Jack Shapiro and the 1929 Stapletons

Jack Shapiro was born in Brooklyn in 1907 to a Jewish immigrant family from Russia. He played college football at NYU as a 5’1″ halfback — the smallest college player in the country at the time — and earned a tryout with the Staten Island Stapletons (one of the NFL’s original 1925-32 New York franchises) in fall 1929.

He played a single regular-season game on October 6, 1929 against the Frankford Yellow Jackets and never appeared in another. The Stapletons cut him after one game; no team picked him up. He worked as a Brooklyn pharmacist for the rest of his life, never sought publicity for his record, and only confirmed his appearance in interviews late in life. He died in 2001 at age 94 — the last surviving player from the 1929 NFL season.

The modern record: Trindon Holliday

The shortest NFL player of the post-1970-merger era is Trindon Holliday, a 5’5″ return specialist out of LSU who was drafted in the 6th round of the 2010 NFL Draft by the Houston Texans. He played for Houston, Denver, the Giants, and the Steelers between 2010 and 2014, primarily as a kick and punt returner.

Holliday’s signature game was the January 12, 2013 AFC Divisional playoff between Denver and Baltimore. He returned a punt 90 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter and a kickoff 104 yards for a touchdown in the third — the first player in NFL playoff history with both a 90+ yard punt return and a 100+ yard kickoff return TD in the same game. The Broncos lost 38-35 in double overtime.

Below 5'7" — the modern leaderboard

Beyond Holliday, NFL history’s other notably small players: Buddy Young (5’5″, 1947-55), Joey Yellen (5’6″), and JJ Moses (5’6″, Texans returner from 2002-06) all sit close to the modern minimum. Active rosters typically don’t field anyone under 5’7″ — partly because the demands of NFL collisions favor mass over speed at the margin, and partly because the position pipeline (track + return-game college specialists) has thinned in the past decade as kickoff returns have been deemphasized.

Wes Welker (5’9″) is the most-decorated short modern player. Andrew Beck (Broncos FB) and Tutu Atwell (Rams WR) are among current actives in the 5’7″-5’9″ range. The shortest active NFL player as of the 2024 season is Stephen Sullivan (Rams) at 5’7″ — and even he isn’t a regular starter.

Background facts cross-referenced with the Wikipedia article on Jack Shapiro (American football) and Pro-Football-Reference / Basketball-Reference public records.