Category Archives: The Film Room/X’s and O’s

Happy Chuck Bednarik Day

Tucked between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving on my football calendar (which would be available in our gift shop if this website had a gift shop) is another notable occasion: Chuck Bednarik Day. It was on this date in 1960 that Bednarik, uh, waylaid Frank Gifford at Yankee Stadium — a Hall of Famer vs. Hall of Famer collision that put The Giffer out of the game for more than a year.

If it isn’t the biggest hit in pro football history, it’s certainly one of the two or three finalists. When Frank returned to the Giants in ’62, it was as a wide receiver, not a running back.

Let’s relive that moment, shall we?

It’s amazing, after watching the clip, that Bednarik was accused by some — though not the Giants — of cheap-shotting Gifford. It was a clean, if high, tackle. The reason Frank was so vulnerable, running so upright, was that he never saw Chuck coming from behind.

Bednarik also got grief for his celebratory jig — with the concussed Gifford lying lifelessly at his feet — but he always claimed it was a victory dance. The Eagles, after all, recovered Frank’s fumble and were on the verge of a 17-10 win. It was a huge play in their (last) championship season.

Here’s some other footage of the hit that gives us a little more of the aftermath. You’ll notice, at the 1:33 mark, that Bednarik spends a fraction of a second exulting — if you want to call it that — then goes to the scene of the recovery. At the end of the clip he looks back at Gifford, who still hasn’t moved.

I side with Bednarik on this one. Why? Well, check out his very similar victory dance after the clock ran out in the title game against the Packers five weeks later:

Seems Bednarik, unlike most players in his era, was a demonstrative guy. Ahead of his time, you might say. So he was both a throwback (going both ways in ’60) and a Man of the Future. Interesting contradiction.

Since this is Chuck Bednarik Day, by the way, do yourself a favor and read — or reread — John Schulian’s definitive take on him for Sports Illustrated. Sportswriting doesn’t get any better. It’s included in the terrific new anthology he edited, Football: Great Writing About the National Sport. A sample:

[Linebacker] was where Bednarik was always at his best. He could intercept a pass with a single meat hook and tackle with the cold-blooded efficiency of a sniper. ”Dick Butkus was the one who manhandled people,” says Tom Brookshier, the loquacious former Eagle cornerback. ”Chuck just snapped them down like rag dolls.”

It was a style that left Frank Gifford for dead, and New York seething, in 1960, and it made people everywhere forget that Concrete Charlie, for all his love of collisions, played the game in a way that went beyond the purely physical. ”He was probably the most instinctive football player I’ve ever seen,” says Maxie Baughan, a rookie linebacker with the Eagles in Bednarik’s whole-schmear season. Bednarik could see a guard inching one foot backward in preparation for a sweep or a tight end setting up just a little farther from the tackle than normal for a pass play. Most important, he could think along with the best coaches in the business.

And the coaches didn’t appreciate that, which may explain the rude goodbye that the Dallas Cowboys’ Tom Landry tried to give Bednarik in ’62. First the Cowboys ran a trap, pulling a guard and running a back through the hole. ”Chuck was standing right there,” Brookshier
says. ”Almost killed the guy.” Next the Cowboys ran a sweep behind that same pulling guard, only to have Bednarik catch the ballcarrier from behind. ”Almost beheaded the guy,” Brookshier says. Finally the Cowboys pulled the guard, faked the sweep and threw a screen pass. Bednarik turned it into a two-yard loss. ”He had such a sense for the game,” Brookshier says. ”You could do all that shifting and put all those men in motion, and Chuck still went right where the ball was.”

From the Eagles media guide in 1960, the season Bednarik and Gifford intersected.

More from Tom Flores, the first MMQB

My post on Tom Flores’ stint as the Oakland Tribune’s Monday Morning Quarterback in 1962 got some nice attention. Sports Illustrated’s Monday Morning Quarterback, Peter King, tweeted out a link to it, and the result, naturally, was a flock of new visitors to the site.

So I thought I’d follow up with a bit more from the Flores/MMQB file — more X’s and O’s, in particular.

Let’s start with his Sept. 10 column, after the Raiders dropped their opener to the New York Titans, 28-17. Flores:

New York’s secret was no secret — just the long pass. They scored all their points from outside our 20 and all through the air. Powell, New York’s spread end, made his touchdowns on a sideline-and-up and on a post pattern.

From where I sat it looked like his post pattern was not called in the huddle, and he confirmed this to the writers later. As he was running some other pattern downfield, our deep backs switched off to what was supposed to be a zone or switch-off between safety man and corner man. But our backs got confused and Powell adjusted his pattern into a post, hoping that [quarterback Lee] Grosscup would have enough time to spot the change. Lee did . . . and hit Art with a beautiful throw which put New York out in front 28 to 10.

The accompanying diagram:

On Sept. 15, with the Raiders off that week, Flores weighed in on the 49ers. One thing he touched on was the halfback option play:

Now that Bill Kilmer has been moved to running back [from quarterback], a new weapon will be introduced: the run-or-pass option. This play, with the right person running it, can be one of the most dangerous in football. [Frank] Gifford of the Giants and [Paul] Hornung of the Packers are perfectionists of this play.

It starts out like an end sweep, except the flanker, instead of blocking, fakes in as if he were going to block and then runs a corner pattern. The halfback runs it like he would any normal end sweep, only he has his eye on his flanker and the deep defensive back on that sideline. If the defensive back reads “run” and shoots up . . ., the halfback slows up and throws a nice soft pass so the flanker can run under it as he cuts to the corner.

Should the deep back read “pass” and stay with the flanker, all the halfback has to do is yell “go” and his guards will turn upfield as they would on an end sweep.

Two days later, following the Niners’ 30-14 loss to the Bears, Flores wrote about Chicago’s pass rush, which registered seven sacks for 64 yards and was essentially the story of the game:

[The Bears] had linebackers running in and out of spots in the line all day long, and most of the time they ended their assignments in [QB] John Brodie’s lap. Bill George, the great middle linebacker, and Joe Fortunato, outside linebacker, kept the 49er[s] offense confused. From a regular pro-type defense with four big men up on the line of scrimmage, they would jitterbug back and forth from various spots along the line and on the snap of the ball go shooting through on either side of the defensive tackles or ends. . . . On 90 percent, or so it seemed, of their defensive plays they shot at least one backer but more often two or three.

They used several types of defensive setups. One in particular seemed to really give the 49ers a rough time. On this defense George would get into the line in a regular lineman’s stance, and the rest of the linemen on the split end side would move out a couple of feet.

This left giant end Doug Atkins (6-8) outside the offensive tackle, and man did he come hard. He and Brodie got to know each other pretty well on a not-so-friendly basis.

On Oct. 1, Flores analyzed a 91-yard pick-six by cornerback Fred Williamson that had given the Raiders a 14-7 lead over the Chargers (in a game they ultimately lost, 42-33):

Fred actually intercepted a pass thrown for another man’s receiver. It went like this. San Diego lined up in a slot-right formation with [Don] Norton spread far out and [Lance] Alworth flanked inside, between Norton and the tackle. As the ball was centered, the outside man, Norton, ran up the field and curled in toward the middle, ending up in a deep hook pattern, at about 15 yards. Williamson went with him and had him covered.

The flanker, meanwhile, ran downfield and cut toward the sideline behind Norton at about 10 yards. This was [safety Vern] Valdez’s man, and he was right behind him ready to go for the ball. On the release of the ball, Fred left his man and went for the interception, cutting in front of Alworth. Somehow, Fred made a leaping catch that almost sent him to the turf, maintained his balance while he struggled to stay inbounds and then turned on his fine speed and outran the remaining Chargers who were coming over to lend a helping hand.

I could go on, but I’ll wrap it up with Flores’ Dec. 10 column. The 49ers had played Vince Lombardi’s Packers tough in a 31-21 defeat — they were up 21-10 at the half — and Tom was impressed with an offensive wrinkle they came up with for Green Bay, one that enabled Brodie to complete 13 of 15 passes in the first half (against a defense, I’ll just remind you, with five Hall of Famers):

The Niners came out with a new type of spread formation that gave the Packers fits the entire first half. With both ends tight, the flanker would spread to either side. On that side the tight end would spread out just about five yards and the halfback would slot in between the end and the tackle. This left only the fullback in the backfield in his regular position behind the quarterback.

From this formation the 49ers did several things. They would send the fullback in motion away from the strength, quick-toss to the fullback to the strength, fake a reverse to the halfback and throw a pass or give to the halfback on the reverse.

Clearly, Flores’ talents went beyond quarterbacking and coaching. His analysis in his Monday Morning Quarterback column was far ahead of its time — good enough to pass muster today. Even the Tribune’s diagrams, though primitive, painted a decent picture of pro football in the early ’60s.

Big Ben bumps Tom Flores out of the record book

What in the world has gotten into Ben Roethlisberger? It’s as if he’s entered another matrix these past two weeks. Throwing for six touchdowns in back-to-back games against the Colts and Ravens? Even nowadays, in the Flag Football Era, that’s extraordinary.

When Roethlisberger tossed No. 12 late Sunday night to Matt Spaeth, he broke the record of 11 TD passes over two games shared by Tom Brady (in his lustrous 2007 season for the Patriots) and Tom Flores (in his less sparkly 1963 season for the Raiders).

Let’s talk about the Other Tom — Flores — for a few paragraphs. That ’63 season, after all, was a turning point for the Oakland franchise. The year before, the Raiders had been by far the worst team in the AFL, going 1-13 under Marty Feldman (who lasted five games) and Red Conkright (who took over for the last nine). In the offseason, owner Wayne Valley tapped a Chargers assistant as his new coach, and that coach — Al Davis — transformed the Raiders into a pro football powerhouse.

In Davis’ first year, Oakland improved from 1-13 to 10-4, winning its last eight. It’s arguably the best turnaround in NFL/AFL history. It was in the final two games, vs. Denver and Houston, that Flores threw 11 TD passes. The final score in the latter was Raiders 52, Oilers 49. (Mike Mercer broke a 49-49 tie with a 39-yard field goal in the last few minutes.)

Here’s a great stat from that game, courtesy of The Associated Press: “All told, the Raiders gained 588 yards Sunday [not counting sack yardage] after going through the first quarter without a first down.” Let’s see somebody do that again (without the benefit of overtime).

But I’m getting off topic. What I wanted to tell you about was what preceded those two magical games for Flores. In 1962, you see, when the Raiders were scraping bottom, he didn’t suit up at all. He was on the Physically Unable to Perform list, or whatever they called it then, after contracting a disease “described as bronchiectasis, a chronic lung condition which requires rest,” the Oakland Tribune reported. “He was told the healing process will take only a few months.”

So Flores sat out the year and, to keep himself occupied, wrote a regular column for the Tribune sports section. And what did the paper call it? Monday Morning Quarterback. (Attention: Peter King.) Here’s the promo the Trib ran in August:

This may well have been the first football X’s-and-O’s column to appear in a newspaper. (I haven’t found an earlier one, and I’ve done a lot of looking.) Up to then, there was a lot of mystery surrounding strategy and tactics. Every once in a while you’d see the diagram of a successful play in the sports pages – or of a new offensive or defensive wrinkle – but beyond that . . . .

Flores, to his everlasting credit, took his job seriously and wrote pieces that were very educational. He was – how shall I put this? – a really good explainer, which is one of the reasons, no doubt, he went on to win two Super Bowls as a coach.

His wheelhouse, of course, was the quarterback position. That’s where he was at his best. On an upcoming game between the 49ers and Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts:

With receivers like [R.C.] Owens, Ray Berry, Jimmy Orr, Dee Mackey and, of course, the great All-Pro Lenny Moore, it’s no wonder most of Baltimore’s offense is through the air. I’d look for a lot of throwing Sunday with Owens and Berry on the short patterns – sidelines, hitches, hooks – and Moore and Orr used more on the longer throws such as sideline and ups, hook and goes, and posts.

This may sound pretty basic in 2014, but in 1962 it was virtually unheard of. You just didn’t get analysis like that. In an earlier column, Flores had discussed these various pass routes. The graphic that ran with it:

All I can say, again, is: not bad for 1962. “Oakland has to make its short passing game go in order to have a better balanced offense,” he wrote. “. . . The short passing game is vital to ball control. Passes like hitches, hooks, shallows, sidelines, swings, screens and flares get a lot of short yardage and help sustain drives.”

Sounds like the philosophy behind the West Coast Offense, doesn’t it?

“Don’t watch the ball so much,” he told his readers. “If you watch the patterns forming, you will see that almost every play has at least one deep receiver and at least one short one, spreading the defense and giving the thrower alternate targets. . . . Defensive linemen are too big and too quick nowadays to try to grind out yards along the ground all the time. The passing game is at least 50 percent of the offense of most teams, and more than that with some.”

It was a wonderfully experimental time for football. Coaches would try just about anything. The year before, the 49ers had used a shotgun offense in which the quarterback – Billy Kilmer in particular – often played much like a tailback in the single wing. In ’62, the Raiders unveiled their own version of it, the “Runnin’ Gun formation.” Here’s Flores column on the subject (complete with diagram):

Flores: “From this set-up you’ll see several things develop. There will be men in motion to either side. Most of the time this will be Red [Conkright]’s so-called ‘runnin’ man.’ In situations where this man is in motion he will probably be involved in a pass pattern either as receiver or decoy.

“Another possibility this offense presents is the almost extinct ‘quick kick’ that was used so often with the old single wing. Since [Raiders quarterback Cotton] Davidson is also a fine punter, this play is a possibility.

“Standing back three yards the QB has an advantage in passing since he can now start looking immediately for receivers. Also, the ball can be centered to either of the deep backs, so they should be able to hit the line faster on running plays.”

Interesting we don’t see more of that today – direct snaps to the running back on quick-hitting plays. Coaches probably figure it’s enough to ask centers to just snap the ball to the quarterback, though centers in the old days would snap it to any of a number of players, including this one:

OK, I’ve had my fun. Anyway, Flores hung up his typewriter after that season and, his lungs improved, returned to the Raiders in ’63. He backed up Davidson for the first five games, then took over the offense and, in a two-week span, threw for 11 TDs. Fifty-one years later, in a much different landscape for quarterbacks, Ben Roethlisberger has thrown for 12. Wonder what kind of sports columnist he’d make.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

For Rex Ryan’s eyes only

That was a tough way for the Jets to lose Thursday night — on a Hail Mary 58-yard field goal try by Nick Folk that failed to clear the big paw of Patriots defensive tackle Chris Jones. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rex Ryan, assuming he could get himself to sleep afterward, had a dream like this:

For the record, that’s one, two, three, four 1936 Green Bay Packers knocking through 50-yarders. This is from a promotional video filmed in Hollywood after the Packers beat the Boston Redskins to win the NFL title. No. 7 is Hall of Fame fullback Clarke Hinkle, No. 57 is tackle Ade Schwammel, No. 52 is guard Tiny Engebretsen and No. 59 is center Frank Butler. (I’m going by the all-time uniform numbers listed in the Packers’ 2014 media guide. It’s also possible No. 59 is tackle Ernie Smith, who did most of their kicking.)

As you can see, all of them are good-sized guys. Teams back then liked kickers with “a heavy leg.” They figured it helped get more distance. Note, too, the white footballs — which were used for night games because they were more visible and were used in this instance for the same reason, so the camera could pick them up in the distance.

Imagine having four players on your team capable of booting a 50-yarder. Of course, it was more of a kicking game in those days, so it was a skill you developed if you had the ability. It wasn’t unusual for a club to rotate several kickers — depending, perhaps, on the distance of the kick. Some kickers were better on the shorter ones, some were better on the longer ones.

Paul Hornung’s forgotten streak

On this day in 1961, Paul Hornung did something that hasn’t been done since — and probably won’t be done again. The Hall of Fame running back, who doubled as a kicker, scored the Packers’ first 31 points in a 45-7 beatdown of the Colts. The highlights of his epic performance:

That was from a ’70s game show, by the way, hosted by Dick Enberg called “Sports Challenge.” The episode you were watching pitted three Packers (Hornung, offensive guard Jerry Kramer and Hall of Fame defensive end Willie Davis) against a team of Dallas Cowboys (quarterbacks Don Meredith and Eddie LeBaron and receiver Frank Clarke). All of them were retired by then (1972, I’m guessing).

Many of the questions were easy — nobody wanted to make the contestants look bad — but it was still funny to see how little some of them knew about the history of their own sports, never mind other sports. (Even recent history . . . like the previous season.)

But getting back to Hornung, he was one of the last of a breed: an offensive star who also kicked. There were a plenty of them in pro football’s first few decades, when rosters were smaller and players had to multitask. By the late ’50s, though, you started to see more and more kicking specialists, guys who did nothing else (except maybe punt, like the 49ers’ Tommy Davis). Paul managed to hold out as a two-way threat through the 1964 season, at which point coach Vince Lombardi replaced him with Don Chandler.

As you saw in the clip, Hornung could do it all — run, catch, kick and, because he’d been a quarterback at Notre Dame, even throw the occasional option pass. (That was the “run-pass option” Enberg referred to on the last touchdown, when Paul decided to run.) As a result, he scored tons of points for those great Packers teams — a record 176 in 12 games in 1960 (since topped only by LaDainian Tomlinson’s 186 in 16 games for the Chargers in 2006), 146 the next season (also in 12 games) and 31 straight that afternoon against the Colts (whose defense, let’s not forget, featured Hall of Fame linemen Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan).

Hornung’s consecutive-points streak was actually 32, because he’d booted the PAT after Green Bay’s final score the previous week. Think about it: What would it take for somebody to do that today? Answer: Kick 11 field goals — with no intervening touchdowns or safeties. It’s possible, certainly, but nobody has come close to pulling it off. In 2007, for instance, the Bengals’ Shayne Graham booted seven field goals to score all of his team’s points in a 21-7 win over the Ravens. But that was pretty much the extent of his streak (22, counting a point-after the game before).

Indeed, I’ve come across just five examples since World War II of players scoring 20 or more points in a game and having it be all the points their club scored. The list:

PLAYERS WHO SCORED ALL OF THEIR TEAM’S POINTS IN A GAME (20+)*

[table]

Date,Player\, Team,Opponent,Pts,How he scored

11-19-50,RB Doak Walker\, Lions,Packers,24,3 TD catches\, 3 PAT\, 1 FG

11-11-07,K Shayne Graham\, Bengals,Ravens,21,7 field goals

11-18-96,K Chris Boniol\, Cowboys,Packers,21,7 field goals

12-8-62,FB Cookie Gilchrist\, Bills (AFL),N.Y. Titans,20, 2 TD runs\, 2 PAT\, 2 FG

12-1-46,FB Ted Fritsch\, Packers,Redskins,20,3 TD runs\, 2 PAT

[/table]

*Since World War II.

(People forget what a talent Gilchrist was. Besides leading the league in rushing that season with 1,096 yards, he kicked eight field goals and 14 extra points.)

Still, the record for most consecutive points doesn’t belong to Hornung. No, it’s the property of another Hall of Famer, Chicago Cardinals back Ernie Nevers, who scored 59 straight over five days (Sunday/Thanksgiving Day) in 1929 — 19 vs. the Dayton Triangles and 40 vs. the Bears. (The latter, incidentally, remains the mark for points in a game.

Several other consecutive-points streaks in the ’20s also were longer than Hornung’s. Nevers had another lengthy streak — 47 points — in 1926, Hall of Famer Paddy Driscoll of the Cardinals scored at least 44 straight (there’s some uncertainty) in ’23 and Hank Gillo of the Racine (Wis.) Legion had a 43-point run in ’24.

Then there’s the streak put together by Ralph Kercheval of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1934 and ’35. That one might be the most remarkable of all. Over a span of eight games in those two seasons, Kercheval, a running back-kicker, scored every one of the Dodgers’ points — all, uh, 34. (Brooklyn didn’t exactly have a dynamic offense.) He extended his run to 40 the next week with two field goals, but then teammate Red Franklin ended it with a rushing touchdown. Hard as it is to believe — even for those low-scoring times — Kercheval’s streak (three touchdowns, six field goals, 4 PATs) lasted almost a year. It began Oct. 28, 1934 and ended Oct. 6, 1935.

It’s easy to cast aspersions on the early NFL. It was, after all, a much different game. But there’s one thing players did back then that today’s heroes will never match: score large numbers of points consecutively.

Hey, it’s something. One last screengrab:

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Gadget plays galore

NFL teams channeled their Inner David Copperfield in Week 3. We saw the Bengals’ Mohamed Sanu, the Dan Marino of wide receivers, complete a throwback to QB Andy Dalton for an 18-yard touchdown, and we saw the Browns dust off the illegal-since-1954 Hideout Play against the Ravens — with Johnny Manziel split way, way out, almost far enough to sell hot dogs. (We covered that bit of subterfuge in a post yesterday.)

It’s probably only a matter of time before some special teams coach sells his boss on this beauty:

I wouldn’t mind seeing somebody run this one, either:

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

The Browns try to pull a fast one

Browns offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan couldn’t possibly have known this, but he ran an illegal Hideout Play against the Ravens on practically the 60^th anniversary of the last legal Hideout Play. Even better, the victim both times was a Baltimore team — the Colts in 1954 and the Ravens on Sunday.

The last legal Hideout Play (a.k.a. Sleeper Play) was run Sept. 26, 1954 — by the sneaky Los Angeles Rams on the first play of the season. The Colts defense didn’t notice wide receiver Skeet Quinlan hanging out near the sideline when the ball was snapped, and no one was near him when he caught an 80-yard touchdown pass from Norm Van Brocklin. After the Rams won 48-0, Commissioner Bert Bell said, in essence, “Enough of this crap. We’re not a Sunday morning touch-football league. Anybody who tries to run a Hideout Play again will be penalized 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct.”

(His actual quote was: “This thing never should have happened in the first place. No matter how many good rules we have, somebody also comes up with something that we have to correct.”)

Here’s the brief game summary that appeared in newspapers across the country:

And here’s Bell declaring the play illegal the next day:

Sure enough, the following was added to the rulebook in 1955 (under Rule 10 — Section 2): “If an offensive player lines up less than five yards from the sideline on [the] same side as his team’s players bench, and his teammates (even though they are outside of [the] field of play) are in close proximity to where he is lined up when the ball is snapped, it is Unsportsmanlike Conduct.”

If he were “in close proximity” to his teammates, of course, his uniform would blend in with theirs and he’d be harder to notice. That’s one of the reasons the play was so effective in the early days. (That and the fact that clubs would usually save it for late in the game, when darkness was closing in. Many stadiums back then didn’t have lights — or had inadequate lighting — making the sidelines less visible in the fourth quarter.)

Actually, quarterback Johnny Manziel, the focal point of Sunday’s shenanigans, was in closer proximity to coaches than players as he stood along the sideline in the second quarter, pretending to have a conversation with his offensive coordinator. He had just come out of the game after being sent in for one play – a run by Isaiah Crowell that lost a yard.

As you can see from the clip, Manziel and Shanahan did a great selling job — had any of the Ravens bothered to notice. Johnny had his back turned to the game, waiting for Kyle to tell him to “Go!” (which he clearly did), and wide receivers coach Mike McDaniel gesticulated in the background for good measure. Then Johnny took off, free as can be, down the sideline, and Brian Hoyer hit him for a 39-yard gain to the Baltimore 23.

Alas, the play was called back — not because it was illegal (the referee didn’t mention anything about that), but because running back Terrance West wasn’t set before the snap. The Browns ended up punting and went on to lose 23-21; but think about it: How “great” would it have been, after the two weeks the NFL has had, for one of its teams to win a game by running a bogus play? After all, had West not messed up, Cleveland easily could have gotten three and possibly even seven points out of that possession.

Beyond that, though, there’s always been something a little cheesy about the play. It just doesn’t seem like something pro football players should be doing. That, certainly, was the point Bell was trying to make. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for coaches reviving long-lost offensive and defensive stratagems. But to pull a stunt like this . . . . Come on, Kyle. With all the rules favoring the offense nowadays, you’re running a Hideout Play? What’s next, having Manziel stick the ball under his jersey?

Some other things about the last Hideout/Sleeper Play that might interest you:

● Hall of Famer Weeb Ewbank made his NFL head-coaching debut with the Colts that day. The Hideout Play, in other words, was the housewarming gift he received from the Rams (the rats).

● The Baltimore cornerback who got caught sleeping was Don Shula. Years afterward, he said, “I remember thinking: Where in hell is [Van Brocklin] throwing the ball?”

● When the teams met again late in the season, the Colts gained a measure of revenge by upsetting the Rams 22-21. How sweet must that victory have been?

A little option action from Colin Kaepernick

Hope you enjoyed Colin Kaepernick breaking out the option Sunday during the 49ers’ 28-17 win over the Cowboys. OK, so it didn’t gain any yards. In fact, his pitch to LaMichael James resulted in a 1-yard loss. But it’s the thought that counts.

Here’s the Lions’ Greg Landry having a bit more success with it in 1973:

Now that’s how to run the option. Landry rushed for over 500 yards in consecutive (14-game) seasons in ’71 and ’72, a first for an NFL quarterback. The running back who took the pitch on the first play, as Howard Cosell pointed out, was Altie Taylor.

See if you can find the ball

There’s no better way to celebrate the start of the NFL season than with a clip — or three — of the ol’ Hidden-Ball Play. These are from Pigskin Champions, a documentary the Packers filmed in Hollywood after winning the 1936 title. As you’ll see, the play was the football equivalent of a Three-Card Monte game.

Which one is your favorite?

Hidden-Ball Play No. 1:

Hidden-Ball Play No. 2:

Hidden-Ball Play No. 3:

Bobby Layne running the option in 1952

Just because you haven’t seen something before doesn’t mean it’s new. Take the option play in the NFL, for instance. The zone-read may be a recent development, but the quarterback either (a.) running the ball himself or (b.) pitching to a trailing back certainly isn’t. Why, Bobby Layne, the Lions Hall of Famer, was doing both — quite effectively — in the early ’50s. And without a facemask, no less.

Here’s some footage from the ’52 title game against the Browns. In this sequence, Layne runs back-to-back option plays — first to the left, then to the right — and keeps the ball for decent gains both times:

Now let’s look at another clip from earlier in the game. From the Cleveland 7, Layne takes the snap, starts right, then pitches underhanded to the trailing Doak Walker, who’s driven out of bounds at the 2. On the next play, Bobby scores on a sneak to give the Lions a 7-0 lead.

More of the same in the ’53 title game:

And two more plays, back to back:

When he retired after the ’62 season, Layne held the NFL career passing records for touchdowns (196), yards (26,768) and, yes, interceptions (243). What tends to be forgotten is that he was also a very good runner. In ’52 he was ninth in the league in rushing with 411 yards — in addition to finishing third in passing yards (1,999) and TD throws (19). And this is in a 12-game season, mind you. In a 16-game season, 411 projects to 564, a total topped last year only by Cam Newton (585) and Terrelle Pryor (576).

The option didn’t take hold in pro football in the ’50s, but it makes sense that some coach — in this case, the Lions’ Buddy Parker — might try it. Layne and many other quarterbacks, such as the Browns’ Otto Graham, had been single wing tailbacks in college and were able runners. Why not take advantage of it? As the T formation spread, though, QBs evolved into Golden Arms rather than pass-run threats. Only now, with the influx of Newton, Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson, is that starting to change. Whether the change is permanent or just cyclical is another matter.

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

The whole 100 yards — and sometimes the end zones, too.