Other than Brett Favre.
I was thinking of how cool it would be for someone like Staubach to come out and take a snap, even if it’s just a knee at the end of a win. Would they let him if he really wanted to? Maybe if he was super duper old and just wanted one more snap before The End?
NFL teams have strict limits on the number of active players they can have at a time. To activate a player like that for even the possibility of a single snap the team would have to de-activate one of their regular players for that week. I can’t see any NFL coach doing anything like that for nostalgia’s sake.
Even taking sevenwood’s reasoning out of it, I’m betting that the NFL would not allow it, or if it happened without their knowledge, the team would be fined and the league would immediately have a new rule.
The NFL is pretty anal about keeping their product at a standardized level. To do this would make the NFL look like a joke, even if it were for only one play. I can’t imagine the NFL permitting anyone on the field that wasn’t considered a ***legitimate ***player.
I’ve often wondered why a team wouldn’t hire a Shaq to be a goal line specialist. He has decent hands, he’s big enough not to get hurt, and who could cover him? He’s outjumping anyone, he’s out-muscling everyone… first down at the one, just throw up a jump ball and I’m guessing he comes down with it every time.
Why not do this?
In most years there’s a huge overlap between NBA and NFL seasons. I doubt the NBA team would want to lose their player for all Sunday games. I also doubt the NBA team would want their player to be subject to injury playing another sport in the middle of their season.
And if by “a Shaq” you just mean a generic big, muscular, athletic guy, not necessarily Mr. O’Neil specifically, then the answer is that they do exactly that. Most NFL players are big guys. They just don’t stand out as much as Shaq does because they’re surrounded by a bunch of other similarly-big guys.
I think you’re overstating things a tiny bit. Shaq is roughly 7 feet tall and around 300 lbs. The tallest WRs are around 6’6’’ and 240 or so. While that seems fairly close in size, those extra few inches are statistically far, far more unlikely to occur. One interesting stat is that roughly 5% of American males are 6’3" or taller, while they estimate that there are about 70 people 7 feet or taller in total. Of those 70 (or so), about 17% of them play in the NBA. It would seem like there are so few people that tall that you have pretty slim pickings. Especially since most that are in good health, and reasonable athletic, can play in the NBA for a longer period of time, for more money. The other part is that many people in that ball park of 7 feet have significant health issues, so giving up a few inches for greater versatility, agility, speed, and durability is worth the tradeoff. That said, the era of the (really) tall receiver is relatively new. I would not be surprised to see a team that had continually redzone scoring problems employ some middling basketball center in the 6’10" range to throw jump balls to. Just as the NFL now employs many “soccer-style” kickers, I think we will continue to see more NBA-sized receivers.
While I don’t doubt that Shaq could snatch such a ball most of the time, I don’t know that he’d come down with it. Remember, the instant he touches the ball, he’s fair game to the defenders, and they’re masters at pummeling receivers who have touched the ball but not yet tucked it away. Besides, within five yards of the line of scrimmage, they can really pound on him until the ball is actually thrown.
I don’t think it would be that cool to see. I don’t want to see geezers take ceremonial snaps during actual football games. Save that stuff for the first day tee off at the Masters tournament or for ceremonial first pitches during the World Series. If a team wants to honor an old hero there’s plenty of time to do that before the game or at halftime, not during the game itself.
My brother and I are taller than 95% of americans? I learned something new. Well my mom is 6’1".
It happened in hockey – Gordie Howe came back to play one shift in 98, making his professional career span across six decades. Of course even without that one shift, his professional career span from 45 to 80 was remarkable without that.
Besides, Shaq would get hit on the legs on his first play and go straight to the locker room, unable to play.
I think Shaq is his prime would likely be far stronger and more durable than almost NFL player. Shaq would be among the heaviest people on the field, and would likely outweigh anyone who is covering him by A LOT. Shaq has nearly 14 inches and 120 lbs or so on Revis, one of the best CBs in the NFL. He’s still have a foot and 50 lbs on Ray Lewis. I’d love to see one of those guys try to take out a guy like Shaq in his prime. It’s likely not gonna happen. It would be different if we were talking one of those stick thin NBA centers like Shawn Bradley or Manute Bol, but Shaq has (had) the build of an NFL player, plus several inches in height.
Yeah, but they wouldn’t have a corner on him, they could put a 320 pound d-lineman on him. At 6-6 to 6-8, he’d be shorter, but I would imagine stronger and more skilled in the game of football. He’d undercut Shaq at the line and knock the crap out of him.
Minnie Minoso came back and played for the White Sox for three games in 1976 and one game in 1980 at the age of 54. If that wasn’t enough, in 1993 he made an appearance with the St. Paul Saints and in 2003, made another appearance with the Saints and drew a walk at the age of 77.
The Sox wanted to bring him back in 1990, but the commish at the time (don’t remember if that was Fay Vincent or someone else) said no.
While other posters have pointed out that there might be technical obstacles, I’d note that there is plenty of precedent in the NFL of coaches doing silly things for the sake of sentimentality. E.g. Doug Flutie drop-kicks an extra point as the last play in his career to become the only player in NFL history to score points with a drop kick.
Coaches also go out of their way to get players to break records.
That’s a legal play, and it had been last done in 1941. He was the only active player to score points with a drop kick, but certainly not the only one in history.
Exactly. The drop kick was the standard way to kick a field goal (or extra point) in the NFL in the 1920s and 1930s. At that point, the shape of the ball was changed (making it more oblong and pointier at the ends) – this was done to make passing easier, but it also made the drop kick more difficult (as it made getting a predictable bounce off of the turf harder), and the placekick quickly supplanted the drop kick. Even so, the rules have never been changed to make the drop kick illegal.
First, I doubt anyone in the NFL is that much stronger than Shaq in his prime. The guy was enormous, in very good shape, and had natural physical gifts that if honed would have made him a great football player for our purposes.
Second, how many d-lineman do you know that are 6-8, 320? Suh is only 6’4", Jared Allen only 6’6". I cannot even think of one that wouldn’t give up significant size/weight to Shaq. Even so, to have them lined up out wide covering a receiver, who they can only contact within 5 yards of scrimmage, above the waist, would not be really helpful. Even if you could slow him down long enough to slow down the play, you are leaving huge holes in you pass and run coverage as a result of having to shift personnel, and likely giving the QB tons of time. This is why Megatron is LAYING WASTE to the league currently. He is gonna catch most of the jump balls they give him in the redzone.
The only chance someone would have of stopping a guy like Shaq is just hoping you could time a jump in the event the pass is not high enough, or trying to take it out of his before he can make a football move, or land.