Today's Tidbit... When Passing Into The End Zone Became Legal

We take for granted back-shoulder passes into the front corner and fade routes in the back corner of the end zone, yet both exist today due to a long line of changes to football's rules, strategies, and techniques. Neither was legal in football's early passing days, so let's look at why that was so and the changes that gave us such exciting plays.

When football adopted the forward pass in 1906, most did not expect the play to have much impact. Little did they know how innovative coaches and players would make that view seem quaint, but many of the passing game’s advances came only after football eased its many restrictions on tossing the pea. We discussed other restrictions on the forward pass here, so this Tidbit focuses on rules limiting the offense's ability to throw the ball past the goal line, each of which limited teams’ willingness to throw the ball in the red zone, if not further out.

The early football gods preferred that teams move the ball by rushing it on workmanlike drives or executing artful punts. They put rules in place to restrict long passes because they saw them as resulting from luck, not skill. Since no one had experience throwing long passes, they were largely right about the luck-skill issue initially, but that changed in time.