The 1957 NFL season was the 38th regular season of the National Football League. After a 5-to-7-game preseason slate, the league's 12 teams played a 12-game league schedule — 72 regular season contests in all.
During sudden-death overtime, rules for time outs are the same as in a regular game, including the last two minutes of the second and fourth quarters.
Home teams wore dark jerseys and road team wore white. Previously, NFL teams were allowed to wear whatever uniform color they liked, even if it clashed with the other team, and were not required to have a white jersey.
Division races
Cleveland won its opener, 6–3 over the Giants and led the Eastern Division from wire to wire. A 17–7 loss to the Eagles in Week Four forced the Browns to share the lead with New York, but the Giants lost the following week and spent the rest of the season trying to catch Cleveland.
The Western Division race was more protracted. Baltimore, Detroit, and San Francisco were tied for the lead several times and had identical 7–4 records at the end of the penultimate week.[2] When two teams tied for first place, they would meet in a one-game playoff. The NFL did have a provision for this situation: "If all three teams win, tie, or lose, then a two-week playoff series begins next Sunday with Baltimore drawing a bye, San Francisco playing Detroit, and the winner meeting the Colts at Baltimore December 29."[3] Detroit and San Francisco both won while starting their backup quarterbacks (Tobin Rote and rookie John Brodie, respectively), but the Colts lost, meaning the additional playoff was not required.
12Joseph T. Labrum (ed.), The National Football League Record and Rules Manual: 1958, 39th Season. Bala-Cynwyd, PA: National Football League, 1958; back cover.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
