NFL's Most Important Game in History / Eulogy to the First Superstar Quarterback

There are pivotal events in sport history when the participation of one exceptional athlete changes the game and how it is played forever.  Babe Ruth changed baseball dynamics forever; he was the first athlete to ever hit 30, 40, 50, and 60 home runs in a single year.

NFL founder George Halas saw his life transformed by his sport on a frozen football field one unforgettable day by a rookie tailback who not only changed how future games would be played, but the very shape of the football itself.

Prehistoric NFL days are numbered before December 12, 1937: the average NFL team passed the ball less than once a quarter; many games concluded as single digit affairs and run defenses dominated the day.

Before that day, football was often a boring scrum of indistinguishable muddy jerseys piled together to see how far a ball could be shoved up the field until its carrier was subdued. The quarterback had two functions: hand the ball to the tailback, then block for him. There were three basic plays: run left, run right, and run up the middle, then repeat whatever just worked.

Passing was an afterthought, a weak capitulation reserved for desperate third down throws by the tailback, not the quarterback!  More than three passes per game reflected team cowardice:  avoidance to engage a more powerful enemy in elbow or fist to face combat. 

Football was changed on December 12, 1937 in the NFL Championship Game at Wrigley Field in a whippy Lake Michigan wind when a kid played against the most hardened veterans. This was the Great Depression with 30% unemployment. Men played football to prevent their families from starving. It was simple: play hard or you lose your job. 

The game of football was no game; it was life or death combat violently contested by hard men with nasty attitudes. Men took great honor and evil joy giving pain, broken bones with game-ending concussions.

There were no post-game prayer meetings. Fisticuffs brawls under grandstands were commonplace.  Alpha males measured team dominance not only by a score, but by the bloodied and broken body count left behind.

Shoulder pads were handkerchiefs and hardened cardboard stuffed into a jersey. A helmet was a leather scarf molded into a cap to protect the ears, like a wrestler head guard.  Few rules meant players were punched in the face, kneed in the groin or elbowed to the forehead without fear of penalty. It also meant numerous interceptions were commonplace due to no pass interference rules.

To complain of broken bones was unmanly, a sign of weakness marking a player vulnerable to renewed violent assaults.  Real men rejected face mask protection and played on both sides of the ball: offense and defense.  Those courageous rare few were known as “60-minute men”.

The rookie played defense and years later he became the first player to ever pick off four inceptions in a single game; he also completed four touchdown passes in the same game. He led the NFL in passing, punting and defensive interceptions, all in the same year.

In later years, the skinny kid told of one violent defender who punched him in the face on every play. The rookie told his teammates not to block his attacker then flattened him with a ball throw full force into his face. The defender staggered, then collapsed face first and was dragged off the field for two plays. He returned continued to use this rookie’s face as a punching bag the rest of the game.

December 12, 1937, is the day Modern NFL Football was born. The wind had blown away the sun. The field froze solid with hardened razor sharp ice shards on a layer of Chicago concrete;  a 15 degree temperature and minus 6 wind bone chill factor. This was flesh frostbite numbing football for those who never left the field.

The rookie had been visibly injured, no matter: he was 170 pounds of raw-boned Texas-tough beef jerky on a mission from God: he knew how the game would end that day for he had seen the future of football. At the end of that day a new era was born: the era of the Modern NFL Quarterback.  

Bronco Nagurski and battle-scarred Bears fought tenaciously but couldn’t stop the Washington Redskins rookie, on a day still frozen in time. The Bears lost 28-21 after leading by seven points at halftime. 

Sammy Baugh threw a balloon shaped football in perfect spirals with uncanny accuracy in a swirling icy Illinois wind with three third quarter touchdowns (55, 78 and 35 yards) and a game 335 yards while slipping and sliding on an ice rink in basketball shoes.  

One of the Bears coaches summed it up best: “Baugh was a one-man team. He licked us by himself!”

Coach Halas did not embrace a passing game or losses gracefully. He adapted the T-formation, anointing a player named Sid Luckman his quarterback. Look at the Bears since that day; you will note their excellent running backs like Gale Sayers and Walter Payton, not their history of inept quarterbacks that still plague them even today. 

In 1940, the Bears repeated as champions shellacking Baugh’s Redskins in the most lopsided NFL Championship Game ever played 73-0! Luckman threw the ball only six times with four completions for 102 yards. Halas had his running game restoration and his revenge. When you seek football revenge, always dig two graves.

In 1942, the Bears were expected to be the first ever NFL Championship three-peat. The undefeated (11-0) Bears were the NFL’s greatest offensive team in history. Dubbed Monsters of the Midway, Luckman and the Chicago Bears had mastered the T-formation outscoring opponents 376 to 84; everyone expected them to crush the Redskins again.

Sammy Baugh had a Texas Ranger’s memory of a 73-0 humiliating loss. Despite never having a great innovative coach, like George Halas, Baugh knew how to adapt a game plan using his attributes which included punting.

Baugh was a phenomenal punter; he averaged 51.4 yards a punt one season, still an NFL record.  His passing accuracy peaked over 70%, an NFL record for 37 years, still second best today.

Sammy Baugh and the Washingtom Redskins bitterly fought the Bears and shocked them with a 14 to 6 NFL Championship victory. It is still one of the greatest upsets in NFL history.

When he left the game after 16 years, he owned 16 NFL records and three still stand today. His last five punts averaged well over fifty yards as his legs neared forty years old.  Baugh’s “forward pass” revolutionized the modern football.

Decades later, the rookie’s personalized playing style evolved into the West Coast Offense.

Only two people were unanimously elected to the first Football Hall of Fame in 1962: George Halas and Sammy Baugh.  Baugh was the last surviving member of the inaugural class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Now 71 years and six days after a day after his forward pass became a game-changing tactical weapon instead of an act of desperation, Slinging Sammy Baugh has passed onto Heaven’s final field. 

No doubt in heaven he will be restored vibrant youth and reunited with his high school sweetheart who loved and married him for fifty-two years. 

Always humble, Sammy asked his football accomplishments not be mentioned when he died, but asked to be remembered as “a good cow man”.  

As one cattle man to another, I apologize to you Mr. Baugh, for my many transgressions mentioning your football feats with your courage and leadership qualities. Yet our world desperately needs more people of integrity like you for inspiration, with less overpaid, under performing classless cartoonish NFL characters of today.  

I thought of Sammy while watching the Dallas Cowboys receive a righteous whipping from the Philadelphia Eagles. I wondered if a few of them Dallas Cowboys might eventually grow up to be Baugh’s “good cow men.”  DeMarcus Ware seems to be a "cow man", but only time will tell.

In the end, life never defeated Sammy Baugh, after 94 years, he simply ran out of time.