score a lot. Watch game tapes when he would get the ball at the end of a quarter on a last possession, and he would dribble it off his foot out of bounds, throw up a bad shot, etc. every time. Yes, based on his career, playing with Jordan and the others, and just looking at the games, you could say he belongs in the top 50. I look deeper and realize what truly happened, and don’t rank him quite that high. I remember watching a Bulls game with a friend one of the years Jordan was playing baseball. The Bulls were going to take the ball out with under 24 seconds to play, and I told her, “Watch Pippen. He’ll get the ball, dribble down the right sideline, and dribble the ball off his foot.” That’s exactly what happened, and she just looked at me. My first impression when I saw Pippen wasn’t on the floor for the end of that Knick game (1.8 seconds) was, “Great. Now Kukoc will take the last shot instead of Pippen, who would definitely miss.” I then thought Pippen should at least be out there as a decoy. This is before we learned what happened. My point is, people don’t realize the deeper aspects of his game, which in my opinion, ranks him lower than he is ranked. Again, I do think he was great defensively. Should he be punished for playing with Jordan? Of course not. But at the same time, we need to consider that when talking about his overall play.
So, to recap, if you want to say Singletary was a great leader and very good against the run, we agree. If you want to say that he was all-around one of the best middle linebackers ever, we will disagree. He could easily be beaten on passes over the middle, and as soon as he didn’t have Hampton in front of him, his play dropped tremendously. This, along with the fact that we already discussed, that many years after he retired (a few years ago), he looked at the films, called up Hampton, and told him “I used to think it was me. After watching these films, I now realize it was you.” Hampton, as I said, responded with, “You’re only realizing that now?” This is exactly what I said during Singletary’s entire career, and even he admitted it many years later, with Hampton also saying it.