What are the eras of pro football? [Archive]

philkid3

03-01-2008, 02:13 AM

Yes, but not as much as baseball. The main one, though, is the 1970 merger followed in recognition by football's equivilent of the "dead ball era" which occurred in the 60s (NFL only) and ended in 1978 with the Mel Blount rule. Teams ran the ball more than at any time since the forward pass was allowed as close as the line of scrimmage, and it ended with two things. The first was the rule change in '78 that essentially created modern pass interference. Since receivers were now basically allowed to run unabaited, teams started passing more. The other change was in '79 when the 49ers hired Bill Walsh, who then invented the West Coast offense.

So beginning in the late 70s, the run-first era was dead and the constantly evolving pass-first era we're in now began. Things have still changed since then, but that's the major revolution.

NFL eras are also less neat than MLB eras and more numerous, since the league is constantly tinkering with rules and new innovations are constantly coming around. Once upon a time everyone ran a 3-4 defense. Then everyone went for rotational defenses. Then the Tampa Two. Once the league was run first, then the West Coast took over, now a more vertical game popularized by the Chiefs and (underrated offensively before this year) Patriots. Once you gave a ton of carries to multiple runningbacks, then you gave hundreds of carries to one "feature back," now you split the same number of carries with two runningbacks to keep them fresh.

Things right now are extremely different from where they were 10 years ago alone.

The vaguest of era definitions, though would go like this:

Before 1933, there was pretty much ONLY running, and the forward pass was a last-ditch weapon that could only be used 5 yards from behind the line of scrimmage. Quarterbacks in the day were basically runningbacks and orchestraters.

After 1933, the forward pass became regularly used, but an incomplete pass in the endzone was a touchback. This changed somewhere in the late 30s, I believe. These two rule changes caused a growth in the idea of passing as a regular weapon and not an emergency effort.

In the late 40s and early 50s, the league became a passing league, largely with the Browns proving that being a pass-first team would win games. Johnny Unitas made the forward pass more popular.

In the 60s, Vince Lombardi ("Three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad.") showed that conservative football, passing when necessary or of high value and running the ball, was a winning strategy. The league entered its most dominatingly slow era ever. Meanwhile, the AFL became a hit with it's passing game.

1970 is the biggest, most recognizable and distinct change in era. Much like baseball fans look at 1901 as the beginning of the modern era and most notable history, though baseball was played before it, "the post merger era" is increasingly looked at the same way: as the modern-era in football. Some move it back as far as 1960, with the advent of the AFL, and some merely push it back to 1966 to include all Super Bowls.

In 1978, the last huge change came with the advent of pass interference rules, followed a year later by the West Coast offense and the success of Air Coryell. Before this, the forward pass was used as a downfield low-success play, save for some examples (like the Vikings). Beginning in the late 70s, the forward pass was seen as the most importan tool in football, and creating a way to stop the forward pass and complete the forward pass with high success and low risk has become the primary focus of football ever since.

Another minor change occurred around the late 40s when specialization became a primary strategy. By the 60s, the idea of players playing both ways was pretty much dead.