This piece is obviously directed toward that element of humanity deeply conversant with modern-day football tactics. Nevertheless, we’ll do our best to make matters reasonably understandable to those more oriented to basic fandom and not the game’s offensive mechanisms.
As we enjoy viewing either a collegiate or professional level game these days, we can’t help but notice the ever-increasing employment of the shotgun formation, with a corresponding decline in the more traditional dropback T. Furthermore, an additional and likely growing diversion which has appeared in the most recent years bears the somewhat inappropriate “wildcat” label.
In the interest of optimum clarification, we offer the following brief explanations pertaining to the three above-mentioned terms:
· Dropback T – The quarterback positions himself right behind the center to take a close-up snap, then drops back either to hand off or pitch out to a runner, throw a forward pass, or carry the ball himself;
· Shotgun – Instead of having to receive a minimum-distance snap and start making a hasty retreat, the quarterback stands several yards behind the center, awaiting a between-legs pass straight into his hands;
· Wildcat – The quarterback sits this play out on the bench, being replaced by a running back in the otherwise shotgun spot.
Handoffs, pitchouts, passes, and straight run options exist in each of the foregoing deployments. With opposing linemen, backers-up, and even deep defenders seeming to grow beefier and speedier from year to year, rapid-fire offensive play execution has become increasingly mandatory. The need for quickness, coupled with deception and a modicum of explosiveness, has never been more vital than under present playing conditions.
At this stage we feel obligated to toss out as concise as possible a history of how offensive attack formations have evolved, beginning with football’s dark ages and moving forward.
During the very early days, the pre-play lineup showed the four backs in a diamond-shape behind the center. This layout soon gave way to bringing the deepest man in closer, so that a Goodyear blimp shot would resemble an inverted letter T pattern, hence the formation’s modern era tag.
However, the aught and teen years of the last century produced an innovative coaching gent named Glenn “Pop” Warner, who devised two separate backfield deployments, soon to be dubbed the single and double wingback respectively. The quarterback no longer started out right behind the center. Instead, a direct pass would be made to one or more players stationed in what we now call the shotgun position. There were distinct advantages thus provided, in that less ball exchange was required, with the play being executable more rapidly.
The alternate Warner systems became the sole attack means employed for roughly three decades, with the single wing being prevalent by far. Its key feature was shifting the running and blocking strength to one side, usually the right.
This dominance was blown to bits in 1941, following two sensational milestone games – one professional, the other on the college Rose Bowl turf – which found not only the enemy forces, but the fans as well, utterly dazzled with what the T-formation, as reincarnated by the Chicago Bears and Stanford University respectively, could accomplish. With exception of a few diehard Warner system advocates, that year witnessed teams from the NFL down to kids playing on vacant lots returning to the theretofore outmoded setup. No change in the game’s structure has ever been swifter or more universal.
Following that massive reversion to ancient-day offensive methodology, a relatively short time span was needed for variations to be introduced. Pretty soon, the blimp would no longer show a pure letter T configuration. The evolutionary movement produced such strategic layouts as the T with man in motion, the winged T, the T with flanker, the slot T, the split T, the sidesaddle T, the wishbone T, the double T, and perhaps a couple more we’ve forgotten.
In due course, even the schools which had adamantly stuck to the single or double wingback lineups (primarily Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Texas, Southern California, and a precious few others) abandoned Warnerism in favor of the T, never again to change back.
Did we say never? Well, hardly ever. During the late 1940s and earliest 1950s, Michigan and Princeton made devastating use of the single wing, spiced up with a highly deceptive “buck lateral” feature. This faded out in fairly short order, though, since far too much ball-handling was involved, making matters easier for eagerly charging defensive linemen.
Jumping to the present, the deployment diversity we see today challenges even the keenest of viewer imaginations. In most instances before a play starts, we observe men spread almost all the way across the field, at times with the quarterback completely alone behind the center.
The question at this point therefore seems to be where do we go from here? Based on past history, our customary presumptuous predictions appear below, to take effect over the coming decade, or likely an even shorter span:
· Permanent disappearance of the snap-and-dropback quarterback maneuver, hence placing him exclusively in the shotgun position;
· Gradual (or maybe steadier) enhancement of the wildcat setup, resulting in far more running back use as a prime play executor;
· Further evolutionary movement yet, to the point where the wildcat arrangement may find the pure running ace to be supplanted the now-defunct triple-threat, do-everything-superbly back, which we old-timers once enjoyed watching perform so masterfully.
We’d like to enlarge upon that last comment a bit, by saying it would be a pleasure indeed to witness the return of a few Walter Eckersall, Jim Thorpe, Eddie Mahan, George Gipp, Paddy Driscoll, Ernie Nevers, Ken Strong, Dutch Clark, Jay Berwanger, Clint Frank, Ace Parker, Byron White, Nile Kinnick, Bill Dudley, or Glenn Dobbs types, in contrast to the numerous single-skill-only gladiators who grace our playing fields at this time.
We can hope, anyway.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
A FEW REFLECTIONS FROM PRO FOOTBALL'S OLDEN DAYS
When we plunk ourselves down on the living room couch these days and tune into the current Sunday or Monday night NFL matches, played in gigantic stadia with barely ever an empty seat, it’s almost impossible to imagine how relatively humble the pro game used to be during those long years of infancy and adolescence. The ball seldom if ever bounced very high a great many moons and decades ago.
We’re not about to embark on a lengthy history of our favorite sport here, since that would require a virtual encyclopedia. Our purpose is merely to present a few selected snapshots of professional football’s struggle throughout its earliest days. The contrast between the then and the now seems absolutely unbelievable.
The first recorded play-for-pay game took place in 1894, when a Latrobe, Pennsylvania team challenged a squad from the nearby hamlet of Jeannette to a single contest, and came out a 12-0 winner. Essentially speaking, that was page one in pro football’s Book of Genesis.
This sport, which had already achieved some popularity on the eastern college gridiron fields at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Pennsylvania, et al, could hardly avoid attaining professional status in due course. The aught and teen years of the twentieth century found a number of loosely organized teams bashing it out across the northeast and midwest (particularly the latter) from one autumn to the next.
What had made this all happen? Did cheering fans pack the stands to capacity week after week? Were fat pay checks being doled out to the players, supplementable by endorsement fees for shaving cream or athlete’s foot remedies? Did the star performers reign as heroes in the cities their teams represented? Did mass hysteria prevail over each new season?
Well, not exactly. In fact, we have to say not in the slightest. Where, then, did the motivation originate?
The answer could only be an inherent love of taking the field and giving out with one’s best. Not unlike kids assembling on vacant lots for an afternoon match, these were grown men with established grid skills seizing an opportunity for organized combative exercise, in return for a couple bucks to the extent club funds became available.
In 1920, the inevitable result occurred, when a small group of men gathered at a Canton, Ohio automobile agency and sat on running boards as they conceived an official league, with franchises offerable to interested civic leaders anywhere at a whopping $100 price. Their venture proved fruitful. The game’s New Testament had begun.
Fourteen memberships were readily acquired in the American Professional Football Association, to be rechristened later as the National Football League. The 1920 season’s participating cities stretched from New York state westward to Illinois, via Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Altogether, after a long era of financial successes and failures, location switches, additional entrants, and otherwise, these “original colonies” expanded to encompass 61 different metropoles, smaller towns, entire states, or major regional areas having seen fit to support their gridiron warriors at one time or another. At present, just 32 survivors remain, carrying out their fall schedules before excited fans numbering in the millions.
The ultimate event each year, or professional football’s Book of Revelations, is the classic Super Bowl, whose spectator frenzy has reached a stage comparable to if not exceeding baseball’s world series, the quadrennial international Olympiad, hockey’s Stanley Cup, the British soccer finals, and perhaps all the rest combined.
It’s been a glorious history indeed, so full of highlights over the past century and a quarter that volumes would be needed to cover them adequately. However, we’ve chosen instead to focus briefly on two much dimmer bulbs from the 1920s and 1930s-1940s, to which little or no due credit has ever been accorded.
We’re talking about a pair of clubs that have always held a certain fascination for this writer, namely the Canton/Cleveland Bulldogs from 1920 until their demise following the 1927 season, and the Brooklyn Dodgers (later renamed the Tigers), who reigned in relative obscurity from 1930 to 1944.
In the years 1922 through 1924, the Bulldogs’ record amounted to 28 victories against a single defeat and four ties. They were a decided forerunner to the subsequent age Bears, Browns, Packers, Cowboys, Patriots, and other dynasties which have made their own highly prominent splashes. Still, who remembers these early day stalwarts’ prowess, or has even heard of them?
Some degree of appreciation certainly seems to be in order. The Canton and Cleveland location lineups during that three-year period included:
· Guy Chamberlin, one of the finest ends the game has known;
· Wilbur “Fats” Henry, generally acclaimed to this day as great a tackle who ever lived, the
Roosevelt Browns, Jim Parkers, and Bob Lillys of latter years notwithstanding;
· Roy “Link” Lyman, still another superb tackle in the eyes of many.
This team truly deserves more recognition than it has ever been granted.
The 1933 season found the league broken down into two separate divisions for the first time, with a playoff game at the end between the respective leaders. Only ten teams existed then
In the Eastern Division were the:
· Boston Redskins, later to migrate to Washington, D.C.;
· Brooklyn Dodgers, later to be called the Tigers;
· Philadelphia Eagles;
· Pittsburgh Pirates, later to become the Steelers;
· New York Giants.
In the Western Division were the:
· Chicago Bears;
· Chicago Cardinals, eventually to move to St. Louis and finally Arizona;
· Cincinnati Reds, doomed to extinction shortly afterward;
· Green Bay Packers;
· Portsmouth Spartans, due to become the Detroit Lions the following year.
With eight of those clubs continuing to thrive today, and the Cincinnati Reds having vanished from the scene, that leaves the never-too-well-fated Dodgers/Tigers on whom we’ve decided to turn our spotlight. For 1933 and the next eleven years, they plugged on as well as they could, but consistently ended up as no more than bridesmaids. The reason we’ve chosen to single them out for recognition is that their rosters over this period featured a bevy of players who rate among the game’s greatest in history. What a shame it was that a franchise whose ranks included those shown below never managed to reach division championship status. Nevertheless, we wish to salute them, especially these highly exemplary performers:
· End Perry Schwartz;
· Tackles Frank “Bruiser” Kinard and Bill Lee;
· Guards Herman Hickman and Grover “Ox” Emerson;
· Sterling tailback Clarence “Ace” Parker.
This may not be the most inspiring article on pro football you’ve ever read, but at least it’s been an enjoyable one to write.
We’re not about to embark on a lengthy history of our favorite sport here, since that would require a virtual encyclopedia. Our purpose is merely to present a few selected snapshots of professional football’s struggle throughout its earliest days. The contrast between the then and the now seems absolutely unbelievable.
The first recorded play-for-pay game took place in 1894, when a Latrobe, Pennsylvania team challenged a squad from the nearby hamlet of Jeannette to a single contest, and came out a 12-0 winner. Essentially speaking, that was page one in pro football’s Book of Genesis.
This sport, which had already achieved some popularity on the eastern college gridiron fields at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Pennsylvania, et al, could hardly avoid attaining professional status in due course. The aught and teen years of the twentieth century found a number of loosely organized teams bashing it out across the northeast and midwest (particularly the latter) from one autumn to the next.
What had made this all happen? Did cheering fans pack the stands to capacity week after week? Were fat pay checks being doled out to the players, supplementable by endorsement fees for shaving cream or athlete’s foot remedies? Did the star performers reign as heroes in the cities their teams represented? Did mass hysteria prevail over each new season?
Well, not exactly. In fact, we have to say not in the slightest. Where, then, did the motivation originate?
The answer could only be an inherent love of taking the field and giving out with one’s best. Not unlike kids assembling on vacant lots for an afternoon match, these were grown men with established grid skills seizing an opportunity for organized combative exercise, in return for a couple bucks to the extent club funds became available.
In 1920, the inevitable result occurred, when a small group of men gathered at a Canton, Ohio automobile agency and sat on running boards as they conceived an official league, with franchises offerable to interested civic leaders anywhere at a whopping $100 price. Their venture proved fruitful. The game’s New Testament had begun.
Fourteen memberships were readily acquired in the American Professional Football Association, to be rechristened later as the National Football League. The 1920 season’s participating cities stretched from New York state westward to Illinois, via Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Altogether, after a long era of financial successes and failures, location switches, additional entrants, and otherwise, these “original colonies” expanded to encompass 61 different metropoles, smaller towns, entire states, or major regional areas having seen fit to support their gridiron warriors at one time or another. At present, just 32 survivors remain, carrying out their fall schedules before excited fans numbering in the millions.
The ultimate event each year, or professional football’s Book of Revelations, is the classic Super Bowl, whose spectator frenzy has reached a stage comparable to if not exceeding baseball’s world series, the quadrennial international Olympiad, hockey’s Stanley Cup, the British soccer finals, and perhaps all the rest combined.
It’s been a glorious history indeed, so full of highlights over the past century and a quarter that volumes would be needed to cover them adequately. However, we’ve chosen instead to focus briefly on two much dimmer bulbs from the 1920s and 1930s-1940s, to which little or no due credit has ever been accorded.
We’re talking about a pair of clubs that have always held a certain fascination for this writer, namely the Canton/Cleveland Bulldogs from 1920 until their demise following the 1927 season, and the Brooklyn Dodgers (later renamed the Tigers), who reigned in relative obscurity from 1930 to 1944.
In the years 1922 through 1924, the Bulldogs’ record amounted to 28 victories against a single defeat and four ties. They were a decided forerunner to the subsequent age Bears, Browns, Packers, Cowboys, Patriots, and other dynasties which have made their own highly prominent splashes. Still, who remembers these early day stalwarts’ prowess, or has even heard of them?
Some degree of appreciation certainly seems to be in order. The Canton and Cleveland location lineups during that three-year period included:
· Guy Chamberlin, one of the finest ends the game has known;
· Wilbur “Fats” Henry, generally acclaimed to this day as great a tackle who ever lived, the
Roosevelt Browns, Jim Parkers, and Bob Lillys of latter years notwithstanding;
· Roy “Link” Lyman, still another superb tackle in the eyes of many.
This team truly deserves more recognition than it has ever been granted.
The 1933 season found the league broken down into two separate divisions for the first time, with a playoff game at the end between the respective leaders. Only ten teams existed then
In the Eastern Division were the:
· Boston Redskins, later to migrate to Washington, D.C.;
· Brooklyn Dodgers, later to be called the Tigers;
· Philadelphia Eagles;
· Pittsburgh Pirates, later to become the Steelers;
· New York Giants.
In the Western Division were the:
· Chicago Bears;
· Chicago Cardinals, eventually to move to St. Louis and finally Arizona;
· Cincinnati Reds, doomed to extinction shortly afterward;
· Green Bay Packers;
· Portsmouth Spartans, due to become the Detroit Lions the following year.
With eight of those clubs continuing to thrive today, and the Cincinnati Reds having vanished from the scene, that leaves the never-too-well-fated Dodgers/Tigers on whom we’ve decided to turn our spotlight. For 1933 and the next eleven years, they plugged on as well as they could, but consistently ended up as no more than bridesmaids. The reason we’ve chosen to single them out for recognition is that their rosters over this period featured a bevy of players who rate among the game’s greatest in history. What a shame it was that a franchise whose ranks included those shown below never managed to reach division championship status. Nevertheless, we wish to salute them, especially these highly exemplary performers:
· End Perry Schwartz;
· Tackles Frank “Bruiser” Kinard and Bill Lee;
· Guards Herman Hickman and Grover “Ox” Emerson;
· Sterling tailback Clarence “Ace” Parker.
This may not be the most inspiring article on pro football you’ve ever read, but at least it’s been an enjoyable one to write.
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