One cornerback was so good they rewrote the rules

Every passing record you have watched fall rests on a rule change written in 1978, and it was aimed at one man.

How bad it had got

• 011977: teams averaged 17.2 points a game
• 02Not one quarterback threw for 3,000 yards
• 03Not one receiver gained 1,000 yards

Defensive backs were permitted to hit receivers all the way down the field. Pittsburgh's Mel Blount played that style better than anyone alive, to the point that the competition committee rewrote the rulebook around him.

They still call it the Mel Blount Rule.

The change

From 1978, contact with a receiver was legal only within five yards of the line of scrimmage. Beyond that, hands off. The five-yard chuck zone is now so fundamental that it is hard to imagine the sport without it — but it is younger than the Super Bowl.

What it produced

Passing numbers jumped after the change, and jumped again after each later crackdown on downfield contact. The sport we treat as normal — 4,000-yard quarterbacks, three-receiver sets, a passing league — is downstream of a committee deciding one defender had made the game unwatchable.

Blount's own view was that being legislated against was a backhanded insult. He is in the Hall of Fame. So is the offense his rule created.