| Tobin Rote, the quarterback who
guided the Lions to their last NFL championship in 1957 while filling in for injured Hall
of Famer Bobby Layne, has died. He was 72. Rote, of Port Hope, Mich., died Tuesday at a
Saginaw hospital after suffering a heart attack nearly two weeks after undergoing back
surgery.
The Lions platooned Rote and Layne at quarterback before Rote finished off the ’57
season after Layne broke his leg in the regular season’s second-to-last game.
In the divisional playoff, the Lions trailed the 49ers 24-7 at halftime. Through the
dressing room walls at San Francisco's old Kezar Stadium, they could hear the 49ers
already beginning their celebration.
"We could hear them laughing," Rote said in ’91. "The walls were
paper thin. They were going on about how they were going to spend their championship game
money. It made us angry."
In the second half, the Lions scored three touchdowns in four minutes, 29 seconds and
went on to win 31-27.
The next Sunday at home in Briggs Stadium, the Lions won their third championship in
six years with a 59-14 rout of the Browns. Rote threw four TD passes and ran for another.
ProFootballWeekly.com asked football historian Bob Carroll for his thoughts on
Rote’s career.
Q: Can you put into perspective just how good of a quarterback he was?
Carroll: When he was good, he was very, very good. Obviously, in ’57, when he came
on at the end of the season after (Bobby) Layne got hurt, he took that team right to the
championship. And, remember, they had come back against San Francisco in a playoff, and
they destroyed the Browns in the championship game. He was just great. And then, the next
eight years, he really didn’t do all that well in Detroit. He went up to Canada and
played for a couple of years, came back and had a terrific year for San Francisco. Now,
before he went to Detroit, in Green Bay … the first year or so his passing record
wasn’t all that great. But he was a great combination runner-passer, and although
Green Bay had weak teams, he was a terrific threat. So he was a very versatile kind of
quarterback in those years. Of course, with Detroit, in that one year, he was just great.
The next two years … obviously it wasn’t just him, the team slipped, too. But he
won a championship with the Lions in ’57, and then he was San Diego’s
quarterback in the AFL in ’63, it must have been.
Q: Being on two different teams that won titles, was it just coincidence that he was
in the right place at the right time?
Carroll: No, San Diego had a good team. In the AFL, a very good team. Jack Kemp
hadn’t quite done the job. They had been in the championship game in the first two
years in the AFL, then Kemp got hurt in the third year. They had John Hadl, of course,
coming in as the eventual quarterback, but he really wasn’t quite ready. That’s
when head coach Sid Gillman pulled Rote down. So he did have a very good team. Likewise
with Detroit, they had a good team because it was really the tail end of that
early-’50s Buddy Parker team, although ’57 is when Parker resigned and George
Wilson took over as coach, but they still had a lot of great players.
Q: With the Lions team that he was on that won the title, how big of a role did he
play?
Carroll: The last three games, once Layne was hurt, what had happened was that, Layne,
of course, was the quarterback, and he was brought in really just sort of as a backup
because, remember, Layne had been knocked out at the end of the ’56 season in the
Bears game when Ed Meadows blind-sided him, which really put the Bears in the championship
game because Detroit had a better team that year, frankly. But once Layne went out, they
just didn’t have it. So anyway, they brought Rote in for emergencies, and it turned
out to be right because Layne was again hurt at the end of the season, and Rote came on.
He faced San Francisco, which had been terrific all year, it was Y.A. Tittle having a
terrific year, and remember, this was one of the great comebacks, San Francisco got ahead
24-7, then the Lions came back in the second half and beat them. And then, of course, the
Browns game was just an absolute slaughter. |
