More for Moore: A 1943 run by Wilbur Moore, whose early return from surgery helped win the Eastern title that year.

Another day Marshall predicted that Wendell Willkie would win the presidency from FDR and that the Redskins would win the championship. Marshall loved seeing his name in print; it fed his ego and helped keep the turnstiles spinning.

The Redskins of 1940 were, in the current vernacular, "awesome." They won their first seven games. And yet before kicking off at Griffith Stadium, they had traveled 7,229 miles by train, getting to and from camp and making exhibition-game stops. In Boston, where the Redskins' departure now was rued, 25,000 showed up to watch them beat a team of College All-Stars. Washington knew what it had, and the excitement was palpable when the likes of the Giants came to town in the season's second game. These were the Giants who, in Washingtonians' minds, had "stolen" the Eastern Division title the previous December.

This time the Redskins won, 21-7, before 34,713 at a packed Griffith Stadium as Dick Todd ran back a punt 78 yards for one Washington touchdown. Flaherty had assembled such depth that he was able to insert Todd into his backfield after Farkas had been sidelined by knee surgery during the exhibition season. Todd played so well in several games that Baugh, rarely euphoric, was moved to remark, "Dick Todd is the greatest running back I've ever seen in my life — and I'm not excepting Cliff Battles. Get Dick into the open field and nobody will catch him."

Other Pages in Chapter 1: 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42

Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 Names, Numbers Trivia Quiz Index

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