Joe Theismann Meets His End
My mom likes to tell me about the Joe Theismann break. It feels like it’s one of those “where were you when JFK was shot” moments but for sports in the older generation. Everyone remembers when they saw the replay of what happened to his leg. They remember LT getting up and frantically calling for a doctor and looking stunned. The Theismann injury is a piece of morbid football lore to be passed down through generations. The freaky coincidental Alex Smith break from a few years back was basically just an excuse to talk about it again. My mom always mentions how she was pretty shocked watching Taylor freak out. It freaks me out that too this day, if you watch a clip on youtube and listen very carefully…you can hear it.
In it’s own sad way, the last snap of his career might be Joe Theismann’s most enduring legacy. The guy had a great career. He led the Skins to two consecutive Super Bowls and pulled off the win in one of them. He played for 12 good seasons and is in many ways possibly the greatest QB Washington has ever had (outside Sammy Baugh). He was the league MVP in 1983 as well as an all-pro once and a pro-bowler twice. He didn’t stick around long enough to accumulate the numbers to reach the Hall of Fame, but only because he decided to leave his legacy on the field in pieces during a routine Monday Night Football game.
I wonder where the moment would rank on a list of all-time NFL memorable moments. It is arguably the best-known sports injury of all time. I think the only one that could challenge and win is the Dale Earnhardt Crash. There have been worse injuries. There have been more recent horrific injuries that still make me cringe. But has any sports injury had the enduring timelessness of the Theismann break? It happened 3 years before I was born and I’ve known about it for pretty much my entire life. Even people who don’t know football have possibly heard about it. Part of that power is through the popularity of football mixed with the celebrity reputation of the player who caused it. A player who to this day is still horrified by it and won’t watch it.
Apparently Joe Theismann agrees with me about his legacy. Read the last paragraph of this piece about LT’s side of the story. I guess somebody has to have the injury legacy. Luckily for Joe it only resulted in a finished career and not anything worse.
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Keep protesting! The changes are still small but a difference is still being made. We just have to keep it up!
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The fact that Alex Smith injury happened on the exact same day with Joe watching the game is poetic in an Edgar Allen Poe way
Never more said Joe
It gets creepier than that. I forgot all the details, so I had to look them up again:
Joe Theismann broke his right tibia and fibula on Nov. 18, 1985 in a game in Washington that ended 23-21. The only three-time Defensive Player of the Year Lawrence Taylor was involved in the injury, which occurred around the 40-yard line. Theismann’s Pro Bowl left tackle, Joe Jacoby, wasn’t on the field due to injury.
Alex Smith broke his right tibia and fibula on Nov. 18, 2018 in a game in Washington that ended 23-21. The only other three-time Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt was involved in the injury, which occurred around the 40-yard line. Smith’s Pro Bowl left tackle, Trent Williams, wasn’t on the field due to injury.
LMFAO but I shouldn’t be
Reminds me of the connection between Lincoln and Kennedy.
I am not sure if you could call it an injury due to the fatal nature of it but the Senna crash would be up there. Certainly outside the US it would be the best known horrible sporting incident of the 3.
I am not sure how much of it is due to growing up in a hockey town; but Clint Malarchuk is right up there for me. It makes me shudder to just think about it.
Interesting fact. Theismann’s name is pronounced “Theese-Mann”, but the assholes in the NCAA changed the pronunciation to “Thighs-Mann” in order to market him as a Heisman candidate.
I was going to share the same tidbit, but it was Notre Dame’s football publicist Roger Valdiserri who convinced him to alter the pronunciation of his name for a Heisman campaign. Joe Theismann came in second to Jim Plunkett and we’ve all been mispronouncing his name for decades since.
“…the Theismann break? It happened 3 years before I was born…”
Whuh?
Dave! All this time I thought you were older than me! For some reason I thought you were born in ’84 or ’85. Granted, I’m not a social media person so your comics here are the only reference I had for making that guess, but yeah.
Nope, I’m an ’88 baby. I’m 32.
Also a morbid joke made on the comments section of the YT video about this driving LT into doing coke.
I prefer the joke from Jaboody Dub though.
It even made the Simpsons! – In a 1991 episode, Homer is interrupted by Marge while watching “Football’s Greatest Injuries,” and Homer says: “Oh, great, you made me miss Joe Theismann!”…… The slo-mo replays from multiple angles shown by the NFL during the game were gnarly. I can remember them to this day.
“The compound fracture. Truly, one of Football’s Greatest Injuries.”
The thing is those videos were real. The Simpsons version was turned up to 11 as a joke but they were real. Makes me question how, if there is a giant NFL Concussion lawsuit, you can’t say they didn’t profit off of them.
My dad was at the game when Theisman’s leg was snapped, and we were both at the game when Smith’s leg was snapped… We’ve never been season ticket holders, it just happened to work out that way. I hope Haskins can have a long successful career, so me and my sons will just watch it from the couch…
Fun Fact:
Theisman suffered a broken leg in his early career playing in Canada too.(Though obviously not as gruesome as he later break)
He was holding out and refusing to sign with the Miami Dolphins at the time.
An injury that will stick with me forever is Kevin Ware’s nasty leg injury on the Louisville basketball team in 2013. Also didn’t help that CBS decided to keep playing it over and over again.