another obit coinage claim

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Jun 5 02:51:46 UTC 2013


Can anyone confirm or disconfirm whether David "Deacon" Jones (December 9, 1938 - yesterday), the great Hall of Fame defensive end of the former Los Angeles Rams and other teams back in the 70s (who along with RFK's friend Rosey Grier and the TV-actor-to-be Merlin Olsen was part of the Fearsome Foursome of the Rams, is in fact the originator of "sack" in the sense of tackling a quarterback behind the line of scrimmage (either as noun or verb)?  The OED doesn't help here; the closest relevant sense of "sack" I can find is 'plunder, despoil', which is on the right track but not quite sufficiently specific.

LH

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