November 25, 1934, 90 years ago: The Chicago Bears beat their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cardinals, 17-6 at Wrigley Field. They move to 11-0 on the season.
Beattie Feathers, a rookie running back out of the University of Tennessee, rushes for 42 yards, giving him 1,004 rushing yards on the season. This makes him the 1st player in the NFL's history, 15 seasons thus far, to rush for more than 1,000.
Unfortunately, Feathers was injured in the game. He would miss the Bears' Thanksgiving Day win over the Detroit Lions, their season finale against the Lions, and the NFL Championship Game against the New York Giants, which the Bears lost, ruining what had been, up until then, an undefeated season.
William Beattie Feathers was born on August 20, 1909 in Bristol, Virginia, on the State Line with Tennessee. He led Tennessee High School to a State Championship, but turned down Virginia, Virginia Tech, and every other football-playing college in the Old Dominion to play for Bob Neyland at the University of Tennessee.
He played with the Bears from 1934 to 1937, with the football version of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 and 1939, and with the Green Bay Packers in 1940. He was the head football coach at Appalachian State University in 1942; coached football at North Carolina State from 1944 to 1951, and also coached their baseball team in 1945; was head baseball coach and assistant football coach at Texas Tech from 1954 to 1960; and, at Wake Forest University, was assistant football coach from 1961 to 1977, and head baseball coach from 1972 to 1975.
He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. He died on March 11, 1979 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, near the Wake Forest campus.
The NFL would settle on a 12-game schedule in 1947, expanding to 14 in 1961, 16 in 1978, and 17 in 2021. The number of yards a player has had to average per game to reach 1,000 for the season has dropped to 84, then to 72, then to 63, and now to 59. As a result, 1,000 yards rushing in a season, so long a benchmark for an elite running back, now has very little meaning.
To put that into perspective: Jim Brown set a record in 1963, with 1,863 yards; O.J. Simpson raised it to 2,000 in 1973; and Eric Dickerson raised it to 2,105 in 1984 -- thus, Brown averaged 133, Simpson averaged 143, and Dickerson averaged 132, and to break his record in a 17-game season, a player would have to average 124 per game.
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