Sports

Statistics from the All-America Football Conference, a pro football league that existed from 1946 to 1949 until some of its teams were folded into the NFL, will count toward the NFL's official records.

League owners voted today to approve a proposal that would make AAFC statistics an official part of NFL history, according to NFL.com.

The AAFC now joins the American Football League as rival leagues that have been fully embraced as part of the NFL's history. The AFL and NFL merged for the 1970 seasons and all 1960-69 AFL stats are considered official NFL stats.

The Cleveland Browns won the AAFC championship in all four years of the league's existence before joining the NFL in 1950 and winning another championship that year. The San Francisco 49ers also played in the AAFC from 1946 to 1949 before joining the NFL in 1950. A team called the Baltimore Colts went from the AAFC to the NFL as well, although that team folded after the 1950 season and the second Baltimore Colts franchise, which started play in 1953 and is now the Indianapolis Colts, was really a separate franchise with the same name.

Longtime Browns head coach Paul Brown will get 47 additional regular season wins and nine additional postseason wins on his coaching record, which will move him into seventh place in NFL history with 222 overall wins.

Browns fullback Marion Motley will now be considered the NFL's all-time leader in yards per carry for a running back. Motley's combined AAFC and NFL total was 828 carries for 4,720 yards, an average of 5.7 yards per carry.

Several other Hall of Famers will now have AAFC stats added to their legacies, including Browns quarterback Otto Graham, 49ers running back Joe Perry, and the great runner/receiver Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch, who played three years for the Chicago Rockets of the AAFC before joining the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL.

For historians of professional football, the decision to open up the record book to the AAFC is significant, and makes the league's official records a fuller picture of the history of the sport.

Mike Macdonald has experienced coaching against receiver Cooper Kupp, so he has an appreciation for what the receiver can do in Seattle's revamped offense for 2025.

Kupp, 31, was released by the Rams at the start of the new league year last month. He ended up with the Seahawks on a three-year deal worth a reported $45 million.

At the annual league meeting on Tuesday, Macdonald explained the challenges he faced when scheming against Kupp — which he’ll now get to deploy while coaching him.

“You could have him covered on paper, but he’s still going to get open,” Macdonald said. "That’s something you have to experience in-game. So, he’s a guy that you have to account for on a lot of possession downs, high-leverage situations where we’ve got to have two guys on this guy. It’s a little bit different than some straight-line, vertical guys where you want more of a high-low double. You want him surrounded as much as possible. You’re allocating resources over there, it kind of shifts where those stress points are on the rest of the field.

“So, yeah, he’s a pain in the butt.”

Kupp has not played more than 12 games in a season since he put up one of the best-ever years for a wideout in 2021, winning AP offensive player of the year and Super Bowl LVI MVP. In 2024, he caught 67 passes for 710 yards with six touchdowns in 12 games for the Rams.