While there were NFL players before him who celebrated after scoring a touchdown, Billy “White Shoes’’ Johnson is credited with the first end-zone dance. Johnson called it the “Funky Chicken,’’ based on a song by the same name by Rufus Thomas. He did it for the first time as a rookie when playing for the Houston Oilers and as coach Bum Phillips liked to tell him, “You can do anything you want if you can run punts back like that all the time.’’
But the greatest punt returner in NFL history began his career as a quarterback, at Chichester High School in Delaware County, Pa.