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Pastimes : The new NFL -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (18226)	10/2/2007 6:06:24 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 90866

and he did it before the 'bubbleboy' rule they put in for QBs

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (18226)	10/2/2007 6:11:26 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90866

Time travel back to 1969 when quarterbacks didn’t wear dresses, Butkus patrolled the middle for Chicago, and Baltimore still had the Colts. Paul Zimmerman, who writes for Sports Illustrated and has covered the NFL since 1960, remembered the climate for cornerbacks prior to the rules being changed. "Guys like Mel Blount, who was kind of a butcher out there … played that double zone so he didn’t have to run with the player all the way down the field," Zimmerman says. "He just hammered [the receiver] at the line. Probably the biggest example of [bruiser cornerbacks] was Freddie Williams, ‘the Hammer.’ He couldn’t cover, but he was feared because he had all that martial arts, karate. He broke guys’ jaws. Of course, he wasn’t as tough as he said he was, but he still was kind of feared. "You also had something the Los Angeles Rams had called the ‘axe technique.’ What they did, they cut the guy at the line. They just threw a body block at the guy on the line, took his legs out. That was legal. It was called ‘axing the receiver.’" "The game was being so smothered by defenses, particularly the Steelers, that they had to do something," Zimmerman says. "It was done in a subtle fashion and in pieces, but [the changes] were done to air mail the football and make passing easier." Defensive linemen also took a hit from the competition committee prior to the 1977 season, when a rule made it illegal for a defensive lineman to strike an opponent above the shoulders or to make a head slap. "Your [offensive linemen] gained a big advantage from that one, because no longer did they have to tuck their heads and duck," Zimmerman says. "Before that you had guys who would just go punching left-right into the backfield. That was a very profound thing." The competition committee went after the defense again prior to the 1978 season. Receivers gained further freedom with the ruling that allowed a defender to maintain contact with a receiver within five yards of the line of scrimmage, but restricted contact beyond that point. Another significant rule change was implemented allowing extended arms and open hands to become permissible in pass blocking; by 1984, offensive linemen could use extended arms on running plays.