Frankie Albert-The First South Paw Quarterback

[Brian wolf]

Thanks Bob ... So, Shaughnessy is a QB whisperer for Albert, Luckman, Baugh and helping Waterfield as well, switches to defense helping evolve the MLB position--disputable--but isnt in the HOF?

Things that make you go "hmmn" ... though admittedly, he making the Hall as a career assistant could set a precedent, rather than as a contributor ...

[John Maxymuk]

If only someone had written a book about this...https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Coaches- ... 153811223X

In brief, T was always the base Offense for the Bears. Halas was the main coach keeping it alive, but, yes, his teams used other popular shift offenses from the time as well as the single wing. I remember a series he wrote for the Chicago Daily News in the early 1920s describing all the various schemes the Bears employed.

Ralph Jones, who is in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame for his coaching of that sport, instituted the Man in Motion on every play for the Bears in his 1930-32 tenure and also widened the line splits. Jones won the 1932 title with Chicago, but the offense was still only averaging 11 points a game (off the top of my head since I am currently away from home), which was tops in the league but not so far beyond the league average. The NFL rule changes would help open things up once Halas stepped back in as coach in 33.

The Bears continued using the Single wing in conjunction with the T throughout the 30s. As, I believe, Bob said, Brumbaugh was the T QB and Moleworth the single wing signal caller. I believe Beattie Feathers ran best in the SW not the T. Shaugnessy started collaborating with Halas in the late 30s, but Jones was still in the picture as a consultant as well. In fact the T formation book that John mentioned featured the names of Halas, Jones and Shaughnessy and was used when those coaches did workshops across the country on the T. Halas was a proud proselytizer of the scheme.

It gets murky here, but I think Shaughnessy widened line splits still further and developed more counter plays and wide plays that made the offense faster and more powerful. When the Bears got Luckman and went all-in with the T, they were averaging 30 points a game and dwarfing the league average. Shaughnessy may also have played a role in the hand-to-hand center-QB exchange or it might have been Jones. Prior to that, the exchange involved a short flip, differing from the long toss from center to tail/half/fullback in the SW. Many more details in the book.

[Brian wolf]

Haha ... I have a couple of your books John M but havent gotten around to this one because of money decisions. My book from Coach Troup got stolen from me before I could read it ... I am missing out on a lot of books. Did Belichick's NFL book collection that he donated to the PFHOF have a listing of every book and author?

Everyone thinks Sammy Baugh is still superior to Sid Luckman and as a football player he is, yet I would still take Luckman as my QB ...

[JohnTurney]

If only someone had written a book about this...https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Coaches- ... 153811223X

Will have to order that one now...could have saved a lot of time, honestly didn't know you did this, looks interesting

EDIT: Ordered a new one--not used, hope you still get a royalty!

John, you've seen film of U. of Chicago - I'd go with that.

I did some clips so people can take a look on Twitter if they are interested
1937
https://twitter.com/NFL_Journal/status/ ... 91744?s=20

https://twitter.com/NFL_Journal/status/ ... 78977?s=20

https://twitter.com/NFL_Journal/status/ ... 33216?s=20


1938
https://twitter.com/NFL_Journal/status/ ... 26018?s=20

This is a 1937 clip that I'd read, but now it's just the same thing as John M and
the rest have confirmed . . . it began "seven years ago" meaning 1930 with is what John
and the rest of you are saying...

[Brian wolf]

Thanks, both Johns ...

Boy that Halas could promote, coach and own a team with the best of them, yet some forget he coached the first T-Formation dynasty, yet was also cheap with his players and owned the team long enough to win his six championship in a new decade while being discussed on whether he is Mt Rushmore material (It's close but Halas is penalized for ownership advantages, I go for Shula, Lombardi, Walsh and Belichick)

Papa Bear would have been the best of all time --for me Wilbur--had he just believed more in Bobby Layne ...

[rhickok1109]

Thats the question ... Did Shaughnessy at Stanford truly create the modern T-Formation, add wrinkles to it or simply popularize it from previous styles of employment?

Shaughnessy made two big changes to create the modern T-formation.

First, he moved the quarterback to immediately behind the center (he had previously been offset slightly, usually to the right, and about a yard back) so he could take a direct hand-to-snap instead of having to catch a ball tossed a short distance through the air.

Second, he created line splits. Until 1940, offensive linemen lined up shoulder to shoulder. By splitting his linemen, Shaughnessy forced the defense to adopt splits, creating ready-made holes and setting up new blocking angles.

The T-formation that Shaughnessy created at Stanford was widely recognized as a revolutionary idea. In less than a dozen years every pro football and almost all major college teams were using it. Nobody had ever bothered to switch to the old T-formation. It was used by the Bears only because that was what Halas had learned in college.

[rhickok1109]

The question is how much Shaughnessy had to do with the Bears use of motion, which was a wrinkle probably not used in the early T. I cannot verify this through film, but maybe someone has seen more stuff from the 1920s and mid-1930s but Bob Oates told me that motion was the thing Shaughnessy brought to the T. Before him motion was not a big part of football according to Oates.

I don't think this is right. I've read in several places that the Bears started using the man in motion in 1930 when Ralph Jones took over as head coach, and in the early '30s Red Grange was often the back who went in motion.

I've read somewhere that Shaughnessy's innovation was having the offensive linemen spaced farther apart, which made the quick-hitting runs easier to execute, or something like that.

Also, just speaking T quarterbacks, Bernie Masterson of the Bears was in the top five passers in 1937 and '38. Obviously Luckman was an upgrade, but I think Masterson was the first T quarterback to throw the ball a lot by the standards of the time. Before him the Bears had Carl Brumbaugh, who was only throwing 30 passes per season.

Yes, Ralph Jones added the man in motion to the T formation. It's perhaps worth noting the single-wing teams also used the man-in-motion quite often. A common play from the single wing was a kind of option on which one of the deep backs (tailback or fullback) went in motion to the weak side. If the other deep back saw that the other back was outflanking the end on that side, he'd pitch the ball to him.

[JohnTurney]

I know more today about the modern T than I did yesterday, appreciate all the great information.

I need to do more study of existing film, but I sure cannot tell any difference in the 1937
University of Chicago line splits and the 1940 Stanford line splits.

I may be missing something . . . but looks pretty similar . . . I wonder
what the difference was.

The 1936 and 1937 Bears appear tighter, perhaps . . . looks like it to me, but
also have better angles.

Curious to what others see

[JohnTurney]

went into 1941-42 Stanford, 1943 Bears

In all of these they look pretty similar, there does to be a guard-tackle split that is wider
and thet goes for the 1937 U of Chi all the way to the 1943 Bears, but they look
very similar to me.

The splits of the tackle from the guard may be the "splits" talked about but honestly
don't know. The guards are hugged to the center in all these - -
but whatever happened it could have happened a bit before 1940 and Stanford.

But it is always helpful to know what the coach intended when you look
at film.

I posted a few clips if anyone interested on Twitter to see if they can discern
anything I am missing in the stills

[JohnTurney]

from a book released today by former NFL GM/Scout

no need to name ... not trying to embarrass he probably had
ghostwriter ... but same old story ... lacks detail
of John M.'s stuff and others on this thread

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