On November 28, 1929, Ernie Nevers scored six touchdowns for the Chicago Cardinals and kicked four extra points. That’s 40-points in one NFL game by one player, and that’s still the record. And Nevers did NOT do this against a pushover franchise. He scored all of the Cardinals points in a 40-6 win over the Chicago Bears. That’s only part of the story. Ernie Nevers was a phenomenal athlete. Not only was he a cornerstone of two NFL franchises, the Duluth Eskimos and the Chicago Cardinals, but he also pitched for the St. Louis Browns in 1926, 1927 and a part of 1928. Nevers was also a terrific talent in track and actually signed a contract to play professional basketball. But, football is where he really excelled. In fact, the 40-points he scored on that Thanksgiving Day was the middle game on an incredible stretch in which he scored all of the Cardinals points in a 19-0 win over the Dayton Triangles just four days earlier, and three days after he scored the 40-points he put up all of the Cardinals 13-points in a narrow loss versus the New York Giants. So, in the span of just seven days, Ernie Nevers scored 72 points – a record that will likely stand forever. On the diamond, Nevers was a pitcher. He never firmly established himself at the Major League level and went just 6-12 in his brief career. He’s probably best remembered for giving up two of Babe Ruth’s 60 homeruns in the Babe’s record-setting year of 1927. But football is where Nevers really made a name for himself. Nevers, who spent just two seasons with Duluth and three with the Cardinals, played in a total of 54 games. But what he did in those 54 games was so remarkable, that in 1963, Nevers was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in its inaugural class along with such greats as Red Grange, George Halas and Jim Thorpe among others. Lee Elder, a member of the Professional Football Researcher’s Association, returns to Sports’ Forgotten Heroes for a wonderful discussion on one of football’s all-time greats.
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