1990 NFL season

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1990 NFL season ended on a margin of one point. The New York Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills 20-19 at Tampa Stadium in Super Bowl XXV, a final score so close it felt like a fraction of a game rather than a championship. That finish was the punctuation on a year that had remade the league's postseason rules, elevated a new commissioner, and produced statistical performances that still stand in the record books.

  How did the league arrive at a moment where the Bills, in their first-ever Super Bowl appearance, lost by a single point? What rule changes shaped the games leading to that January? And which performances from the 1990 regular season earned their place in NFL history? The answers require tracing a season that was, in nearly every structural sense, the first of its kind.

• 2. A New Postseason Map

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  For the first time since 1966, every NFL team played with a bye week built into the schedule in 1990. The league had an odd number of teams in 1966 and needed the format. In 1990, the motive was revenue. Each team now played its 16 games across 17 weeks, and the postseason field expanded from 10 teams to 12 by adding one extra wild card from each conference.

  The argument for expansion had been building for years. During four of the five previous seasons under the old format, at least one team with a 10-6 record missed the playoffs entirely. The 11-5 Denver Broncos in 1985 were the sharpest example. Then, three years later, a 10-6 San Francisco 49ers team won Super Bowl XXIII, which made the exclusion of 10-6 squads look not just unlucky but absurd.

  Yet when the new sixth seed actually materialized, it belonged not to a 10-6 powerhouse but to the New Orleans Saints, who entered with an 8-8 record. That first sixth seed was a reminder that rules rarely produce the scenarios they were designed for. The expanded format itself would hold until 2002, when conference realignment shifted the playoff structure again, eventually leading to a 14-team postseason in 2020.

• 3. Tagliabue Takes the Helm

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  Paul Tagliabue's first partial season as NFL Commissioner was 1989, when he took over from Pete Rozelle midway through the year. The 1990 season was his first full one in charge. On the 8th of October, the league announced that the Super Bowl's Most Valuable Player Award would be renamed the Pete Rozelle Trophy, honoring the man who had shaped the modern NFL before stepping aside.

  Art Shell became the permanent head coach of the Los Angeles Raiders in 1990, having served as interim for the final 12 games of 1989 after Mike Shanahan was fired. Several other franchises also changed coaches for the new season. Jack Pardee replaced Jerry Glanville in Houston. Rod Rust replaced the fired Raymond Berry in New England. Bruce Coslet replaced the fired Joe Walton in New York with the Jets. The Dallas Cowboys' Jimmy Johnson, who had been brought in the year before, would earn the Coach of the Year award at season's end.

  The television landscape was also reshaping itself around the league. This was the first season under a new four-year deal with TNT to broadcast Sunday night games during the first half of the season. ABC, CBS, NBC, and ESPN each signed their own four-year renewals. TNT's broadcast team opened with Skip Caray on play-by-play and Pat Haden as color commentator, while Fred Hickman hosted the pregame show called The Stadium Show.

• 4. The Draft and Its Legacy

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  The 1990 NFL Draft was held on the 22nd and the 23rd of April at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. The Indianapolis Colts held the first overall pick and selected quarterback Jeff George from the University of Illinois. The choice that would define the draft's legacy came seventeenth overall.

  The Dallas Cowboys selected Emmitt Smith at pick seventeen. Smith would go on to retire as the NFL's all-time leading rusher. Before the season even opened, the Cowboys had also acquired a different kind of capital: on the 25th of September, Dallas traded quarterback Steve Walsh to the New Orleans Saints in exchange for the Saints' first and third round picks in the 1991 draft, plus a second round pick in 1992 that could convert to a first depending on performance. Smith won the Offensive Rookie of the Year award in 1990, his first step toward that all-time rushing record.

• 5. Records That Held

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  On the 24th of September, Thurman Thomas of the Buffalo Bills rushed for 214 yards against the New York Jets. It was the second highest single-game total in the history of Monday Night Football at that point.

  Three weeks later, on the 14th of October, Joe Montana threw for 476 yards in a single game, setting a 49ers record, and threw six touchdown passes. On the same day, Jerry Rice caught five touchdown passes and scored 30 points, both 49ers records. Also on the 14th of October, Barry Word of the Kansas City Chiefs ran for a team-record 200 yards against the Detroit Lions at Arrowhead Stadium. Kansas City won that game 43-24, and Word later won the NFL Comeback Player of the Year award.

  On Veterans Day, the 11th of November, Derrick Thomas set the NFL single-game record with seven quarterback sacks against Seattle's Dave Krieg at Arrowhead Stadium. Thomas did not get the win. Krieg slipped a final blitz and threw a touchdown pass to Paul Skansi, giving the Seahawks a 17-16 victory, their first at Arrowhead since 1980. The Thomas record would come close to being matched three times, once by Thomas himself in 1998, when another player reached six sacks.

  On the 16th of December, Warren Moon threw for 527 yards against Kansas City, the second-most passing yards ever recorded in a single game. Moon won the Offensive Player of the Year award that season. The Houston Oilers, his team, led the NFL in total yards gained with 6,222 and passing yards with 4,805. Joe Montana won the league's Most Valuable Player award, and Bruce Smith of the Buffalo Bills took Defensive Player of the Year.

• 6. Officiating, Loss, and One Settlement

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  Dick Jorgensen, the referee for Super Bowl XXIV, was diagnosed in May with a rare blood disorder during the offseason. He died five months later, on the 10th of October. For the remainder of the 1990 season, every NFL official wore a black armband on the left sleeve bearing the white number 60 in his honor.

  Two referees, Ben Dreith and Fred Wyant, were demoted to line judge that year. Dreith had worked as a referee in the AFL from 1966 to 1969 and in the NFL since the merger. After the 1990 season, the league fired him. Dreith filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, citing age discrimination as the cause of both his demotion and his dismissal. The NFL and Dreith eventually reached an agreement in 1993: a settlement of $165,000, plus court costs and attorney fees.

  Ed Hochuli was hired that season as a back judge, assigned to Howard Roe's crew. He would be promoted to referee two years later. Tom White was promoted to referee after only one season of NFL experience, the first official to achieve that transition since Jerry Markbreit in 1977.

• 7. Grief on the Sidelines

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  Football coach George Allen, a Hall of Fame head coach who led the Los Angeles Rams and the Washington Redskins, died on the 31st of December, 1990. Bronko Nagurski, the Chicago Bears running back who played from 1930 to 1937 and came out of retirement in 1943, died on the 7th of January at age 81. He had been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963 and was also a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

  Darryl Usher, a member of the Phoenix Cardinals in 1989, was shot and killed on the 24th of February in Phoenix, Arizona at age 25. On the 21st of December, Chicago Bears rookie Fred Washington was killed in a car accident during his first season with the team. He was 23. Washington had been a member of the 1984 Texas 4A State Football Champion Denison YellowJackets and was voted defensive player of the year at that level.

  Rufus Mayes, a former first round pick of the Chicago Bears and a longtime starting tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals, died on the 9th of January at age 42. Carl Ekern, a former Pro Bowl linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams, died on the 1st of August at age 36.

• 8. Super Bowl XXV

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  The New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers had both started the 1990 season at 10-0, the first time in NFL history two teams opened a season with identical unbeaten records through ten games. That mark would not be equaled until 2009, when the Colts and the Saints each reached 13-0.

  The Giants carried their defense into January. New York allowed a league-low 211 points during the regular season. The Buffalo Bills led the league in scoring with 428 points. Their meeting in Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium produced one of the tightest finishes in the game's history, with the Giants winning 20-19. Ottis Anderson, the Giants' running back, was named the Super Bowl's Most Valuable Player. The award carried a new name: the Pete Rozelle Trophy, bestowed for the first time that January. Buffalo's loss was their first Super Bowl appearance. They would return to represent the AFC in each of the next three Super Bowls as well.