1978 NFL season

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1978 NFL season opened with a league that had just decided scoring was no longer a luxury. In the previous year, teams had averaged only 17.2 points per game, the lowest total since 1942. League officials called it the "Dead Ball Era" and moved to end it. What followed was one of the most transformative single seasons in professional football history, touching everything from the rulebook to the television deal to the jersey numbers worn by officials on the field. The season would end with a Super Bowl decided by four points, Pittsburgh Steelers against Dallas Cowboys, 35-31, at the Orange Bowl in Miami. But the story of how the game got there, and how differently it looked by the time it arrived, is worth tracing from the very beginning.

• 2. Rewriting the Rulebook

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  Defenders in 1977 were permitted to manhandle wide receivers for the full length of the field. Starting in 1978, that contact was restricted to the first five yards past the line of scrimmage, and only before the ball was thrown. The change carried a specific name: the "Mel Blount Rule," a pointed reference to the Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback whose physical style of play had helped inspire the restriction.

  A second major change addressed what happened when a deflected pass was caught by an offensive player. Before 1978, a second offensive receiver could not legally catch a deflected pass unless a defensive player had touched it first. That restriction led directly to one of football's most contested plays. In Super Bowl V, Baltimore Colts receiver Eddie Hinton tipped a pass intended for himself. Cowboys defensive back Mel Renfro made a stab at the ball, and officials ruled he had tipped it slightly into the arms of tight end John Mackey, who scored. Renfro denied touching the ball. The same rule surfaced again during the Immaculate Reception in 1972. Despite both incidents, the change did not come until this season, and it became known as the "Mel Renfro Rule."

  Pass blockers gained new freedoms as well. Extended arms and open hands were now permitted, opening up an entirely different geometry for offensive linemen. The penalty for intentional grounding was also reduced, from a loss of down and 15 yards to a loss of down and 10 yards from the previous spot. A new safety rule applied if the passer committed the foul in his own end zone. Teams that intentionally committed penalties to stop the clock faced a five-yard penalty and a ten-second runoff. Hurdling, once a foul, was removed from the books entirely.

• 3. A Longer Season

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  Sixteen games replaced fourteen in 1978, a change the league would keep in place until 2021. The expanded schedule was not simply a matter of adding two games to the calendar. It required a new scheduling format, one that sent a division from one conference to play a division from the other, rotating every season and repeating the cycle every three years. Non-divisional opponents within a team's own conference were now determined by divisional finish from the prior year rather than by a fixed rotation.

  The playoff field expanded alongside the schedule, growing from eight teams to ten. Each conference added a second wild card team. Those two wild card clubs played each other, with the winner advancing to face the division champion holding the best overall record. If the wild card winner came from the same division as that top seed, the team with the second-best record hosted instead. The tiebreaker system ran through head-to-head competition first, then division records, common opponents, and conference play. This ten-team format held from 1978 through 1989, with 1982 as the lone exception.

• 4. The Draft and Earl Campbell

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  On the 2nd of May 1978, the NFL held its draft at New York City's Roosevelt Hotel. With the first pick overall, the Houston Oilers selected running back Earl Campbell out of Texas. Campbell arrived carrying the Heisman Trophy, the award given annually to college football's most outstanding player. By the end of the regular season, he had rushed for 1,450 yards and won both the Offensive Player of the Year award and the Offensive Rookie of the Year award, an unusual double that underlined just how dominant his debut had been.

• 5. Money and the Players

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  The average NFL player salary in 1978 sat just under $62,600, a figure that represented a 13.2 percent increase over the previous year. At the top of the market, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton was the highest-paid quarterback, earning $360,000. Running back O.J. Simpson commanded the highest salary of any player in the league, at just under $733,400.

  Tarkenton finished the season as the statistical leader in completions, attempts, and passing yards, posting 345 completions on 572 attempts for 3,468 yards. Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys led all passers with a 84.9 rating, while Pittsburgh's Terry Bradshaw threw 28 touchdown passes and was named the league's Most Valuable Player. Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears led the league with 333 rushing attempts, though Campbell edged him in total rushing yards.

• 6. Officials, Numbers, and Television

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  Before 1978, NFL officials wore single or double-digit numbers. The addition of a seventh official to each crew, a new position called the Side Judge, forced a change. Fifteen new officials entered the league that year, and the available single and double-digit numbers were exhausted. Tom Dooley, Dale Hamer, and Dick Hantak were among the first officials assigned triple-digit numbers, wearing 103, 104, and 105, respectively. Bob Boylston drew 101, Gene Carrabine 102, and the sequence ran up to Jim Osborne at 110. The veteran Bernie Ulman, who had served as head linesman for Super Bowl I and referee for Super Bowl IX, retired before the season, leaving the league with 14 officiating crews.

  Television that year involved new four-year contracts signed by ABC, CBS, and NBC. CBS received broadcast rights to the new NFC wild card game, NBC the AFC wild card. NBC's broadcast team saw reshuffling: Dick Enberg and Merlin Olsen, and Curt Gowdy and John Brodie served as the network's co-head crews. Jim Simpson was demoted from the No. 2 play-by-play spot. Network executives wanted to elevate Enberg but allowed Gowdy to call the Super Bowl, marking his last season with NBC. On the studio side, former Miss Ohio USA Jayne Kennedy replaced Phyllis George as a reporter on The NFL Today, and Mike Adamle joined NBC's pregame show NFL '78 as an analyst. Simpson departed after the second week of the following season to join a newly launched cable network called ESPN.

• 7. Super Bowl XIII

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  Pittsburgh's 14-2 regular season record was the best in the AFC, and the Steelers allowed only 195 points all year, the fewest in the league. Terry Bradshaw's 28 touchdown passes led the NFL. The Dallas Cowboys, who led the league in scoring with 384 points, finished 12-4 and surrendered only 1,721 rushing yards, the fewest in football.

  The two met at the Orange Bowl in Miami in Super Bowl XIII. Pittsburgh won, 35-31. Bradshaw was named the game's Most Valuable Player for the season. The margin of four points made it one of the closer Super Bowls to that point, and it left Dallas with its second Super Bowl loss, both coming against Pittsburgh.