Sports

NFL will include stats from 1946-49 All-America Football Conference in official records

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: Cooper Kupp was "a pain in the butt" to coach against

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.

NFL to use 'Hawk-Eye' technology to measure first downs in 2025, replacing chain gang measurements

ATLANTA, GA - SEPTEMBER 27: Members of the chain gang walk off the field during the first half of an NFL football game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Chicago Bears at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on September 27, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
The NFL won't rely on the chain gang to take on-field measurements of first downs in 2025. (Photo by Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
Perry Knotts via Getty Images

Farewell, chain gang? 

The NFL will use Sony's Hawk-Eye technology as the primary way to measure the line to gain, the league announced Tuesday at its annual spring owners meetings. The technology will use six 8K cameras to track the ball's position on the field. 

First-down measurements became a heated topic after the recent AFC championship game, where the Buffalo Bills' Josh Allen fell short of a first down late in the game. Replays showed Allen reach the first-down marker, but the position of the ball could not be seen by sideline cameras. Referees confirmed the ruling after a review, and the Bills went on to lose the game.

In a media release, the NFL stated: 

Sony’s Hawk-Eye virtual measurement technology will serve as an efficient alternative to the process of walking chains onto the field and manually measuring whether 10 yards have been met after the official has spotted the ball. The chain crew will remain on the field in a secondary capacity.

While Hawk-Eye will replace the chain gang walking out onto the field to measure first downs, the chain gang isn't completely going away. The crew will "remain on the field in a secondary capacity," per the league's release.

The switch to Hawk-Eye should speed up crucial first-down measurements, though may not necessarily result in calls being more accurate. Hawk-Eye presumably would not have changed the outcome of Allen's AFC championship plunge, as the ball was not visible to the camera during the play.

In those instances, where officials spot the ball is what really matters.

Still, speeding up the game is a positive thing. With the Hawk-Eye cameras, the first-down measurement process should take roughly 30 seconds, per the league's statement. That will save roughly 40 seconds compared to the manual chain-gang measurement.

That should allow games to get back to the action faster, and give fans less time to agonize over whether their entire season was lost because their favorite team couldn't gain a single yard.

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