JRN 362 - Lecture Nineteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football
Rich Hanley, Associate Professor
Lecture Nineteen

Review
• A handful of dominant teams marked
the decades of the 1960s and 1970s.
• In the NFL, the Packers, the
Dolphins, the Steelers and the
Cowboys – America’s Team – drew
national followings because of that.

Review
• In college, traditional powers such as
Alabama, Texas, USC, Nebraska,
Oklahoma and Notre Dame, among
others, sustained their places at the
top of the annual Associated Press
poll as they had for years, but
schools such as Clemson and Miami
would join the elite group.

A New Era
• The most significant dynastic
conquest of 20th and 21st century
football was that of the NFL itself over
the United States, planting its shield
in every corner of the U.S. (including
Los Angeles again with both the
Rams and Chargers, and in Las
Vegas, from Oakland, in 2020.

A New Era
• Underneath this period, the brutality
of the game escalated to the point
where NFL and college officials
modified rules to reduce injuries while
maintaining the organic – and, as it
turns out, toxic - level of ecstasy and
violence that attracted attention from
the start of the game in the 19th
century.

A New Era
• The shadow of death of players by
their own hand and by the slow,
methodical blinkering of dementia,
both connected to the game.
• Parents began to question whether
their children should play the game,
thus threatening the future of the
game.

A New Era
• On the field, the San Francisco 49ers
replaced the dominant teams of the
1970s for a dynastic reign of their
own in the 1980s and 1990s.
• The team used an offense developed
by Bill Walsh when he served under
coach Paul Brown of the Cincinnati
Bengals.

A New Era
• The 49ers and their deployment of
the pass-oriented West Coast offense
reflected a decade of rule and other
changes.
• From a run-oriented, defensive game
that reflected rugby, football turned to
the pass and specialization as
rosters expanded.

A New Era
• Changes in the college game helped
NFL teams adapt quickly to new rules
that favored a wide-open game more
than the closely contested,
compressed structure of play.

A New Era
• In college, the one-platoon system
gave way to free substitution through
a series of rules changes in the late
1960s and early 1970s.
• That permitted smaller, faster, more
skilled players to take the field on
offense, creating the engine for the
option offense.

A New Era
• In the NFL, rule changes from the
1960s to the 2000s methodically
made it easier to score points.
• One such rule in the 1960s narrowed
the distance between hash marks,
giving teams a more open field
through which to start pass plays.

A New Era
• In 1978, the NFL prohibited a
defender from maintaining contact
with a receiver five yards out from
line of scrimmage.
• Also, the league allowed offensive
linemen to extend arms and block
with open hands. A year later, the in-
the-grasp rule protected
quarterbacks.

A New Era
• The shift to artificial turf in the 1970s
and to domed stadiums in Minnesota
, New Orleans and Indianapolis
(where the Baltimore Colts moved in
1984), in turn, created the physical
environment for more open play in
climate-controlled conditions.

A New Era
• In addition, the NFL expanded in
1976, adding Seattle and Tampa
Bay.
• Further expansion in the 1990s
amplified the talent gap.
• Speed went first to offense in college,
and that’s where it went in NFL.

A New Era
• As noted earlier, the first team to fully
exploit the new rules and new
approaches was the Dallas Cowboys
of the 1960s and 1970s.
• The team used a shotgun offense,
spread formations and drafted fast
wide receivers such as Bob Hayes,
an Olympic 100-meter gold medalist
in 1964.

A New Era
• Landry’s move to speed in the 1960s
combined with passing tactics
developed by Gillman of the Los
Angeles Rams and San Diego
Chargers and deepened by Brown
and his offensive coach Walsh with
the Bengals, provided the foundation
for the modern passing game
enabled by the rule changes.

A New Era
• And the college players necessary to
make these new offenses work were
in place.

A New Era
• In short, the rules, the athletes and
the conditions all worked in concert
toward creating a more intensified
focus on offense, meaning the
quarterback developed into an even
more prominent position on the field,
one that needed an increased thicket
of rules to protect from harm.

A New Era
• For example, 12 of the first 14 games
in which a quarterback threw for more
than 500 yards occurred after the
1981 season.
• Prior to Vince Ferragamo in 1982,
only Norm Van Brocklin (554 yards in
1951) and Y.A. Tittle (505 yards in
1962) passed for more than 500
yards in a game.

A New Era
• The factors that cracked open the pro
and college game in the 1980s had
antecedents from as early as the
1920s.
• That’s when Baylor first operated a
spread-type offense, as 19th century
Yale great Pudge Heffelfinger noted
in his 1954 book about his life in
football.

A New Era
• Leo “Dutch” Meyer, coach of Texas
Christian University, deployed the
spread offense in the 1930s with the
tailback also serving as the
quarterback.
• Sammy Baugh emerged from that
offense as a top collegian who later
became one of the greatest players in
NFL.

A New Era
• Under Meyer, TCU’s tailback -
quarterback Davey O’Brien won the
Heisman Trophy in 1938 when he
passed for 1,457 yards, a record at
the time.
• “His team threw from anywhere on
the field,” Heffelfinger wrote.

A New Era
• Meyer’s spread offense used a
tailback – quarterback at the top of
the formation with the fullback and
two halfbacks spread to the wings
alongside two ends.
• In effect, it was a triple wing offense.
That gave the offense a “five wide”
look that made it hard to defend the
pass or run.

A New Era
• Meyer’s 1952 book titled Spread
Formation Football gave coaches the
key to how TCU could roll up 436
yards including 340 yards by
quarterback Ray McKown against
Southern California in 1951.
• “The Meyer Spread became the talk
of football overnight,” wrote
Heffelfinger.

A New Era
• “Everybody loved to throw the long
pass. But the point Dutch Meyer
made was, `Look at what the short
pass can do for you.’ You could throw
it for seven yards on first down, then
run a play or two for a first down, do it
all over again and control the ball.
That way you could beat a better
team,” said Baugh.

A New Era
• Colleges, though, did not adopt the
spread formation for decades.
• But within 30 years, Walsh, an
assistant coach with the Cincinnati
Bengals under Brown, would pursue
Meyers’ principles for the pro game in
terms of deploying a short pass in
place of a run.

A New Era
• Walsh attended Hayward High
School, outside of San Francisco.
• He played for San Jose State
University before landing a coaching
job at the College of San Mateo.
• He later served as an assistant at Cal
under coach Marv Levy.

A New Era
• Walsh joined Brown’s staff in 1968
after several years working under
Gillman and Al Davis in the AFL.
• He initially designed a vertical
passing attack but modified it to
feature horizontal plays after Greg
Cook was injured in his first season.

A New Era
• “His philosophy was based on
stretching the field, which would force
the linebackers deeper and open
things up underneath. Then he'd go
deep again. He always liked deep
receivers. He liked to force the
cornerbacks downfield, then go short
to bring (them) up, then go deep
again,” Cook said.

A New Era
• "It was never a take-what-they-give-
us philosophy. It was make them take
what we give them. And it gave me a
feeling of invincibility. I felt I could
make any throw he wanted me to
make,“ Cook added.

A New Era
"We had no idea that we were creating a
template for the future of offense in the
NFL," Walsh explained later. "We did
what we did just to stay competitive,
then expanded on it as we continued to
have success."

A New Era
• The offense featured short, precise
passes designed to move that ball at
least four yards.
• Quarterbacks were taught to follow a
progression pattern to spot the open
receiver.

A New Era
• Walsh coordinated all routes in a
standard progression, as former
quarterback and later coach Sam
Wyche revealed.
• “Therefore, if No. 1 isn't open in the
progression, No. 2 probably is, and
No. 3 almost certainly is,“ said
Wyche.

A New Era
• Walsh said his receivers pursued
“controlled routes” that were
“carefully planned, very precise, and
closely timed.”

A New Era
• The offense worked.
• The three quarterbacks who played
under Walsh’s offense in Cincinnati –
Cook (AFL), Carter (AFL) and Ken
Anderson (NFL, after the merger) –
would lead their leagues in
completion percentage.

A New Era
• But when Brown retired, he did not
select Walsh as his replacement to
coach the Bengals.
• Walsh coached at Stanford after
leaving the Bengals. In 1979, the new
owner of the San Francisco 49ers, Ed
DeBartolo, hired him to lead the
team.

A New Era
• DeBartolo grew up in Youngstown,
Ohio, in the football crescent, and
admired Paul Brown.
• If he couldn’t hire Brown, he would
hire the next best coach: Walsh. In
January 1979, Walsh became coach
of the 49ers, who went 2-14 in 1978.

A New Era
• Walsh drafted Joe Montana of Notre
Dame in the third round of the 1979
NFL draft run an offense he
formulated in the 1960s and
described as the Cincinnati offense or
the Midwest offense.
• Bill Parcells called it the West Coast
Offense in 1985, and the name stuck.

A New Era
• The change in the NFL from “pure
violence” into a league based on
precision and speed is represented in
the iconic photograph of what
became to be known as “The Catch,”
Dwight Clark’s 11-yard catch from
Montana against Dallas that vaulted
the Niners to the Super Bowl.

A New Era
• San Francisco met, ironically enough,
Cincinnati in that Jan. 24, 1982,
game, with both teams led by Walsh
disciples at quarterback: Montana for
the 49ers, Ken Anderson for the
Bengals.
• The 49ers won, 26-21.

A New Era
• With Montana and receivers such as
Jerry Rice and John Taylor, the 49ers
also won Super Bowls XIX and XXIII
in 10 years.
• Walsh’s successor, George Siefert,
won two more, including one with
Steve Young at quarterback, to go 5-
0 in Super Bowls using Walsh’s
principles.

A New Era
• The influence of Walsh’s offense is
evident in the number of his
assistants hired as head coaches to
install it.
• So many NFL teams would deploy
Walsh’s original formulation that it
became the standard offense as
much as George Halas’ T-formation
pro set had.

A New Era
• The primacy of the quarterback in the
emerging offenses of the 1980s
became startling evident in the 1983
NFL draft.
• Teams selected six quarterbacks in
the first 27 picks, including three Hall
of Famers.

A New Era
• John Elway of Stanford was selected
with the first pick by the Baltimore
Colts, who dealt Elway to Denver
when he told the team he wouldn’t
sign with them.
• Elway would play in five Super Bowls
with Denver, winning two.

A New Era
• Buffalo drafted Jim Kelly of Miami
(Florida) with the 14th pick.
• Kelly would sign with the USFL
Houston Gamblers but would join the
Bills after two years in 1986 and lead
them to four Super Bowl
appearances.

A New Era
• Miami drafted Dan Marino from
Pittsburgh with the 27th pick.

A New Era
• Miami coach Don Shula won two
straight Super Bowls and finished the
1972 season undefeated on the
strength of a running game that
featured three backs.
• But with a new age at hand, Shula
adapted with Marino and developed a
sharp passing game.

A New Era
• In 1984, Marino combined with Mark
Clayton and Mark Duper in an
offense that baffled defenses.
• Marino threw 48 touchdowns that
year, 16 more than the next
quarterback on the list of TD passes
that year, Dave Krieg. It broke the
NFL record by 12 TD passes.

A New Era
• On Jan. 20, 1985, at Stanford
Stadium, Marino and the Dolphins
met Montana and the 49ers in the
Super Bowl
• The 49ers won, 38-16, as Walsh
installed six defensive backs to stop
Clayton and Duper and keep Marino
at bay.

A New Era
• To be sure, there were outliers from
the past who clung to the old ways of
football.
• The 1985 Chicago Bears used a solid
defense and ground game to win the
1986 Super Bowl over the Patriots,
and the team showed it could embed
itself in the culture with The Super
Bowl Shuffle.

A New Era
• The great running back Walter
Payton powered the team’s
throwback offense under head coach
Mike Ditka, who was born in the heart
of the football crescent in Aliquippa,
Pennsylvania, and played for the
Chicago Bears and the Cowboys
before becoming a coach.

A New Era
• Payton’ astonishing combination of
speed, agility and toughness, a
combination of Jim Brown and Gayle
Sayers, the former Bears’ great in the
mid 1960s, rushed for a career total
of 16,726 yards.

A New Era
• The 1986 Giants likewise stand as a
throwback tam amid the
modernization of offenses in
response to new rules and innovative
coaches.
• Linebacker Lawrence Taylor led the
team’s stifling defense as the Giants
won the 1987 Super Bowl over
Denver.

A New Era
• The Giants’ innovation emerged from
the need to give the 6-foot-3, 235-
pound Taylor room to move.
• His speed on the outside gave him
the capacity to blitz or cover running
backs and even wide outs. The
Giants built the 3-4 defense for him.

A New Era
• Taylor was named NFL MVP in 1986,
becoming the first defensive player
so honored since 1971.

A New Era
• In 1991, the clash of styles – the
throwback represented by the Giants’
defense and stout running game and
the new represented by the Buffalo
Bills under quarterback Jim Kelly and
a no-huddle/sugar huddle, spread
offense – would collide in the Super
Bowl.

A New Era
• Kelly’s path to the Super Bowl and
the no-huddle offense was paved by
his experience with the Houston
Gamblers of the short-lived USFL
and their offensive coordinator Mouse
Davis.

A New Era
• Davis was a high school coach in
Oregon in he early 1970s when he
first read a book written in 1965 by
Ohio high school coach Glenn “Tiger”
Ellison titled “Run & Shoot Football:
Offense of the Future.”
• Davis adopted the book’s principles
but focused on passing.

A New Era
• Ellison ran a modified version of the
winged T, placing two wide receivers
on the wingback's side, creating, in
effect, a slot back.
• That gave the offense five receivers
with space to move.

A New Era
• But Ellison saw the spread formation
as one that would open the running
game while providing a secure option
for short passes.

A New Era
• At Portland State, Davis modified it to
feature a double-slot formation with
halfbacks in the gaps between the
tackles and the end.
• "We swiped it," Davis said in 1979,
"but we changed it. Ellison was still
run-oriented. We always pass first
and run second.”

A New Era
• “The object is to make the defense
the last to know what is going on.
First a back or an end in motion gives
pause to the secondary, then the
quarterback sprints to one side,
usually still with the option of pitching
to a trailing back,” Davis said.

A New Era
• “Then all the receivers (four, unless
the trail-back is out there, too), rather
than running set patterns, react to
what the defensive backs have
decided to do,” Davis said.
• It allows for improvisation as events
dictate, Davis stressed. And, he said,
it’s more fun.

A New Era
• During the 1985 USFL opener, Kelly
threw for 574 yards, an American
professional football record in leading
Houston to a 34-33 win over the Los
Angeles Express and its quarterback
Steve Young.
• Kelly joined the Bills when the USFL
folded after 1985.

A New Era
• In Buffalo under coach Marv Levy,
Kelly ran a modified version of the
run-and-shoot that featured a no-
huddle pace introduced by Sam
Wyche when he coached Cincinnati.
• The Giants would thus face a fast-
paced offense that threatened their
defense.

A New Era
• The game in Tampa also featured the
full convergence of pop culture,
military virtues and the NFL, as pop
star Whitney Houston delivered a
rousing rendition of the National
Anthem amid the U.S. run up to the
war in Iraq.

A New Era
• The Giants sought to slow Kelly and
the no-huddle, spread offense called
the K-gun by running the football and
burning time off the clock.
• Coach Bill Parcells whose team beat
the 49ers to get to the game, wanted
to do the same to the Bills by
“shortening” it.

A New Era
• Defensive coordinator Bill Belichick,
meanwhile, focused on slowing the
K-gun offense, allowing the great
running back Thurman Thomas to run
with maximum, time-consuming
effectiveness.

A New Era
• “I thought it was a collective brain fart
– like what the hell are you talking
about,” said linebacker Carl Banks.
“We were a team that prided itself
defensively on not giving up 100-yard
rushers, not even giving up 100-yard
games for a total offensive rush stat.”

A New Era
• “And then he reeled us back in and
kinda gave is a method to the
madness,” said Banks?
• The madness? A two-man front, with
five or six defensive backs, to stop
Kelly’s short passes. Thomas gained
115 yards on 15 carries, but Kelly
was neutralized.

A New Era
• The plan worked as the Giants kept
Kelly in check for most of the game,
holding the ball for 40:33 to the Bills’
19:27.

A New Era
• Still, the game would be resolved
only by a field-goal attempt by the
Bills’ Scott Norwood from 48 yards on
a damp field.
• He missed, wide right, and the Giants
won.
• But the NFL’s momentum toward the
spread offense persisted.

A New Era
• Washington coach Joe Gibbs
pursued a hybrid approach during the
1980s and early 1990s, combining
the spread offense for his wide
receivers assigned to a “trips”
formation with three on one side of
the ball.
• But he made sure he could run with
tight ends who could block.

A New Era
• It worked.
• Gibbs won three Super Bowls with
three different quarterbacks, including
Doug Williams.
• Williams became the first Black
quarterback to win a Super Bowl
when he led Washington over Denver
in January 1988.

A New Era
• Meanwhile, the college game
underwent a revolution of its own on
two fronts: one on the offensive side
of the ball just as in the NFL, the
other in south Florida that focused on
the culture of the game in addition to
approaches to and the methods of
play.

JRN 362 - Lecture Nineteen

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JRN 362 - Lecture Nineteen