Arnie Herber: Taking the hits

Continued from last week

“Herber was not a scrambler. He had to hold the ball long enough for his receivers to get downfield, and he knew he was going to get hit,” Norman L. Macht wrote in “Arnie Herber: The Man Who Invented the NFL Passing Game.”
“Playing with very light pads for protection and often without a helmet, he took a bone-bashing, bloodletting beating week after week. His nose was broken so often that he decided not to get it fixed until he retired.

“After every game, he was literally battle-scarred.

“He never complained. Once in a while, he got even.”

But despite his moxie on the field, Macht said that some locals were still unforgiving.

“Despite his success, for his first five years with the Packers, playing in City Stadium in East High territory, Arnie was still West High Herber,” Macht said.
“They wrote letters to the newspaper; the press criticized him, said he was too erratic, weak on defense, and couldn’t think fast enough to call signals.”
But Herber was not without his faithful supporters, and one came to his defense in a Dec. 16, 1936, Press-Gazette letter to the editor.

“Being both a ‘Packer Fan’ and a reader of the Press Gazette, I think a few comments should be in order. Yes. We have a ‘great Packer team’ and we are very proud of them, they did a grand job and deserve all the credit they can receive both to players and coaches, but I, and a great many other fans of Green Bay and vicinity think a little more credit and writeup should be given one of our local boys, Arnie Herber,” the Herber fan wrote.

“It seems to us that Arnie, who threw those passes that won so many games should get a little credit too, as well as the receivers.

“We have to buy Chicago, New York, Detroit or Milwaukee papers or listen to the sports announcers to hear or read what they think about Arnie Herber. Even Wilfred Smith calls him the ‘greatest passer of pro football.’ If you haven’t a good picture of Arnie, we’ll send you one.

“We have a great team and hope they continue their success for some years to come, but we also think that they wouldn’t have the football championship if Arnie was missing.”

But all of the hits that Herber was taking on the field were beginning to take their toll.

To be continued