NFL Legends Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

He set the single-season sack record with 22.5 in 2001, won a Super Bowl over the unbeaten Patriots with the Giants, and later co-hosted a network morning show.

Question 2

The Baltimore Ravens' first-ever draft pick, a mountainous left tackle and 11-time Pro Bowler, he protected the blind side for a decade.

Question 3

The anchor of Pittsburgh's "Steel Curtain," he won four Super Bowls and starred in a 1979 soft-drink commercial in which he tosses his jersey to a kid in a stadium tunnel.

Question 4

Nicknamed "Megatron," he set the single-season receiving-yards record with 1,964 in 2012 for the Lions and then retired at 30, still in his prime.

Question 5

A Green Bay star of the 1930s and 40s, he is credited with inventing modern pass routes, led the league in receiving eight times, and retired holding nearly every receiving record.

Question 6

A 6-foot-3 Alabama Heisman winner nicknamed "King," he ran for 2,027 yards in 2020 and has multiple 99-yard touchdown runs.

Question 7

A Steelers center on four Super Bowl teams, his decline and death after football led to the discovery of the brain disease CTE in players.

📚 All Quizzes

Browse every category and see the full list of quizzes on BriskQuiz

→

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?