Clash of Titans

The late December holiday was still three months away, but it still felt like Christmas morning when Ohio State opened its 1941 season. The game against Missouri was the first for new Ohio State coach Paul Brown, the 33-year-old wunderkind from Massillon High School who brought a sterling prep record (80-8-2) as well as the discipline and organizational skills that had gone missing under slap-dash coach Francis Schmidt. Brown in September 1941 was a star based on potential alone—but potential was enough to make OSU fans giddy. The first step came against a Missouri team coached by Don Faurot, who coincidentally was among the four finalists for the Ohio State job that Brown got. ("Rear-view mirror: Ohio State vs. Missouri (1941)", The Columbus Dispatch, September 24, 2014)

Faurot spent a huge amount of time in the off-season designing a completely new offense. He wasn't reinventing the wheel. The 1940 Chicago Bears of George Halas had sprung the modernized T-formation on pro football. It was designed by offensive coordinator Clark Shaughnessy, who left to coach Stanford for the 1940 season. The quarterback no longer squatted behind the center but merely crouched, hands under the crotch so that he took a direct handback rather than a snap. A halfback went in motion to create better passing situations.

If the quarterback kept the ball, he moved down the line toward an unblocked end. "I wanted to pressure the defensive end with what amounted to a 2-on-1 break in basketball," said Faurot. If the end came toward him, the quarterback would flip a lateral to the trailing halfback . If the end held his ground, the quarterback kept the ball and cut upfield.

When Ohio State had enough of Coach Francis Schmidt, Brown became the overwhelming choice of Buckeye fans as the replacement. However, the leading candidate was Don Faurot of Missouri. But the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association endorsed Brown for the position with an implied threat that they would steer their top players away from Ohio State if he was not given the position. So OSU Athletic Director Lynn St. John, who had wanted to hire a coach with college experience, changed his tune and signed "The Massillon Miracle Man."

The Tigers quickly moved across midfield. First, HB Harry Ice started around left end, and when tacklers closed in, he lateraled to HB Bob Steuber, who kept going until senior S Jack Graf pulled him down on the OSU 44. Two plays later, Steuber zipped through left tackle for 28y to the 15 where Graf made another touchdown-saving tackle. But the defense tightened, and Missouri had to turn over the ball on downs at the 12.

Faurot had used the Notre Dame box formation in his spring game, and we had seen nothing then that warranted any alarm. Of course, he had strategically hidden the split T and all its new techniques. Instead of positioning themselves a conventional six inches from the center, the guards split a yard or a yard and a half, and the tackles split the same distance from the guards. Now at that time defensive linemen were always taught to take their spacing from the position of the offensive linemen—for instance, a defensive tackle might be taught to play off the inside shoulder of the man opposite him. If they did that now, however, huge splits would open up in our defensive line, into which the quarterback could easily pop through or hand the ball to a running back. To increase the line's effectiveness further, Faurot had also developed the brush block, in which the offensive linemen hit the defensive man hard enough to seal him off or knock him off-balance for just the instant it took the quarter or halfback to bolt past.
We had never even thought about such things, and Missouri started ripping through us right from the start. Our players were totally confused, and we had to make an instant decision.
"Just keep your normal distances in relation to your teammate next to you," we told them, because we could think of nothing else at the time. "Let them split from sideline to sideline if they want to, but you stay in your same relative position."
That desperate decision saved us, and from then on we played with the traditional 6-2-2-1 defense. Missouri drove up and down the field, with Don Greenwood, Harry Ice and Bob Steuber putting on a stunning show of offensive football.

OSU finally broke the scoring ice in the second quarter following an interception by sophomore C Johnny Rosen on the Buckeye 39. Graf, a second-string quarterback in 1940 whom Brown converted to fullback, gained for 52 of the 61y of the drive, including the final two on fourth and goal for the touchdown. Leon Schoenbaum's extra point try sailed wide. Buckeyes 6 Tigers 0

Missouri came roaring back at the beginning of the third quarter. Ice took the kickoff on his three and ran it back 53y to the Bucks' 44. A forward pass and lateral gave the Tigers a first down on the 22. However, a few plays later, another Mizzou aerial, this one by Ice, was intercepted by Dick Fisher on the 20 and returned to the 33.

On the fourth play of the fourth quarter, the Bucks started a possession on their 39 and shifted their attack into high gear. Charles Anderson took a pass behind the line of scrimmage and gained a first down on the Missouri 44. On third-and-four, a double reverse ended up with Anderson carrying on an end-around for 26y to the 12.

Missouri finally struck like lightning with less than three minutes to play. Starting from the Ohio 37, sensational sophomore HB Maurice "Red" Wade went outside end for 8y. Then he bolted through tackle on a split-T dive play into the end zone. Suddenly Buckeye fans began to bite their fingernails. The extra point made it 12-7 Ohio State with two minutes left.

The Tigers tried an onside kick, but the kick did not cover the necessary 10y before being touched by the kicking team. When the next kickoff went out of bounds on the OSU 35, all the Buckeyes had to do was run out the clock. But on second down, Tom Kinkade fumbled, and G Ed Sweeney recovered for Missouri on the OSU 46.

The reason Ohio State didn't seem too surprised by Missouri's new offense came to light some time later. OSU Athletic Director St. John gave Faurot a copy of an expense account that had come across St. John's desk. One of Coach Brown's young assistants had spent time on the Missouri campus spying on the Tigers in their practice sessions, which were open to MU students and those who purported to be students. Brown did not mention that mission in his autobiography.