OK, what?
Without a doubt, people intimately familiar with World War II-era football are shaking their heads and saying, wistfully, “Yup, that’s old Slingin’ Sammy Baugh for you.” But in case that name doesn’t ring a bell, consider what it would be like if Drew Brees and Darren Sharper were the same guy. That’s pretty much Baugh.
In 1937, there were 4,262 rushing attempts in the NFL to only 1,815 pass attempts, and only one team threw more touchdowns than interceptions. Into this sloppy, run-based culture stepped the rookie Sammy Baugh. That year, he threw more completions than any player ever had in a season.
OK, it was only 81, but in the championship game Baugh’s play was unheard of, and he is often credited with revolutionizing the forward pass in the NFL. The rookie went 17 of 33 for 335 yards in the championship game during a season in which teams averaged 93 passing yards per game, throwing three long touchdown passes in the second half to lead the Redskins to a 28-21 victory over the Chicago Bears.
After an aborted attempt to play baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and a couple of mediocre seasons, Baugh was back on form in 1940, leading the NFL in completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns and passer rating.
It’s not like it was close, either. Of quarterbacks with more than 80 attempts, Baugh’s completion percentage was 17 percentage points better than the next highest, and he threw for 77 yards more than a player who attempted 100 more passes. His passer rating of 85.6 sounds pedestrian now (2009 equivalent: Kyle Orton), but second best was 73.3 (Matt Hasselbeck level) and third was 54.5 (Jake Delhomme and JaMarcus Russell territory).
Oh yeah, and he was also the punter, with an average 6.5 yards per punt better than anybody else’s in the league.
Granted, this was a weird era for football. In the aforementioned game, in which Baugh threw four touchdowns and intercepted four passes, he also punted three times on first down.
NFL teams in the 1940s must have been really into field position. That said, a punting average of 51.4 yards per punt is pretty unbelievable by anyone, let alone a quarterback-defensive back hybrid, and especially since the ball was not of the same quality that it is today.
Baugh’s most amazing season was definitely 1943, which included the game with four touchdowns and four interceptions. He led the league in passing completions, passing attempts, completion percentage, punts, punting yardage, yards per punt and interceptions.
He finished second to Bears great Sid Luckman in passing touchdowns, passing yards and passer rating among qualifiers.
When Sammy Baugh retired in 1952, he held 13 different records at three different positions. He remains sixth all-time in punting average, is the only Redskin with his number officially retired and was the last surviving member of the inaugural class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame before his death in 2008.
I cannot let the opportunity of discussing Sammy Baugh’s career pass by without mentioning two of my favorite games in NFL history — he played a vital and hilarious role in losing both of them. These games were played for the NFL Championship (forerunner of the Super Bowl) in 1940 and 1945.
Baugh’s Redskins played the Chicago Bears for the 1940 championship and lost an epic nailbiter by the heartbreakingly close score of 73-0. The Bears ran the ball 53 times and passed only 10 times, accumulating 381 yards on the ground.
The Redskins, on the other hand, ran for only 5 yards and threw eight interceptions, two of which were thrown by Baugh and three of which were returned for touchdowns. You might think that to get 73 points, the Bears scored 10 touchdowns and a field goal, but actually they scored 11 touchdowns and missed three extra points and one other conversion (there were no two-point conversions in 1940). Kicking was different back then.
One of Baugh’s plays in the 1945 championship game against the Cleveland Rams (yes, the St. Louis Rams, even before they were the Los Angeles Rams, were the Cleveland Rams) led to the aptly named Sammy Baugh rule.
On a windy December day in Cleveland, Baugh dropped back to pass in his own end zone in the first quarter.
Unfortunately, just as he threw, a gust of wind blew the ball into the goalposts, which at the time were on the goal line rather than 10 yards behind it.
According to the rules, that meant an automatic safety. Rams 2, Redskins 0. After the season, the rule was changed to make passes that hit the goalposts incomplete.
The final score of that 1945 championship game? Rams 15, Redskins 14. Oops.
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