Jack Abendschan

Jack Abendschan played 11 years in the CFL, from 1965 to 1975, all with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.  As such, Abendschan's career spanned the change to place kickers becoming a specialized position.  In fact, Abendschan was the last of the old time kickers who played a regular postion in addition to handling the place kicking.  When Abendschan started his career in 1965, his fellow kickers included players like Larry Robinson (DB), Tommy Joe Coffey (WR) and Moe Racine (OL). The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the rise of the specialized kicker.  The first was Ted Gerela of BC (though Gerela was a backup at running back), and he was followed by totally dedicated kickers like Dave Cutler and Bernie Ruoff.  By the time of his retirement, Abendschan was the last remaining regular position player who was still handling place kicking.  A quck survey of the 1975 CFL stats shows the other kickers to be all specialists:  Zenon Andrusyshyn (Toronto), Gerry Organ (Ottawa), Don Sweet (Montreal), Ian Sunter(Hamilton), Bernie Ruoff (Winnipeg), Dave Cutler (Edmonton), Cyril McFall (Calgary), and John Wintemeyer(BC).  Abendschan's kicking stats seemingly don't compare that well to today's standard where a fieldgoal percentage less than 70% or a convert percent less than 100% is considered poor.  Abendschan's best FG perecntage was 1970 with 63.2%, but his stats were very good for his era.  Sometimes the improvement in FG percentage is attributed to the rise of the specialist kicker, but the stats don't always back that up.  Dave Cutler was one of the early specialty kickers and his career overlapped with Abendschan for 7 years from 1969 to 1975.  In those 7 years, Abendschan had a higher FG% than Cutler 4 times, with Cutler beating Abendschan only twice (Abendschan missed the entire 1974 season).  To focus on a specific year, in 1971, Cutler hit only 34% of his fieldgoals while Abendschan hit 47.2%.  What seems to have been a bigger factor in the rise of fieldgoals percentages that speciality kickers seems to be an improvement in equipment.  The footballs used became more standardized and uniform and that helped both the fieldgoal kickers and the quarterbacks in passing the ball.  The use of the specialized long snapper has also probably helped increase fieldgoal percentages in recent years.  You see the same improvement in convert percentages.  In his early years, Abendschan was doing quite well for kickers, hitting 80-90% of his converts.  That rose into the 90s in his later years, and indeed Abendschan hit the modern mark of 100% in his final year in 1975.  Abendschan twice let the CFL in scoring (1969 and 1970) with identical 100 point seasons and besides handling the placekicking, handled the kickoffs for the Riders.   Abendschan was also an outstanding offensive guard,  winning 5 All-Canadian selections (1967, 1969, 1971, 1972 amd 1973) and 7 West All-Stars (1966 and 1970 in addition to the years metnioned).  Note:  The 2008 CFL Facts and Figures doesn't list Abendschan as a West All-Star in 1972 even though they do list him as an All-Canadian that year. 

Abendschan is credited with a lost for 20 yards in 1970 and one for 7 yards in 1971.