Bernie Bierman’s offensive philosophy basically boiled down to the following quote.
"A good running game behind good blocking is the smartest game. I pushed my players to perfect a fundamental game. Passing is a gamblers game, played by fools... I could take a team today, teach it to take the ball away from the other team on defense, control the ball on offense and beat the best of them with their new tangled fancy aerial attacks..."
Here are some numbers that prove how far he was willing to take his run first mentality.
Number of plays, runs and passes by down Minnesota teams 1932-1941
1st down - run 2,000 times, pass 184 pass attempts with a completion percentage 8.