The 1950s would widely be considered a serious blemish in the history of Washington football. Owner George Preston Marshall refused to sign Black players. The team suffered multiple losing seasons. A coaching carousel meant consistency was hard to come by.

Yet, even in the down years for any sports franchise, there are great individuals with great stories worth shining the spotlight on. Eddie LeBaron, who played for Washington 1952 to 1952 and again from 1955-59, is one of those.

At 5-foot-7 and 160 pounds, the quarterback from northern California certainly did not fit the image of an NFL player even in the middle of the century. As the saying goes, though, often it's not about the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Not only was LeBaron a competitor, but he was a talented and smart player. The small signal-caller knew that he had to get a little creative in order to be most effective on the field.

"If he did drop back to pass, of course, given his height, they were going to have what we refer to now as a 'floating pocket,' so that he didn't stand in a stationary spot," Dennis Crawford, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame, explained on the latest episode of Hail Tales: Stories from Washington Football History. "Somebody 6-3, 6-4, putting their arms up, that presents a very difficult challenge not only for LeBaron to throw over, but for his receivers down the field to be able to see their quarterback releasing the ball."

So that meant LeBaron resorted to, in his words, "run-fake type plays or half rolls or roll out type of things." Beginning his college career at just 16 years old, the quarterback started to show what was possible with the play-action pass during his time at the College of the Pacific. As a senior in 1949, he set a flurry of records on his way to leading the Tigers to an undefeated season. He was named an All-American and finished sixth in Heisman voting.

"He had a wonderful career at Pacific. He scores 45 touchdowns over those seasons," Crawford elaborated. "That's a lot of production at that time. It's especially a lot of production from somebody that size."

Planning for a Sammy Baugh-less future down the line, Washington drafted LeBaron with the 123rd overall pick in the 1950 draft. However, the 1950 season is not when the young quarterback first suited up in the burgundy and gold. Instead, in June 1950, LeBaron went to fight in the Korean War.

"Eddie LeBaron is one of several who decided to give up a comfortable life and went to a foreign nation and was thrown into a just a horrible situation and he won a Bronze Star," Crawford said. "He's a legitimate American military hero. And I think that that's something that we shouldn't take lightly."

In 1952, LeBaron was honorably discharged as a first lieutenant. He joined the Burgundy & Gold afterwards, and it seems George Preston Marshall needed time to get used to the presence of this new, diminutive quarterback.

"Mr. Marshall didn't want a short quarterback so in the programs in those days, initially I was 5'10 and 180 when we started and gradually, finally talked him into putting my true size down of 5'7 and 160," LeBaron said with a laugh during an interview.

Four games into the 1952 season, LeBaron took over for Baugh and received All-Rookie honors at the end of that year. He would go on to start 58 games during his seven seasons in Washington. He was named to the Pro Bowl three times, and in 1958, he was the league's top-rated quarterback after completing 79 of 149 passes for 1,365 yards and 11 touchdowns. And because these were still the days of 60-minute players, he was also the primary punter for his first three seasons in Washington.

LeBaron was a bright spot at a time when there perhaps wasn't much to be proud of about Washington football. He was so beloved in fact that in 1958 he was voted the most popular athlete in the nation's capital. His popularity stretched far beyond the bounds of D.C., and he became a model to look to for plenty of small aspiring athletes.

"I was the hero of the little folk," LeBaron said. "I used to get letter from fathers all over the country, saying, 'My son is 5-foot-3 and 112 pounds and wants to be quarterback and would you write him and tell him that he could do it.'"