TOM DEMPSEY: KICKING WITH HALF A FOOT

Everybody knows two things about Tom Dempsey, who has died aged 73, after contracting corona virus at a care home in New Orleans where he was living while suffering the ongoing effects of dementia.

One is that in 1970 Dempsey kicked a 63 yard field goal for the New Orleans Saints, a kick that broke the existing record by 7 yards and lasted until Matt Prater hit a 64 yarder in Denver in 2013. The other is that Dempsey made that kick wearing a shoe that looked like the business end of Thor’s hammer, because he’d been born without toes on his right foot, the one he used to kick.

When Dempsey made that kick, the league was transitioning from toe-kicking, which had always been the way to kick (and indeed was in rugby too until a similar time) to soccer-style kicking, with the instep instead of the toe, and swinging the foot in a sideways arc. The Gogolak brothers, refugees from the Hungarian revolution, had brought soccer kicking to college and then pro football, and Jan Stenerud had already established himself as the best kicker in the AFL, just as it merged into the NFL. The last of the great toe-kickers was Mark Mosely, who was the league MVP with the Redskins in 1982. A few years later, everyone was kicking with the instep.

Aside I: When I played in high school, our kicker, Barry McDermott, who was also our starting center, had a left leg that was much smaller than his right. He walked with a limp, which didn’t stop him being a ferocious blocker. And he kicked with the smaller leg, which he…