Punt As Much As You Can

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There was an era of football where the punt may have been the most effective weapon for an offense. It just doesn't sound right to our modern gridiron minds to understand. No worries we brought in an expert to help.

One of the top experts in early football rules history, Timothy P. Brown, joins us to explain the kicking game strategy of early football. The story is eloquently shared below in the link that takes you to Tim's article, complete with photos of the era. Timothy Brown's

-Transcription of Punt Often with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday, Football Archaeology Day, as we bring in our friend Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, Darin. Great to see you, hear from you again, and looking forward to lots of Tuesdays during 2022, or 2023, I should say.

We already did a bunch for 2022. Old habits, old habits. It's hard to change that date. That's one of the toughest things to do.

We'll be doing that into March, I'm sure, all of us. Hey, you know, we have had a great football season. You know, we've had some great Tuesdays on Football Archaeology.

You know, I shared a lot of Rose Bowl memories with you. And, you know, now we've got into some of your interesting tidbits from November. One that really caught my eye is you had one titled from November 14th called Punning Early and Often about some early football strategy.

We'd really like to hear about it. Yeah, you know, I think for me, this is kind of a, it's kind of a fun topic, you know, for two reasons. I think, you know, one is just kind of the nature of, you know, punting was a much bigger part of the game, you know, back then.

But for me, it also, I think, just generally, you know, in line with that thought, it kind of just reinforces, you know, just the, when we're going back and doing history and reading about things that have happened in the past, it can be very difficult to make sure you have, you know, you're wearing their hat. And what I mean by that is, you know, you're working under the assumptions they worked under, not the assumptions you now work under, you know, because 100 years or 120, you know, some years have passed. And so, you know, the point of the overall article is just kind of discussing how, back in the day, teams often punted on first or second down.

And then once, you know, they got four downs, and they would punt on third down, too. But, for us, that seems like just such a strange way to play the game, right? It's like, why in the heck would you punt on first down? And yet it's, you know, if you kind of put yourself back under their assumptions and under their rules, then it starts making a bit more sense. And so, you know, in my mind, there's two kinds of key things that, you know, that are different about the game that they played versus what's played today.

And so one is just that people punted early on or on, on early downs, because it was difficult to move the ball. You know, you know, they just, you know, pretty much everybody with the, you know, exceptions here and there, but pretty much everybody played close formations, you know, with three or four backs, you know, inside the, the both ends being tight. And sometimes there'd be a wing or, you know, whatever, whatever it was, but I mean, for the most part, everybody's playing really tight together.

And, then, the defense has had a wide guy on either side to stop anybody from sweeping. So everything just got funneled into the middle. And so it was just hard to move the darn ball and do it consistently.

So it's one thing to get a first down. It's another thing that, you know, string together five, six, seven first downs, drive down the field and score. So, you know, it's just that, that whole idea that the, in a game of reasonably well-matched opponents, it typically was going to be a pretty low-scoring game.

You know, they did not have Yale and Harvard or Yale and Princeton or whomever, Michigan and Chicago, or when they played one another, they didn't play a bunch of 47 of 43 games, you know, it was 13 to 10, it was six to nothing. So just, you know, the fact of the matter is against well, you know, well-matched teams, it was really difficult to move the ball. So, they played the field position game, and they just booted it.

Right. And they booted it thinking, Hey, I'm going to have to keep the ball in their territory, and then they can make a mistake, and then I can capitalize on it. And so this particular article has a quote by a guy named George Brooke, who was a famous player and coach back then.

And, and, you know, wrote a lot of articles that were in, you know, syndicated newspaper articles, but he, he basically made an argument that the maxim he called it, that if the ball is inside your 40, you should punt it. That's it. Right.

Which is like, you know, again, what, one of those things we just can't even imagine. And so, just the way that he phrased it, I got it here. So, he considered that if you were inside your own 40, he considered dangerous ground.

And he said this is called dangerous ground because if the team should lose the ball for some foul or offside play fumble or other common means of losing it, then, you know, then their goal is going to be in danger. So it's kind of the reverse of what I was saying, which is why you want to punt it, but it just points out that, you know, so our assumptions are offenses can move the ball. And then the other assumption, you know, we understand fumbles or interceptions or something like that, losing the ball, but we don't think about it in terms of the first thing he mentioned, which is some foul or offside play.

So back then, most penalties resulted in a loss of possession, did you know? So, you know, yes, there was, you know, if you interfered with the center five-yard penalty, piling on or a couple of other things for 15-yard penalties, but an offside, if you were offside loss of possession, right? And then like, you know, the old, the forward pass before the forward pass was legalized, you know if you pitch the ball forward that was lost possession, you know, was another, another example of that. So again, it's just that we don't think about the game that way.

We don't think about, you know, jumping offside, boom, the other guy gets the ball at the spot, you know? So, so, you know, there was just, I think that much more reason, you know, you, you were risking yourself and your field position if you kept the ball and you were inside the 30, inside the 40, whatever it was. So anyway, it just kind of makes more sense now. Or, you know, if you kind of think about those two terms, you know, the offensive inefficiency and then loss of possession.

So no, no, just interesting to me. Yeah. It made me start really thinking about it, you know, especially before the forward pass was legal.

You know, we, we talked now, you know, we watch a game when they say, Oh, you know, the defense has eight in the box, or they're to stop the run. Well, they were putting, you know, 10, 11 in the box back then. There was no threat behind them to that.

So they could fill every gap and have an extra guy to shoot the gaps if they wanted to. So, so probably made moving the ball on the ground real ineffective. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah. And you know, there are so many things that we just take for granted, the opposite of forward pass, but just other ways of just moving, you know, trying to move the ball, you know, just like a, well, I guess a shovel, shovel pass would have been illegal then anyways, but you know, option plays and those kinds of things that just, you know, hadn't come along yet.

So it was, it was tough. Yeah. Well, it's great.

Definitely that article and some of the photographs, the pictures you have in there and you know, Mr. Brooks quotes and things that really make you think and takes you back, you know, 120 some years ago and appreciate how the game has evolved over time and made a lot more enjoyable from a fan's point of view. And probably from an offensive and defensive strategist to make, make some headaches for them too, for the defenses, but the forward pass stuff, but Hey, just some great stuff and how important the kicking game was at that point. It really comes to light.

So we thank you for sharing that with us. And Tim, why don't we take this time? You know, you have these tidbits coming out each and every day. Maybe you could share with the listeners how they, too, can appreciate your tidbits each day.

Sure. So, my site where I post the tidbits every day is called football archeology.com. It's a site where you can just sign up for free, and you'll get, and you'll get an email delivered every night at seven o'clock Eastern. I also post on Twitter.

And so, but just to, you know, if you want to make sure you get it every day, you don't have to read it necessarily, but if you want to make sure you get it every day, just subscribe. And it'll pop right into your inbox dutifully. It most certainly does.

So, Tim, we appreciate you coming on again. Again, Timothy P Brown, footballarcheology.com, and Tim, we'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Okay.

Very good. Thanks, Darin. Appreciate it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.