Name: How NFL rule changes made linemen gigantic
Uploaded: 2021-05-23T13:27:07.000Z
Duration: 2 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It's easy to see the difference when you look at modern players versus the old-school

In 1892, he became the first person to be paid to play football.

And he's a decently big guy: 6' 4”, 178 pounds.

But compare that to players today, and he looks tiny.

Take the New England Patriots' Alan Branch — 6' 6'', 350 pounds.

Or the Atlanta Falcons' Jake Matthews — 6' 5'', 309 pounds.

Back in 1970, only one NFL player weighed over 300 pounds.

And in training camps in 2010, 532 players weighed over 300.

These charts by Alex Bresler show the change in NFL players' height and weight

Over time, players got taller and heavier on average.

Notice that while most positions had a slow increase in weight, these two skyrocketed.

Those are the offensive and defensive linemen, the guys that ram into each other at the start

You can think of it as a kind of weight class specialization happening over time based on

Receivers and the guys who guard them need to be fast down the field, while the linemen

are basically sumo wrestlers trying to either block or buy time

That size specialization probably had to do with the ways the rules have changed over

Before the 1950s, substitutions were limited, so players played multiple positions, offense

And then in the 1970s, blocking below the waist became illegal, which basically moved

Before that, if linemen were too top-heavy, they would be more vulnerable to “old-school”

blocking techniques that would knock out their knees.

On top of that, new training and dieting practices have helped players get bigger and stronger

These heavy players are still really athletic.

But the rapid increase in weight comes with some serious health concerns.

A government study in 1994 found that NFL linemen face a substantially higher risk of

dying of heart disease — 52 percent higher than the general population and three times

And a 2008 study found that retired linemen were almost twice as likely to have metabolic

syndrome, which includes a bunch of risk factors like obesity and high blood pressure.

That makes them a lot more likely to suffer from heart disease and diabetes down the road

So yes, many players have gotten bigger as the game of football has evolved.

And they've helped their teams by bulking up, but it does come at a price.