1970 NFL season
The 1970 NFL season was the 51st regular season of the National Football League, and the first after the consummation of the AFL–NFL merger. The merged league realigned into two conferences: all ten of the American Football League (AFL) teams joined the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers to form the American Football Conference (AFC); the other thirteen NFL clubs formed the National Football Conference (NFC).
Regular season
September 18 – December 20, 1970
December 26, 1970
January 17, 1971
January 24, 1971
The season concluded in 1971 with Super Bowl V on January 17, as the Baltimore Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys 16–13 at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. The Pro Bowl was the following Sunday; the NFC beat the AFC 27–6 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Draft[edit]
The 1970 NFL Draft was held from January 27 to 28, 1970 at New York City's Belmont Plaza Hotel. With the first pick, the Pittsburgh Steelers selected quarterback Terry Bradshaw from Louisiana Tech University.
The NFL rules became the standardized rules for the merged league, with two exceptions that were both carried over from the AFL:
After experimenting with compromise rules regarding the two-point conversion (then exclusive to the AFL) during the late 1960s preseasons, the NFL decided not to use that feature and use its previous rule only allowing one point for any conversion. The two-point conversion would later be added to the NFL rules in 1994.
Records[edit]
On November 8, New Orleans Saints placekicker Tom Dempsey kicked a record 63-yard field goal as time expired to win 19–17 over the visiting Detroit Lions. It bettered the previous record by seven yards (set seventeen years earlier by Bert Rechichar),[4][5] and stood for 43 years (tied in 1998, 2011, and 2012) until it was broken in 2013 by Denver Broncos' Matt Prater.[6] His record 64-yard field goal was at elevation in Denver on December 8, at the end of the first half. That record would stand until September 26, 2021, when Baltimore Ravens' Justin Tucker kicked a 66 yard field goal as time expired to win 19-17 over the Detroit Lions[7]
The Denver Broncos, Detroit Lions, and Los Angeles Rams all started 3–0 but lost in Week Four. Only the Lions advanced to the postseason after the 3–0 start.
Stadium changes[edit]
Before the season, the league had demanded that the Chicago Bears find a new home field: Wrigley Field was too small, as it did not meet the new stadium requirement to seat at least 50,000, and it did not have lights (installed in 1988), meaning it was unavailable for late afternoon and night games. The Chicago Cubs baseball team, which shared the stadium with the Bears, did not want to convert it to a football configuration while the Cubs were still in playoff contention.
As a result, the Bears' first home game of the season against the Philadelphia Eagles was played at Northwestern University's Dyche Stadium; Chicago also treated this game as a trial run for possibly moving their home games to Evanston. Dyche Stadium (since renamed Ryan Field), did not have lights (nor does it have permanent standards today), was planned as the Bears' new home, but a deal fell through due to strong opposition from several athletic directors in the Big Ten Conference and residents of Evanston. After negotiations with the Cubs' ownership for continued use of Wrigley Field collapsed, the Bears moved to Soldier Field in 1971 where they remain to the present day, save for a temporary relocation in 2002 to the University of Illinois' Memorial Stadium while Soldier Field was completely renovated.
The Boston Patriots played in their fourth facility in eleven seasons, leaving Alumni Stadium at Boston College for Harvard Stadium, the only facility in Massachusetts at that time which met the NFL's 50,000-seat minimum. The struggles to find a home led the Patriots to hastily construct Schaeffer Stadium in Foxborough, which opened in 1971. Renamed from "Boston" to "New England" when they moved, the Patriots continue to play in Foxborough in Gillette Stadium, which opened in 2002.
Two multi-purpose stadiums made their debut this season: Riverfront Stadium and Three Rivers Stadium, replacing Nippert Stadium and Pitt Stadium as the homes of the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers, respectively. This was also the last season in which Franklin Field was the home of the Philadelphia Eagles; they moved to Veterans Stadium, another multi-purpose stadium, in 1971.
Seven teams played their home games on artificial turf in 1970. This was up from 2 teams in both the NFL and AFL in 1969. The teams were: Cincinnati, Dallas, Miami, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, who joined Houston and Philadelphia, the two teams which played on turf in 1969. Super Bowl V was held at the Orange Bowl in Miami, and was the first Super Bowl played on artificial turf (specifically, Poly-Turf).
Television changes[edit]
To televise their games, the combined league retained the services of CBS and NBC, who were previously the primary broadcasters of the NFL and the AFL, respectively. It was then decided that CBS would televise all NFC teams (including playoff games) while NBC all AFC teams. For interconference games, CBS would broadcast them if the visiting team was from the NFC and NBC would carry them when the visitors were from the AFC. At the time, all NFL games were blacked out in the home team's market, so this arrangement meant that fans in each team's home market would see all of their team's televised Sunday afternoon games on the same network (CBS for NFC teams and NBC for AFC teams). The two networks also divided up the Super Bowl on a yearly rotation, with the network of the designated visiting conference (NBC for odd-numbered games, CBS for even-numbered game) televising each game through Super Bowl XVIII. From 1970–73, whichever network did not televise the Super Bowl televised the Pro Bowl the next week.
Meanwhile, with the debut of Monday Night Football on ABC on September 21, 1970, the league became the first professional sports league in the United States to have a regular series of nationally televised games in prime-time, and the only league ever to have its games televised on all of the then-three major broadcast networks at the same time. Both teams that advanced to the Super Bowl, the Baltimore Colts (44-24 to the Chiefs) and the Dallas Cowboys (38-0 to the Cardinals), had suffered humiliating defeats at home on Monday Night Football during the season.
All three networks initially signed four-year television contracts through the 1973 season. The first MNF team consisted of veteran play-by-play announcer Keith Jackson, sportscaster Howard Cosell, and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith. Ray Scott remained as lead play-by-play announcer for CBS, but Pat Summerall replaced Paul Christman as that network's lead color commentator after Christman died from a heart attack on March 2, 1970. Curt Gowdy and Kyle Rote remained as NBC's lead broadcast team.[8]