Offensive End History

Possibly the biggest personalities on the football field in the modern NFL the past 30 seasons have been the wide receivers. Some are brash, brimming with overconfidence, and flashy. They bring a whole new element to the game, but it wasn't always such a glamorous job. So in this edition, we look at the evolution of the offensive ends.

As we have talked about in other posts the game of football evolved from the sports of rugby and soccer in the mid to late 19th century. With the advancements of rules such as eleven to a side and the line of scrimmage which was added in the early 1880s at the suggestion of Walter Camp, offensive positions started to emerge. There were traditionally 7 players assigned to play along the line of scrimmage on the offensive side of the ball. It is no mystery that the men at the terminal, outermost positions of each side of this line of seven players were called the "ends." These rudimentary position names added another layer to them when they gained the nomenclature of 'Right End" and "Left End," both based upon the side of the line they were on from the snapper's perspective.

During the stocking cap era of football during the 1880s, all line positions stood erect, with their feet spread apart, and had clenched fists on their arms extended. Author Timothy P. Brown in his book How Football Became Football: 150 Years of the Game's Evolution, points out that innovative Coach Pop Warner had his Carlisle linemen of 1899 start from a crouching position in a game against Columbia. Warner believed that since getting in a three or four-point stance aided track sprinters an advantage of getting a good start it may also help stationary football players do the same at the snap of the ball.

The ends would adopt these same tactics pre-snap. When the ball was snapped their main objective in early football was to protect the flanks of the formation from defenders attempting to come from the outside edges. These fellas were preferably big and strong enough to hold blocks, that was their main objective once blocking became legal in the early twentieth century.  When the forward pass was adopted as a legal play in 1906 things started to change a bit for the end. 

By the time the 1930s rolled around, some teams were experimenting with spreading the field by moving one end far out near the sideline, drawing the defense away from running plays and leaving them more open on passing ones. These "Split Ends" became the prototype for what has evolved into being called today the wide receiver. The ends that stayed tight to the tackle on his side were now referred to as the "Tight End."

I think that the evolution of the end of yesteryear to the wide receivers we know in today's NFL can best be summed up by three greats that played the position and each opened doors to their peers and those that came later and helped morph the game of football and much of its offensive strategy.

The first such player that is responsible for revolutionizing the position is Don Hutson. Hutson played End at the University of Alabama and later in the NFL for the Green Bay Packers. at 6 foot-1 inch tall and weighing in at 183 pounds he at that time was sort of an oddball. What is a guy that skinny going to be able to do to help the offense? Surely he can't keep a charging defensive end at bay for very long. What he could do was run and run very fast. He was clocked at 9.71 seconds in the 100-yard dash.  He could outrun every single defender in the game of football at the time. He led the NFL in receiving in eight of his 11 seasons and in scoring in five consecutive years. In fact twice, in 1941 and 1942, he was named the league’s MVP. The other thing he could do was run set passing routes. Many give Hutson the credit for creating the route tree we celebrate as a fundamental in today's passing game.

Ends simply did not do these things. The Green Bay Packers exposed defenses by using the speed, skill, and maneuvering of a little guy and it worked as eventually everyone copied the format. This really opened up football to not just be a game of big brutes, but also to have room for the talented slighter-built players as well.

The second player at the end that made a difference to the position was Baltimore Colts great Raymond Berry. Baltimore chose him as a Futures pick in the twentieth round of the 1954 NFL Draft because he had only caught 33 passes at SMU. The Pro Football Hall of Fame tells us though Berry did not have the blazing speed he honed his craft so that as he declared he had 88 different moves to get open that he used. Berry was quite the weapon when paired with Johnny Unitas with the Colts. Together after Unitas joined the team in 1956 this pair gave the Baltimore Colts one of the greatest QB to Wideout tandems of all time. Three straight times Raymond led the league in receptions and caught a then-record 631 passes for 9,275 yards and 68 touchdowns in his 13-year career. He wasn't fast like Hutson, but his sure hands and rout discipline made him stand out, and others tried the practices too and the game was changed.

The third player that transformed the position was Jerry Rice. The receiver is from Mississippi Valley State. An article on biography.com informs the reader that Jerry Rice earned All-America honors and set 18 Division I-AA records while at Mississippi Valley State. The profootballhof.com states that the San Francisco 49ers drafted Rice in the first round of the 1985 NFL Draft. The website jerryricefootball.com claims that the prolific receiver holds 36 NFL records as he wears the rings of 3 Super Bowl Championships. You can read about one of those records in our September 29th post of the Football History Headlines. Jerry was not the fastest receiver on the field but his work on the practice field was seldom matched by anyone as well as his film study and those combined with his natural athletic abilities translated into a big problem for opposing defenses. One of his biggest attributes was his yards after catch statistics where he would often turn a short slant pattern catch into a long TD reception. Rice is only one of three wideouts to have ever won the prestigious offensive player of the year award in the NFL, and he won it two different times 1987 and 1993.

The idea of these speed demons on the outside was liked so much that teams started to figure out how to get more of them out there at the same time. Running backs started shifting outside the tackles as well and the birth of the flanker occurred. It didn't take long for the smart guys on the sidelines to scheme the use of using more wide receivers as flankers instead of using backs out there too. Thus the slot receiver was born. Football was getting used to the three, four, and even five wide receiver sets.

As passing schemes became more complex, coaches were finding it confusing and tiresome to keep up with the whole wide receiver, slot receiver, or wideout call-outs. Coaches had to start labeling receivers that correspond to their position on the field.  The folk of football started using the terminology of the X Y Z receivers as offensive players. In it simplest form: the Z receivers line up off the line of scrimmage; X receivers are on the line of scrimmage, and the Y receiver is normally close to the tackle usually as a tight end.

Fun fact: Only Jerry Rice (in 1987 and 1993), Michael Thomas (in 2019), and Cooper Kupp (in 2021) have won Offensive Player of the Year.

Bunch formations, trips to a side, and other unbalancing shifts and formations allow coordinators to scheme up things like wide receiver screens, rub routes, and even jet sweeps. Yes putting these Z receivers in motion can really play havoc with the defense as they alter the formation first presented. Offensive coordinators are always looking for that magic chess piece move that will gain an advantage for their players over the opponent. Where will the position advance to next? We need to watch th superstars at the position and note how the brainiac play-callers use them to gain the next big thing in advantages

The banner photo is of a Diagrammed Pitt Pass Play Used in Penn Game devised by Heinie Miller and used Pop Warner concepts from November 13, 1922.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com