Chuck Howley—A Pair of 1958 Chicago Bears Clips

 By John Turney 

Howley as a Bear

Clark Shaughnessy is known for being an offensive coach, often dubbed the "Father of the Modern T-Formation" (maybe "co-Father of the Modern-T" would be a better title, but that is a story for another day). Regardless, he's not quite as well known as the Bears' defensive coach from 1951-62.

He held the position until about halfway through the 1962 season when George Halas replaced him with George Allen.

He had a lot of success as the coach of the 1950s iteration of the Monsters of the Midway and he did it his way. One of his philosophies was to not give the offense the same look twice.

To achieve that he'd move his players around - far more than other coaches of his day - especially the linebackers.

You can see George Conner at any of the linebacker spots and even on the defensive line The same goes for Bill George, he'd play middle guard, stand up as a middle linebacker but also play outside linebacker, defensive tackle, and even stand-up defensive end plus probably more we have not listed.

Chuck Howley finally was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this past year and will get his Gold Jacket this Summer in Canton. He got in for his work with the Dallas Cowboys but he got quite a bit of playing time for the Bears in 1958 and early 1959 when he went down with a serious knee injury. 

It was an injury serious enough to cause him to step away from football for a year, at least until he tested it and felt he would give the NFL another go.

It's always interesting to look back at players who perhaps had not hit their prime. This is a clip from his rookie year where George has moved to left outside linebacker and moves out of frame and #54, Chuck Howley is playing middle linebacker—

Here is one with Howley at the position he normally played when he was in the game, left linebacker. George is in the middle and Joe Fortunato is on the right, noting that sometimes Fortunato would switch sides putting Howley or whoever the left linebacker was on the right.—

The second clip didn't go so well with Del Shofner going for a long touchdown. But it still gives a small illustration of Clark Shaughnessy's ideas of switching guys around.

Hall of Fame defensive end Doug Atkins called them "rinky-dink" defenses because sometimes he ended up having to cover a back more than he wanted - he wanted to get after the passer - but going back and seeing them is interesting. 

No one did things quite like Shaughnessy.