Comal Car and Driver

This is a doozy. If you’re not following Traces, you’re missing out 

How many of y'all have heard about The Curse of Bobby Layne? It is one of the great pieces of NFL folklore, made considerably better by the fact that Bobby Layne was a Texan with exactly the sort of personality a body would reckon might try to put a hex on somebody.

Bobby --- number 22 on the far right of the photo below ---- was born in Santa Anna, Texas, grew up in Dallas, starred at Highland Park High School and the University of Texas, and became one of the NFL’s great early quarterbacks. With Bobby at quarterback, the Detroit Lions were a powerhouse, winning NFL championships in 1952 and 1953. Detroit won another championship in 1957. Bobby was the emotional center of those great Lions teams, a famously tough, hard-living character who once said he had never lost a game, although he had occasionally “run out of time.” In October 1958, the Lions traded Bobby, then 31 years old, to the Pittsburgh Steelers for quarterback Earl Morrall and two draft choices.

And that's where the legend begins. According to the story, Bobby, angered at being traded, declared that the Lions wouldn't win another championship for 50 years. There is a fairly large historical catch: as far as I can tell, there is no contemporary 1958 newspaper account documenting Bobby saying it. The story seems to have grown considerably in later years, and some historians of the Lions regard the famous quotation as apocryphal. Bobby himself later spoke of having tried what people called a “hex,” however, and his son Alan said the family had heard the story through his mother. So there may have been some angry Bobby Layne voodoo in the air, but the wonderfully precise “50 years” quotation cannot be firmly authenticated.

What makes the entire story so great is what happened --- or did not happen --- next. Detroit's 1957 championship remains the franchise's most recent NFL championship. The Lions went from being one of the dominant teams of the 1950s to decades of frustration. And during the supposed curse's 50th and final year, 2008, Detroit did not merely fail to win a championship: the Lions went 0–16, becoming the first NFL team to lose all 16 games of a regular season. Meanwhile, the Steelers, the very team to which Detroit had banished Layne, went on to win the Super Bowl that season. If I wrote all of this in a story, y'all would accuse me of laying it on too thick.

There's one more great Texas twist. After that disastrous 2008 season, Detroit used the No. 1 pick in the 2009 NFL Draft on Matthew Stafford. Stafford had grown up in Dallas and attended Highland Park High School, the same high school Bobby Layne attended. So, almost exactly as the alleged 50-year curse expired, Detroit went looking for salvation and wound up with another Highland Park quarterback. Not only that, but ever since the curse, the Lions have never appeared in a Super Bowl. I think I am correct in saying that they are the only NFC franchise that has never made it, and the only franchise that has played continuously throughout the entire Super Bowl era without reaching one. One last thing: Matthew Stafford played quarterback for the Lions for 12 years and never won a Super Bowl. He was traded to the Los Angeles Rams and won the Super Bowl his first year there. That, my Texas friends, is one powerful curse! What's the old expression? Oh yeah, "Don't Mess With Texas." 😀

Good morning Bulverde, Spring Branch, Canyon, Lake, Texas! We are available tomorrow, Saturday night for nights out with your friends, a show and dinner, a wedding what have you. We don’t like to be available on Saturday nights (Friday before), but here we are 😃. Either our smaller car for two or our larger car that holds seven find something for us to do🚗

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