NFL Legends Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

Second all-time in receiving yards, he spent almost his whole career with Arizona, was known for enormous hands and a spotless reputation, and lost his only Super Bowl.

Question 2

A sixth-round pick in 2000, he won seven Super Bowls and five Super Bowl MVPs over 23 seasons, the last title with Tampa Bay at age 43, and holds nearly every career passing record.

Question 3

A quiet Colt who set the single-season catch record with 143 in 2002 alongside Peyton Manning, he was a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Question 4

He had back-to-back 1,400-yard seasons for Atlanta, made a spectacular catch during the 28-3 Super Bowl collapse, and long held the highest career yards-per-game average.

Question 5

Nicknamed "The Playmaker," he won three Super Bowls with Dallas in the 1990s, was known for physical downfield routes, and cultivated a flashy image on and off the field.

Question 6

A scrambler who spent 18 seasons with Minnesota and the New York Giants, he retired in 1978 as the all-time leader in passing yards, touchdowns and completions, but lost all three of his Super Bowls.

Question 7

The NFL's all-time leading scorer, he won two Super Bowls for New England with field goals on the final play and kicked two field goals through a blizzard in the "Tuck Rule" game.

Question 8

A Giants edge rusher who forced offenses to redesign their pass protection, he was named league MVP in 1986, a rare feat for a defensive player.

Question 9

He threw a record 48 touchdown passes in only his second season, in 1984, and finished with more than 61,000 yards for one Florida team, but lost his only Super Bowl and never went back.

Question 10

He is the NFL's all-time leading rusher, won three Super Bowls and a league MVP with Dallas, and played through a separated shoulder to win a division-clinching game in 1993.

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About NFL Legends

Pick a decade of pro football and it has a face. The 1940s belong to Sammy Baugh, who passed, punted and played defense in the same game, and to Don Hutson, who more or less invented the modern receiver while defenders stood around wondering how to cover him. The 1950s and 60s gave us Johnny Unitas in black high-tops and a crew cut, Jim Brown leading the league in rushing in eight of his nine seasons and then quitting at 29 for Hollywood, and Vince Lombardi's Green Bay teams led on the field by Bart Starr and the near-blind enforcer Ray Nitschke.

The 1970s were a golden age of dynasties and defenses. Pittsburgh's Steel Curtain, with Joe Greene and the toothless Jack Lambert, won four Super Bowls in six years; Dallas answered with Roger Staubach and "Mr. Cowboy," Bob Lilly; Minnesota's Purple People Eaters, featuring a future Minnesota Supreme Court justice in Alan Page, kept losing the big one, four times. The 1980s were the decade of the quarterback and the coach: Joe Montana and Bill Walsh's West Coast offense in San Francisco, Dan Marino throwing 48 touchdowns in only his second season, Lawrence Taylor forcing every offense in the league to redraw its blocking scheme, and the 1985 Bears winning a Super Bowl with a novelty rap video already in the can.

Then came the passing era. Peyton Manning won a record five MVP awards; Tom Brady, the 199th pick of his draft, played until he was 45 and won seven Super Bowls, more than any single franchise; Jerry Rice pushed the career receiving records so far out of reach that no one has come close. Defenses produced their own icons: Deacon Jones, who coined the word "sack" because he thought it deserved a name like a home run; Reggie White, an ordained minister with 198 of them; Ray Lewis and Ed Reed patrolling the middle in Baltimore; Deion Sanders playing shutdown cornerback and Major League Baseball outfield in the same year.

The legends are not all skill-position stars. Anthony Munoz is routinely rated the best offensive lineman who ever lived. Mike Webster, the centre on four Steelers champions, declined so badly after football that the examination of his brain gave doctors their first case of the disease CTE in a player. Jim Otto wore the number "00" and later counted some 74 operations. Adam Vinatieri kicked two Super Bowls dead on the final play, and Devin Hester returned kicks so well that he became the first man voted into Canton essentially as a returner.

That is the real measure of a legend: Canton, Ohio, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where a gold jacket and a bronze bust wait for the couple of dozen players enshrined each decade out of the tens of thousands who have played. This quiz runs across all of it, quarterbacks and pass rushers, running backs and returners, the leather-helmet era and the modern game, and asks the same thing every time: two clues, no name, who is it?