PHILADELPHIA — In the surviving recording of football's most famous tackle, there is no sound and, until the end, no sign of the man who unleashes the everlasting violence. On a YouTube channel called historycomestolife, there is 97 seconds of smoky black-and-white video, the athletes moving in a choppy, Chaplin-movie manner, and the silence somehow intensifies the brutality of the hit and the gravity of its aftermath.
On November 20, 1960, no rain or snow fell on Yankee Stadium, and the temperature climbed to 58 degrees, warm for autumn in New York. The field was dirt, and the footing was good. The players on the two teams — the Philadelphia Eagles, who were 6-1, and the New York Giants, who were 5-1-1 and had lost the NFL Championship Game each of the previous two years — could run and cut and accelerate without fear of slipping. They could reach full speed without having to hesitate. In the instant before they reached each other, both of the players involved in the tackle — the hitter, Chuck Bednarik, and the hittee, Frank Gifford — had done that. Bednarik was 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds, and Gifford was 6-foot-1 and 197 pounds, and each was moving as fast as he could.
