NFL Roster Size Evolution

I was recently reading Tex Maule's The Game. It's a fine look at professional football's evolution through the 1962 NFL season. As the lead football writer at Sports Illustrated, Maule had access to the magazine's photography department. The photos by Walter Iooss, Jr, Neil Leifer, and friends are outstanding. The Game is a fun, interesting look at the NFL from a perspective of nearly 60 years ago. Maule includes a chronology of NFL events at the end of his book. This chronology includes the somewhat annual changes in the size of NFL rosters. I've always been curious about the NFL's roster size evolution. I've never been all that successful in piecing together the year-to-year changes. Maule's notations in his chronology inspired me to take another swing at it. It didn't take long to discover that Bill Horgan at Hogs Haven, SB Nation's Washington Redskins blog, did all of the work for me. I thank him for that.

The NFL (APFA until 1922) was thrown together on the fly. The team owners gathered in Canton on September 17, 1920 and teams were playing games about two weeks later. There wasn't a lot of organization in those early days. In Maule's chronology, the first mention of the NFL passing a rule on the roster size was in 1926. So, I'll start there.

1926:
Maximum: 18 players
Minimum: 15 players

1930:
Maximum: 20 players
Minimum: 16 players

1933:
25 players for the first two games
22 players for the remainder of the season

For some reason the NFL would adopt an early season roster reduction on a few occasions over the first 40 years.

1935:
24 players

1936:
25 players

1938:
30 players

1940:
33 players

1943:
28 players

World War II changed a lot of things. Including the NFL. Rosters were reduced. Free substitution was also adopted for the duration of the war.

1945:
33 players

1947:
35 players for the first three games
34 players for the remainder of the season

1948:
35 players

1949:
32 players

1950 brought free substitution to the NFL for good and the game was forever changed.

1950:
33 players at the start of the season, increased to 34 in September

1951:
33 players

From 1951-54 the NFL had it's first roster size stability since the late 1920s.

1955:
35 players for the first two games
33 players for the remainder of the season

1957:
35 players

1959:
36 players

1960:
38 players

1961:
36 players

1963:
37 players

1964:
40 players

From 1964-73, the NFL saw it's longest stretch of roster size stability in it's history.

1965:
The "Taxi Squad" was formed. From 1965-67 the size was unlimited in size. In 1968 it was limited to 13 players. From 1969-73 it was limited to seven players.

1974:
47 players

1975:
43 players

1978:
45 players

Outside of a few twists, this is basically the start of the 45-player active roster.

1982:
49 players
4 inactive for games

1984:
49 players

A response to the USFL threat?

1985:
45 players

1989:
The roster structure that we know today was adopted. Active roster, inactives, and a "developmental squad." 45 active, 2 inactive, 6-man developmental squad.

1991:
45 players, plus an extra quarterback

1993:
45 players
8 inactive for games
5-man developmental

The NFL hits the 53-man roster size that we know and love today.

2005:
The developmental/practice squad was bumped to 8 players.

2011:
The 45 players +QB active for games was replaced by a less specific 46 players.

2014:
The practice squad was bumped to 10 players.

The 2020 CBA will introduce some squirrelly twists involving game day activation of practice squad players. Teams will also be able to have as many as 48 players active, if at least eight of those players are offensive linemen. Or something like that.

Coaches often belly-ache about the roster restrictions of only having 46 players, now maybe 48, available for games. Whenever I hear that bellyaching, I think of the coaches that had to do the same thing with 40, or fewer, players.

I thank Tex Maule and Bill Horgan for the research that made compiling this roster size evolution pretty easy.