Zero first downs, fourteen points: the record the Giants set twice

The New York Giants won a football game on 27 September 1942 without gaining a single first down.

They beat the Washington Redskins 14-7 at Griffith Stadium in front of 34,700 people, and the compiled box score credits their offense with zero first downs: none running, none passing, none from a penalty. Washington finished the afternoon with 15. 1

Both Giants touchdowns arrived on long plays. On the first snap of the game, Tuffy Leemans faked a handoff to Ward Cuff, faked a plunge by Merle Hapes, faded back and hit Will Walls, who took the ball a step ahead of Washington's Steve Juzwik and went in untouched. That was 50 yards, one minute and 49 seconds into the afternoon. 2 The Redskins tied it in the second quarter on Bob Seymour's two-yard run. 1 In the third, a charging Giants lineman hit Dick Poillon as he threw, the ball wobbled toward the flat, and O'Neale Adams, a rookie end, gathered it in on the 35 and ran the rest of the way. Ward Cuff kicked both conversions. 2

Between those two plays, the Giants' offense produced almost nothing worth writing down. They ran the ball 26 times for one yard in total. Hank Soar's ten carries for six yards were the best of it, and two of his teammates finished the afternoon on minus nine. They threw one pass in the whole game, and Leemans completed it, for the touchdown. 1

That is 27 plays from scrimmage and 51 yards of offense. Washington ran 74 plays for 233, with seven of its first downs on the ground, seven through the air and one from a Giants penalty. 1 Sammy Baugh, whom The Times called "one of the marvels of the age", spent the afternoon moving his team up and down the field. 2 His team outgained the Giants by 182 yards and lost by seven. 3

The weather at Griffith Stadium that afternoon was overcast, 79 degrees, with a 20 mph wind, and the field was slippery enough that The Times wrote that "ball-handling was hazardous". 12 "On a dry field, this undoubtedly would have been a different story, but the conditions were always in favor of the defense," the report added. 2

The Giants leaned into the weather. The same report said Steve Owen's team "had to play it safe, throwing only one pass", and that Washington was then free to mass its forces against the run, "the rugged Redskin line smothering everything that came in its direction." 2

It was also the second season after Pearl Harbor, and NFL rosters were thinning as players left for military service. 4 The Giants' roster that year lists a tackle, Win Pedersen, with the word "Military" beside his name. 5

Washington lost once in 1942, and it was that afternoon. 6 The Redskins won their remaining nine games, finished 10-1, and beat the Chicago Bears 14-6 in December for the championship. 6 The Giants finished 5-5-1, third in the Eastern Division. 5

The only team that beat the champions was the team that never gained a first down against them.

The Giants had won this way before, with the same coach on the bench. On 1 October 1933, in Milwaukee, they beat the Green Bay Packers 10-7 with zero first downs: 28 carries for 45 yards, seven pass attempts, one completion, and that completion a scoring pass from Harry Newman to Dale Burnett. 7 Ken Strong kicked a field goal for the rest. 7

Steve Owen coached the Giants in both games. Ray Flaherty, who coached the Washington team that lost in 1942, was the Giants' left end on the field in 1933, and the morning after the 1942 game The Times noted that Owen had now beaten "his old pupil, Flaherty" eight times in their last nine meetings. 28

The club's record book keeps those two afternoons, and only those two, under fewest first downs: "0 at Washington, Sept. 27, 1942" and "0 at Green Bay, Oct. 1, 1933". 9

Other NFL offenses have been held without a first down. None of them won. Denver was held to none by the Houston Oilers on 3 September 1966 and lost 45-7, with its seven points coming on an 88-yard kickoff return by Goldie Sellers. 10 A record query for the fewest first downs by a team in a win returns one game: this one, in Washington, on 27 September 1942. 11

One quirk of the record book helps explain why nobody has matched it. The NFL's guide for statisticians now credits a team with a first down on every touchdown run or pass, whatever distance the play covered. 12 By that bookkeeping, the 50-yard pass Leemans threw would have been a first down as well as a touchdown. The tally of 27 September 1942 gives the Giants none all the same, and the club has carried the zero in its record book for more than eighty years. 9

Two details for anyone who goes looking. The compiled scoring line credits the touchdown catch to Ward Cuff with the kick by Will Walls, while the next morning's Times gives the catch to Walls and both conversions to Cuff, and the compiled receiving table agrees with the newspaper. The same record counts Adams's return as 66 yards, where The Times wrote 65. 12

What the record really measures is the two plays on either side of it. An offense can do nothing for most of an afternoon and still win, if its defense holds the best team in the league to seven points and one throw goes 50 yards. The Giants did it in Milwaukee in 1933 and again in Washington in 1942, and in the eighty-four years since, no other NFL team has won a game without gaining a single first down.