The Reason We Remember Gus Frerotte
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 the next year. 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
It’s true. Back in those days, we didn’t have no internets full of player breakdowns and movements, so as a teenager, the only thing I knew about who the Giants were facing was based on what my dad told me.
I had no idea who Gus was prior to that game. And I had no idea where he went or how long he played after it. But hot dang if that moment isn’t forever burned in to my mind. I should probably feel a touch guilty that my dad and I celebrated him taking himself out of the game. Ahhh, to be young and think that Danny Kanell was going to get us out of our Dave Brown / Kent Graham funk. *shudders*
Sorry to spoil the tie fun fact, but the future-Commanders tied the Bengals in 2016 in London. I remember it very well because my dad’s a Commies fan and my brother’s a Bengals fan and we went into the game saying “Hey, at least one of you’s gonna be happy at the end” and they were not.
I’m a Dolphins fan, and we’ve been to see them three times, and the Bengals twice. Still, none of us have ever watched our team win live.
Wasn’t Brett Favre on the Jets in 2008? How could he replace Gus Frerotte midseason?
“replaced by Favre *the next year*”
That’d better be an *electric* leaf-blower if they’re in the DC area!
This wasn’t just SNF, but *ESPN* SNF. And they had the back half of the SNF package; the front half was TNT. This was the last season of that arrangement as ESPN got the full SNF package starting in 1998 until 2005
That era of SNF is what TNF is today: they get a slate of mid-tier games and maybe if they’re lucky one of them is a good one. MNF was the prime game. There were a *FEW* TNF but done to account for baseball.
There was also no flex scheduling, meaning when the schedule came out in the spring: it’s locked in (barring something happening to where the game cannot be played as originally scheduled such as hurricanes or the Marlins making a shock run to the World Series and it goes 7 games). If the game on SNF was a tank bowl or the MNF was lopsided: TS (teathered swimming)
Other oddities of the 1997 season
1)There was another tie: PHI-BAL played to a 10-10 draw in Baltimore two weeks earlier
2)Jerry Rice was lost for the season with a knee injury in Week 1 at Tampa. Sports Illustrated declared the 49ers dead, but they went 13-3 and made it to NFC Championship Game
3)Speaking of the Buccaneers, they had a radical uniform overhaul. Ditch the creamcicles & hello to a red pirate flag on a pweter helmet. They started 4-0, ended up 11-5 (I think), and beat the Lions for their first playoff win since 1979! Also being the Brett Favre-Warren Sapp rivalry. Yeah, Hugh Culverhaus dying and the team being sold to the Blazers was a huge deal
4)Barry Sanders rushed for 2000yds. He split the MVP with Brett Favre
5)The Giants had a shock season where they won the NFC East, but blew a 2-score lead with 3min left at home vs the NFC-6 Vikings in the Wild Card
6)The Cowboys started the season with a 37-7 win at the Steelers. Why didn’t they win the NFC East? All the bad drafts, off the field stuff, and free agency departures caught up to them. They were 6-5 after a coming back to beat [NAME REDACTED] 17-14 at home. It ended up being their last win of the season. Losses to at GB (blowout), TN on Thanksgiving, CAR on MNF, at CIN (this was the Bungles era!!!), and NYG put them at 6-10. Switzer “resigned” at the end of the season. He was 27-7 in his first two seasons with a Super Bowl win, but most people credit that to the roster building that Jimmy Johnson did. Switzer in his last two seasons in Dallas: 17-17
7)There was a Super Bowl rematch, GB-NE on MNF. That game was nationally televised on ABC, available to everyone in the US – except those in the Miami and Chicago markets. The reason being is that CHI-MIA got bumped back to the next night because the Florida Marlins made a surprise run to the World Series and beat the Cleveland Indians in 7 on Sunday night (yeah, it was not sexy but ended being a very underrated series). Chicago, led by former Jimmy Johnson (now coaching the Dolphins) assistant Dave Wandstedt, won that game for their first win of the season.
8)For the 3rd straight season, the Colts beat the defending Super Bowl Champions; this time it was the Packers. And the Colts still won TANK BOWL!
9)Bill Parcells took the Jets from 1-15 to 9-7
10)The regular season started in *AUGUST*. 31 August to be specific… ummm, why is that date significant and why do I hear Elton John on a piano?
11)Someone shot a flair gun towards the end of SF-PHI on MNF. I suspect it was a member of the “It’s Always Sunny” Gang. And that’s when we learned that Veterans Stadium had a jail.
12)This was the last season NBC televised NFL games until they got the SNF package in 2006. This was done because A)CBS saw their ratings crater after losing the NFL and came back to the shield a la Homer Simpson asking for his job back in “Maggie Makes Three”; and B)An NBC executive (forget which one specifically, but he was a big name) said he hoped the World Series ends in a sweep so that the Must See TV (that was a BFD) lineup is not interrupted. The Sports Gods have a sense of humor because CLE-MIA went 7. That likely gave the NFL the rationale to let CBS return to broadcasting games. It also set off a domino effect to where NBC gradually lost high profile sport properties over time.
13)The Steelers beat the Patriots in a playoff game. An ugly 7-6 game at Three Rivers that saw Drew Bledsoe turn the ball over a lot (don’t remember the exact number, I think 4). That was the last time the Steelers would beat the Patriots in the playoffs. Currently the Steelers have lost 3 straight playoff games – all in the AFC Championship – to the WHATDYAFUCKINGKNOW THE FUCKING PATRIOTS!!!!!
14)Last Super Bowl to not feature a continuous scorebug. Every Super Bowl since SB33 the next year would have scorebug
15)The NFC’s Super Bowl streak was snapped. It was done by an AFC West team (DEN) who beat the favored NFC team (GB by 11) and the Super Bowl MVP was a HOF RB (Terrell Davis). The last AFC team to win a Super Bowl before the NFC went streaking was an AFC West team (LA Raiders) who beat the favored NFC team (WSH by 3) and the Super Bowl MVP was a HOF RB (Marcus Allen).
The guy saying he missed the game, it was on ESPN so unless he lived in the Washington, DC market or had cable – which back in the 1990s was a luxury (we had it for awhile until I made certain purchases that made my mom upset… I was a teenager, draw your own conclusions).