Throwback Thursday: Active Player Limits

Since the ball was first passed between the legs of the center, the number of football players on the field for a game has never swayed from eleven. The number of players that make up an active game day roster for an NFL team has swayed a lot. Roster limits were never detailed in an NFL rule book. The limits were only noted in league bylaws. It took six years before the league even thought to limit the size of the roster. It's just a guess here but I think that it was because Chicago Bears owner/coach/player George Halas was trying to horde talented football players. 1925 was the first year that a limit was put on the size of an NFL team. That limit was set at 16 football players. After that, it changed pretty much as a matter of routine.

1925              16
1926-29         18
1930-34         20
1935              24
1936-37         25
1938-39         30
1940-42         33
1943-44         28
1945-46         33
1947              35-for the first 3 games and then dropped to 34
1948              35
1949-50         32
1951-56         33
1957-58         35
1959              36
1960              38
1961-62         36
1963              37
1964-73         40
1974              47
1975-77         43
1978-81         45
1982              45-for the first 2 games and then increased to 49
1983-84         49
1985-90         45
1991-2010     45-plus a third quarterback
2011-             46

With the roster limits holding pretty much steady for all of my football life I find the nearly yearly bouncing around of the roster size for most of the league's history a little odd. It wasn't until the roster increase of 1964 to 40 players that the size remained steady for more than six seasons. Some of the adjustments are interesting. There were slight increases when the NFL was challenged by a rival league. The AAFC in 1947. The AFL in 1960. The WFL in 1974. The USFL in 1983. The in-season increase in 1982 was probably due to the players strike. One thing that strikes me as fairly interesting is that the switch to two-platoon football in the early 1950s didn't result in an increase of the roster size. The increase through that decade was more gradual than I would have expected.

It's amazing that the game day roster limit for an NFL team has increased from 16 players in 1925 to 46 players today. It's still 11 players on the field but there's a lot more on the sideline.