The Draw Play

Back a couple weeks, in the post about the Jaguars punter chopping his own shin with an axe, I mentioned some of the other famous idiotic injuries of history. On Monday when asking for Lateral requests, “Bubs” in the comments reminded me of this particular injury.

While the Jaguars axe incident is not widely known outside Jacksonville (probably because we didn’t see it happen), most people know the Gus Frerotte Headbutt. It is probably the most infamous of the NFL human body own-goals. It happened in primetime.

It’s late November in 1997. You pop a pez from your Disney dispenser, yell at your sister to stop playing her Spice Girls CD, and you check to make sure your Tamagotchi is happy. It pooped. It isn’t happy.

You go downstairs and watch Sunday Night Football with your parents. It’s another goddamn NFC East battle between Washington and New York. Maybe one day you won’t have to watch this division in primetime so much. The Giants are starting Danny Kanell. The future Commanders are starting a 3rd year 7th round QB named Gus Frerotte. This is a battle for first place. The 90’s were a simpler time.

Late in the 2nd quarter with both teams scoreless, the Giants fumble and Washington reaches the redzone with roughly 2 minutes left. Gus Frerotte takes the snap, the protection breaks down, and Frerotte scuttles his way to the pylon for a TD.

In his excitement, he does what many frat-bros and adrenaline filled young men are prone to do, and physically slams a body part into a hard object in celebration. In this case, his head, into the poorly padded walls of Jack Kent Cooke Stadium. Now known as FedEx Field.

Gussy Boy would miss the rest of the game with a neck sprain. He had to be taken out of the stadium on a stretcher. He would be replaced by Giants legend Jeff Hostetler. Jeff would play very poorly. So would the Giants. New York would muster a lone touchdown of their own in the second half, and that would be it.

Yes, that was it. The game ended 7-7. The Gus Frerotte headbutt game for first place in the division would end in a tie. Both of these teams had not tied for over a decade, and neither team would tie again until 2022, when they once again tied each other. Football is a wonderful sport.

Gus got a stinger in his neck and had to spend the next week as the league’s biggest clown, because news cycles actually lasted back then. Gus took the lumps to his already concussed chin pretty well, seeming to understand the only thing to do was to laugh it off. Frerotte played another decade of NFL football. He was mostly a journeyman backup who would occasionally get some starts, but a 15-year career is nothing to sneeze at.

His only main claim to fame is tying the elusive record of a 99 yard touchdown pass in 2008, his final season. He actually was leading the Vikings to a good season before a back injury would cut his year short, and he would be replaced by Brett Favre. Gus retired after that.

He’s been living happily in his home state of Pennsylvania ever since. He even became a brand ambassador for RC21X, a software data company that measures human performance in various ways. He was, of course, in the Brain department.

It isn’t the way anyone wants to be remembered, but after a while it becomes kind of neat to be remembered at all. Gus Frerotte would be a name you forgot existed if he hadn’t slammed his own head into a wall like a dumbass. He has his tiny little nugget of NFL fame that we can all laugh about forever.

 

Note: To the person who suggested Laterals need a tag, you were very correct and that was long overdue. I have added it, and hopefully managed to tag them all