Bart Starr resurrected Vince Lombardi’s halfback option pass with Willard Harrell

Ron from Broken Arrow, OK

In looking through the Packers media guide, I see that in 1975, Willard Harrell threw three touchdown passes in five attempts, covering 61 yards. I presume these passes were likely on the “halfback option” play. How in the world did this happen on an otherwise less than successful team during Bart Starr’s first season as coach? Did the opposing team not see this on film after it happened the first time? Or was Harrell just a gifted passer? I also find it interesting that the Packers’ starting quarterback that season, John Hadl, threw only six TD passes. Should Bart have considered moving Harrell to quarterback?

First, here’s a reminder of what Vince Lombardi wrote in “Run to Daylight.” He called the halfback option “the greatest play in football.” In addition, in a June 4, 1963, Milwaukee Journal story, Lombardi called it “the most important play in our offense.”

As a first-year coach who had been Lombardi’s quarterback for nine seasons, when the Packers won five NFL titles, it’s not surprising that Starr would have wanted to include the halfback option in his playbook, even if it was becoming an obsolete play.

In Lombardi’s offense, the halfback option (Red Right 49 Sweep Pass) was a twin play to his signature power sweep (Red Right 49 was the call). As he explained in “Run to Daylight,” when he became backfield coach of the New York Giants in 1954, he was new to the NFL and had not even seen many pro games. Thus, prior to his first season, he immersed himself in film study and “that option play was one of the first things I put in” the playbook, Lombardi wrote.

Frank Gifford was the one Giant Lombardi was somewhat familiar with after facing him as an assistant at Army in 1951 when it played Southern Cal. “I knew that as a college Single-Wing tailback he had been not only a great runner but a fine passer,” Lombardi wrote. That’s the genesis of the halfback option. “The optional run-or-pass is basically a Single-Wing play,” Lombardi added in “Run to Daylight.”

Here are two more Lombardi quotes in reference to the halfback option. “Everything is made to look exactly like the sweep,” he wrote in “Vince Lombardi on Football.” In the same book, he also wrote, “In fact, if you want to make the sweep go you must be able to execute the halfback option where the back can either run or throw.”

That’s why the Packers almost never flip-flopped their backs other than…