1933 NFL season

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1933 NFL season changed professional football in ways the game had never seen before. Three new franchises joined the league, the rulebook was rewritten from the ground up, and for the first time in the NFL's fourteen-year history, the season ended with a true championship game. Before 1933, the league had borrowed its rules wholesale from college football. After 1933, it had its own identity.

  What brought all of this on? A single playoff game, played the year before, had proven the demand was there. The league's owners took that lesson and ran with it. They split their teams into two divisions, invited new cities into the fold, and handed the forward pass to players anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. The Chicago Bears and the New York Giants would settle the question of who was best in what became the first NFL Championship Game. How that game was reached, and what had to be built to make it possible, is the story of one of the most consequential off-seasons in football history.

• 2. A League Rebuilt

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  Three cities sent teams to the NFL in 1933: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. The Pittsburgh Pirates put Forrest Douds in charge as their first head coach. The Philadelphia Eagles handed the same role to Lud Wray. The Cincinnati Reds opened their inaugural season with Al Jolley guiding the team for the first three games, then Mike Palm taking over for the remaining seven.

  The league did not only gain teams. It also lost one. The Staten Island Stapletons departed, though they kept scheduling games against NFL clubs on an informal basis. Meanwhile, the Boston Braves organization shed its name and became the Boston Redskins, also moving their home games from Braves Field to Fenway Park. With that shuffle complete, the NFL stood at ten teams, up from eight the year before.

  George Halas of the Chicago Bears made one of the more dramatic coaching decisions of the year. To cut costs, Halas simply laid off his own head coach, Ralph Jones, and resumed the role himself. It was a move that would have consequences by season's end, when his Bears faced the New York Giants for the title.

• 3. Rewriting the Rulebook

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  A play in the 1932 NFL Playoff Game involving Bronko Nagurski was so controversial that it rewrote the rules of professional football. Nagurski, a Bears fullback, threw a touchdown pass that opponents argued was illegal because he was not five yards behind the line of scrimmage when he released it. In 1933, the NFL eliminated that five-yard requirement entirely. Henceforth, any player could throw a forward pass from any point behind the line. The change was officially named the Bronko Nagurski Rule in his honor.

  Hashmarks, also called inbounds lines, were painted onto the field ten yards in from each sideline. Every play would now begin with the ball spotted on or between those lines. The adjustment was designed to open up the field and reduce the stranglehold that sideline positioning had given defenses.

  The goal posts also moved. They were pulled from the back of the end zone and placed at the goal lines themselves, reversing a change that had been made before the previous season. The intent was direct: more field goals, fewer ties. Two smaller rules completed the package. A punt hitting the opponent's goal posts before being touched by any player was ruled a touchback. And if a kicked ball struck the goal posts behind the goal line and rolled back out of the end zone or was recovered by the kicking team, it counted as a safety.

• 4. Yards and Records

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  The 1933 season was only the second year in which the NFL officially tracked and preserved statistics. Several categories that would later become standard, including interceptions, punting average, kickoff return yardage, and field goal percentage, were not recorded at all. What was kept reflects how the new rules reshaped the game.

  Harry Newman of the New York Giants led all passers with 973 yards, a new NFL record. Glenn Presnell of the Portsmouth Spartans finished second with 774 yards, and Arnie Herber of the Green Bay Packers added 656. In the running game, Jim Musick of the Boston Redskins set an NFL record with 809 rushing yards. His teammate Cliff Battles was close behind at 737. Bronko Nagurski, whose controversial pass had inspired a rule change, rushed for 533 yards for the Chicago Bears.

  Paul Moss of the Pittsburgh Pirates led all receivers with 283 yards, barely edging his teammate Ray Tesser at 282. Bill Hewitt of the Bears caught for 273 yards. In touchdowns, Kink Richards of the New York Giants and Shipwreck Kelly of the Brooklyn Dodgers each scored seven, tying for the league lead. Ken Strong of the Giants and Glenn Presnell of the Spartans each added six.

• 5. The First Championship

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  At the end of the 1933 season, the Chicago Bears met the New York Giants in the first NFL Championship Game ever played. The Bears won. The road to that game had run through a new two-division structure, a format the league had put in place specifically because the 1932 playoff game had demonstrated that fans would show up for high-stakes postseason football.

  The Bears played their home games at Wrigley Field under head coach George Halas. The Giants played at the Polo Grounds under Steve Owen. Owen's team had Harry Newman setting passing records. Halas's team had Nagurski, the fullback whose touchdown had reshaped the rules the entire league now played under. Their meeting in the Championship Game was, in a real sense, the culmination of everything the 1932 Playoff Game had set in motion.

  The Green Bay Packers, coached by Curly Lambeau, split their home schedule between City Stadium and Borchert Field in Milwaukee. That 1933 game at Borchert Field was the first time the Packers had hosted in Milwaukee. Beginning the following year, the team would play two or three home games annually in Milwaukee, a arrangement that would continue all the way to 1994.