From Field Goals to Game Changers: How Morris Stroud Altered NFL Rules

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And the history of football has really taken some, some great turns and had some great trajectories, but also has had some great stories to it, both from the famous players that we hear about in our living rooms every week to week and still talk about to this day decades later to the guys maybe we haven't heard that much about.

We have a couple interesting stories today on some great legendary players.

And the first one is maybe one of those players you've never heard about, but this is an amazing player that coach Hank Stram of the Kansas City Chiefs used in a very unusual way.

Coaches were looking for any edge, any loophole to snatch victory.

But while most teams were looking for at the playbook, the Kansas City Chiefs were looking at the rafters.

Meet Morris Stroud.

At 6 foot 10, he remains one of the tallest players ever to lace up a pair of cleats in the National Football League.

On paper, he was a tight end, but Stroud was a physical anomaly in an era of smaller, scrappier players.

But head coach Hank Stram didn't just want Stroud to catch passes.

He had a vision that felt more like a heist than a strategy.

The logic was deviously simple.

Why let the ball go through the uprights when you have a man tall enough to reach them?

During field goal attempts, Stroud wouldn't rush the kicker.

He wouldn't try to penetrate the line.

Instead, he would retreat.

He'd stand directly under the crossbar, wait for the ball to reach its apex and simply jump.

The tactic?

Strike.

Stroud would swat away kicks that were clearly on a scoring trajectory that he could reach with his hands and his leg power.

It turned the automatic three points into a game of basketball played on grass.

It was the ultimate defensive cheat code.

You didn't need to block the kick at the line.

You just needed a giant play, a goalie at the rim.

The NFL offices in New York weren't amused.

This wasn't football.

It was an existential threat to the scoring system.

And if ever a team found a seven footer to camp out under the goal post, the field goal would become extinct.

Or they would have to have a higher trajectory.

The Stroud rules, it was called, was the official NFL amendment to the rule book to preserve the integrity of the kicking game.

The new regulation stated it is illegal to touch or deflect the ball that is above the crossbar between the uprights.

It was goaltending.

And the penalty as the field goal was ruled successful and three points were awarded.

The Morris Stroud never actually recorded a stat for a goal post block in an official game that changed the score.

But the mere threat of a 6 foot 10 frame was enough to change the laws of the game forever.

So the next time you see a ball sail through the uprights with with room to spare, remember Morris Stroud.

He's the reason the sky stays open.

Yeah, that is definitely one different way to use a player.

And it's so unique that the NFL has to make a rule to stop you from doing it before something can really happen.

But we have those players that do the mundane tasks that we see every day, but just do it to such a high elite level that nobody can even compare to them.

You know, they are the goats, the greatest of all time at their positions.

Well, there's been a debate going on for quite a while about the wide receiver position, and you know, dramatically dominated by one man in recent modern football history.

But maybe somebody from the past has the right to talk about them as a crown, too.

So here's a part of our story that I think you will enjoy on this too.

In a debate over the greatest wide receiver of all time, Jerry Rice is the default answer.

His records are so massive, they look like typos.

But what if we define dominance not by career totals, by how much a player embarrassed their own era?

With this in mind, there is a ghost from Green Bay who might actually have Rice beat.

Enter Don Hudson, the man often called the Babe Ruth of football.

To understand Hudson, you have to look at the gaps.

The guy in second place, he had 33.

Hudson didn't just lead the league, he was the league.

Over 11 seasons, Hudson won the receiving triple crown, leading in catches, yards, and touchdowns seven times.

To put that in perspective, that accounts for nearly 40% of all Triple Crowns in NFL history.

He was inventing the modern passing game while defenders were still trying to figure out how to tackle.

He led the league in touchdowns eight times.

8.

He retired with 99 scores, a record that stood for 44 years until Steve Largent finally broke it in a much longer season.

And he did all that while playing elite defense, too, retiring with 30 career interceptions.

So you may ask, why is Rice still the goat?

Because dominance isn't just a peak, it's a Siege.

Rice played 20 seasons and 303 games, nearly triple Hudson's career.

Hudson played in an era of leather helmets and frankly, a shallower talent pool due to the era's segregation and the impact of World War II.

Rice dominated the league during the most competitive era of football, facing hall of Fame cornerbacks in a league designed to stop him.

Rice has 22,895 receiving yards aren't just a record, they are a mountain.

A gap between Rice and second place is almost an entire hall of Fame career in itself.

Here's the statistical truth.

If you measure dominance by a standard deviation, how far ahead were you from the average player next to you?

Don Hudson is the most dominant player in NFL history.

He wasn't just better, he was a different species.

But if you define dominance as the highest level of sustained excellence against the best athletes on earth, well my friends, Jerry Rice stands alone.

Hudson revolutionized the game, but Rice perfected it.

One is was a pioneer who broke the math and the other was a machine that broke the record book.

Who's your pick?

The Babe Ruth of the gridiron or the goat?

The comparison is what makes football fun.

Going back to the record books and studying a football history, we do it all in your portal deposit of football history pigskindispatch.com we're taking a peek over at the chains and the down marker.

It's fourth and long.

We're have to punt the ball and get on out of here.

But we'll have another series tomorrow for your football history headlines, so be sure to tune in.

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