1994 NFL season

The 1994 NFL season was the 75th regular season of the National Football League. To honor the NFL's 75th season, a special anniversary logo was designed and each player wore a patch on their jerseys with this logo throughout the season. Also, a selection committee of media and league personnel named a special NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team, honoring the best NFL players from the first 75 seasons.

The Phoenix Cardinals changed their name to Arizona Cardinals in an attempt to widen their appeal to the entire state of Arizona instead of just the Phoenix area. The name was initially resisted by Bill Bidwill.

The Seattle Seahawks played their first three regular season home games at Husky Stadium because the Kingdome, the Seahawks' regular home field, was undergoing repairs for damaged tiles on its roof. The Seahawks returned for the 2000 and 2001 seasons while their new stadium was under construction.

This was also the first season that the then-fledgling Fox Network televised NFL games. Fox took over the National Football Conference package from CBS. The league also signed an exclusivity agreement with the direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service DirecTV to launch NFL Sunday Ticket, a satellite television subscription service that offers every regular season NFL game. As of 2011, it is still exclusive to DirecTV.

The season ended with Super Bowl XXIX when the San Francisco 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers. Both teams had met that regular season, the second straight season that had happened, and ninth time overall.

Even though the 1994 World Series was canceled, the NFL ultimately decided not to reschedule its Thursday night contests in October for Sunday, even though they wouldn't have competed with baseball those nights.

Major rule changes

A package of changes were adopted to increase offensive production and scoring:

• The two-point conversion after touchdowns is adopted.
• The spot of the kickoff is moved from the 35-yard line to the 30-yard line. This would remain intact through the 2010 season.
• The "Neutral zone infraction" foul is adopted. A play is automatically dead before the snap when a defensive player enters the neutral zone and causes an offensive player to react.
• After a field goal is missed, the defensive team takes possession of the ball at the spot of the kick (instead of at the line of scrimmage) or the 20 yard line, whichever is farther from the goal line.
• During field goal attempts and extra point tries, players on the receiving team cannot block below the waist.

Throwback jerseys

The league also honored its 75th season by having each team wear throwback uniforms during selected games. The designs varied widely in their accuracy:

• While no attempt was made to simulate obsolete leather helmets (which were phased out in the 1950s), teams simulating uniforms from the era of leather headgear simply removed all decals and striping from their regular hard-shell helmets.
• All jerseys displayed the player's last name on the back side, though this practice did not become standard until 1970[1].
• Many of the uniforms worn were not completely accurate displays of previous team uniforms. For example, the Buffalo Bills throwback contained a red helmet with a white buffalo logo with white (instead of gray) facemasks. However, the actual historic uniform displayed a white helmet with a red buffalo logo with gray facemasks. The New York Jets did the same, with green helmets and white logos and a black facemask (instead of gray). The Dallas Cowboys wore their current helmets. Ironically, the Cowboys in 2004 and the Bills In 2005 would later adopt an accurate representation of their 1960s throwbacks as their alternate uniform, while the Jets would return to their "throwback" style (albeit with a darker shade of green and green facemasks) full-time in 1998.
• In some instances the fonts and typestyles used were only approximate matches at best, although the San Diego Chargers and Houston Oilers' throwbacks were completely accurate replications, including typefaces, of their first uniforms in 1960.

Some teams occasionally wore theirs in additional games during the season, and the San Francisco 49ers wore them through the Super Bowl. They proved to be so popular that the New York Giants followed the lead of their stadium tenants and eventually returned to wearing them full-time, with very slight modifications, in 2000. And after the NFL modified its rules to allow teams to wear alternate jerseys in 2002, the San Diego Chargers selected their throwbacks as their third uniforms.

Final regular season standings

W = Wins, L = Losses, PCT = Winning Percentage, PF= Points For, PA = Points Against

Clinched playoff seeds are marked in parentheses and shaded in green. No ties occurred this season.

Tiebreakers

• Miami finished ahead of New England in the AFC East based on head-to-head sweep (2-0).
• Kansas City finished ahead of L.A. Raiders in the AFC West based on head-to-head sweep (2–0).
• Green Bay was the first NFC Wild Card based on best head-to-head record (3–1) vs. Detroit (2–2) and Chicago (1–3) and better conference record (8–4) than N.Y. Giants (6–6).
• Detroit was the second NFC Wild Card based on better division record (4–4) than Chicago (3–5) and head-to-head victory over N.Y. Giants (1–0).
• Chicago was the third NFC Wild Card based on better record against common opponents (4–4) than N.Y. Giants (3–5).
• New Orleans finished ahead of Atlanta in the NFC West based on head-to-head sweep (2–0).

Playoffs

Home team in capitals

AFC

• Wild-Card playoffs: MIAMI 27, Kansas City 17; CLEVELAND 20, New England 13
• Divisional playoffs: PITTSBURGH 29, Cleveland 9; SAN DIEGO 22, Miami 21
• AFC Championship: San Diego 17, PITTSBURGH 13 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, January 15, 1995

NFC

• Wild-Card playoffs: GREEN BAY 16, Detroit 12; Chicago 35, MINNESOTA 18
• Divisional playoffs: SAN FRANCISCO 44, Chicago 15; DALLAS 35, Green Bay 9
• NFC Championship: SAN FRANCISCO 38, Dallas 28 at Candlestick Park, January 15, 1995

Super Bowl

• Super Bowl XXIX: San Francisco (NFC) 49, San Diego (AFC) 26, at Joe Robbie Stadium, Miami, Florida, January 29, 1995

Statistical leaders

Team

Individual

Awards

External Links

• Football Outsiders 1994 DVOA Ratings and Commentary

References

• NFL Record and Fact Book (ISBN 1-932994-36-X)
• NFL History 1991-2000 (Last accessed October 17, 2005)
• 1994 season in details
• Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League (ISBN 0-06-270174-6)
• NFL 75th Anniversary Throwbacks (Archived 2009-10-21)