He Doesn’t Want to Be the Modern One Play O’Brien

In football lore, Johnny (One Play) O’Brien was a Notre Dame end who caught a touchdown pass on a 78-yard play that beat Army in the fourth quarter in 1928 at Yankee Stadium while 78,188 people went mildly crazy.

It was the only down he played in that game and one of the few he ever played. He was a spindly hurdler and hardly even a part-time player.

He was known as One Play ever after--he died in a car crash a few years later--but he was overlooked even then.

You see, the Army game he won, 12-6, was the famous “Win One For the Gipper” game.

It was the game in which the coach, Knute Rockne, implored the mediocre team--it lost a third of all the games Rockne ever lost, four--to pull this one out in the memory of the great halfback who had died of pneumonia at the height of his career eight years before.

Rockne told his troops before the game that George Gipp, on his deathbed, had asked him: “Some time, Rock, when the team’s up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper.”

Said Rockne mistily: “This is that game.”

A Notre Dame halfback named Jack Chevigny, who was later killed with the Marines on Iwo Jima, slammed into the end zone for the first touchdown in that game and, as he did so, he was reported to have said: “That’s one for the Gipper.”

Johnny O’Brien’s one play was one-upped.

All this came to mind the other day as I traveled here to the L.A. Raiders’ training camp to seek out the one man who must know exactly how Johnny O’Brien felt.

Jack Squirek is the nearest thing to One Play O’Brien we have on the gridirons today.

It all goes back to Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa in January of ’84. If you recall the circumstances, the score in the second quarter of that game was 14-3 in favor of the Raiders. There were 12 seconds left to play in the first half, and the Redskins had the ball on their 12-yard line.

Now, conventional strategy in that situation calls for the quarterback to fall on the ball twice or hand it off to some back and have him duck harmlessly into the line.

But Redskin quarterback Joe Theismann was more adventurous. Besides, his coaching staff had recalled a similar situation in an earlier regular-season game with the Raiders in which they had called for a surprise screen pass and ripped off a 67-yard gainer.

Unfortunately for the Redskins, the Washington coaches were not the only ones to remember.

On the Raider sideline, assistant coach Charlie Sumner had a similar flashback. He grabbed reserve linebacker Jack Squirek. “Go in for Matt Millen and watch Joe Washington!” he shouted, referring to a speedy, deep-threat Redskin halfback.

Now, Jack Squirek was hardly your basic NFL household name at that time. He had logged most of his time on special teams, those suicidal squads of apprentices who are used to blunt the wedge in kickoffs or hurl themselves at punt returners. They are the paratroopers of football.

But in situations where fleet pass-catching backs had to be caught or checked, Squirek went in at linebacker for the more powerful, but slower, Millen.

The screen pass was called. It’s the football version of the old Keystone Kops ploy in which the cops all lean on a door that is suddenly opened, leaving them lying in a pile on their faces.

Theismann lured the Raider line in while Joe Washington surreptitiously slid to his left and waited for the last-second pass.

Two things went wrong. Squirek was looking for it. And so was defensive end Lyle Alzado, who drifted back with Washington, too. Desperate, Theismann had to loft the ball over Alzado’s head like a guy throwing his clothes over a transom.

Washington wasn’t waiting where the ball came down. Squirek was. He caught it and danced into the end zone.

The Super Bowl had 30 minutes and 4 seconds to run. But it was over. Nobody spots the L.A. Raiders 18 points at the half and lives to laugh about it.

In the press box, frantic scribes fell all over themselves trying to find out what a Jack Squirek was. One radio man called him Jack Squirrel.

The Raiders have more interceptors than the approaches to Moscow. But they’re supposed to be named Lester Hayes or Mike Haynes or Vann McElroy or Rod Martin. Not guys you have to look up.

Of course, Squirek points out it wasn’t totally surprising, since he had scored a touchdown as recently as high school at Cuyahoga Heights, Ohio. This was merely the first pass he had intercepted as a pro football player. The 80 million who saw him do it probably thought he did it all the time.

But that one play was not upstaged by a ghost from seasons past. A ghost from seasons present, Marcus Allen, pretty much took care of that, running wild most of the rest of the game.

Still, Squirek’s catch was critical. “It pretty much took them out of their game plan,” he recalled as he sat by a practice field here the other day. “We could go roaring in on every play.”

He became an instant celebrity. If a guy makes only one interception in his career, he had picked the right time to do it.

But, does it make him One Play Squirek?

He hopes not. But the next season, his career advanced only to the third exhibition game before a zealous Miami Dolphin defender broke his jaw.

Forced to take nourishment through a straw, he lost weight and strength. He was unable to take advantage of his acclaim.

“This year will tell the story,” he predicts. It will determine whether he will become the modern One Play O’Brien or whether, when fans in the future discuss Super Bowl XVIII and someone says, “Jack Squirek broke it up with an interception,” the listener will respond with “Naturally!” instead of “Who?”