Hello again. You might remember me as the 49er fan who came asking for favors a few weeks ago. I ended up writing about the three seasons myself and I figured that as long as they were written, there were probably Colts fans who would get a kick out of reading them.

This isn't getting posted anywhere else, so I'm not pimping anything. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to read a bit about your team. All three seasons are pretty long, so I'll only post 1948 here. If you enjoy it and would like to see 1949 and 1950, let me know and I'll post those as well. If you simply don't care or don't like it, I won't bother you with the rest.

Remember, this is kind of Y. A. Tittle-centric by necessity. I hope you enjoy it. Here it goes:

Background:

When the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) had formed in 1946, Baltimore had been one of the major cities that had put in a bid for a team. At that time, the AAFC, under Commissioner Jim Crowley, had denied the city’s bid because it could not secure a stadium, and had instead granted teams to New York (the Yankees), Chicago (the Rockets), Los Angeles (the Dons), San Francisco (the 49ers), Cleveland (the Browns), and Buffalo (the Bisons), while adding Brooklyn (the Dodgers) and Miami (the Seahawks) shortly thereafter.

After its first year, the league faced a few difficult changes. Jim Crowley gave up his commissionership to take the head coaching job with the Chicago Rockets, a team plagued by financial and management instability. Admiral Jonas H. Ingram took his place as head of the league. The Buffalo Bisons were renamed the Buffalo Bills, and the bankrupt Miami Seahawks organization was purchased and moved to Baltimore by a group led by Bob Rodenberg. The new team, named the Colts, played its home games at Municipal Stadium (which, appropriately enough, was shaped like a horseshoe), and wore green and silver uniforms.

That team, led by former Green Bay Packer player and Purdue head coach Cecil Isbell, and quarterbacked by Bud Schwenk, a former NFL player, went a miserable 2-11-1.

1948:

After an awful first season, majority owner Bob Rodenberg pulled himself out of the team, and the ownership, having over 200 stockholders at the time, was reorganized. Jake Embry was named the new team president.

Between 1947 and 1948, the Colts actually benefited from the league’s troubles. The AAFC was struggling to compete with the NFL, and part of the reason was the extreme gap between the league’s best teams and the league’s worst teams. Powerhouses like the Cleveland Browns or New York Yankees could likely easily compete at an NFL level, but bottom of the barrel teams like the Chicago Rockets or, during the 1947 season, the Baltimore Colts, were woefully incapable of competing with even the league’s mediocre teams. In an effort to even out the competitive balance of the league, AAFC Commissioner Jonas Ingram encouraged the strongest teams in the league to distribute some of their players to weaker teams.

In one of these distributive moves, the Cleveland Browns ended up sending rookie quarterback Y. A. Tittle to the Baltimore Colts. Tittle would step in immediately to the starting job to replace Bud Schwenk, who left to play with the Yankees in 1948. Tittle would go on to post one of the best individual seasons from a quarterback in the league that season.

The Colts in 1948 had an extremely young team, with no fewer than four rookies starting regularly on offense, including one rookie at every skill position, and only one full-time starter over the age of 29. That player, 8 year veteran right tackle Lee Artoe, was also the only regular starter with more than 3 years of professional experience on the team. Furthermore, only two players who had been regular starters in 1947 would be regular starters again in 1948 – fullback Bus Mertes and left halfback Billy Hillenbrand.

The 1948 Baltimore Colts did not resemble the 1947 Baltimore Colts at all. And considering the team’s record from the year before, that was probably a good thing.

The Season: 1948

The Colts began the 1947 season at home and would have their first chance to square off against one of the league’s elite teams immediately. The already 1-0 New York Yankees came to Baltimore on September 5, and Colts fans were hoping that the new team would be ready to answer to the call, and the team came out swinging. In his first professional game, Y. A. Tittle threw for 326 yards and 4 touchdowns, while running for another score as the Colts downed the Yankees by a score of 45-28.

Next, they went on the road for two games to face off first against the Chicago Rockets and then to New York to finish their season series with the Yankees early. Coming off of the spectacular win over the Yankees at home, the hapless, disorganized Rockets promised to be easy pickings for the Colts, but surprisingly enough, the Rockets held Tittle and the Colts in check and Baltimore lost the game 14-21. It would, in fact, be the only game that Chicago won all season. The team bounced back in New York, though, and appeared to have the Yankees number, significantly outplaying them on both sides of the ball on the way to a 27-14 victory.

Already, after only 3 games, the Colts had equaled their win total from the season before. Not only that, but they had also swept their season series against the reigning Eastern Division champions. Even so early in the season, it was hard to say that this team was not much improved over the previous incarnation.

They wouldn’t have to wait long to set a new franchise record for wins in a season. They followed up the win in New York by heading home to face the Brooklyn Dodgers in the first game of a three game home stand. The Dodgers were another of the league’s perennial punching bags, and the Colts defeated them easily 35-20, mostly because of a dominating running game that went for over 230 yards and three TDs on the day.

The next two games were to be no cakewalk, as the two best teams from the Western Division – the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers, were coming to Baltimore. Unlike their games against New York, though, Baltimore had no answer for the Browns and 49ers. Their passing game was completely stifled by both teams, and if not for a strong effort on the ground while getting walloped 14-56 by the 49ers, their offense would have been completely non-existent over these two weeks. They would head back on the road with a record of 3-3.

The upcoming road trip would be one of the toughest stretches that the Colts would play all season. At 4 games, it was the longest they would away from home all season, and it would pit them against Los Angeles (a frequent contender for second place in the West), San Francisco, Buffalo (the second best team in the East in 1947), and again against the defending Champion and currently undefeated Browns.

In Los Angeles, the Colts’ passing game showed up for the first time in nearly a month (and wouldn’t slow down for the rest of the year), and the team rode a TD each from Y. A. Tittle and backup QB Charlie O’Rourke to defeat the Dons 29-14 and get their record back over .500. In San Francisco, they were not so lucky. Though still effective through the air, the only mustered a pitiful 42 yards on the ground and could not overcome San Francisco in a 10-21 loss. It was a similar story in Buffalo as the running game could not get going and the defense got torched on the way to a 17-35 loss that put the Colts under .500 for the first time all season. And they would not get back up to .500 against the undefeated Browns, who did to Baltimore what they had done to just about everybody they faced that year, ad steamrolled them in every facet of the game.

The last four games of the season would prove to be less of a challenge as the Colts would get to face off against the laughing stock Chicago Rockets and Brooklyn Dodgers. The Rockets didn’t provide much of a challenge, and Tittle had his first multi TD game of the season since they had defeated the Yankees in their first game of the season. Before heading off to Brooklyn, though, the Colts would play a hard-fought game at home against the Los Angeles Dons that they would ultimately lose 14-17.

Amazingly, even at two games under .500 with only two games to go in the season, the Colts were still in contention. The Yankees were in the midst of their worst season in franchise history and the division leading Bills were only one game ahead of them in the standings. Though the Bills won that week, the Colts stayed in contention by defeating the Dodgers in Brooklyn behind two passing TDs from Tittle and two rushing TDs from star fullback Bus Mertes.

At one game out of first place behind the Bills, and only one game to go against the same division leading Bills, the last game of the season was going to be, by far, the most important game of the season. Once again demonstrating the heroics that he had begun to develop in the second half of the season, Tittle carried Baltimore over Buffalo, scoring twice on the ground to complement a single passing TD on the way to a 35-15 victory and a share of the division lead. Tied for first in the division, it would take a one game playoff to determine whether it would be the Colts or the Bills in the Championship game against the defending champion Cleveland Browns. Despite having a 10 point lead going into the fourth quarter, though, Baltimore could not hang on against Buffalo, and ended up losing the game 28-17.

Y. A. Tittle finished his rookie season with 2522 passing yards (third in the league behind Cleveland’s Otto Graham and Buffalo’s George Ratterman), 16 TDs (tied for fourth in the league with George Ratterman, and behind San Francisco’s Frankie Albert, Cleveland’s Otto Graham, and Los Angeles’s Glenn Dobbs), and 9 INTs (best in the league among starters).