Beginnings: The NFL from 1920 through 1949

"Find out what the other team wants to do. Then, take it away from them."

— George Halas

When a group of executives met in 1920 to officially form the American Professional Football Conference — what became the National Football League in 1922 — the game was a leather-helmeted, three yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust, war of attrition for the most part. The T formation and the single-wing were the dominant formations in football and saw stacked defensive fronts to counter the ground game. In 1932, the first season for which there are official statistics, Arnie Herber of the Green Bay Packers led the league with 34 completed passes on 104 attempts for 639 yards, nine touchdowns, and nine interceptions. It wasn't until 1939 that any passer attempted more than 200 throws, and in that season, both Parker Hall of the Cleveland Rams and Davey O'Brien of the Philadelphia Eagles did it. For his efforts Hall was rewarded with nine touchdowns and 13 interceptions, while O'Brien had six touchdowns and 17 picks.

In its early decades, the NFL's strategy was brutish and basic. Don Hutson of the Packers ran the first option routes and could be considered the first truly modern receiver because of his ability to get free with speed and agility in a route tree that — while hardly advanced at today's level — got the job done. In 1942 Hutson caught 74 passes for 1,211 yards and 17 touchdowns, which represented an inconceivable series of numbers at the time. Pop Ivy of the Chicago Cardinals ranked second that year with 27 receptions. The first truly organized passing game took the league by storm as the men in charge of the league narrowed the ball over the years to make it less like a rugby ball and more like the instrument we see today.

Selected sixth overall out of TCU in the 1937 NFL Draft, Sammy Baugh of the Washington Redskins led the league in his rookie year in attempts (171), completions (81), passing yards (1,127), and ... interceptions (14). Baugh was a great thrower for his era, but he plied his trade in an unfavorable passing era. He did throw for three touchdowns to beat the Bears in the 1937 NFL Championship, but it wasn't until 1945 that he put up a condensed version of what might be considered a modern passing season. That year he completed 70.3 percent of his passes — a record that stood until Ken Anderson of the Cincinnati Bengals broke it in 1982 — with 11 touchdowns and four interceptions. Passing efficiency would not be the name of the game for several decades. Even into the 1960s and 1970s, quarterbacks were inclined to hurl the ball deep to receivers running basic route concepts against rudimentary defenses.

When Baugh came into the NFL, he had to fight an uphill battle to get his passing acumen on the field. In doing so he helped change the game forever. "Ray Flaherty was our coach when I got to Washington and he was a pretty typical coach for the time," Baugh told The Sporting News. Flaherty admonished Baugh to remember that in the pros receivers expected their quarterbacks to be accurate with "none of those wild heaves you see the college boys throw."

Baugh remembered the following conversation. "They tell me you're quite a passer," Flaherty said.

"I reckon I can throw a little," Baugh replied.

"Let's see it. Hit that receiver in the eye."

"I cocked an eye toward Wayne Millner, who was running a little buttonhook pattern, and I turned to Flaherty and said, `Which eye?'"

Flaherty, who Baugh remembered as a "mean-hot-tempered sonofabitch," didn't question Baugh too much after that. The Redskins ran the single-wing at the time, but Baugh's skill allowed them to tweak the system from tailback-based to quarterback-based. "What we did with the single-wing in Washington was to add the wrinkle of passing early in downs and controlling the clock. That's what we did at TCU, and that's really all I knew how to do."

Glenn "Pop" Warner invented the single-wing in the earliest days of the 20 century and implemented it to perfection when he coached the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Warner used sweeps, spins, and reverses, as well as the first real iteration of the forward pass, to befuddle opponents, who never quite knew whether a pass, run, or punt was coming at them. Warner then expanded his single-wing concept to a double-wing when he put two receivers to one side. (The single-wing idea can still be seen in certain power sweep and Wildcat plays.) The double-wing was in many ways the precursor to the shotgun formation. The inevitable triple-wing put three receivers to one side and was as close as anybody got to a spread offense in the game's early days.

Steve Owen's A formation had a heavy line to one side and the backs strong to the other side. Knute Rockne invented what was called the "Notre Dame Box." In this formation players would shift from the standard T Formation into a power formation designed with heavy blocking for end runs. And there was the ubiquitous T Formation, which spawned more innovations at the NFL level than any early formation — and most of it from two Bears coaches, Ralph Jones and Clark Shaughnessy. Indeed, when we turn to the idea that the old game has shaped the new game, one football mind — Shaughnessy's — did more to establish concepts that are still seen today than anybody else.

Clark Shaughnessy: The NFL's Forgotten Innovator

The most innovative coach of the pre-Paul Brown era did the most to forward professional football to the game it is today. "I always looked upon Clark Shaughnessy as a conscientious idealist who might better have followed the trail of Father Flanagan of Boys Town," football historian Roger Treat told Sports Illustrated. "He may never be entirely happy in the jovial thuggery of pro football, where every man has a little assassin in him."

Shaughnessy was a head coach for just two seasons at the NFL level with the Los Angeles Rams in 1948 and 1949. His NFL experience began more than a decade before, when he first spoke to Chicago Bears owner George Halas at a civic dinner in 1935. Shaughnessy was the University of Chicago's head coach and he told Halas that he had watched several Bears games that season and that he had some ideas regarding the use of the T formation that might open things up for Halas' team. Named this because there are three running backs behind the quarterback in the shape of a T, the formation allowed the quarterback to drop back to pass, gave different rushing options, and offered new sleights of hand.

But knowing it needed to be tweaked, Halas rearranged the place cards at his table so he and Shaughnessy could sit together, and heard him out. Halas had been working with the T formation since his freshman year at the...