Another trainer sometimes credited with popularizing the aerial spiral pass in 1906 is former Princeton All-American “Bosey” rider. Reiter claimed to have invented the aerial spiral pass while playing professional football as a player-coach for Connie Mack`s Philadelphia Athletics in the original National Football League (1902). [20] [21] While playing for the Athletics, Reiter was a teammate of Hawley Pierce, a former Carlisle Indian School star. Pierce, an Indian, taught runners to throw a spiral pass under his hand, but Reiter had short arms and was unable to throw from distance from a sneaky delivery. As a result, Reiter began working on a spiral pass by hand. [20] Reiter recalls trying to mimic the movement of a baseball catcher throwing second base. After practicing and experimenting, Reiter discovered “that way he could reach more distance and accuracy in the throw.” [20] In 1906, Reiter was head coach at Wesleyan University. In the first game of the 1906 season against Yale, Reiter`s quarterback, Sammy Moore, threw a pass to Irvin van Tassell for a thirty-yard victory. The New York Times called it “the best game of the day” when Wesleyan`s quarterback “deftly passed the ball in front of the entire Yale team to his friend Van Tassel.” [22] Van Tassel later described the historic game to United Press: Incompleteness: Incompleteness occurs when a pass thrown to an eligible recipient is not taken. This leads to the end of the downdraft.
In Canadian football, the first friendly game with a forward pass took place on July 5. The 1921 championship was held at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada between the McGill Redmen football team and the Syracuse Orangemen of Syracuse University. The game was organized by McGill Head Coach Frank Shaughnessy. [10] [11] McGill player Robert “Boo” Anderson is credited with the first forward pass attempt in Canadian football history. [12] 1905, as coach at Clemson College, John Heisman. And I talked about the possibility for the Committee on Rules of Procedure to authorize the use of the forward pass. Freed from the rules, it wasn`t long before the league had its first 1,000-yard passer. That happened in 1936, when the Green Bay Packers threw Arnie Herber 173 times for 1,239 yards. Another Packers QB became the NFL`s first 2,000-yard passer when Cecil Isbell completed 146 of 268 passes for 2,021 yards in 1942. Sound familiar? We would now consider this an action-play pass. If an authorized receiver on the passing team catches the ball legally, the pass is completed and the receiver can try to move the ball.
If an opposing player catches the ball legally (all defensive players are legitimate recipients), it is an interception. This player`s team immediately takes possession of the ball and he can try to move it towards the opposing goal. If no player is able to catch the ball legally, it is an incomplete pass and the ball becomes dead as soon as it hits the ground. He is then sent back to the original line of scrimmage for the next down. If a player interferes with an eligible receiver`s ability to catch the ball, it is a passing disorder that results in a penalty of varying degrees (largely depending on the rules of the respective league). In a 1905 experimental game in Wichita, Kansas, Washburn University and Fairmount College (later Wichita State) used the pass before new rules were approved in early 1906 allowing gambling. [4] The first pass goes to Bill Davis of Fairmount, who completed an Art Solter pass. [5] The big problems were penalties and automatic loss of the ball for incomplete passes. This ensured that the coaches did not use tactics and opened the game.
In both rugby codes, the direction of the pass is relative to the player making the pass, rather than the actual trajectory relative to the ground. A forward pass occurs when the player plays the ball forward relative to himself. [66] (This only applies to the player`s movement, not the direction in which the passer is looking, i.e. if the player points backwards and approaches his team`s goal area, he is not forward; and vice versa, if the player goes to the opponent`s goal area, he is forward.) In rugby league, the video referee is not allowed to judge whether a pass is forward. [67] This player hurriedly threw the pass forward to a running back who scored a touchdown. But that doesn`t mean other teams in the Midwest haven`t figured it out. Arthur Schabinger, quarterback at the College of Emporia in Kansas, is said to have regularly used forward passing in 1910. Coach H. W. “Bill” Hargiss` “Presbies” reportedly showed the game in a 17-0 win over Washburn University[43] and in a 107-0 destruction at Pittsburgh State University.
[44] Carlisle`s coach, Pop Warner, had quarterback Frank Mount Pleasant, one of the first regular spiral passing quarterbacks in football. Prior to the 1913 season, Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne of Notre Dame practiced forward passing while serving as lifeguards in Ohio.[45] The training paid off when the Irish launched a high-flying assault on West Point on November 1, 1913, which overwhelmed the army. Because the rules advised against passing, football continued to be a ground game – and deadly. The Chicago Tribune reported 31 football-related deaths between September 1908 and the summer of 1909, and the Army and Navy canceled their 1909 seasons after each team killed a player from football injuries. I mentioned earlier that Eddie Cochems pressured Heisman to introduce the passport. In 1906, he took his team from St. Louis to Beulah Lake to train and develop the necessary skills and movements. “I saw the first forward pass in football. It was illegal, of course. In the 1906 season, forward passes were legal, but very rare. This change arose from a controversial touchdown pass thrown by Chicago Bears fullback Bronko Nagurski during the 1932 indoor playoff game that decided the championship in `32.
In this game against the Portsmouth Spartans (later the Detroit Lions), Nagurski simulated a run to the line and then quickly threw a TD pass to Red Grange. The Spartans denied that Nagurski was within 5 yards of the line when he threw the pass. The game went ahead and the Bears then added a safety to put the finishing touches on the 9-0 victory. The last meeting of the rules committee tasked with redesigning the game was on April 6, 1906, when the forward pass officially became a legal game. [4] The New York Times reported in September 1906 the reasons for these changes: “The chief effort of football reformers was to open up the game—that is, to foresee the natural elimination of so-called mass games and to produce a game in which speed and actual skill were to replace as much as possible mere brute force and force of weight.” [8] However, the Times also reflected widespread skepticism about whether forward passing could be effectively integrated into the game: “No team has proven that forward passing is anything but a questionable and dangerous play that can only be used in the last extreme.” [9] John Heisman was instrumental in accepting the rules. Eligible Receiver: Only an eligible receiver can legally catch a forward pass for the offensive team. An eligible catcher is any player who is in the backfield, or both players at the end of the line of scrimmage. Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais worked on the pass in the summer of 1913 while lifeguards on the Lake Erie beach at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. That year, Notre Dame head coach Jesse Harper also showed how the pass can be used by a small team to beat a larger one by first using it to defeat the rival army.[46] After being used in this match against a great school at the national level, the forward pass quickly gained popularity.
[47] The timing of a forward pass begins is important to the game. The pass begins as the passerby`s arm moves forward. If the passer drops the ball before this moment, it is a fumble and therefore a loose ball. In this case, anyone can take possession of the ball before or after touching the ground. If the passer drops the ball as his arm moves forward, it is a forward pass, regardless of where the ball lands or is hit first. [1] [2] At the time, however, the passing game did not resemble the aerial attack that teams engage in today. In fact, the current rules have not really favoured the passport. To pass the ball legally, the pitcher had to be at least 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage.
The penalty if this rule has not been respected: a turnover for the defense. The rules even stated that if a pass was incomplete and not touched by either team, the ball was also passed to the defense. Carlisle wasn`t just throwing one or two passes a game. They threw it halfway through their offense,” she adds. “Notre Dame is credited with popularizing forward passing, but Pop Warner is the man who really created the passing game as we know it.” Heisman saw forward passing as the salvation of a sport that had degenerated into dangerous formations and tactics such as flying wedge and mass plays.
