1. The Forward Pass

The art of throwing a football from one player to another over the line of scrimmage coincided, roughly, with the debut of the horseless carriage, and in some quarters it was almost as much derided. Syracuse, for one, would have none of the forward pass until Yale (or was it Cornell?) taught the Orange better.

The year 1905 was a season of radical upheaval among the turtle-necked, canvas-jacketed, mustachioed, pigskin pug-uglies. In addition to legalization of the forward pass (heretofore, as in English rugby, the ball could be passed directly across the field, or back, but never forward), the ten-yard rule, and the onside kick came into being.

The forward pass, though, came in wearing hobbleskirts. It could not be thrown to a receiver within five yards on either side of where the ball was put in play, meaning the center. Also, it could not be thrown any closer than from five yards behind the line of scrimmage. As a result, teams using the forward pass were confined to a simple throw over the corner of the line. The defense wasted no time in catching up with this simple play.

But, there were innovators then, as there are today. Deception began to take over. Fielding H. Yost equipped his Michigan team with an aerial maneuver in which the quarterback, after taking the snap from center, faked to the halfback, took one or two diagonal steps, then passed to an end who had gone deep.

If you think that play sounds familiar, hearken to this one described by Walter Camp, Yale's pigskin pundit, in his College Football, published in 1910.

"One night," he wrote, "while studying the problem of how to get men down the field in a position to take a longer forward pass, the thought suggested itself: why not let the fullback take up a position as if to kick, and as soon as the ball was passed to him, let him run directly back toward his own goal line, say five or ten yards, and turn and throw the ball?"

Substitute today's quarterback for the fullback, erase the fake kick, and you have the established practice of the modern passer trotting backwards, wheeling, then spotting his receiver in the open.

Or consider this play, also developed by the bright boys at Yale. After faking a drop kick, a Yale back would start a sweeping end run, giving his ends a chance to penetrate deep downfield and receive a long, high throw from the artful drop kicker. This was the Elis' famed "23" play. Now it is known as the roll-out, perpetrated either by the quarterback, or a halfback, or the fullback, who are also good passers.

In its early days, and for quite a few years after its inception, the forward pass was not an integral part of football. Rather, according to Camp, "it was a makeshift weapon designed to bolster the attack . . . and also in line of an answer to the appeal of many that they would like to see the ball oftener."

Modern advocates of grind-'em-out college football could profit by these observations of the old master, made 50 years ago. But Camp, himself, was not wholly sold on the forward pass from a humanitarian point of view, as the following paragraph indicates.

"The writer's prediction was that within a year or two after its introduc­tion, it [the forward pass] would become perfected to such an extent that it would force the defending side to withdraw their halfbacks from their position of protecting the tackles, and that the third year would see these players ranged at least eight yards back of the line of scrimmage; that when this happened, there would no longer be any forward passing to speak of, but that the heaviest and most atrocious form of massed play that the game has ever seen would be used on the thus defenseless tackles."

Obviously, Camp and his fellow strategists had not yet come around to the 4-3 defense up front, manned by four 260-pound tackles and three 230-pound linebackers. Or maybe in those days they just didn't grow the boys so big, so early!

PASSING COMES OF AGE

From all indications, Camp's dire warnings concerning the reactions to be expected against the forward pass were taken to heart by most coaches because it wasn't until 1913 that any team exploited the weapon to the limit. The team that exploited the aerial bomb to the point of awesome destruction was Notre Dame. Its victim, of all teams, was Army, which utterly disdained the weapon—a commentary, then as now, on the so-called rigidity of the military mind.

Outside of the Middle West, Notre Dame, with only 700 students enrolled, was an unknown quantity, athletically and scholastically. Army was chided in the press for having scheduled an early season "pushover."

Notre Dame's two finest players, Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais, prepared all summer for the big chance to make their small school famous. At Cedar Point, a summer resort on Lake Erie, day after day, week after week, quarterback Dorais and end Rockne threw and caught the ball to perfect their forward pass techniques—long and short, inside and outside.

Came the big day in early November. Only 2,500 spectators bothered to sit in the stands of the old field at West Point for the expected annihilation of the unknown upstarts. The confident Cadets made it a game for the first half, and although they trailed by 14-13 at intermission, they looked for a Notre Dame roll-over in the third and fourth periods.

A roll-over it was, but a tornado rolling out of the Midwest. Coach Jess Harper's team cut loose with the most dazzling exhibition of forward passing since it had been legalized. Throwing mostly to Rockne, but with a heave now and then to the other end, Joe Pliska, Dorais completed 14 out of 17 passes for 200 yards to annihilate Army 35-13. At one stretch, the Irish dropped 12 consecutive aerial bombs. This was one more than the number of players they used all during the game that centered nationwide attention on the South Bend school.

Nation-wide attention, too, focused on the forward pass. But, although the wizardry of Dorais and Rockne proved it at last to be a vigorous offensive weapon, most coaches still chose to regard the forward pass as not much more than a "makeshift" or "fill-in." The off-tackle smash and the end sweep were still the coaches' bread and butter.

PASSING AND THE  PROS

There were dissenters, though. Some fine college passers, such as Benny Friedman of Michigan, continued to keep the torch afire until the 1930's when the professionals, aided, abetted, and inspired by the famed "aerial circuses" of Southwestern colleges, began employing the forward pass not only as a primary striking force, but also as a sure-fire method of selling a new and exciting brand of football to a part of the public that had only a cursory interest in college rah-rah.

The sporting goods manufacturers went right along. They razzle-dazzled their football, changing it from a heavy, lumpy object that had to be thrown almost from the palm of the hand into a thinner, flatter, more pointed ball that could be gripped easily by stubby-fingered people like myself and then thrown with almost the accuracy and speed of a baseball.

Meanwhile, the ingenious human mind was at work devising elaborate patterns of aerial attack that enabled the passing geniuses among the pros to set a solid foundation for incredible passing and receiving records when the pay-for-play game became fully accepted in the late 1940's. The rule-makers helped by legalizing the forward pass from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. Before that change in 1933, there had to be a five-yard gap between the scrimmage line and the lofting of the ball.

The startling advance in the professional passing game is shown by such statistics as the following:

In 1932, Arnie Herber, of the Green Bay Packers, led all National Foot­ball League passers with 101 throws and 37 completions good for 637 yards.

Luke Johnsos, then an end for the Chicago Bears and now a coach for the same pioneering team, led all receivers with 24 catches.

Four years later, the same Herber's league-leading mark was 77 comple­tions in 173 throws for 1,239 yards. His receiver was the magnificent Don Hutson who led the league in the number of catches for eight years through the era of 1936 to 1945, surrendering the honor only to the Philadelphia Eagles' Don Looney in 1938 and the Chicago Cardinals' Gaynell Tinsley in 1940.

The first pro passer to throw more than 200 times a season was Parker Hall of the Cleveland Rams, who, in 1941, fired 208 bullets, completing 106 of them for 1,227 yards. But, the year before that, little Davey O'Brien, a graduate of Texas Christian's aerial circus, set an all-time one-game record by throwing 60 times for the Eagles against the Washington Red­skins. Davey had 33 completions, 14 of them to Don Looney for 180 yards, but still had to settle for an amazing 13-6 Washington victory. Actually, the Redskin's victory over the Eagles' record aerial barrage wasn't quite so amazing. They had a better balanced team and the incomparable Sammy Baugh at quarterback.

While keeping Herber's 101 throws in mind, remember that just 15 years later, in 1947, Baugh set a new league record of 354 pass attempts, 210 completions, and 2,988 yards gained. These astounding totals, set by the lean, rawhide-tough Texan when he had already been 10 years in the National Football League, probably will defy all efforts to surpass them, especially in an era when the grind-em-out type of college coaches are turning out nothing but a record number of ''dead" arms and receivers who couldn't catch a volley ball.

THE EGG AND I

It would be nice to say that while all this passing magic was transpiring, I was lapping up every little word about it, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed, and hardly able to wait for the time when I, too, could start racking up the records. But, truthfully, I hardly knew anything about these giants of the gridiron. In 1940, I was residing in the sheltered and remote precincts of Walnut Creek, California, doing my football duty as a tailback on a team fielded by Acalanes Union High School (300 students).

I was too busy passing, punting, and running (they timed me in the 100-yard dash by the calendar), and besides, there was no professional team on the Coast. We didn't get much news of those Eastern teams, and what we did get seemed to be slanted to give us the impression it was a truck drivers' league, and not to be recommended to the youth of Western America.

When I graduated from high school in 1943, the Navy claimed me, not as a member of the Great Lakes or some other noted football team, but as an undistinguished swabbie sweeping the seas in dungarees. After three years of complete anonymity and separation from football, I entered the University of Oregon on April 1 (All Fools Day) 1946. I was fooled right from the start. There was no scholarship awaiting me because all my high school heroics had been lost at sea. But like Ralph Henry Barbour's heroes, I went out for the team and managed to make the freshman squad, when Tex Oliver was head coach, as a fifth-string tailback in the single wing.

In my sophomore year, matters took a turn for the better. Jim Aiken arrived from the University of Nevada to take over the coaching job. He installed the T-formation and went to work on me as his possible quarter­back. We worked together for two years, summer and winter, after he gave the command to a very scared sophomore, "Take over, from now on you're my quarterback."

The highlight of my college career was playing against Doak Walker and his S.M.U. team in the Cotton Bowl in 1948, even though we lost 21-13.

Meanwhile, ready to graduate a year ahead of my class, I saw to it that Dan Reeves, the big man on the Los Angeles Rams, was the first to know about it. I wanted to play on the West Coast and had no interest in going to San Francisco because I knew that the All-America Conference was going to fold sooner or later and I didn't want it to fold on me.

But, somehow, Greasy Neale, then coach of my present team, the Philadelphia Eagles, knew about me, too. He had a scout named Bud Whitehead with me for my last six games. But I was determined to join the Rams, which I did in 1949.

I received no bonus for signing and I was paid the minimum salary, which was a much smaller minimum than it is today. I just wanted to begin making some money. I had married, and between Gloria and myself, we didn't have the price of a weekend at Muscle Beach.

As everyone who knows me knows, I always was a modest kid. The Rams had Bob Waterfield and Bobby Thomason ahead of me, and there were a lot of quarterbacks on other teams who also were ahead of me. But, none of them was ahead of me in my own estimation. I always felt I could throw better than any of them. This is by way of explaining that, in my own modest way, it was no surprise to me that I was somewhat instru­mental in helping those great Rams' receivers, Tom Fears and Elroy Hirsch, to set pass-catching records in 1950 and 1951.

Again, just keep Luke Johnsos' 24 catches for 1932 in mind and compare them with Fears' all-time record of 84 receptions for 1,116 yards, and with Crazy Legs' 66 for a record 1,495 yards and a record 17 touchdowns. Oh, yes, a fellow named Waterfield was in there pitching the ball to these boys, too.

Meanwhile, I wasn't too modest to admit I could use a bit more educa­tion. I returned to Oregon and earned my Master's Degree, thanks to a magnificent block by my old friend, Dr. P. O. Sigerseth. To the good doctor and to my wife Gloria I owe what little I have attained in keeping my verbs from running interference with my nouns.

My nine years with the Rams were happy and prosperous. I probably would still be serving out my time with them, except for a delicate situation that arose in 1957 involving coach Sid Gillman and myself. It has been publicized extensively and needs no retelling here. Suffice it to say that we both wanted to call the signals; Gillman from the sidelines, the way Paul Brown does. I thought I could call the plays better from my position in back of the center. The Rams felt they had to back their coach, so we parted company.

Naturally, I was bitter at the trade that sent me to the Philadelphia Eagles in exchange for an offensive guard, a defensive halfback, and a No. 1 college draft choice. It meant tearing up all the roots I had so carefully nurtured on the West Coast and moving my wife and three daughters to a city 3,000 miles away from my home and which I had known only from the hotel and the airport because of the Rams' infrequent appearances in Philadelphia.

But to quote that trite saying, everything works out for the best. The Eagles' management has treated me well, and I have made a host of new friends in my new surroundings. The entirely unexpected trade also jolted me into thinking about my future, and in doing so I began almost automatically to draw strange symbols all over the table cloth. This book about the skills and work of the professional quarterback is one result of those symbols.

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