He rushed for TDs of 96 and 46 yards in addition to catching a 45-yard TD pass from Y.A. He scored three touchdowns that day, actually, and averaged 62.3 yards per major as the Colts pasted the Packers, 41-21. All these years later, Spavital’s sprint is in a four-way tie for ninth all-time.

At the time, it was the third-longest run in NFL history, behind a pair of 97-yarders. Leading up to the next season, Spavital signed on with the Baltimore Colts, for whom he scored on a 96-yard run against the Green Bay Packers on Nov. He made his pro football debut one year later - with the All-America Football Conference’s Los Angeles Dons.

Post-Dobbs, the Roughriders did not reach the championship game again until 1966, when Ron Lancaster equalled Dobbs’ single-season standard for TD tosses.ġ948: The Chicago Bears claimed Oklahoma A&M fullback Jim Spavital 11 th overall. Regina was dubbed “Dobberville” in honour of a phenomenally popular pivot who threw a franchise-record 28 touchdown passes in 14 regular-season games in 1951 before piloting the Roughriders to their first Grey Cup berth since 1934. Eight years later, he arrived in Saskatchewan and instantly took the province by storm. Humbug!ġ943: Tulsa quarterback Glenn Dobbs was picked third overall by the Chicago Cardinals. Baugh told the Abilene Reporter-News that the Roughriders’ offer of a three-year contract was “for the most money that I’ll ever be offered in coaching.” The Hardin-Simmons brass soon sweetened the pot, thereby retaining Baugh. The Saskatchewan tie? In 1958, the Roughriders offered Baugh - then at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas - their head-coaching job. Slingin’ Sammy was such a sensation that he was among the 17 charter inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. Here, expertly timed to coincide with the 2023 NFL draft, is a chronological list of first-rounders with ties - tenuous, in some cases - to the Green and White.ġ937: Washington chose Texas Christian quarterback Sammy Baugh sixth overall. Who is this game-breaking future GM? To find out, read on! Really!īefore being selected the second time, he had already exploded for what is still the ninth-longest run from scrimmage in NFL history. In fact, he was a first-rounder in two different drafts. TRIVIA: A former Saskatchewan Roughriders assistant coach and general manager was a National Football League first-round draft choice.

Bobby hall this bright future