1943 NFL season

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1943 NFL season opened on the 19th of September without one of its ten teams, with two others fused into a single makeshift squad, and with rosters so thin that the league had to raise its player limit just to keep games competitive. This was professional football at war. World War II had drained the league of hundreds of players, and the NFL's response to that crisis would reshape how the game was played for generations. What rule changes did the emergency produce? How did a quarterback named Sid Luckman and a standout from the University of Georgia named Frank Sinkwich fit into a season unlike any other? And how did a charity game in Evanston, Illinois, preview one of professional football's greatest careers?

• 2. A League at War

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  The Cleveland Rams did not play a single snap in 1943. Wartime manpower pressures had become so severe that the NFL granted the franchise permission to suspend operations entirely for the season. The league shrank to eight active teams, matching the 1932 season for the fewest clubs in NFL history.

  The Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers went further than a hiatus. The two Pennsylvania franchises merged their operations into a single combined team. Fans called them the Steagles; the official name was Phil-Pitt. Greasy Neale, head coach of the Eagles, and Walt Kiesling, head coach of the Steelers, served as co-head coaches of the merged squad. The Steagles split their home schedule between Philadelphia's Shibe Park and Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, playing four games in Philadelphia and two in Pittsburgh.

  To keep rosters viable, the NFL raised the player limit from 25 to 28. League officials were watching closely as the United States began drafting fathers into the military, and they feared that expanded conscription could cripple their teams beyond recovery. The players who remained on NFL rosters while serving were listed on an official Service Roster, a recognition of the dual reality those men lived during the 1943 season.

• 3. Rewriting the Rulebook

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  The 1943 season brought one of the most consequential rule changes in NFL history, and it arrived not from a coach's innovation but from necessity. The free substitution rule was adopted in direct response to the depleted rosters of the war era. The NCAA had already made a similar adjustment to college football in 1941, and the NFL followed suit.

  Before the change, NFL football operated under a one-platoon system. A player who was removed from the game could not return until the next quarter began. The new rule stated that an eligible substitute could replace a teammate at any time when the ball was dead and time was out, as long as he reported to the designated official. Players who were taken out could return after at least one down had been played.

  The practical effect of free substitution extended far beyond the war years. It eventually gave rise to the two-platoon system, the foundation of modern football's separate offensive and defensive units. A wartime patch became a permanent architectural shift in how the game was organized.

  Also in 1943, the wearing of head protectors became mandatory for all players. The rule formalized a protection that had previously been optional, and it arrived in the same season as the substitution change.

• 4. Otto Graham's August Debut

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  On the 25th of August, weeks before the regular season began, the annual charity Chicago All-Star Game was played at Dyche Stadium in Evanston, Illinois. The matchup pitted the reigning 1942 NFL champion Washington Redskins against a roster of college all-stars that included Northwestern tailback Otto Graham.

  Graham made the largest play of the day not as a passer but as a defender. He intercepted a pass thrown by Redskins quarterback Sammy Baugh and returned it 97 yards for a touchdown. The college all-stars won 27-7, their first victory over the standing NFL champions since 1938.

  The game's official star was not Graham but Wisconsin fullback Pat Harder, who scored once through the air and once on the ground, then converted two extra points. Harder would be taken with the second overall pick in the following year's draft. Graham, the player who had actually decided the game with his interception return, would go on to become a Hall of Famer. His 97-yard pick-six at Dyche Stadium was, in that sense, a glimpse of things to come.

• 5. The Regular Season's Strange Rhythms

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  Despite the disruptions, the NFL drew 1,072,462 fans across the 1943 regular season, a figure that came within fewer than 7,000 of the league's all-time attendance record, set the year before, even though 15 fewer games were played in 1943. The closeness of the competition among depleted squads was credited for the strong turnout.

  On the 7th of November, the Detroit Lions and the New York Giants played to a 0-0 final. As of the 2024 season, that scoreless tie remains the last of its kind in NFL history. It was the 73rd scoreless tie in league history, but scoreless games had been fading for years through the 1930s and early 1940s, and none has occurred in the 80 years since.

  The Eastern Division race grew complicated late in the year. Washington and New York finished the regular season tied at 6-3-1 and had to play each other on two consecutive Sundays, December 5th and December 12th. The second of those games had originally been scheduled for October 3rd but was postponed due to heavy rain. The Giants won both games to create the tie. Then, for a third straight weekend, the two teams played at the Polo Grounds in New York, on the 19th of December, with the Redskins shutting out the Giants 28-0 to advance to the championship.

  The Chicago Bears, who had clinched the Western Division on November 28th with an 8-1-1 record, sat idle for three full weeks while the Eastern race resolved itself.

  Green Bay recorded 42 interceptions during the regular season, leading the league to a net turnover margin of plus-23, an average of plus-2.3 per game. The Chicago Bears, meanwhile, continued what the source describes as a dubious tradition, surrendering 274 more penalty yards than their opponents over the course of the season.

• 6. Sid Luckman and the Championship

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  Wrigley Field in Chicago hosted the Championship Game on the 26th of December 1943, the first time in NFL history that a playoff game was held so late in the calendar year. A crowd of 34,320 attended, generating $120,500.05 in gate receipts, a new record for a championship game. Radio rights fees brought in an additional $6,045.46, slightly below the $7,000 collected for the 1942 championship. The winning players each received $1,146.87; the losers earned $765.78.

  Washington's fullback Andy Farkas scored first, on a 1-yard plunge early in the second quarter after a scoreless opening period. Chicago Bears quarterback Sid Luckman answered with a 31-yard pass to left halfback Harry Clarke. Fullback Bronco Nagurski then scored on a 3-yard run to give Chicago a 14-7 lead at halftime.

  In the third quarter, Luckman connected with right halfback Dante Magnani twice. The first was a 36-yard pass play. The second was a swing pass to the flat that Magnani turned into a 66-yard touchdown run. At 28-7, Sammy Baugh pulled the Redskins within 14 with a 17-yard pass to Farkas, but Luckman responded in the fourth quarter with touchdown passes to end Jim Benton on a 29-yarder and to Harry Clarke for 16 yards. Baugh finished the scoring with a 26-yard strike to right end Joe Aguirre. The Bears won 41-21.

  Luckman finished the regular season with 2,194 passing yards and 28 touchdown passes, completing 54.5 percent of his attempts on 110-for-202. His performance earned him the Joe F. Carr Trophy as the league's Most Valuable Player. The longest touchdown pass of the entire season was an 86-yard strike thrown by Lou Brock of the Green Bay Packers.

• 7. Draft Day at the Palmer House

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  The 1943 NFL draft was held on the 8th of April, 1943, at Chicago's Palmer House Hotel. All ten teams participated, including the Cleveland Rams, who would not field a team that season, and the franchises that were about to merge into the Steagles. Together, the ten teams selected 300 players.

  With the first overall pick, the Detroit Lions chose running back Frank Sinkwich from the University of Georgia. Sinkwich also appears in the passing leaders, finishing fifth in the league with 699 yards, completing 50 of 126 attempts with 7 touchdowns against 20 interceptions.

  At season's end, the Associated Press and the United Press were virtually unanimous on their All-League teams, differing only in their choices for fullback and one tackle position. Green Bay's Don Hutson anchored both lists at end; Hutson also led all receivers with 776 yards on 47 catches and 11 touchdowns. The rushing title went to New York Giants back Bill Paschal, who gained 572 yards on 147 carries and scored 10 touchdowns.