In several forms offootball, aforward pass is the throwing of the ball in the direction in which the offensive team is trying to move, towards the defensive team's goal line. The legal and widespread use of the forward pass distinguishesgridiron football (American football andCanadian football) fromrugby football (union andleague) in which the play is illegal. The primary passer is thequarterback, and statistical analysis is used to determine a quarterback's success rate at passing in various situations, as well as a team's overall success at the passing game.
Illegal and experimental forward passes had been attempted as early as 1876, but the first legal forward pass inAmerican football took place in 1906, after a change in the rules. Another rule change on January 18, 1951, established that no center or guard could receive a forward pass, and a tackle may only do so if he announces his intent to the referee beforehand that he will be an eligible receiver, called atackle-eligible play. The onlylinemen who can receive a forward pass are the ends (tight ends andwide receivers). The rules regulate who may throw and who may receive a forward pass, and under what circumstances, as well as how the defensive team may try to prevent a pass from being completed.
Ingridiron football, a forward pass is usually referred to simply as a pass, and consists of a player throwing the football towards the opponent's goal line. This is permitted only once during ascrimmage down by the offensive team before team possession has changed, provided the pass is thrown from behind theline of scrimmage; a pass is legal as long as some part of the passer's body is behind the line of scrimmage. The person passing the ball must be a member of theoffensive team, and the recipient of the forward pass must be aneligible receiver and must touch the passed ball before any ineligible player. An illegal forward pass can incur a yardage penalty and the loss of a down, although it may be legally intercepted by the opponents and advanced.
If an eligible receiver on the passing team legally catches the ball, the pass is completed and the receiver may attempt to advance the ball. If an opposing player legally catches the ball—all defensive players are eligible receivers—it is aninterception. That player's team immediately gains possession of the ball and he may attempt to advance the ball toward his opponent's goal. If no player is able to legally catch the ball it is anincomplete pass and the ball becomesdead the moment it touches the ground. It will then be returned to the original line of scrimmage for the nextdown. If any player interferes with an eligible receiver's ability to catch the ball it ispass interference which draws a penalty of varying degrees, depending upon the particular league's rules.
_drops_back_to_pass.jpg)
The moment that a forward pass begins is important to the game. The pass begins the moment the passer's arm begins to move forward. If the passer drops the ball before this moment it is afumble and therefore a loose ball. In this case anybody can gain possession of the ball before or after it touches the ground. If the passer drops the ball while his arm is moving forward it is a forward pass, regardless of where the ball lands or is first touched.[1][2] At some levels of play, a video replay may be required for the game's officials to conclusively determine if a play is a fumble or a forward pass.
Thequarterback generally either starts a few paces behind the line of scrimmage or drops back a few steps after the ball is snapped. This places him in an area called the "pocket", which is a specific protective region formed by the offensive blockers up front and between the tackles on each side. A quarterback who runs out of this pocket is said to be scrambling. Under NFL and NCAA rules, once the quarterback moves out of the pocket the ball may be legally thrown away to prevent a sack. NFHS (high school) rules do not allow for a passer to intentionally throw an incomplete forward pass to save loss of yardage or conserve time, except for a spike to conserve time after a hand-to-hand snap. If he throws the ball away while still in the pocket then a foul called "intentional grounding" is assessed. InCanadian football the passer must simply throw the ball across the line of scrimmage—whether he is inside or outside of the "pocket"—to avoid the foul of "intentionally grounding".
If a forward pass is caught near a sideline or endline it is a complete pass (or an interception) only if a receiver catches the ball "in bounds". For a pass to be ruled complete in-bounds, either one or two feet must touch the ground within the field boundaries after the ball is first grasped, depending on the league rules. In theNFL the receiver must touch the ground with both feet, but in most other codes—CFL,college football and high school—one foot in bounds is sufficient.
Common to allgridiron codes is the notion of control: a receiver must demonstrate control of the ball in order to be ruled in "possession" of it, while still in bounds. If the receiver handles the ball but the official determines that he was still "bobbling" it prior to the end of the play, then the pass will be ruled incomplete. Similarly, if the receiver fails to continue to control the ball after falling to the ground, the pass may be ruled incomplete.
The forward pass had been attempted at least 30 years before the play was actually made legal. Passes "had been carried out successfully but illegally several times, including the 1876Yale–Princeton game in which Yale'sWalter Camp threw forward to teammateOliver Thompson as he was being tackled. Princeton's protest, one account said, went for naught when the referee 'tossed a coin to make his decision and allowed the touchdown to stand' ".[3]
TheUniversity of North Carolina used the forward pass in an 1895 game against theUniversity of Georgia. However, the play was still illegal at the time. Bob Quincy stakes Carolina's claim in his 1973 bookThey Made the Bell Tower Chime:
John Heisman, namesake of theHeisman Trophy, wrote 30 years later that, indeed, the Tar Heels had given birth to the forward pass against the Bulldogs (UGA). It was conceived to break a scoreless deadlock and give UNC a 6–0 win. The Carolinians were in a punting situation and a Georgia rush seemed destined to block the ball. The punter, with an impromptu dash to his right, tossed the ball and it was caught byGeorge Stephens, who ran 70 yards for a touchdown.
In a1905 experimental game atWichita, Kansas,Washburn University and Fairmount College (what would becomeWichita State) used the pass before new rules allowing the play were approved in early 1906.[4] Credit for the first pass goes to Fairmount's Bill Davis, who completed a pass to Art Solter.[5]
1905 had been a bloody year on the gridiron; theChicago Tribune reported 19 players had been killed and 159 seriously injured that season.[6] There were moves to outlaw the game, but United States PresidentTheodore Roosevelt personally intervened and demanded that the rules of the game be reformed. In a meeting of more than 60 schools in late 1905, the commitment was made to make the game safer. This meeting was the first step toward the establishment of what would become theNCAA and was followed by several sessions to work out "the new rules".[7]
The final meeting of the Rules Committee tasked with reshaping the game was held on April 6, 1906, at which time the forward pass officially became a legal play.[4]The New York Times reported in September 1906 on the rationale for the changes: "The main efforts of the football reformers have been to 'open up the game'—that is to provide for the natural elimination of the so-called mass plays and bring about a game in which speed and real skill shall supersede so far as possible mere brute strength and force of weight."[8] However, theTimes also reflected widespread skepticism as to whether the forward pass could be effectively integrated into the game: "There has been no team that has proved that the forward pass is anything but a doubtful, dangerous play to be used only in the last extremity."[9]John Heisman was instrumental in the rules' acceptance.
In Canadian football, the first exhibition game using a forward pass was held on November 5, 1921, atMcGill University inMontreal, Quebec, Canada, between theMcGill Redmen football team and visiting American college football team theSyracuse Orangemen fromSyracuse University. The game was organized byFrank Shaughnessy, the head coach of McGill.[10][11] McGill player Robert "Boo" Anderson is credited with the first forward pass attempt in Canadian football history.[12]
The forward pass was not officially allowed in Canadian football until 1929.[13]
Most sources creditSaint Louis University'sBradbury Robinson fromBellevue, Ohio with throwing the first legal forward pass. On September 5, 1906, in a game againstCarroll College, Robinson's first attempt at a forward pass fell incomplete and resulted in a turnover under the 1906 rules.[14] In the same game, Robinson later completed a 20-yard touchdown pass toJack Schneider. The 1906 Saint Louis University team, coached byEddie Cochems, was undefeated at 11–0 and featured the most potent offense in the country, outscoring their opponents 407–11. Football authority andCollege Football Hall of Fame coachDavid M. Nelson wrote that "E. B. Cochems is to forward passing what theWright brothers are to aviation andThomas Edison is to the electric light."[4]
While Saint Louis University completed the first legal forward pass in the first half of September, this accomplishment was in part because most schools did not begin their football schedule until early October.
In 1952, football coachAmos Alonzo Stagg discounted accounts crediting any particular coach with being the innovator of the forward pass. Stagg noted that he hadWalter Eckersall working on pass plays and saw Pomeroy Sinnock of Illinois throw many passes in 1906. Stagg summed up his view as follows: "I have seen statements giving credit to certain people originating the forward pass. The fact is that all coaches were working on it. The first season, 1906, I personally had sixty-four different forward pass patterns."[15] In 1954, Stagg disputed Cochems' claim to have invented the forward pass:
Eddie Cochems, who coached at [Saint] Louis University in 1906, also claimed to have invented the pass as we know it today ... It isn't so, because after the forward pass was legalized in 1906, most of the schools commenced experimenting with it and nearly all used.[16]
Stagg asserted that, as far back as 1894, before the rules committee even considered the forward pass, one of his players used to throw the ball "like a baseball pitcher".[16]
On the other hand,Hall of Fame coachGus Dorais told theUnited Press that "Eddie Cochems of the [Saint] Louis University team of 1906–07–08 deserves the full credit."[17] Writing inCollier's more than 20 years earlier, Dorais' Notre Dame teammateKnute Rockne acknowledged Cochems as the early leader in the use of the pass, observing, "One would have thought that so effective a play would have been instantly copied and become the vogue. The East, however, had not learned much or cared much about Midwest and Western football. Indeed, the East scarcely realized that football existed beyond the Alleghanies ..."[18]
Once the 1906 season got underway, many programs began experimenting with the forward pass. On September 26, 1906, Villanova's game against the Carlisle Indians was billed as "the first real game of football under the new rules".[19] In the first play from scrimmage after the opening kicks, Villanova completed a pass that "succeeded in gaining ten yards".[19] Following the Villanova-Carlisle game,The New York Times described the new passing game this way:
The passing was more of the character of that familiar in basket ball than that which has hitherto characterized football. Apparently it is the intention of football coaches to try repeatedly these frequent long and risky passes. Well executed they are undoubtedly highly spectacular, but the risk of dropping the ball is so great as to make the practice extremely hazardous and its desirability doubtful.[19]
Another coach sometimes credited with popularizing the overheadspiral pass in 1906 is formerPrinceton All-American"Bosey" Reiter. Reiter claimed to have invented the overhead spiral pass while playing professional football as a player-coach forConnie Mack'sPhiladelphia Athletics of the originalNational Football League (1902).[20][21] While playing for the Athletics, Reiter was a teammate ofHawley Pierce, a former star for theCarlisle Indian School. Pierce, aNative American, taught Reiter to throw an underhand spiral pass, but Reiter had short arms and was unable to throw for distance from an underhand delivery. Accordingly, Reiter began working on an overhand spiral pass.[20] Reiter recalled trying to imitate the motion of a baseball catcher throwing to second base. After practice and experimentation, Reiter "discovered he could get greater distance and accuracy throwing that way".[20] In 1906, Reiter was the head coach atWesleyan University. In the opening game of the 1906 season againstYale, Reiter's quarterback Sammy Moore completed a forward pass to Irvin van Tassell for a thirty-yard gain.The New York Times called it "the prettiest play of the day", as Wesleyan's quarterback "deftly passed the ball past the whole Yale team to his mate Van Tassel".[22] Van Tassel later described the historic play to theUnited Press:
I was the right halfback, and on this formation played one yard back of our right tackle. The quarterback, Sam Moore, took the ball from center and faded eight or 10 yards back of our line. Our two ends angled down the field toward the sidelines as a decoy, and I slipped through the strong side of our line straight down the center and past the secondary defense. The pass worked perfectly. However, the quarterback coming up fast nailed me as I caught it. This brought the ball well into Yale territory, about the 20-yard line.[23][24]
The football season opened for most schools during the first week of October, and the impact of the forward pass was immediate:
Some publications creditYale All-AmericanPaul Veeder with the "first forward pass in a major game". Veeder threw a 20- to 30-yard completion in leadingYale pastHarvard 6–0 before 32,000 fans inNew Haven on November 24, 1906.[30][31][32] However, that Yale/Harvard game was played three weeks after St. Louis completed 45- and 48-yard passes againstKansas before a crowd of 7,000 atSportsman's Park.[33][34]
The forward pass was a central feature of Cochems' offensive scheme in 1906 as his St. Louis University team compiled an undefeated 11–0 season in which they outscored opponents by a combined score 407 to 11. The highlight of the campaign was St. Louis' 39–0 win overIowa. Cochems' team reportedly completed eight passes in ten attempts for four touchdowns. "The average flight distance of the passes was twenty yards." Nelson continues, "the last play demonstrated the dramatic effect that the forward pass was having on football. St. Louis was on Iowa's thirty-five-yard line with a few seconds to play. Timekeeper Walter McCormack walked onto the field to end the game when the ball was thrown twenty-five yards and caught on the dead run for a touchdown."[4]
The 1906 Iowa game was refereed by one of the top football officials in the country,West Point's Lt.Horatio B. "Stuffy" Hackett.[35] He had officiated games involving the top Eastern powers that year. Hackett, who would become a member of the football rules committee in December 1907[36] and officiated games into the 1930s,[37] was quoted the next day in Ed Wray's[38]Globe-Democrat article: "It was the most perfect exhibition ... of the new rules ... that I have seen all season and much better than that of Yale and Harvard. St. Louis' style of pass differs entirely from that in use in the east. ... The St. Louis university players shoot the ball hard and accurately to the man who is to receive it ... The fast throw by St. Louis enables the receiving player to dodge the opposing players, and it struck me as being all but perfect."[39]
Hackett is the only known expert witness to the passing offenses of both Cochems' 1906 squads and that of Stagg, who dismissed any special role for the St. Louis coach in the development of the pass. Hackett was an official in games involving both teams. As Wray recalled almost 40 years later: "Hackett told this writer that in no other game that he handled had he seen the forward pass as used by St. Louis U. nor such bewildering variations of it."[40]
"Cochems said that the poor Iowa showing resulted from its use of the old style play and its failure to effectively use the forward pass", Nelson writes. "Iowa did attempt two basketball-style forward passes."[41]
"During the 1906 season [Robinson] threw a sixty-seven yard pass ... and ... Schneider tossed a sixty-five yarder. Considering the size, shape and weight of the ball, these were extraordinary passes."[41]
In 1907, after the first season of the forward pass, one football writer noted that, "with the single exception of Cochems, football teachers were groping in the dark."[42]
Because St. Louis was geographically isolated from both the dominant teams and the major sports media (newspapers) of the era, all centered in and focused on the East, Cochems' groundbreaking offensive strategy was not picked up by the major teams. Pass-oriented offenses would not be adopted by the Eastern football powers until the next decade.
But that does not mean that other teams in the Midwest did not pick it up.Arthur Schabinger, quarterback for theCollege of Emporia inKansas, was reported to have regularly used the forward pass in 1910. CoachH. W. "Bill" Hargiss' "Presbies" are said to have featured the play in a 17–0 victory overWashburn University[43] and in a 107–0 destruction ofPittsburg State University.[44] CoachPop Warner atCarlisle had quarterbackFrank Mount Pleasant, one of the first regularspiral pass quarterbacks in football.[45]
Knute Rockne andGus Dorais worked on the pass while lifeguarding on aLake Erie beach atCedar Point inSandusky, Ohio, during the summer of 1913.[46] That year,Jesse Harper,Notre Dame head coach, also showed how the pass could be used by a smaller team to beat a bigger one, first utilizing it to defeat rivalArmy. After it was used against a major school on a national stage in this game, the forward pass rapidly gained popularity.[47]
The1919 and1920 Notre Dame teams hadGeorge Gipp, an ideal handler of the forward pass,[48][49] who threw for 1,789 yards.[50]
John Mohardt led the1921 Notre Dame team to a 10–1 record with 781 rushing yards, 995 passing yards, 12 rushing touchdowns, and nine passing touchdowns.[51]Grantland Rice wrote that "Mohardt could throw the ball to within a foot or two of any given space" and noted that the 1921 team was the first at Notre Dame "to build its attack around a forward passing game, rather than use a forward passing game as a mere aid to the running game."[52] Mohardt had bothEddie Anderson andRoger Kiley atend to receive his passes.
From 1915 to 1916,Pudge Wyman andendBert Baston of Minnesota were "one of the greatest forward-passing combinations in the history of the gridiron".[53][54]
In the1921 Rose Bowl,California'sBrick Muller completed a touchdown againstWashington & Jefferson which went 53 yards in the air, a feat previously thought impossible.[55]
In a 1925, 62–13 victory overCornell, Dartmouth'sAndy Oberlander had 477 yards in total offense, including six touchdown passes,[56] a Dartmouth record which still stands.
The1925 Michigan team was coachFielding H. Yost's favorite and featured the passing tandem ofBenny Friedman andBennie Oosterbaan.
Yost discipleDan McGugin coachedVanderbilt and was one of the first emphasize the forward pass.[57] His1907 team beatSewanee on adouble pass playGrantland Rice cited as his biggest thrill in his years of watching sports.[58] McGugin's1927 team was piloted byBill Spears, who threw for over a thousand yards. According to one writer, Vanderbilt produced "almost certainly the legit top Heisman candidate in Spears, if there had been aHeisman Trophy to award in 1927".[59] McGugin disciple and former quarterbackRay Morrison brought the pass to the southwest when he coachedGerald Mann atSouthern Methodist.[48]
The first forward pass in a professional football game may have been thrown in anOhio League game played on October 25, 1906. The Ohio League, which traced its history to the 1890s, was a direct predecessor of theNFL. According to Robert W. Peterson in his bookPigskin The Early Years of Pro Football, the "passer wasGeorge W. (Peggy) Parratt, probably the best quarterback of the era", who played for theMassillon, Ohio Tigers, one of pro football's first franchises.[60] Citing theProfessional Football Researchers Association as his source, Peterson writes that "Parratt completed a short pass to end Dan Riley (real name,Dan Policowski)" in a game played atMassillon against a team from West Virginia. Since the Tigers "ran up a 61 to 0 score on the hapless Mountain Staters, the pass played no important part in the result".[61]
According to National Football League history,[62] it legalized the forward pass from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage on February 25, 1933. Before that rule change, a forward pass had to be made from 5 or more yards behind the line of scrimmage.
Forward passes were first permitted in Canadian football in 1929,[63] but the tactic remained a minor part of the game for several years.Jack Jacobs of theWinnipeg Blue Bombers is recognized, not for inventing the forward pass, but for popularizing it in theWestern Interprovincial Football Union (one of the forerunner leagues to the modernCanadian Football League) in the early 1950s, thus changing the Canadian game from a more run-dominated game to a more passing-dominant game.
_(6932187715).jpg)
Specification of the size of theball for the American game came in 1912. Increased use of the forward pass encouraged adoption of a narrower ball, starting with changes in the 1920s which enhanced rifled throwing and also spiral punting.[64] This had the consequence of all but eliminating thedrop kick from the American game.[65]
In the two codes of rugby (union andleague), a forward pass is against the rules. Normally this results in ascrum to the opposing team, but on rare occasions a penalty may be awarded if the referee is of the belief that the ball was deliberately thrown forward.[66]
In both codes of rugby the direction of the pass is relative to the player making the pass and not to the actual path relative to the ground. A forward pass occurs when the player passes the ball forward in relation to himself.[66] (This applies only to the movement of the player, not to the direction in which the passer is facing, i.e. if the player is facing backwards and passes toward their team's goal area, it is not forward; and conversely, if the player passes toward the opponent's goal area, it is forward.) In rugby league, thevideo referee may not make judgements on whether a pass is forward.[67]
Thegarryowen, as well as the cross-field kick, while not as reliable as the forward pass and more difficult to execute successfully, can provide some of the function that a forward pass does in American and Canadian football.
In some other football codes, such asassociation football (soccer),Australian rules football andGaelic football, the kicked forward pass is used so ubiquitously that it is not thought of as a distinct kind of play at all. In association football and its variants, the concept ofoffside is used to regulate who can be in front of the play or be nearest to the goal. Historically some earlier incarnations of football allowed unlimited forward passing, and present-day Australian rules football and Gaelic football do not have an offside rule.
Notes
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)The passing combination. Pudge Wyman to Baston, was the most damaging offensive threat of the team that year and stories of its feats have grown to legends.
"Grantland Rice Tells Of Greatest Thrill In Years Of Watching Sport".Boston Daily Globe. April 27, 1924.ProQuest 497709192.Bibliography
Media related toForward pass at Wikimedia Commons