quarterback
Roger Staubach throwing a pass against the
Maryland Terrapins just as the
pocket collapses in 1964. In
gridiron football, a forward pass is usually referred to simply as a pass, and consists of a player throwing the football towards the opponent's goal line. This is permitted only once during a
scrimmage down by the offensive team before team possession has changed, provided the pass is thrown from behind the
line of scrimmage; a pass is legal as long as some part of the passer's body is behind the line of scrimmage. The person passing the ball must be a member of the
offensive team, and the recipient of the forward pass must be an
eligible receiver and must touch the passed ball before any ineligible player. An illegal forward pass can incur a yardage penalty and the loss of a down, although it may be legally intercepted by the opponents and advanced. If an eligible receiver on the passing team legally catches the ball, the pass is completed and the receiver may attempt to advance the ball. If an opposing player legally catches the ball—all defensive players are eligible receivers—it is an
interception. That player's team immediately gains possession of the ball and he may attempt to advance the ball toward his opponent's goal. If no player is able to legally catch the ball it is an
incomplete pass and the ball becomes
dead the moment it touches the ground. It will then be returned to the original line of scrimmage for the next
down. If any player interferes with an eligible receiver's ability to catch the ball it is
pass interference which draws a penalty of varying degrees, depending upon the particular league's rules. of the
Seattle Seahawks dropping back to pass against the
Green Bay Packers during a 2009 game. The moment that a forward pass begins is important to the game. The pass begins the moment the passer's arm begins to move forward. If the passer drops the ball before this moment it is a
fumble and therefore a loose ball. In this case anybody can gain possession of the ball before or after it touches the ground. If the passer drops the ball while his arm is moving forward it is a forward pass, regardless of where the ball lands or is first touched. At some levels of play, a video replay may be required for the game's officials to conclusively determine if a play is a fumble or a forward pass. throwing a pass against the
Miami Dolphins during a 2009 game. The
quarterback generally either starts a few paces behind the line of scrimmage or drops back a few steps after the ball is snapped. This places him in an area called the "pocket", which is a specific protective region formed by the offensive blockers up front and between the tackles on each side. A quarterback who runs out of this pocket is said to be scrambling. Under NFL and NCAA rules, once the quarterback moves out of the pocket the ball may be legally thrown away to prevent a sack. NFHS (high school) rules do not allow for a passer to intentionally throw an incomplete forward pass to save loss of yardage or conserve time, except for a spike to conserve time after a hand-to-hand snap. If he throws the ball away while still in the pocket then a foul called "intentional grounding" is assessed. In
Canadian football the passer must simply throw the ball across the line of scrimmage—whether he is inside or outside of the "pocket"—to avoid the foul of "intentionally grounding". If a forward pass is caught near a sideline or endline it is a complete pass (or an interception) only if a receiver catches the ball "in bounds". For a pass to be ruled complete in-bounds, either one or two feet must touch the ground within the field boundaries after the ball is first grasped, depending on the league rules. In the
NFL the receiver must touch the ground with both feet, but in most other codes—
CFL,
college football and high school—one foot in bounds is sufficient. Common to all
gridiron codes is the notion of control: a receiver must demonstrate control of the ball in order to be ruled in "possession" of it, while still in bounds. If the receiver handles the ball but the official determines that he was still "bobbling" it prior to the end of the play, then the pass will be ruled incomplete. Similarly, if the receiver fails to continue to control the ball after falling to the ground, the pass may be ruled incomplete.
Early illegal and experimental passes The forward pass had been attempted at least 30 years before the play was actually made legal. Passes "had been carried out successfully but illegally several times, including the 1876
Yale–
Princeton game in which Yale's
Walter Camp threw forward to teammate
Oliver Thompson as he was being tackled. Princeton's protest, one account said, went for naught when the referee 'tossed a coin to make his decision and allowed the touchdown to stand' ". The
University of North Carolina used the forward pass in an 1895 game against the
University of Georgia. However, the play was still illegal at the time. Bob Quincy stakes Carolina's claim in his 1973 book
They Made the Bell Tower Chime: versus
Auburn game In a
1905 experimental game at
Wichita, Kansas,
Washburn University and Fairmount College (what would become
Wichita State) used the pass before new rules allowing the play were approved in early 1906. Credit for the first pass goes to Fairmount's Bill Davis, who completed a pass to Art Solter. 1905 had been a bloody year on the gridiron; the
Chicago Tribune reported 19 players had been killed and 159 seriously injured that season. There were moves to outlaw the game, but United States President
Theodore Roosevelt personally intervened and demanded that the rules of the game be reformed. In a meeting of more than 60 schools in late 1905, the commitment was made to make the game safer. This meeting was the first step toward the establishment of what would become the
NCAA and was followed by several sessions to work out "the new rules". The final meeting of the Rules Committee tasked with reshaping the game was held on April 6, 1906, at which time the forward pass officially became a legal play. However, the
Times also reflected widespread skepticism as to whether the forward pass could be effectively integrated into the game: "There has been no team that has proved that the forward pass is anything but a doubtful, dangerous play to be used only in the last extremity."
John Heisman was instrumental in the rules' acceptance. In Canadian football, the first exhibition game using a forward pass was held on November 5, 1921, at
McGill University in
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, between the
McGill Redmen football team and visiting American college football team the
Syracuse Orangemen from
Syracuse University. The game was organized by
Frank Shaughnessy, the head coach of McGill. McGill player Robert "Boo" Anderson is credited with the first forward pass attempt in Canadian football history. The forward pass was not officially allowed in Canadian football until 1929.
First legal pass , "Father of the Forward Pass", pictured in 1907 Most sources credit
Saint Louis University's
Bradbury Robinson from
Bellevue, Ohio with throwing the first legal forward pass. On September 5, 1906, in a game against
Carroll College, Robinson's first attempt at a forward pass fell incomplete and resulted in a turnover under the 1906 rules. In the same game, Robinson later completed a 20-yard touchdown pass to
Jack Schneider. The 1906 Saint Louis University team, coached by
Eddie Cochems, was undefeated at 11–0 and featured the most potent offense in the country, outscoring their opponents 407–11. Football authority and
College Football Hall of Fame coach
David M. Nelson wrote that "E. B. Cochems is to forward passing what the
Wright brothers are to aviation and
Thomas Edison is to the electric light." In 1954, Stagg disputed Cochems' claim to have invented the forward pass: Stagg asserted that, as far back as 1894, before the rules committee even considered the forward pass, one of his players used to throw the ball "like a baseball pitcher". Writing in ''
Collier's'' more than 20 years earlier, Dorais' Notre Dame teammate
Knute Rockne acknowledged Cochems as the early leader in the use of the pass, observing, "One would have thought that so effective a play would have been instantly copied and become the vogue. The East, however, had not learned much or cared much about Midwest and Western football. Indeed, the East scarcely realized that football existed beyond the Alleghanies ..." , who threw the first legal forward pass in 1906 Once the 1906 season got underway, many programs began experimenting with the forward pass. On September 26, 1906, Villanova's game against the Carlisle Indians was billed as "the first real game of football under the new rules". Following the Villanova-Carlisle game,
The New York Times described the new passing game this way: Another coach sometimes credited with popularizing the overhead
spiral pass in 1906 is former
Princeton All-American
"Bosey" Reiter. Reiter claimed to have invented the overhead spiral pass while playing professional football as a player-coach for
Connie Mack's
Philadelphia Athletics of the original
National Football League (1902). While playing for the Athletics, Reiter was a teammate of
Hawley Pierce, a former star for the
Carlisle Indian School. Pierce, a
Native American, taught Reiter to throw an underhand spiral pass, but Reiter had short arms and was unable to throw for distance from an underhand delivery. Accordingly, Reiter began working on an overhand spiral pass. Van Tassel later described the historic play to the
United Press: The football season opened for most schools during the first week of October, and the impact of the forward pass was immediate: • On October 3, 1906, the
Des Moines Daily News reported "probably the first use" of the "long forward pass" in the
University of Missouri's 23–4 win over
Kirksville Normal School. • On October 4, 1906,
Princeton opened its season with a 22–0 win over
Stevens. Press accounts indicate that Princeton put the forward pass to good use, as "old-time football gave way to the new game". • On October 4, 1906, the
Carlisle Indians beat
Susquehanna University 40–0, as "the forward pass was used for a number of good gains". • On October 4, 1906,
Harvard defeated
Bowdoin 10–0 "in a hard-fought contest that was featured by a newfangled and daring forward pass that Crimson worked in the closing minutes of play". • On October 4, 1906,
Williams College defeated the
Massachusetts Agricultural College, scoring the game's only touchdown on a forward pass by Waters. Some publications credit
Yale All-American
Paul Veeder with the "first forward pass in a major game". Veeder threw a 20- to 30-yard completion in leading
Yale past
Harvard 6–0 before 32,000 fans in
New Haven on November 24, 1906. However, that Yale/Harvard game was played three weeks after St. Louis completed 45- and 48-yard passes against
Kansas before a crowd of 7,000 at
Sportsman's Park.
New style of play 's analysis of St. Louis' passing game against Iowa,
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, written by Ed Wray, November 30, 1906 The forward pass was a central feature of Cochems' offensive scheme in 1906 as his St. Louis University team compiled an undefeated 11–0 season in which they outscored opponents by a combined score 407 to 11. The highlight of the campaign was St. Louis' 39–0 win over
Iowa. Cochems' team reportedly completed eight passes in ten attempts for four touchdowns. "The average flight distance of the passes was twenty yards." Nelson continues, "the last play demonstrated the dramatic effect that the forward pass was having on football. St. Louis was on Iowa's thirty-five-yard line with a few seconds to play. Timekeeper Walter McCormack walked onto the field to end the game when the ball was thrown twenty-five yards and caught on the dead run for a touchdown." He had officiated games involving the top Eastern powers that year. Hackett, who would become a member of the football rules committee in December 1907 and officiated games into the 1930s, was quoted the next day in Ed Wray's
Globe-Democrat article: "It was the most perfect exhibition ... of the new rules ... that I have seen all season and much better than that of Yale and Harvard. St. Louis' style of pass differs entirely from that in use in the east. ... The St. Louis university players shoot the ball hard and accurately to the man who is to receive it ... The fast throw by St. Louis enables the receiving player to dodge the opposing players, and it struck me as being all but perfect." Hackett is the only known expert witness to the passing offenses of both Cochems' 1906 squads and that of Stagg, who dismissed any special role for the St. Louis coach in the development of the pass. Hackett was an official in games involving both teams. As Wray recalled almost 40 years later: "Hackett told this writer that in no other game that he handled had he seen the forward pass as used by St. Louis U. nor such bewildering variations of it." "Cochems said that the poor Iowa showing resulted from its use of the old style play and its failure to effectively use the forward pass", Nelson writes. "Iowa did attempt two basketball-style forward passes." "During the 1906 season [Robinson] threw a sixty-seven yard pass ... and ... Schneider tossed a sixty-five yarder. Considering the size, shape and weight of the ball, these were extraordinary passes." Because St. Louis was geographically isolated from both the dominant teams and the major sports media (newspapers) of the era, all centered in and focused on the East, Cochems' groundbreaking offensive strategy was not picked up by the major teams. Pass-oriented offenses would not be adopted by the Eastern football powers until the next decade. But that does not mean that other teams in the Midwest did not pick it up.
Arthur Schabinger, quarterback for the
College of Emporia in
Kansas, was reported to have regularly used the forward pass in 1910. Coach
H. W. "Bill" Hargiss' "Presbies" are said to have featured the play in a 17–0 victory over
Washburn University and in a 107–0 destruction of
Pittsburg State University. Coach
Pop Warner at
Carlisle had quarterback
Frank Mount Pleasant, one of the first regular
spiral pass quarterbacks in football.
Knute Rockne of
Notre Dame running away from
Army after a forward pass from
Gus Dorais, 1913
Knute Rockne and
Gus Dorais worked on the pass while lifeguarding on a
Lake Erie beach at
Cedar Point in
Sandusky, Ohio, during the summer of 1913. That year,
Jesse Harper,
Notre Dame head coach, also showed how the pass could be used by a smaller team to beat a bigger one, first utilizing it to defeat rival
Army. After it was used against a major school on a national stage in this game, the forward pass rapidly gained popularity. The
1919 and
1920 Notre Dame teams had
George Gipp, an ideal handler of the forward pass, who threw for 1,789 yards.
John Mohardt led the
1921 Notre Dame team to a 10–1 record with 781 rushing yards, 995 passing yards, 12 rushing touchdowns, and nine passing touchdowns.
Grantland Rice wrote that "Mohardt could throw the ball to within a foot or two of any given space" and noted that the 1921 team was the first at Notre Dame "to build its attack around a forward passing game, rather than use a forward passing game as a mere aid to the running game." Mohardt had both
Eddie Anderson and
Roger Kiley at
end to receive his passes.
Increase in popularity 's
Brick Muller vs.
W & J College, 1922 From 1915 to 1916,
Pudge Wyman and
end Bert Baston of Minnesota were "one of the greatest forward-passing combinations in the history of the gridiron". In the
1921 Rose Bowl,
California's
Brick Muller completed a touchdown against
Washington & Jefferson which went 53 yards in the air, a feat previously thought impossible. In a 1925, 62–13 victory over
Cornell, Dartmouth's
Andy Oberlander had 477 yards in total offense, including six touchdown passes, a Dartmouth record which still stands. The
1925 Michigan team was coach
Fielding H. Yost's favorite and featured the passing tandem of
Benny Friedman and
Bennie Oosterbaan. Yost disciple
Dan McGugin coached
Vanderbilt and was one of the first emphasize the forward pass. His
1907 team beat
Sewanee on a
double pass play
Grantland Rice cited as his biggest thrill in his years of watching sports. McGugin's
1927 team was piloted by
Bill Spears, who threw for over a thousand yards. According to one writer, Vanderbilt produced "almost certainly the legit top Heisman candidate in Spears, if there had been a
Heisman Trophy to award in 1927". McGugin disciple and former quarterback
Ray Morrison brought the pass to the southwest when he coached
Gerald Mann at
Southern Methodist. Citing the
Professional Football Researchers Association as his source, Peterson writes that "Parratt completed a short pass to end Dan Riley (real name,
Dan Policowski)" in a game played at
Massillon against a team from West Virginia. Since the Tigers "ran up a 61 to 0 score on the hapless Mountain Staters, the pass played no important part in the result". According to National Football League history, it legalized the forward pass from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage on February 25, 1933. Before that rule change, a forward pass had to be made from 5 or more yards behind the line of scrimmage. Forward passes were first permitted in Canadian football in 1929, but the tactic remained a minor part of the game for several years.
Jack Jacobs of the
Winnipeg Blue Bombers is recognized, not for inventing the forward pass, but for popularizing it in the
Western Interprovincial Football Union (one of the forerunner leagues to the modern
Canadian Football League) in the early 1950s, thus changing the Canadian game from a more run-dominated game to a more passing-dominant game.
Change in ball shape Specification of the size of the
ball for the American game came in 1912. Increased use of the forward pass encouraged adoption of a narrower ball, starting with changes in the 1920s which enhanced rifled throwing and also spiral punting. This had the consequence of all but eliminating the
drop kick from the American game. ==Rugby football==