1929: Packers Defeat Giants in Battle of Unbeatens

The November 24, 1929 game at the Polo Grounds in New York featured the top two teams in the NFL,  the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants, who both were undefeated thus far. 

Coach Curly Lambeau’s Packers had added guard Mike Michalske, tackle Cal Hubbard, and HB Johnny McNally (aka Johnny Blood) in the previous offseason. These players had been considered malcontents, but with the Packers they became keys to success along with holdover tailback Red Dunn, tailback Verne Lewellen (pictured above), and end Lavvie Dilweg. Green Bay was 9-0 and hadn’t given up more than six points in any game. However, the Packers were missing three regulars due to injury – Dunn, back Eddie Kotal, and end Dick O’Donnell.

The Giants were coached by Roy Andrews and were 8-0-1. Owner Tim Mara had bought the entire Detroit Wolverines franchise solely to obtain tailback Benny Friedman, a passing sensation out of Michigan, and he yielded results worthy of his then-huge $10,000 contract. Five other players from the Panthers also made the club, as, for that matter, did Coach Andrews.

There was a crowd of 25,000 in attendance at the Polo Grounds for the big showdown. Rain fell intermittently during the contest and would prove to be a hindrance to New York’s passing attack. The Packers won the toss and elected to kick off and the teams exchanged punts throughout the first quarter. One of Lewellen’s kicks was downed at the New York five and Benny Friedman chose to punt on first down, McNally returning it to the New York 40. FB Bo Molenda, a former Michigan teammate of Friedman, and Verne Lewellen carried the ball deeper into Giants territory. HB Herdis McCrary caught a pass from Lewellen in the end zone for a 20-yard touchdown and Molenda added the extra point.

The Giants threatened when Friedman threw long to end Ray Flaherty, who reached the Green Bay 10. However, McCrary intercepted a Friedman pass and New York came up empty. Lewellen punted and neither team came close to scoring for the rest of the half.

The Packers had first possession in the third quarter, and after Molenda returned the kickoff to the Green Bay 26, runs into the line by Molenda and McNally picked up eight yards, but the series stalled and Green Bay had to punt.

After tailback Hap Moran was thrown for a loss of eight yards, FB Tony Plansky threw to back Tiny Feather for 20. Friedman (pictured at left) passed the Giants down the field, connecting with Flaherty to the Green Bay 25, again to Feather, and then Plansky for the last 15 yards and a touchdown. However, Friedman’s extra point attempt sailed wide and the Packers remained in front by a point.

The teams continued to trade punts in the battle for field position. Another fine kick by Lewellen pinned the Giants back at their 10 and they ended up having to punt the ball back from their end zone. McNally returned it to the New York 37 and then ran for six yards on the next play. Molenda followed up by getting a first down, but the Packers ultimately ended up losing the ball on downs.

Green Bay put the game away in the fourth quarter. The Packers drove 75 yards, highlighted by a 30-yard Lewellen completion to McNally out of punt formation, to a two-yard TD by Molenda, who again added the extra point.

Tackle Jug Earp intercepted a pass at the New York 39 to give the visitors the ball once more. Lewellen went long to Molenda in a play that reached the New York three, and on the next play McNally (pictured below) ran around left end for a touchdown. Molenda failed to add the extra point, but it didn’t matter. The Packers won by a convincing final score of 20-6.

For the first time all season, the Giants faced a heavier line and it worked to Green Bay’s advantage. Meanwhile, the shorthanded Packers made only one substitution during the game. Verne Lewellen and Bo Molenda drew most of the headlines for their play during the game, but it was a solid group effort by Curly Lambeau’s club.

Green Bay played the Frankford Yellow Jackets to a scoreless tie in their next game but won the last two to finish as undefeated NFL Champions at 12-0-1. They gave up a total of just 22 points in the 13 games, eight of which were shutouts. The Giants won their last four contests and ended up in second place with a 12-1-1 record.

The NFL title for Green Bay was the first of three straight, a feat they would duplicate in 1965-67. In a time when there were no divisions and no postseason, the Packers did it in 1929-31 by compiling an overall tally of 34-5-2.

1929: Benny Friedman Throws First Two of 20 TD Passes for Season

On October 13, 1929 Benny Friedman, tailback for the New York Giants, threw his first two touchdown passes of the season against the Staten Island Stapletons in a 19-9 win. The Giants’ record improved to 2-0-1 as a result, but it was also the beginning of an extraordinary achievement for the player who was the first great passer in pro football history.

In an era when the football was less sleak than it is today and the rules tended to discourage passing (which most teams did only out of necessity), Friedman was a revolutionary figure. He played college football at Michigan under Head Coach Fielding Yost, who called him “one of the greatest passers [and] smartest quarterbacks in history”. His contemporary, Red Grange, called him the best field general among the opponents he played against at Illinois, and Friedman honed his talent as a passer and was also a good runner.

The 5’10”, 172-pound passing tailback entered the NFL with the Cleveland Bulldogs to great fanfare in 1927 and set a league record with 11 touchdown passes. The Bulldogs folded and Friedman moved on to the Detroit Wolverines, and once again paced the NFL with nine scoring passes (he also tied for the league lead in rushing touchdowns with six). However, the Wolverines weren’t doing well financially despite a 7-2-1 record, and were purchased by owner Tim Mara of the Giants – primarily so he could obtain Friedman for his club (six other Detroit players also started for the 1929 Giants).

The Giants played the Orange Tornadoes to a scoreless tie in their opening game and then defeated the Providence Steam Roller prior to the contest against the Stapletons. It was New York’s first home game and there were some 30,000 fans at the Polo Grounds. In the second quarter, Friedman threw to back Led Sedbrook for a 15-yard touchdown. The second was tossed to wingback Hap Moran and covered 20 yards in the fourth quarter to pace the Giants’ ten-point win.

The next week against the Frankford Yellow Jackets, again at home, Friedman threw three touchdown passes (all in the second quarter) to give him five for the season. It became six two weeks later at Chicago against the Bears. He had eight after seven games with two TD passes in a rout of the Buffalo Bisons.

Following a win in New York’s rematch with the Tornadoes, Friedman had nine scoring passes and the next week at home against the Bears he threw for a season-high four touchdowns in a game. The Giants had remained undefeated through nine contests, but lost to Green Bay in a game that would prove critical to their title hopes. While Friedman threw to FB Tony Plansky for New York’s only points, he was also intercepted twice and the Packers won by a 20-6 score.

The star passer threw two touchdown passes in each of the next two games, a second win over Staten Island and then as part of a 24-21 thriller over the Chicago Cardinals that came down to a drop kick field goal on the last play of the game. His 19th TD pass came in the 14th game, against Frankford, and in the season finale Friedman beat the Bears with his 20th, a 27-yard throw to Sedbrook.

The Giants finished with a 13-1-1 record, which put them second to the one team that defeated them along the way – the 12-0-1 Green Bay Packers. They were easily the highest-scoring team in the NFL with 312 points as the runner-up Packers scored 198. Defensively, New York gave up only 86 points as only three of their opponents reached double figures against them and eight of the games were shutouts.

Friedman’s 20 touchdown passes broke his own record by nine and lasted for 13 years – it was finally broken by Green Bay’s Cecil Isbell, who tossed 24 in 1942 and whose 15 TD passes in ’41 was the closest that anyone came to Friedman’s mark in the intervening seasons. He received consensus first-team All-Pro recognition for the third straight year, and would do so once more the next season, when he led the NFL for the fourth consecutive time with 13 TD tosses.

Friedman initially retired to take an assistant coaching position at Yale in 1931, but returned to the Giants for the second half of the season. He played two more years with Brooklyn (after his wife, not wanting to leave New York, reportedly vetoed a deal that would have sent him to the Bears), plus one last game with the Dodgers in 1934, and finished up with 66 touchdown passes. Not surprisingly, that was the career record and would last until surpassed by Sammy Baugh in 1943.

Statistics from the 1920s and early 30s are too spotty to fully measure Benny Friedman’s performance, but there is no question from the touchdown pass totals alone that he was the most effective passer of his era by far, and likely the most accurate. A student of the game who trained himself to be outstanding at throwing the ball, Friedman went into college coaching and was athletic director at Brandeis University. He also tirelessly (some might say shamelessly) promoted himself for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, an honor that he finally received in 2005 – 23 years after his death in 1982.

Friedman wasn’t particularly well-liked by his peers (he was prone to being arrogant and aloof), but he set the stage for the pass-oriented game that pro football has become and thus is one of the game’s pioneers. The record 20 touchdown passes in 1929 was the crowning achievement of his career.

1929: Ernie Nevers Scores 40 Points vs. Bears

Perhaps no player has ever so dominated a game as fullback Ernie Nevers did on November 28, 1929 when he scored all 40 points for the Chicago Cardinals in a Thanksgiving Day matchup at Comiskey Park against the usually more successful crosstown rivals, the Chicago Bears.

Nevers was an outstanding all-around athlete (he also played baseball and basketball professionally, although not nearly as successfully) who played his college football under legendary coach Pop Warner at Stanford and entered the NFL in 1926. After two years with the Duluth Eskimos, he was forced to sit out the 1928 season with an injury and then joined the Cardinals. In this era of smaller rosters and less specialization, the 210-pound, 26-year-old star was not only the starting fullback, but the placekicker, punter, and a linebacker as well.

The weather for the game against the Bears was bitterly cold, causing the field to be frozen and footing less than ideal. Six minutes into the first quarter, Nevers scored his first touchdown on a 20-yard run, but was wide on the PAT attempt. He plunged five yards for another before the opening quarter was done, and this time was successful on the extra point. Nevers scored another seven points with a six-yard TD and successful PAT in the second quarter to give the Cardinals a 20-0 lead.

The second half was more of the same: three Nevers touchdown runs followed by two successful Nevers extra points; another 20-point half. When it was over, the Cardinals had beaten the Bears soundly, 40-6. Nevers pulled himself out of the game with about five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and received a tremendous ovation from the crowd.

The six touchdowns remain the single-game record, since tied by Dub Jones of the Browns in 1951 and Gale Sayers of the Bears in 1965. However, Nevers remains the only player to score all six by rushing, and his 40 points are still the most ever accumulated by a player in a game; it is the oldest NFL record still unbroken.

Nevers had also scored all of the Cardinals’ points in the previous week’s game against the Dayton Triangles, a 19-0 win, so while it doesn’t show up in the record books, he actually scored 59 consecutive points for his team.

As it was, the Cardinals finished with a 6-6-1 record for fourth place in the twelve-team NFL. Ernie Nevers played a total of five years, taking a great physical toll – he was not an elusive outside dasher like his contemporary, Red Grange, but a straight-ahead inside runner who was also a rugged linebacker on defense. However, he was a first team All-NFL selection in all five seasons and, in 1963, became a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.