1953 NFL season

The 1953 NFL season was the 34th regular season of the National Football League. The names of the American and National conferences were changed to the Eastern and Western conferences.

The season ended on December 27 with the NFL championship game in which the Detroit Lions defeated the Cleveland Browns for the second year in a row.

Draft
The 1953 NFL Draft was held on January 22, 1953, at Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. With the first pick, the San Francisco 49ers selected defensive end Harry Babcock from Georgia.

Major rule changes
The definition of illegal motion was clarified so that a player moving directly forward at the snap was to be considered illegally in motion.

Enfranchisement of the Baltimore Colts
A Baltimore, Maryland, group headed by Carroll Rosenbloom was granted an NFL team, and was awarded the holdings of the defunct Dallas Texans organization. The new team was named the Baltimore Colts, after the unrelated previous team that folded after the season. While the first Colts franchise used a green and silver color scheme, the new Colts franchise retained the blue and white color scheme used by the Texans.

The 12 teams of this NFL season continued for the rest of the decade of the 1950s. These would become known as "old-line" teams as they predated the 1960 launch of the American Football League (AFL).

Conference races
For 1953, the former American and National Conferences of the previous three seasons were renamed the Eastern and Western Conferences, respectively. The Western race saw the Rams beat the Lions twice, in Detroit (October 18) and in L.A. (November 1), and at the midway point in Week Six, the Rams were a full game ahead in the race. In Week Seven (November 8), the 49ers beat the Rams 31–27, and the Lions won their game, to put all three teams at 5–2–0. In Week Eight, the Lions beat Green Bay 14–7, while the Rams were tied 24–24 by the Cards, and the 49ers lost 23–21 to the Browns. As both teams won their remaining games, San Francisco was always a game behind Detroit.

In the Eastern, the Cleveland Browns won their first eleven games and led wire-to-wire, clinching a playoff spot by week 10. Their shot at a 12–0–0 regular season was spoiled by a 42–27 loss in the finale on December 13, and tarnished further by the championship game loss to the Lions two weeks later.

NFL Championship Game
Detroit 17, Cleveland 16 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit, on December 27, 1953

Attendance
A total of 2,164,585 fans attended the 72 regular season league games held in the 1953 season. Another 54,577 attended the league championship game, for a total attendance of 2,219,162, or 30,399 per game.

Eleven of the 12 teams in the league reported profitable financial operations, with only the Chicago Cardinals losing money — with this franchise said to have reduced its red ink "drastically" from its 1952 operations.

Awards

 * UPI NFL Most Valuable Player – Otto Graham, Cleveland Browns

Offseason

 * Baltimore Colts: The new Colts team hired Keith Molesworth as their first head coach.
 * Chicago Cardinals: Joe Kuharich was replaced by Joe Stydahar.

In-season

 * Green Bay Packers: Gene Ronzani resigned after 10 games. Hugh Devore and Ray McLean served as co-head coaches for the rest of the season.

Stadium changes

 * The new Baltimore Colts move into Memorial Stadium, the home of the previous Colts team.
 * The Green Bay Packers home games in Milwaukee moved from Marquette Stadium to Milwaukee County Stadium.
 * Shibe Park, the home of the Philadelphia Eagles, was renamed Connie Mack Stadium.

Additional sources

 * NFL Record and Fact Book (ISBN 1-932994-36-X)
 * NFL History 1951–1960 (Last accessed December 4, 2005)
 * Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League (ISBN 0-06-270174-6)