Football Historian Answers Football Questions

WIRED

Sportswriter and football historian John Eisenberg joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about American Football.   Director: Justin Wolfson  Director of Photography: Charlie Jordan Editor: Alex Mechanik Expert: John Eisenberg Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Brandon White  Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer Camera Operator: Chris Eustache Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen  Production Assistant: Sonia Butt Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Additional Editor: Paul Tael; Jason Malizia Assistant Editor: Andy Morell

Transcript

00:00I'm John Eisenberg, sports writer and football historian.

00:03I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet.

00:05This is Football Support.

00:07♪♪

00:12Cheyney asks, what's the origin of American football being named football?

00:16First of all, it's not named after European soccer, English soccer, which is known as football.

00:21Actually, the origin of the name goes back way before that.

00:24You go to the 1600s, 1500s, sports were pretty much divided up.

00:28There were sports that were played on horseback, and there were sports that were played on foot.

00:33All those sports that were played on foot were known as foot sports, and so that evolved into football.

00:39And so that was yet another thing early in the history of the sport here.

00:42It just stuck.

00:43Dan Bolio asks, why are we still calling the Cowboys America's team?

00:48Really? This is a fair question.

00:50The Dallas Cowboys have a great history.

00:53They've won Super Bowls.

00:54They've had tons of playoff teams.

00:56A great tradition.

00:58But the last time they won the Super Bowl was in the early 1990s.

01:02And so we're going back a long way.

01:05And they haven't won many playoff games since then.

01:08They still have probably more fans than any other team.

01:11They get tremendous television ratings.

01:13But I don't know that they're America's team anymore.

01:16New Reditor says, today I learned one of the four kickers who have kicked 63-yard field goals in NFL history was Tom Dempsey for the Saints.

01:26He had no toes on his kicking foot.

01:29Yes, he'd been born with no toes on his right foot.

01:32He'd been born with no fingers on one hand.

01:34He was a great athlete.

01:36And he made it to the NFL.

01:37And he kicked with a square-toed shoe.

01:40No other kicker had come close to making a field goal from 63 yards.

01:44And it won a game.

01:46It shocked everyone.

01:47And what was interesting was in the immediate aftermath of that, in the offseason, the league outlawed the square-toed shoe that he had used.

01:56Because they felt it was almost like a club kicking the ball and was an unfair advantage.

02:01The great thing for Dempsey was he continued to kick in the NFL for a number of years.

02:05The changing of the shoe did not limit his ability to have a football career.

02:11Barry Shuck asks, what is the origin of the term touchdown?

02:15This goes back to the beginning of football in this country.

02:17One of the main influences was rugby.

02:19And in rugby, the goal is to move the ball over a goal line and you score the point when the offensive player touches the ball down on the ground in the end zone.

02:29That's called a try in rugby.

02:31But the touchdown is what the player is trying to do.

02:36And so football borrowed a lot from rugby in its early years.

02:39And so it was the same thing.

02:41They felt like, well, we're going to get the ball over the goal line and we're going to score the points.

02:46H. Belaski asks, I hate the new kickoff rule in the NFL.

02:50Why do they feel they must make new rules?

02:53I'm not a huge fan of the new kickoff rule either, but I do know why they did it.

02:57They're trying to cut down on the velocity of the collisions and keep the players safer.

03:02So what they did was they moved the coverage teams forward about 40 yards, well into enemy territory.

03:09The kicker is alone back on his 40, kicking the ball off.

03:13The coverage team can't begin to run until the ball is caught and the returner begins to return the kick.

03:18So the velocity of the collisions is cut way down.

03:22The New Mule asks, by the way, are NFL footballs still made of pigskin?

03:27NFL footballs are not made of pigskin and they've never been made of pigskin.

03:32The exterior has always been leather.

03:34The way that the nickname pigskin came about was in the early days of the NFL, the 1920s, the 1930s.

03:42To inflate the balls, they used pig's bladder.

03:46And so the nickname grew from pig's bladder to pigskin.

03:49It never was the skin. It was always leather.

03:51However, the fact that there was pig entrails in the ball and it was known as pigskin,

03:55and still sometimes you hear people call it pigskin.

03:58Severianism asks, what have been the most impactful rule changes in NFL history?

04:04Unlimited substitutions. That rule came into existence in 1950.

04:09Before that, there were great limits on when players could come off the field.

04:13As a result, you had guys playing both ways.

04:15If you were the quarterback, you were also a defensive back.

04:17If you were an offensive lineman, you were also a defensive lineman.

04:20When the NFL went to unlimited substitutions in 1950, completely changed the nature of the game.

04:26It brought in specialization. You could just be a defensive back or you could be a tight end.

04:32And so what that really created was separate units as well, offense and defense.

04:37Kutso Jr. asks, who invented football?

04:41Football was not invented by one person.

04:43The field sport came over from England around 1850, 1860.

04:48The first official game was a college game between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869.

04:54But it bore no resemblance to the sport that you see today.

04:57It was really a mixture of rugby and soccer.

05:01It became the sport that we know it much more so about 10 or 12 years later.

05:05Walter Camp, who was a medical student at Yale, helped invent the rules of football.

05:11It wasn't a free-flowing game anymore.

05:13It was one team had the ball or the other team had the ball.

05:16Now you could run with the ball or throw the ball.

05:19So around 1880, it became a semblance of the sport that we know today.

05:24OK Health asks, which team had the worst defense in NFL history?

05:30Now, I think there's a lot of fans that could raise their hand and have a suggestion on that.

05:34But I think the winner is the Detroit Lions of 2008.

05:39That year, the Lions played 16 games.

05:42They lost all 16.

05:43And they gave up almost 33 points a game.

05:47No team in the history of the NFL has allowed more than 33 points per game on average.

05:52The Lions came very close that year.

05:54They have to win.

05:55Heidelberg says, change my view.

05:58Patrick Mahomes is visibly and obviously better at the quarterback position than Tom Brady was.

06:04You can't knock either one of these players.

06:06Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback of the current generation in the NFL,

06:10the most successful, a fantastic player.

06:13He's already won three Super Bowls.

06:15He's on his way to being in the conversation.

06:17However, Tom Brady right now owns that conversation.

06:20And I would suggest looking at the statistics.

06:23It's really pretty simple.

06:24He won seven Super Bowls.

06:26He is far and away the career leader in NFL history in touchdown passes, completions, passing yardage.

06:34No one else is close.

06:36TooLazyToLink asks, before the forward pass was invented, what the hell did the quarterback do?

06:43What needs to be understood is that in the early days of football,

06:46the quarterback did not touch the ball on every play.

06:49Offenses ran through the tailback was the most important position on the offensive field.

06:54The quarterback was so named because he was a quarter of the way back to the tailback.

07:00Same with the halfback, half the way back to the tailback.

07:03And the fullback was lined up next to the tailback.

07:06The quarterback was more of a blocker.

07:08A Reddit user asks, what made Jerry Rice the GOAT?

07:11Rice, the receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, is easily the greatest receiver in the history of pro football.

07:17He played for 20 years.

07:18He set, I believe, 36 records, many of which still stand.

07:22He's the all-time leader in catches, in receiving yardage, in receiving touchdowns.

07:26Nearly 200, I believe.

07:28So the GOAT of receivers, that's an easy one.

07:30VariousBeach7840 asks, what is the greatest single-game performance in NFL history?

07:37In more recent football, I would go with Tom Brady's performance.

07:41Super Bowl 51 against the Atlanta Falcons, where they trailed 28-3 and came back to win the game 34-28 in overtime.

07:49That entire comeback rested on Tom Brady's arm.

07:52He threw and threw and threw, and he almost never missed a pass.

07:57An engineer, the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, a peerless performance.

08:01FakeWhiteKnight asks, why is Joe Namath in the Hall of Fame?

08:05Joe Namath is in the Hall of Fame because he was a quarterback in the New York Jets when they engineered probably the greatest upset in pro football history.

08:14Super Bowl III, they were heavy underdogs.

08:17They were the champions of the AFL, the New York Jets, and Namath predicted they would win the game, and they did win the game.

08:23They defeated the champions of the NFL, the Baltimore Colts.

08:27The Colts were favored by 17 points.

08:29The whole sports world thought they would win.

08:31If you look at it, his statistics, his accomplishments other than that, he really doesn't belong.

08:36He had a losing record as a starting quarterback.

08:38He barely completed 50% of his passes.

08:41In today's football, if you complete barely 50% of your passes, you don't have a job.

08:45He threw more interceptions than touchdowns over his career.

08:48However, his one great moment was just about the greatest moment.

08:52StoutSaber asks, in the old days, why the hell was the goalpost in the middle of the end zone?

08:58The goalpost was never in the middle of the end zone.

09:01It was on the goal line.

09:02That's where it was for a number of years, right when pro football started.

09:06And the reason it was there, there wasn't nearly as much scoring in the early days of pro football.

09:11It wouldn't be unusual to see the final score of a game be 6-2 or 9-3.

09:17So they were trying to encourage scoring, and they were trying to encourage field goals.

09:21So they had the goalpost right on the goal line.

09:23What happened was teams started relying too much on field goals and kicking too many field goals.

09:29So that's when they moved the goalpost to the back of the end zone,

09:32making it harder to kick field goals, trying to encourage touchdowns.

09:36It's also too dangerous to have the goalpost right on the goal line.

09:39You've got today's players, bigger, stronger, faster, and they're crisscrossing the field at a great velocity.

09:46If they ran into the goalpost that's situated there, you'd have serious injuries.

09:51So, the undefeated Dolphins are the best football team of all time?

09:57A very good question, and one that will always start an argument.

10:01The Miami Dolphins in 1972 played 14 regular season games, 3 playoff games, won them all.

10:08They are the only team in NFL history to go through an entire season without losing a game.

10:14And so, by definition, they're the greatest team of all time.

10:17Of course, football is relative. It's a lot different today than it was back then.

10:21Different teams can claim that they're better even if they might have lost one game along the way.

10:26The Chicago Bears of 1985 had probably the most fierce defense in the history of the NFL.

10:32They lost one game and pretty much slaughtered everybody else.

10:36The dynasty teams in the NFL, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys,

10:42they all had fantastic teams at times over the years.

10:46They all won multiple Super Bowls.

10:48I'm sure if you said, would you like to have them play the Miami Dolphins of 1972, they would take that on in a heartbeat.

10:54But, the Miami Dolphins didn't lose a game that year. They get to brag.

10:59AtContentLawyer asks, how has technology changed the way football is played in the NFL?

11:06The fact that there's so much more video in our world now certainly has changed pro football as it has everything else.

11:13Anytime you're watching a game, you see players on the sidelines.

11:16As soon as they come off the field, the quarterback's oftentimes looking at a tablet going over what they did.

11:21You have coaches, defensive coordinators, offensive coordinators who would rather be in the press box than down on the field

11:28because they have access to much more video.

11:31I would argue that technology hasn't changed pro football as much as it has other aspects of our world.

11:37GPS technology, for instance, could easily be used to determine whether a team has gained 10 yards in four downs and gets the first down.

11:45When they bring those chains out for a measurement, it is still an imperfect science.

11:50The reason why we're not seeing GPS technology in football has never been really explained.

11:55The NFL has a great thing going. The simpler, the better in some respects.

11:59And so, I think at this point, they want to just continue with the way it was.

12:04jmcomber75 asks,

12:12Quarterbacks have always been able to throw while running.

12:15There was never a limit on a quarterback's ability to run and throw.

12:19There were, however, many limits on passing.

12:21The rules that constricted passing in the early days of the NFL sound amazing today.

12:27If the passer threw the ball and it was incomplete, that was a 15-yard penalty.

12:33If the passer lines up and throws the ball into the end zone trying to throw a touchdown and the ball falls incomplete, the other team gained possession of the ball.

12:42So, there were tons of rules that restricted passing in the early days of pro football.

12:48And it all changed in 1933.

12:51The owners of the teams realized the sport they felt was pretty boring.

12:55It was a lot of just plunging into the middle of the line, not nearly enough passing.

12:59They opened it wide, and the change was instantaneous.

13:03S.L. Olson asks,

13:16This is a great and serious question that is on a lot of minds in the NFL.

13:20The study of concussions and the impact of playing football on the players has been an ongoing story for the last 15 or 20 years.

13:29There's a lot of concern in the NFL about whether playing the sport is too dangerous for you.

13:35A lot of the doctors and a lot of the researchers will say that their research points to the fact that, yes, it is dangerous to play this game.

13:42So, this is an ongoing situation that the NFL for sure is worried about.

13:46That's why you see so much thrown into improving helmet technology and trying to make the sport safer for the players.

13:52I don't think it will kill the NFL. The NFL is so popular.

13:55PorkSport69 asks,

14:03There have been a lot of losing teams that have gone on to have winning teams immediately.

14:07I don't think you can come close to what the St. Louis Rams did in the late 90s.

14:12In 1998, they played 16 games. They won four, came in last in their division.

14:16At the beginning of the next year, they were listed as a 201 shot to win the Super Bowl.

14:21But they had a new quarterback, Kurt Warner, and suddenly their offense exploded.

14:25And they went all the way to the Super Bowl, and they won the Super Bowl.

14:29McRib79 asks,

14:35The way to start answering that question is to understand that into the 1940s, there were players playing with no helmets.

14:41It was not mandatory that you had to wear a helmet.

14:44In 1942, a player named Dick Plasman for the Chicago Bears was the last NFL player to play with no helmet.

14:52The next year, the NFL made helmets mandatory, and those were leather helmets.

14:56Thin little scraps of leather didn't give you a whole lot of assistance as far as safety is concerned.

15:02And so in that decade, the technology began to advance, and helmet makers rolled out the plastic helmet.

15:08By 1950, NFL players were using plastic helmets.

15:12I Guarantee It asks,

15:18Vince Lombardi was one of the greatest coaches in the history of the NFL.

15:21He was coaching the Green Bay Packers when the Super Bowl era began.

15:25He came to Green Bay in 1959. They were the worst team in the NFL.

15:29They didn't win a game the year before. Tide won.

15:32Lombardi took the same players that had been on that winless team.

15:37They had a winning record in his first season in 1959.

15:41And then, starting in 1960, they dominated the NFL for the next six or seven years.

15:46They won five championships out of seven years.

15:48They won the first two Super Bowls.

15:50And so Vince Lombardi, by winning those first two Super Bowls, really set the standard for excellence in pro football.

16:01A couple come to mind.

16:02George Blanda, a quarterback and kicker who played in the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s,

16:08played 26 seasons of professional football.

16:12I don't think we're ever going to see anyone play 26 seasons of NFL football.

16:17Brett Favre, quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, great Hall of Fame quarterback,

16:21stayed healthy, amazingly, and started 297 straight games at quarterback.

16:28That is an Ironman record that, in football, is almost impossible.

16:32There's so many injuries.

16:33Even with rules that have made quarterbacks not getting hit as hard as they used to,

16:36they still get hit hard.

16:38297 straight starts.

16:40I don't think we're ever going to see anyone come close to that.

16:48Now, it depends on what you're talking about.

16:50Just a couple of years ago, the Minnesota Vikings were playing the Indianapolis Colts.

16:54The Colts were ahead 33-0.

16:56The Vikings came back and won that game.

16:58That is the greatest comeback in pro football history in terms of points.

17:04That was a regular season game.

17:06In a playoff game in 1992, the Houston Oilers were ahead of the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo by 32 points.

17:17The Bills mounted a rally in front of their home fans and came back and won that game.

17:21The biggest comeback in the Super Bowl, the New England Patriots were playing the Atlanta Falcons.

17:27The Falcons were ahead 28-3, so a 25-point lead.

17:31The Patriots came back and won that game.

17:34Those are definitely your three comebacks that stand out far and away from anything else in the history of pro football.

17:40Okay, that's all the questions.

17:42I hope you learned something.

17:43Until next time.

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