1934 NFL season

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 9th of December 1934, the New York Giants walked off the field at the Polo Grounds with a 30-13 victory over the Chicago Bears, and football history had a new name: the Sneakers Game. What made that championship possible was a full season of chaos, records, and reinvention across the National Football League's 15th year of existence. How did a franchise from Portsmouth, Ohio become a Detroit institution? How did one rookie running back destroy a record by nearly 300 yards? And why did a team from Cincinnati simply vanish mid-season, replaced by an independent club from St. Louis? The 1934 NFL season answers all of these questions, and the answers are stranger than the questions suggest.

• 2. A New Team in Detroit

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  Before a single game was played in 1934, the Portsmouth Spartans packed up and moved from Ohio to Detroit, Michigan, where they became the Detroit Lions. The newly renamed franchise wasted no time proving the relocation was no mere cosmetic change. Detroit shut out their first seven opponents of the year, marching to a 10-0 record before losing once to the Green Bay Packers and twice to the Chicago Bears. Even with those late-season stumbles, the Lions finished the year allowing only 59 points total, an average of just 4.5 points per game. Detroit also claimed the top defensive unit in the entire league that season, a distinction that would help establish the franchise's identity for years to come. That same 1934 season would also mark the beginning of a Thanksgiving tradition: the Lions played on the holiday, and they have continued to do so every year since.

• 3. Beattie Feathers Rewrites the Record Book

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  Halfback Beattie Feathers of the Chicago Bears did something in 1934 that no NFL player had ever done before: he rushed for more than 1,000 yards in a single season. Feathers finished with 1,004 yards in just 11 games, averaging an extraordinary 9.9 yards per carry. That total did not just break the old league record; it shattered it by nearly 300 yards. Feathers also led the league in touchdowns, scoring nine, another new NFL record. The Bears as a whole were the top offensive team for the second consecutive year, racking up 3,750 yards of total offense, more than 700 yards better than their own 1933 total. Three other teams also surpassed the previous year's offensive high-water mark: the Boston Redskins, the Lions, and the Green Bay Packers. Swede Hanson of the Philadelphia Eagles finished second in rushing with 805 yards, and Dutch Clark of Detroit was third with 763.

• 4. The Passing Game Steps Back

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  Despite the league-wide surge in offensive output, one part of the game actually went in reverse in 1934. Passing totals declined, with the average completion rate falling to 30.4 percent even though the number of passing attempts was roughly equal to 1933. Coaching staffs had focused attention on pass defense, which had the counterintuitive effect of opening up running lanes instead. The result was that the league's increased production came almost entirely through the ground game rather than the air. Arnie "Flash" Herber of the Green Bay Packers led all passers with 799 yards, followed by Warren Heller of the Pittsburgh Pirates with 511. A pair of rule changes also reshaped the season: incomplete passes no longer resulted in a five-yard penalty, and a hand-to-hand forward pass made behind the line of scrimmage that hit the ground before being caught would now be ruled a fumble rather than an incomplete pass.

• 5. The Cincinnati Collapse

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  The Cincinnati Reds had a season that was difficult to watch. They lost their first eight games and were outscored by a combined total of 243-10 in the process. The league then suspended the franchise for failure to pay its dues. With three games remaining on Cincinnati's schedule, an independent team from St. Louis called the Gunners stepped in to play them. The St. Louis Gunners, coached by Chile Walsh and playing their home games at Sportsman's Park, managed something the Reds never did: they shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates in one of those three games. The Reds had spent their home season in unusual fashion, playing each of their four home games at a different venue, including Crosley Field in Cincinnati, Triangle Park in Dayton, Universal Stadium in Portsmouth, and Corcoran Stadium at Xavier University.

• 6. The Sneakers Game

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  Sixty regular season games led to a single championship contest, and it produced one of the most memorable moments in early NFL history. The New York Giants, Eastern Division champions coached by Steve Owen and playing at the Polo Grounds, faced the Chicago Bears, who had gone undefeated through the Western Division. A Bears victory would have given them the first ever undefeated, untied season in league history. Instead, the Giants won 30-13, denying that milestone and earning the new Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy, which had been established that season as the league's award for the NFL champion. The trophy would be presented to championship winners through 1967. The game's informal name, the Sneakers Game, stuck in football lore, though the 1934 season gave the league another lasting legacy as well: with the goal posts moved to the goal line to encourage field goal attempts, more than 20 games were decided by three points or less, and for the first time since the league's founding, no game ended in a tie.