The 1974 NFL season was the 55th regular season of the National Football League. The season ended with Super Bowl IX when the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Minnesota Vikings. Players held a strike from July 1 until August 10, prior to the regular season beginning; only one preseason game (that year's College All-Star Game) was canceled, and the preseason contests were held with all-rookie rosters. The 1974 season was the first played under a major rules reform intended to promote offensive football, including a reduction of the penalty for offensive holding from 15 yards to 10, elimination of unlimited "chucking" of pass receivers and banning low blocks against them, moving the goalposts to the end line to incentivize more aggressive play-calling, and implementing sudden death overtime to reduce tie games.

Draft

The 1974 NFL draft was held from January 29 to 30, 1974, at New York City's Americana Hotel. With the first pick, the Dallas Cowboys selected defensive end Ed "Too Tall" Jones from the Tennessee State University.

New officials

There were two new referees in 1974, Cal Lepore and Gordon McCarter. Lepore replaced the retired John McDonough, the referee for Super Bowl IV and the NFL's longest game, the 1971 Christmas Day playoff between the Dolphins and Chiefs which lasted 82 minutes, 40 seconds. McCarter succeeded Jack Reader, who left the field to become chief lieutenant to NFL Director of Officiating Art McNally at league headquarters in New York.

Rules reform of 1974

The NFL faced growing criticism in the early 1970s that its game had become too conservative — run-centric and field position-oriented. The league's competition committee had worked for several years attempting to craft rules changes that would make long touchdown drives more achievable and reducing the number of possessions ending with long field goal attempts. Unfortunately, various piecemeal attempts to implement rules changes to open up the game had devolved into arguments and been shot down at the annual meetings of team owners. Ahead of the 1974 a new approach was taken by the competition committee, however, and a broad suite of major rules reforms were presented to the other owners as a package on a take-it-or-leave it basis. With changes implemented by the rival World Football League (WFL) helping to spur action lest the NFL be left behind, this set of rules changes was approved:

Timing

Kicking

Blocking and receiving

Although the package of rules changes were approved by ownership for the 1974 season, substantial dissent remained, with at least eight owners expressing disapproval off the record. Chief among these was Joe Robbie, owner of the world champion Miami Dolphins, who objected that the changes were "frankly intended to tip the scales toward passing and against running." Robbie asserted that his team had "proved that football fans like to watch a good running game" and that "you aren't making it exciting when you put in a new rule making it harder to block sweeps." Those favoring passing were more positive, with St. Louis Cardinals head coach Don Coryell enthusiastically declaring, "The new rules definitely encourage offense."

Roster changes

In addition to its sweeping changes to playing rules, the NFL eliminated the "future list" ("taxi squad") of players a team could sign without placing them on an active roster. The future list had been formalized by the league in and had informally existed for over a decade before that. The concept returned in, renamed the practice squad.

Division races

From 1970 to 2001, there were three divisions (Eastern, Central and Western) in each conference. The winners of each division, and a fourth "wild card" team based on the best non-division winner, qualified for the playoffs. The tiebreaker rules were changed to start with head-to-head competition, followed by division records, records against common opponents, and records in conference play.

National Football Conference

American Football Conference

Final standings

Tiebreakers

Playoffs

Awards

Coaching changes

Offseason

In-season

Uniform changes

Television

ABC, CBS, and NBC each signed four-year contracts to renew their rights to broadcast Monday Night Football, the NFC package, and the AFC package, respectively. The major change was that ABC was also given the rights to the Pro Bowl, instead of having the game rotate annually between CBS and NBC. Don Meredith left ABC to join NBC's lead broadcast team of Curt Gowdy and Al DeRogatis in their own three-man booth. NBC also hired the then-recently retired quarterback John Brodie to replace Kyle Rote as the network's #2 color commentator, alongside Jim Simpson. ABC initially hired Fred Williamson to replace Meredith in the MNF booth, but he was so inarticulate during the preseason broadcasts that Williamson was replaced by Alex Karras for the regular season. CBS abandoned its pre-recorded The NFL Today pregame show in favor of a live, wraparound style program titled The NFL on CBS. Jack Buck was originally promoted to replace Ray Scott as the network's lead play-by-play announcer alongside color commentator Pat Summerall; only for CBS to shift Summerall from color commentator to play-by-play at midseason. Tom Brookshier was then paired with Summerall.