The West Coast Offends -- and Montana Takes Advantage

The obvious thought is that the 49ers were fortunate to have five great quarterbacks in Frankie Albert, Y.A. Tittle, John Brodie, Steve Young, and Joe Montana. But when you consider that any of these quarterbacks could have been the starting quarterback or at least #1a for the all-time Chicago Bears or several other teams, the question shifts. The question becomes, "Why?" Why were the 49ers the recipients of all this bounty and not the Bears, or the Steelers, or the Lions, or a half-dozen other teams? It can't be entirely because the personnel was there; it has to be because someone coaching the 49ers, or several people, had new and better ways of playing football involving the quarterback.


As we’ve mentioned earlier, rarely does a professional football team pull off a successful 180-degree flip[1]. Change tends to be incremental and evolutional. Offensive genius attracts offensive genius. Frankie Albert hired Red Hickey in 1954. Why? Because Albert related well to offensive minds and Hickey had a good one. Never mind that Hickey was a bootlegger and Hickey was more of a free-thinker. The basic idea – moving the ball down the field via the pass – was the same.

The problem with the Niners through the ‘60s and early ‘70s was that they had defensive coaches coaching a basically offensive team. Bill Walsh brought innovative offense back to a team that thrived on offensive innovation. The dark years after Walsh, Seifert and Mariucci were the result of defensive thinking applied to an offensive team -- which is why Niners fans ought to be so excited about Jim Harbaugh. He is the right person to coach the Niners, and the Niners are the right team for him to coach.

So taking this thinking back to Joe Montana, it’s not that the 49ers were fortunate to have so many great quarterbacks. They were fortunate to have so many great offensive minds to work through their quarterbacks to produce results.

It’s definitely more this way than the other. The records of the five QBs listed above when they weren’t with the Niners was 63-59-4 (counting Albert’s year in Canada and Young’s with the L.A. Express); take out Tittle’s years with the Giants and the record drops to 31-46-1.

Montana would probably not have been a Hall of Fame quarterback had he landed with the Bears, the Steelers, the Cardinals, the Bills, or a score of similarly defense-minded teams. While I realize many football fans view Montana with a reverence approaching Joe DiMaggio in baseball or John Havlicek in basketball, the reality is more pedestrian: He was more lucky to be a Niner than the Niners were to have him as a quarterback.

 
[1]So all you folks who think that Robert Griffin III is going to transform the Redskins into the 21st-century Niners might want to hold off for a couple of years.

The West Coast Offends

One of the things people get wrong with the San Francisco 49ers is the whole West Coast-offense thing.

The way the legend goes is that Bill Walsh came to town with a phenomenal new scheme called the West Coast offense and revolutionized a moribund attack and suddenly it was okay to say bad words on records. Or something like that.

What a bunch of rubbish.

The fact is that the San Francisco 49ers have always run a West Coast offense, in one or another of the ways that term has come to be defined. The West Coast offense out of the shotgun? Buck Shaw and Frankie Albert ran that in 1951. Five-yard dumpoffs to the running backs? That's how Hugh McElhenny got to Canton. McElhenny finished his career with 264 receptions. The only contemporary running backs who caught as many passes were Bobby Mitchell and Frank Gifford, and they spent most of their careers as actual flankers. Big possession receivers? San Fran had two of the best in six-foot-three R.C. Owens and six-foot-four Bernie Casey. Passing to the tight end? Dave Parks led the league in receptions in 1965, with John Brodie passing and Jack Christiansen in charge.

Brodie was a prototypical West Coast offense quarterback: short drop, quick release, short patterns, limited mobility. Brodie led the league in passing yards three times. He led the league in yards per completion once -- 1961, a complete aberration of a season.

From the time the 'Niners entered the league until 2002, the last good year of their run, the San Francisco offense was always more multidimensional than most, always full of backs who could catch, always willing to use the short pass as a surrogate run.

Like television or the iPhone, the West Coast offense was less revolutionary than evolutionary, a successful synthesis of elements that had already been tried. The only difference between the West Coast offense and the Run 'n' Shoot  is that the West Coast offense worked in the NFL.

The Run 'n' Shoot might have worked in the NFL; there was nothing inherently flawed about it. All it needed to succeed was the right coach and the proper personnel. The West Coast offense had Bill Walsh, and after a couple of years it had the people to make it work. But perhaps most importantly, it had a team used to such stuff.

Of Course, You Know This Means WAR

Yeah, I’m back. Don’t get all excited or anything.

The hot stat in baseball is replacement value. It’s expressed in different ways, including WAR, or “wins above replacement,” but its basic premise is this: if you replaced player X on your team with a statistically average player, would he perform better or worse than the player he replaced – and by extension, would the team be better or worse?

Of course, this being a baseball statistic it has all kinds of tendrils – would the team be better offensively? Defensively? Would he hit in the clutch? Would he get on base? Would he throw out base-stealers? Would he give up the gopher ball in late-and-close situations? – but the idea of replacement value really boils down to how close a given player comes to the norm.

Replacement value is semi-self-fulfilling. Successful teams have more above-the-norm players, but it’s not clear whether those teams are successful because they have more above-the-norm players, or more of those teams’ players are above the norm because they’re on successful teams. Success begets performance and vice versa, and don’t forget: “Mother and Child Reunion” was first a chicken-and-egg dish served in a Chinese restaurant.

Football being less stat-driven than baseball (though not for lack of want-to), replacement value is not the hot topic it is on the diamond. Replacement value is less valuable in football because three-quarters of an NFL roster is on the field for one-third of a game or more. Many of those players are going to be at or below replacement value. It’s unavoidable. It’s the definition of the mean in a  world where all the children are above average.

(With all the situational offenses and defenses sometimes you’re better-served looking at the replacement value within a position on a given team – moving from the designated run-stuffer to the designated pass-rusher on defense or looking at the first-down back versus the third-down back. One of the reasons the Giants are so good is that Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw are both above replacement. Ditto for Osi Umenyiora and Jason Pierre-Paul.)

In football, replacement value is good for answering tough questions at the top of the pyramid. Who’s better – Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? How can you tell?

The baseball answer to that, delivered from the pulpit of replacement value, is to take Manning and Brady away from their teams, replace them with a player whose replacement value is at the norm, and see what happens.

That’s a loaded question. Take Albert Pujols out of the St. Louis lineup and there’s an Albert Pujols-shaped hole that can't be filled by Matt Holliday or Lance Berkman. The Cardinals still have to bat nine; they can slip in a Skip Schumaker and go into run-manufacturing mode, but it’s a partial transformation at best. They’re not going to go all bunt-y and start running Berkman like he was Michael Bourn.

Contrast that with football. The most crushing blow to an offense in 2011 outside of Peyton Manning occurred when the Vikings lost Adrian Peterson. How did the ‘Queens react? By not running the same offense at all. Joe Webb got the keys, the passing attack flipped around, the running attack was stood on its head, and while it wasn’t more successful it wasn’t markedly less successful. The point is that given resources and resourcefulness it can be done.

Indianapolis, of course, did none of those things, because it wasn’t built to do them. Joseph Addai and Donald Brown are running backs whose chief asset is not running the ball 30 times a game. They’re the Trevor Hoffman fastball, effective not because it’s used but because it might be used the next pitch … or maybe the pitch after that. The offense built around Peyton Manning could not be rebuilt around anyone else, certainly not Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky, or Kerry Collins, and the defense wasn’t good enough to deliver a win when the offense couldn’t outscore the opposition. So on the surface you’d guess that Peyton Manning had the greatest replacement value of any player in recent times.

Not so fast; we still have the Brady-Manning question to answer. Why did the Patriots not disintegrate when they lost Tom Brady in 2008, while the Colts went kablooey when they lost Manning in 2011? Defense is a big part of the answer, and having a defensive coach as head coach. The Indianapolis defense was shredded by injuries in 2011; New England in 2008 had a great defense, with Richard Seymour, Vince Wilfork, Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Rodney Harrison, Jerrod Mayo, and Adalius Thomas all playing at a high level. They weren’t the 16-0 defense of the year before, but they were a top-10 defense, and the best defense the Pats have had since.

Even so, the offense was the league’s sixth-best unit, with the same crappy running game that New England has always had. Good receivers to be sure – Wes Welker and Randy Moss – but not really better than Wayne and Garcon and Dallas Clark in Indy. So you think maybe Matt Cassel was better than Curtis Painter?

Maybe a little, but maybe not that much. If Tom Brady’s replacement value is significantly lower than Peyton Manning’s, replacing Brady with Cassel doesn’t hurt nearly as much as replacing Manning with Painter-slash- Collins-slash- Orlovsky. So we come back to the original conclusion: Manning is better than Brady.

Yes, to the extent that his replacement value is higher. You may want Brady over Manning in a big game, and that’s your right. Replacement value doesn’t go there.

All of which is the long way ‘round to the big question: What player is/was the most indispensable to his team?

The simplest way to look at this is to examine the change in record from the year before the player left to the year he left, and then if he went to a new team the difference between the year before the player came and the year he came. A couple of simple change equations, acknowledging that the loss of one player does not define any team’s season.

Let’s work with the top 50 players of all time according to Pro Football Reference, and let’s look at changes that occurred in the meat of that player’s career, if that’s possible.

It gets dicey. Carl Eller and Johnny Unitas changed teams at the tail-end of their careers, when they were close to being replacement-level players. That’s not the same as Marshall Faulk changing teams after three years or T.O. being dealt to the Eagles in the prime of his career.

This little work is split in two, with a list of players who went from one team to a different team this time, and a list of players who didn’t go anywhere saved for the next episode, along with a big wrapup.

Now, the list of players who switched teams.

Lest you think the transition from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers was smooth and productive, guess again. The Packers got more than 50 percent worse; the Jets got 125 percent better. And the QB aside, the Favre-led team was nearly indistinguishable from the Rodgers-led team; it wasn’t like the defense collapsed or the offense was gutted by injuries. Favre at that stage of his career was that much better than Rodgers at that stage of his career. It was a big difference.

The difference between Warren Moon and Billy Joe Tolliver was likewise huge. Unlike the calculated move Green Bay made from the old pro (Favre) to his successor (Rodgers), Houston went from a productive star, to a 28-year-old journeyman who could serve as the poster boy for sub-replacement-level quarterbacks. If Curtis Painter were older, less intelligent, and longer off the tee he would be Billy Joe Tolliver. Given that, a precipitous decline was inevitable.

Interesting stuff abounds in these numbers. Love him or hate him, T.O. made the Eagles better and the ‘Niners worse – though he had the opposite effect when he went from Philly to Dallas three years later. Randy Moss, meanwhile, has had the opposite effect everywhere he's gone. Randy Moss is a player whose teams get worse when he arrives. That doesn't mean teams aren't good when Moss arrives, or that they don't prosper at some point during his tenure. They just don't get better when he arrives – and they get better when he leaves.

You can see how two safeties, Paul Krause and Emlen Tunnell, stabilized young defenses, and how three great defensive backs – Rod Woodson, Ronnie Lott, and Herb Adderley – were unable to do much for established defenses.

You can also see that L.T. is a good player. The Chargers may have underestimated how good – or perhaps they simply forgot that addition by subtraction is still subtraction. How could the Chargers without Tomlinson possibly be a better team than the Chargers with him?

And then there's Marshall Faulk. When he went from the Colts to the Rams he pulled off the amazing combination of making his new team nine games better, while the team he left got 10 games better. There has never been an NFL trade that made each team that much better.

This is good, but there's still the Peyton Manning situation to consider. And we will ... next time. 

And I promise there will be a next time.

Better, Not Best

In light of Alex Smith finally seeing the aforementioned twirling bright object, a brief appraisal of the relative merits of the 'Niners' greatest quarterbacks, Joe Montana and Steve Young.

You ready? Here it is: Montana is the best quarterback in 'Niners' history, but Young is better.

There's no question that Steve Young is a measurably better QB than Joe Montana. Measurably better. Young is fifth all-time in yards per passing attempt. Montana is 23rd. Young is second in passer rating. Montana is eighth. Young is 18th in postwar player value, meaning he was the 18th best player at any position to have played since 1950. Montana is 31st. Montana is 24th in passing yards/game while Young is 42nd, but Young has a better completition percentage, a better interception percentage and a better TD percentage.

By any measure of the things you want a quarterback to do -- complete passes, gain yards, throw TD passes, and avoid interceptions -- Young is better. So why is he second fiddle to Montana and destined to always be second fiddle to Montana? Because Montana got there first. Montana threw the pass that led to The Catch, and he led the 'Niners to their first Super Bowl win. The fact that he's a Notre Dame kid doesn't hurt, either. You can't quantify it, nor should you try.

The gulf in popular perception is so wide that it can't even be bridged by their vastly different post-football paths, where Young has shown himself to be one of the most thoughtful and well-spoken athletes to ever have received mutliple concussions, while Montana treads a line just north of Pete Rose-dom.

It's unfortunate that Young will always be 1A to Montana's 1 because it needlessly degrades Young's substantial accomplishments, but it makes a case for what "better" really means.

Maynard, Saner

About a year ago, in writing a segment on the New York Jets, I wrote the following on Don Maynard:

“So how good was Don Maynard really? He had an HOF QB throwing to him, yet he was only a first-team All-AFL pick once, never all-NFL anything, and only a four-time AFL All-Star. Not to put too fine a point on it, but through most of Maynard's best years he wasn't even the best wide receiver on his team. George Sauer was a four-time AFL All-Star and a first-team All-AFL pick twice before walking away from the game after six years to wear a turtleneck and channel Tom Wolfe. Maynard was there for the Al Dorow years and hung around through most of the Namath era and was rewarded with an HOF bust, though he was clearly inferior to Sauer when the two played together. Maynard had speed and hands but was not a disciplined route-runner. Sauer had speed and hands and ran routes. Maynard was good and durable but clearly not great. In that respect he resembles Harold Jackson or Isaac Curtis, two receivers who are close to the Hall of Fame but not in, and not likely to get in.”

Permit me the luxury of reconsidering.

Certain aspects of the above statement are indisputable. Maynard was not well thought of during his career. For half of his career peak he was the most productive player on a woefully unproductive team. He was a headstrong west Texas cowboy adrift in New York City, continually criticized for running undisciplined routes and having so-so hands. (“A stubborn nonconformist who fumbled,” was Sports Illustrated’s take.) When Joe Namath arrived, it was the passes that were spectacular, not so much the pass-catcher.

But if you accept the notion that Don Maynard was the overrated split end catching passes from the overrated quarterback Joe Namath, then the question is, “How bad was Don Maynard? Otis Taylor bad? Gary Garrison bad? Dee Mackey bad? Jerry LeVias bad?”

Fortunately, there are ways to answer that question.

First, I took all the Hall of Fame wide receivers from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, plus a few others, and broke down their stats. I focused on four things: yards per catch first, then receptions, then touchdowns, and finally yards.

The order’s important. Since I don’t have a stat that measures targets, yards per catch is the only measure of a receiver’s effectiveness. A quarterback passes the ball in a calculated risk that he will gain a significant amount of yards, mitigating those instances where the passes falls incomplete and gains no yards. (Or, to revisit the Woody Hayes Perspective On Passing, those instances where the second bad thing happens and the quarterback throws an interception.) A quarterback that completes two-thirds of his passes for an average of 10 yards per completion has reached a state of perpetual offensive motion. He could conceivably move up and down the field at will. If a given receiver delivers 15 yards a catch compared to an average receiver’s 10, he’s much more efficient and therefore much more valuable.

Here’s what I mean. Lance Alworth averaged 19.5 yards per catch during the peak of his career. Lionel Taylor averaged 12.7. Taylor had to catch 50 percent more passes than Alworth to match Bambi’s production. Not surprisingly, Alworth was and is considered to be the more valuable of the two receivers.

You could argue that by catching more passes for fewer yards per catch Taylor was actually more productive, since he kept more drives going, but the counter to that is first, Alworth also caught more balls per year, and second, Alworth also had twice as many touchdowns. Taylor was nowhere near as productive as Alworth, and that’s why Taylor is not prime HOF material.

The other reason to look at yards per catch is that it takes the quarterback out of the equation to an extent. Maybe Lionel Taylor’s production suffered because Frank Tripucka and an assortment of dead-armed sphere-chuckers were entrusted with getting him the ball – but, hey, every time someone got Taylor the ball he churned out fewer yards than most tight ends. Sure, it could be that the Broncos of the ‘60s ran a lot of underneath routes because those were the only routes the quarterback could throw, but the production of Al Denson and others suggests otherwise. Lionel Taylor simply wasn’t much of a RAC guy. If you’re looking for a semi-contemporary contemporary, think Art Monk. If you prefer a contemporary who’s truly contemporary, try Hines Ward.

Receptions are important because they show how many times a receiver was achieving that big RAC. Alworth is the top receiver of the ‘60s because he caught as many passes as anyone for more yards and touchdowns than anyone. Conversely, it took Bob Hayes extra time to make it to Canton because he only caught 45 passes a year in his best years, even though his RAC and TDs were just a tick behind Alworth’s. Also remember that the pass was still largely a gambler’s play in the ‘60s; the notion of the pass as a tool for extending possession was just being formulated and accepted.

Finally, touchdowns reflect the ultimate goal of throwing passes and gaining yards: winding up in the end zone. Not to bash Lionel Taylor, who happens to be one of my favorite players from the AFL days, but five TDs a season on top of everything else pretty much deep-sixes his chances of getting to Canton. On the other hand, anything between eight and 10 TDs sustained over a seven-to-10-year career gets you noticed.

So enough of the preliminaries. Where does Don Maynard rank? Let’s go to the chart:

Well, maybe Maynard doesn’t suck after all. Taken in the highly appropriate context of where he sits with his contemporaries and measured on the basis of his best years, Maynard comes out second only to Alworth among ‘60s receivers. Oh, and he absolutely blows the doors off of George Sauer.

(Just so you know, we went apples-to-apples here. We compared continuous peak years, throwing out the tentative first years and the on-the-skids last years. These figures show what you might reasonably expect from these receivers when they were in the prime of their careers.)

This chart does no favors to the receivers who aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Harold Jackson, for all his longevity, never got much better than this. Jack Snow, who isn’t on the chart, posted some great yards-per-catch numbers but just never caught enough balls. Think of him as a poor man’s Bob Hayes, with a guest shot on The Beverly Hillbillies. The same, minus the Hollywood, applies to the underrated Carroll Dale. Ten years later they could have been Cliff Branch. Otis Taylor had decent RAC numbers, but again, he was never the target the way Maynard or Alworth was.

There are a few mitigating circumstances to consider, but not many. Hayes and Maynard were very much alike in the sense that they were old-school bomb receivers, more of a piece with Tom Fears and Harlon Hill than the Charlie Joiners and Jerry Rices to come. They were not modern receivers, but no one said they had to be.

Considering durability, competition and production, Don Maynard is one of the best three wide receivers of the ‘60s. Forgive me for suggesting otherwise.

Curtis Martin: The Malcontent's Moment

Most of the time running backs coming out of college with bad reps fully justify those reps. In fact, they often go out of their way to justify their reps. Lawrence Phillips? Choking the woman in the bar was sheer genius. Ricky Williams? You had a feeling the NFL wasn't ready for Peter Tosh, and you were right. Cedric Benson? His only faux pas was not getting arrested in grand style, in Chicago, on a Great Lake. Maurice Clarett? Rashaan Salaam? Brent Moss? Brent Fullwood? Duane Thomas? Joe Don Looney? The defense rests.

Ah, but ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution calls Curtis Martin. Martin was a first-round talent drafted coming out of Pitt, but was drafted in the third round because of concerns over his work ethic. You know where those concerns usually wind up: Larry Kinnebrew. Well, it never happened. Instead, Martin became respected for his diligent work habits and overall intelligence -- the anti-Phillips, so to speak.

Arguably the best NFL free-agent signing ever and definitely one of the top five free-agent signings in New York sports history, Martin signed a big-money deal with the Jets so he could stick with Bill Parcells, and he delivered seven straight 1,000-yard seasons. He's the Jets' all-time rushing leader, the star of this year's Canton class, and a quality individual, but consider all the damage he's done. Thanks to Martin, drafting a malcontent like Travis Henry makes sense. On the other hand, that's why God made Cincinnati start with "sin."

Charley Ane One

The role of first-ins is misunderstood. People sometimes think if the first person to do something or be something had not done or been it, then nobody would have. For instance, if Alexander Graham Bell had not shouted "Watson, come here" into a mess of steel reeds we'd all be restricted to text-messaging on our Blackberrys.

Actually, first-in is more a matter of circumstance than being so far out there that you're off the GPS. Bell did the best job of summarizing the existing science and wrangled a patent for the lot. Fact is, several people not named Bell have a legitimate case to be designated as the Inventor of the Telephone. The problem is, of course, what to do with all the postage stamps in all the stamp albums.

Jackie Robinson was Jackie Robinson, but if there hadn't been a Jackie Robinson there'd quickly have been a Roy Campanella or a Monte Irvin. Much is made of the fact that Jackie Robinosn had the perfect temperment to break the color barrier, but Irvin or Campanella would have sufficed just fine.

Charley Ane was the first Polynesian pro-footballer, and everyone from Haloti Ngata back to Mosi Tatupu should give a nod in his direction, but if there hadn't been a Charlie Ane there'd have been someone else, as soon as there was someone who made sense. You can always make a case that sure, colleges should have done a better job recruiting American Samoa and yeah, the NFL should have made a better effort to scout the Pacific Rim, but heck, Minnesota was lucky if it could track down the best kid in the Iron Range every year and the NFL was too busy overlooking Otis Taylor to be bothered with Polynesia.

It wasn't conscious exclusion; it just happened, and it's still happening. Stanford doesn't get the best halfback in Guinea-Bissau, and the NFL's scouting presence in the Falkland Islands is mediocre at best. Just count your blessings that Charlie Ane was discovered in Hawaii and got to go to USC and was scouted by the Lions and got a chance, because he was a fantastic lineman, whether at center or tackle.

HOFtime

Now that we're through the all-time playdowns and in the midst of that sleepy time of year, I thought I'd throw out the names of some non-Hall of Famers for your consideration.

Are these guys Canton-worthy? Depends about the part of Canton you're talking about, and whether you really mean Canton, Ohio, or The Huge, Stinking Chinese City Formerly Known As Canton. But they deserve to be in one of those conversations, alongside the moo goo gai pan.

Here you go.

Bobby Dillon: Just because Sammy Baugh and Don Hutson could play D-back doesn't mean it was easy, not with the Messrs. Fears and Hirsch and Lavelli and Speedie bearing down on you and the position itself going through full-on puberty. Through the mid-'50s, when the Packers' front seven consisted of Hawg Hanner and Clayton Tonnemaker flanked by large cardboard cutouts, Bobby Dillion was supporting Val Joe Walker, Jim Psaltis, Veryl Switzer, and Clarence Self in the defensive backfield. By any measure Dillion had his own work cut out for him, yet he excelled -- four times All-Pro, five times Pro Bowl. On a better team this was Canton material. On the Packers of the mid-'50s it was self-preservation.

Steve Tasker: If a healthy disregard for sanity is a prerequisite for playing special teams, Steve Tasker's disregard was Jack LaLanne healthy. It was selling carrot juicers to all the other special-teams' guys disregards. This was fortunate for Tasker, as there are few jobs not being held by North Koreans where disregarding sanity pays so well. Tasker was the Kim Jong Il of the special-teams' world, not because he came to work in a Hongqi V12 or launched pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Vai Sikahema, but because he didn't give a rip what western civilization said, he was going to disembowel Elbert Shelley if it was his last act on earth, and damn the U.N. sanctions. Such miscreance is usually only found on SpikeTV, but it got the dude seven Pro Bowl appearances, and if they ever figure that screaming down the field 10 times a game like a candidate for the rubber room is enough to get you immortalized a short drive away from The Rubber City, Tasker is so there.

Jim David: At some point with the Detroit Lions' defensive backfield you have to ask how much of it was the reputation and how much was the players. From 1949 to 1967 the Lions had at least one All-Something D-back. From 1952 to 1963 they had two or more. Now granted, the Lions essentially defined modern D-back philosophy, and granted, the Lions stuck some tremendous players in their D-backfields. But was Jim David All-Pro for six straight seasons in the '50s because he was that good, or because the system was that advanced? With the exception of Night Train Lane, none of the Lions' D-backs played much anywhere else, so it's hard to judge. There's definitely something to the system, however. Other teams that followed it, most notably the Lombardi Packers, churned out All-Pros and HOFers, though never to the extent of the Lions. It's like the Lions discovered something that no one else could figure out or find for a decade. It's perplexing, and it really took the AFL to bring pro football around to something the Lions had known since 1951.

Dave Robinson: Three Pro Bowls, four times all-something, could match Herb Adderley stride-for-stride in a straight-line race … based on athletic ability alone, Dave Robinson would be the all-time-great Packer linebacker you'd pick first -- and then your team would be mediocre because Ray Nitschke played like a guy who missed his appointment with the exorcist. But Dave Robinson certainly had it all.

Neil Smith: Lest you think I'm just Jackson Pollock splash-painting with football words, this thing about the strength of a team resting in its lines really exists. You can prove it using a spreadsheet and the simplest of analytical tools: your brain. Go to pro-football-reference.com. Call up the page that lists current teams and their all-time records. Copy it and dump it into an Excel spreadsheet, then eliminate all the extraneous stuff, such as the all-time leading receivers for the various teams. Sure, there’s some hungover eyebrow-raising to be done at the revelation that Eric Martin is still the Saints' all-time leading receiver, but that only proves that records truly are made to be broken. Once the non-essentials have been banished to Deleteville, sort the teams by won-loss percentage, with the winningest teams at the top. You should wind up with a spreadsheet that starts with the Chicago Bears and ends with the Houston Texans. (It's not a straight oldest-to-youngest search, thanks to those Terry Feltons of the football world, Detroit and ChiStlAz.) Now, go though the spreadsheet and identify the part of each team that has historically been the strongest -- QB, RB, O-line, D-line, LB, DB,WR, special teams. Do that and you wind up with nine of the 10 best teams characterized by at least one dominant line -- and the teams have been able to perpetuate those lines over time and changes in personnel, rules, game play, and coaching staffs. You can win some games with a great QB, about as many with a great RB, proportionally less with great pass-catchers and D-backs. But you ain't perpetuating nothin' unless you're committed to building powerhouse lines every season, regardless of coach or quarterback. And while Kansas City isn't the winningest team out there, its whirpool runneth over with really solid D-linemen like Neil Smith -- a stout run-stuffer, a sack machine, and very, very comparable to Buck Buchanan. If you're wondering what a perennially great team is made of, here's your answer: Neil Smith. Four Neil Smiths, ideally.

Tom Sestak: By all accounts Sestak, who died young, was an absolute monster. His coach, Lou Saban, said Sestak was "one of the best I've ever seen, on any field, in any league ... for strength, interior pass rush, ability to read offensive keys, instinct to fight off traps, and raw courage." His knees were goulash but his upper body was like the palisades, and he could one-arm-tackle anyone, even bruisers like Jim Nance. The nearest thing to Sestak in today's game are Minnesota's Williamses, but Sestak was better. And less heralded, but that's Buffalo.

Maxie Baughan: This is a head-scratcher. You don't figure, do you, that the NFL is holding down Maxie Baughan because he slept with an assistant coach's wife when he was head coach at Cornell? Isn't that what assistant coaches (and their wives) are for? But it must be that, because there are a bunch of HOFers besides Trippi and Hornung with worse credentials than Mad Max. Consider that Baughan was All-Something nine times out of 10 in the Decade of the Linebacker, when teams finally concluded that, hey, it's pretty neat to have a guy who runs up into the hole and tackles Tucker Fredrickson for a loss and runs back and nails Aaron Thomas in the ribs when Gary Wood overthrows him. Nine times out of 10 for Baughan beats Dave Wilcox's seven, which is not the same thing as Baughan being better than Wilcox. If Baughan had laid down these numbers playing the middle instead of the outside he'd have been in Canton 20 years ago, because the Decade of the Linebacker was all about the middle. Just because Sam Huff was miked and Ray Nitschke had a steel plate in his head and Dick Butkus screamed at people and Tommy Nobis was the most fought-over No. 1 draft pick ever middle linebackers got an aura in the '60s, even though they were playing a position that five years earlier centers played in their free time. That stinks for Baughan, who really was a corker.

Bill Forester: Bill Forester may have been better than Ray Nitschke. Contemporary measurements say so; All-Pros are three-to-one in favor of Forester, and Forester has a 4-3 edge in Pro Bowls. Forester doesn't have as many rings and he spent more years playing nose tackle, of all things, on rotten teams, but he was Lombardi's first choice for defensive captain over Nitschke. Let's call it a draw then, except for one thing: Nitschke's one of the all-time greats and Forester nuzzles up to Brian Noble in the Packer Hall of Fame. Fairly unfair, in other words.

Alex Karras: The case is clearer with Karras, who deservedly or not served a one-year suspension for gambling in 1963, along with Paul Hornung. Gambling has always been the big stop stick in the road for halls of fame, and Karras hit it full-on – though, it must be noted, it didn't stop his partner in alleged crime. But with Karras, there was also Paper Lion, and the movie where he punched out the horse, and the other movie where he played a gay bodyguard, and the goofy TV series where he wore an apron, and, and ... and the lesson here, kiddies, is that if you want to have your cake and eat it too, relax, be patient, and always remember to play for Vince Lombardi. Think about this, though: At the time of their suspensions, what would have been the over on who would have the longer acting career: the curly-haired Golden Boy with the dimple, or the brick-shaped, stolid Greek? Gyro Boy’s upset win is the Jets-over-Colts of football-to-acting transitions.

Winston Hill: Hill was an accomplished tennis player, so ostensibly he was better than Franco Harris, whose tennis game was not much different from his football game (meaning that, yes, he sent it out of bounds every chance he got). Just the mere fact that Hill played tennis tells you something about him: He was very nimble as offensive linemen go, even by '60s standards. Hill was listed at 6-4 and 270 but played around 250. He made all-Star games eight times, or about four times more than he would have made it in a unified NFL, but he was probably one of the 10 best AFL linemen. The fact that he was able to stand up to the Bob Lillys and Bubba Smiths after unification tells you how good he was. And you'd best stay away from his overhead smash.

Packers-Bears: The Pretend End of the Pretend Road

At last, to paraphrase my minivan, we have arrived at our destination. Route guidance will cease. Enjoy your stay.

I can’t remember why I decided to pursue an all-time-greatest-teams playdown. Oh, wait; I do. I had spent many months analyzing NFL teams and constructing all-time lineups as part of the process of writing a book called Jim and Kit’s Big Book of All-Time Football Lineups (note to self: whack the title), and once I had a sufficient supply of lineups and snide Leo Sugar references I felt duty-bound to do something with them, and if the book wasn’t happening the playdown was a reasonable second choice.

I suppose I could have just thrown a bracket up there and given it the Colin Cowherd treatment and run an illegal gambling operation and had everyone in the office chip in a twenty to play, but that’s not how I operate. Long and overblown, baby, with absolutely no income potential: that’s Big Kitty Style.

So I started this thing on May 20, 2011, with a running account of Chargers-Chiefs, and almost 235 days later to the day here I am, playing out a post-Pro Bowl finale featuring the Bears and Packers banging leather helmet against leather helmet in a commercial-free, flyover-less, non-Kevin Harlaned paean to the wonders of football longevity.

Let’s nuke the hecklers right away, because Lord knows I love explaining once again how the two overwhelming favorites to get here got here.

Forget that one of these teams is in my backyard and the other is just over the fence. The Bears are here because over 90-plus years they’ve assembled more high-quality linemen on both sides of the ball than anyone. Anyone; not even close. The Bears also have four Hall of Fame running backs, five Hall of Fame linebackers, the two greatest kick returners ever, and pro football’s very own Babe Ruth, all coached by the guy who gave the NFL CPR for a decade.

The Packers are here because it snowed.

Well, more than that. The Packers are here because they have four great quarterbacks, three tremendous wide receivers, six HOF running backs, the highest-rated defensive player ever (Reggie White), a slew of HOF linemen and three HOFers in the secondary, with Vince Lombardi driving the bus.

And because it snowed.

The Packers and Bears are 1-2 in all-time wins, and first and fourth in all-time winning percentage. They are 1-2 in Hall of Famers, and between them they have 22 World Championships – almost one-fourth of all NFL titles. Lest you think it’s merely a function of longevity, the other team that was there at practically the beginning, the ChiStlAz Cardinals, has two NFL championships and no Super Bowl wins, and the rest of the pre-1935 teams – the Lions, Eagles, Redskins, and Giants – have been the Pimlico clay to the Packers and Bears’ Secretariat.

Oh, there are differences. The Packers were never coached by anyone as large as Abe Gibron, though Mike Sherman's astonishing paunch-that-launched-a-thousand-ships wins extra points for its shock value. The Bears peaked earlier than the Packers; the team has two championships in the last 50 years, versus the Packers’ five. Contemporary history totally favors the Packers, notwithstanding certain moments from Devin Hester and Jay Cutler’s chins, but we’re talking history history, and that has the teams in nearly a dead heat.

There were other worthy candidates for the finals; the Colts, Rams and – yes, J.B. – the Vikings all could claim positions. Teams like the Cowboys, Chiefs and 49ers offered intriguing possibilities and upset potential. If scores of years and hundreds of games weren’t weighing down the results, there might have been more upsets. But statistical probability grinds a straight path through this canyon, and at the end of the path you find Bears-Packers. There will be no more explanations.

Instead, a pregame tale of the tape. The Bears have managed to turn an impressive historical assortment of offensive talent into a subpar historical offense. If you index their offensive rankings on a year-by-year basis the Bears have a historical offensive ranking of 89, against a baseline of 100. Conversely, the Packers have an indexed offensive ranking of 111 – exactly as much above the norm as the Bears are below the norm.

Defensively it’s a different story. The Bears are far above the norm, as you’d expect – their indexed rating is 118 – but the Packers are at 113. On pretend paper, this is a game pitting a below-average-offensive/very-good-defensive team against a very-good-offensive/very-good-defensive team.

In that regard the pretend game is not much different from this week’s semi-pretend national-championship college-football game. It took about 10 minutes of watching LSU and Alabama this season to recognize that ‘Bama has a pretty good offense and a stellar defense, and LSU has a dysfunctional offense and an exceptional defense. Was there ever really any doubt that anything would happen in the Faux National Championship other than exactly what happened? I realize the endless weeks of buildup boosted the GNP by keeping 197 quasi-expert commentators employed through the holidays, but really. Step back, view things dispassionately, call it like you see it, and move on.

Leaving the world of real pretend national championships to return to the more comfortable yet lower-paying world of pretend pretend world championships, the crucial question is the eternal crucial question: How much weight do you give prewar performances, and how do you adequately weight the accomplishments of prewar players?

From 1921-41 the Packers were 163-65-18; the Bears were 177-62-30. The Packers are down 14 in the win column, but only down three in the loss column. That suggests some schedule-padding on the Bears’ part, not to mention a whole bunch of quasi-exhibitions ending in either scoreless ties or blowouts.

Yes, blowouts. The all-time Bears have scored 24,234 points. The all-time Packers have scored 24,975 points. However, if you want to start NFL time at 1946, the Bears have scored 18,973 points to the Packers’ 20,245. The Bears ran up the scores through the ‘20s, picking on the likes of the Akron Indians and the Louisville Colonels. The Packers had their games with the Racine Tornadoes of the football world but did proportionally less barnstorming than the Bears, holding down their numbers and creating an historical statistical dead heat that’s actually anything but.

Speaking to that point, the Bears have 16 HOFers who began their careers pre-war. The Packers have eight. The players can’t be thrown out because their accomplishments are legitimate, and they obviously outperformed their peers. But their contributions need to be discounted about 20 percent in this milieu to account for schedule-padding and generally inferior competition.

One note on that 20 percent discount: Almost every great lineman of the 1930s except for the centers Mel Hein and Alex Wojciehowicz played for the Bears, because when the NFL draft was instituted the Bears drafted linemen when almost every other team drafted skill-position players. The fact that the Bears had all the good linemen and were not flat-out dominant throughout the era suggests three things: the skill-position players were overrated, the offense was antiquated, and the great linemen may not have been all that great. You could discount these players – Fortmann, Stydahar, Kiesling, Musso, Turner -- 30 percent and not be overdoing it.

Outside of the dead-ball era, the difference between the two teams is one-seventh of a game per year – a dead heat record-wise, like we said, though inside that dead heat the Packers scored more points, won more championships, and played defense about as well, and the only reasonably good Bear quarterback, Sid Luckman, padded his stats during the war years. So you could read the tea leaves and say there’s a case for the Packers.

There’s also a case for the Bears. There’s the 1940 NFL Championship, the 1983 Bears, arguably one of best teams ever, and Walter Payton, Gale Sayers, and Dick Butkus – players who shifted the game’s tectonic plates.

We could find a dozen more reasons why this game is basically dead even, so we might as well play it out, knowing that there will eventually be a winner.

(This is not an empty declaration. Two years ago the championship game of the Australian Football League, that delightful mélange of volleyball, rugby, and fragmentation bomb, ended in a tie, so the next weekend they played another one. Imagine if you tried that with the Super Bowl. Al Michaels would blow a motherboard.)

The Packers kick off on a blustery 12-degree day at Soldier Field. Sayers runs the ball out to the 40, and the Bears immediately take advantage of the field position by running three plays for seven yards and punting.

The Packers get the ball, get a first down and nothing more, and kick back to the Bears. The Bears run five and kick back to the Packers, who go three-and-out and kick back to the Bears. The Bears gain ground steadily on these exchanges, moving their starting field position from their own 40 to the Green Bay 44.

The Bears pound the ball close to field-goal range, only to come away empty-handed when Reggie White strips the ball from Sid Luckman and Willie Davis returns the fumble to the Bears 34. At that point Starr goes to work methodically, using Forrest Gregg’s ability to neutralize Doug Atkins on the pass rush to connect on a series of short passes to Hornung, Canadeo, and Sterling Sharpe. That softens the middle for Jim Taylor, who hammers it into the end zone from seven yards out, putting the Packers on top 7-0.

The Bears get another great kickoff return – out to the Packer 48 – but do nothing with it, in the process pointing up the Bears’ major flaw, something that had appeared in previous games but had always been subsumed by strong line play and good defense. Sid Luckman is an overrated quarterback – he’s one of two prewar QBs to start for an all-time team, and he ain’t no Sammy Baugh -- but beyond him the Bears have no quarterback, so he has to play. If he’s able to hand the ball off to Payton and Sayers most of the game and only throw the ball as a change of pace, he’s fine. But shut down the run and force the pass and Luckman has neither the skills nor the skill players to play effectively.

And that’s what happens here. White, Davis and Jordan (with help from Ray Nitschke) control the running game. Adderley, Woodson and Wood cover the receivers. On defense, the Bears aren’t quite strong enough in the D-line to put consistent pressure on the Packers’ quarterbacks (Brett Favre gets a couple of series after Bart Starr gets knocked woozy in the second quarter), and don’t have the D-backs to run with the receivers.

The result deteriorates like the grass at midfield. Pressed into a passing situation, Luckman throws a flare meant for Bill Hewitt right into the arms of Charles Woodson, who undercuts the route, breaks beautifully on the ball, and returns the pick to the Bears 35. The drive produces a Chester Marcol field goal – matched after a long return on the ensuing kickoff leads to a short drive for a three-pointer.

With the lid off the goal and the Bear mystique shattered, the Packers move right back down the field. This time it’s Favre, hooking up with Sharpe on a 24-yard catch-and-run and Hutson on a 45-yard post-corner route that puts the Packers up by two touchdowns.

The Bears are not equipped to play from behind. The Packers’ front line attacks the run with abandon and let their defensive backs handle their business – which they do without difficulty. Offensively, the Packers dial back the aggressiveness as gameday turns dark and blustery; they tack on a third-quarter field goal and withstand a very late Bears touchdown to prevail 20-10.

The stat sheet doesn’t have much to say. Taylor runs for 61 yards and a score. Hornung and McNally each catch four passes out of the backfield. Lofton has a couple of catches, Hutson catches five with a score, and Sharpe snags four.

Defensively, White has 2.5 sacks, Davis has 1.5, and designated pass rusher Ted Hendricks gets home once. In addition to Woodson’s pick, Bobby Dillon and Leroy Butler intercept Luckman, whose day is generally luckless.

Speaking of the Bears’ offense, their vaunted running attack doesn’t amount to much. Even with Bronko Nagurski leading the way, Payton can only manage 71 yards on 19 carries. Sayers is even less productive, with 59 yards rushing, though he does catch six passes for 81 yards. In fact, the passing yards are almost exclusively allocated from the tight end down; Harlon Hill’s two catches and Bill Hewitt’s three are hardly the stuff championships are made of.

So there you go. It pains me greatly to anoint the Green Bay Packers as the champions of the first-and-only Football With 1 Stick Gum all-time playdowns. Why does it annoy me? For those outside of the Packers’ sphere, it seems like hopeless homerism. For those inside the sphere, it’s the only possible outcome. And personally, I have a tremendous antipathy towards the Packers. When the Packers win it buoys the spirits of those around me, and has that pleasant residual effects. But at the same time, it's so cliched. It's like yet another riff on the "Hoosiers" theme starring Dennis Quaid, where the plucky band of underdogs hit the winning shot as time expires. I'm quite anti-cliche, thank you; I love underdogs like Matthew Stafford loves corn dogs, but I prefer the ones with the funky uniforms that get eliminated in round 2. The Packers, the Titletown ouevre, the innumerable houses and mailboxes and lawn tractors and pickup trucks and silos and tea cozies dolled up in green and gold, it gets old after a while. Especially when there's a team like the Saskatchewan Roughriders out there needing some love.

In the end, the weight of talent over time couldn't be denied. The Packers got a few breaks but generally had the most balanced team from line-to-backs on both sides of the ball. They had enough prewar players to create a deep roster and enough great postwar players to provide the necessary punch. There could have been many other outcomes, but this is the one that got home this time.

Fortunately for pretend matchups like this, there’s always a tomorrow. And it starts today. But only after I savor this one for a couple of minutes.

Packers-Colts: Longing and Belonging and a Fistful of Prop Snow in the Face

If you've been following our all-time playdowns as closely as I am, you're a liar. I'm the freaking author. On the other hand, if you've been following the playdowns semi-closely, you know the Colts' advancing to the semifinals is a point of some contention. People say they shouldn't have beaten the Vikings in the round of 16, the Cowboys in the quarters, or even the Eagles in the first round. Well, they did. They did because while the defense is little more than average the offense is consistently far above average. Put another way, they have not one but several of the most dynamic offensive players in professional football history at a rate of at least one to every position. Tight end, John Mackey and Dallas Clark. Wide receiver, Ray Berry, Marvin Harrison, and Reggie Wayne. Running back, Eric Dickerson, Marshall Faulk, Edgerrin James, and Lenny Moore. Oh, and quarterback, Peyton Manning and Johnny Unitas.

If you're still unconvinced, here's the convincer. According to pro-football-reference.com, the Colts have 13 offensive players among the top 250 players of all time – two in the top 11 (including player No. 1), three in the top 20, four in the top 30. Just doing the math, if there are 32 teams, there should be eight players per team, four on offense and four on defense. Thirteen offensive players from a team means there are more than 200  percent more offensive players from the Colts than from an average team. Throw in five defensive players, and the Colts have 18 of the top 250 players of all time, where the average team has eight – and all that with no Art Donovan, no Bubba Smith, no John Mackey, or no Dallas Clark. That's why the Colts are here.

And if you're unconvinced about the value of Peyton Manning versus his Colts counterpart, Johnny Unitas, consider this: The Colts lost Unitas and nearly won to the Super Bowl with Earl Morrall. The Colts replaced Manning with the closest thing to Morrall the waiver wire had to offer, Kerry Collins, and have nearly won Andrew Luck. Oh, and despite playing most of his career behind Jeff Saturday and an assortment of grain-storage buildings, Peyton Manning is almost never sacked.

The all-time Colts have more than enough line to block for Manning and all that firepower, and just enough defense. So enough about whether they belong. They're there.

Let's compare the Colts to the Packers. The Packers have 14 players in the top 250, eight on defense. (Twelve if you stretch and include Ted Hendricks, Emlen Tunnell, Steve McMichael, and Hardy Nickerson, all of whom spent portions of the back ends of their careers in Green Bay.) So the modern Packers are at a decided disadvantage – and they'd stay at a disadvantage, if we pulled a National Football League and started football time with the merger of the All-American Football Conference.

Unfortunately for the Colts, their time starts with NFL Football Standard Time. The Packers start their football epoch B.C. (Before Cleveland), and by doing that, they up the skill level tremendously. The Packers add the greatest receiver of the prewar era (Don Hutson), three of the best backs (Tony Canadeo, Clarke Hinkle and Blood McNally), and two great linemen (Cal Hubbard and Mike Michalske). Throw those six players in the mix and the Packers have the edge, 19 to 18.

Close game, in other words. Both teams belong, and the game shapes up as an offensive powerhouse versus a strong, well-balanced defense.

Let's play this out.

The Colts get the opening kickoff and go three-and-out. The Packers get the punt and do the same. The Colts take over at their 37 after a decent Lydell Mitchell punt return and Manning goes to work. He hits Wayne, Moore, Berry, Faulk, and Mackey in succession, broken up by a couple of handoffs to Eric Dickerson. The drive takes the Colts to the Packers' 17, where it's third and five.

You know what Peyton Manning throws in these situations like you know your own name. Fade route to Reggie Wayne, touchdown, Colts up seven-zip.

Now it's the Pack's turn. With wide receivers like James Lofton, Sterling Sharpe and Don Hutson working against Bob Boyd and some sugar cookies, Bart Starr doesn't need to be Brett Favre; being Starr is plenty. Starr largely eschews the run in favor of out-routes and screens to Tony Canadeo. The Packers stretch and wedge and ply the ball down to the Colts' eight-yard line. A Gino Marchetti sack pushes the back to the 13. Starr figures if it worked for Manning, why not? He throws his own fade route to Hutson and the game is tied.

Fair enough. The Colts come right back. This time Manning, starting to feel the heat from Reggie White et al., makes better use of draws and screens with Faulk and Mitchell. He wriggles the ball down to the nine and lets Eric Dickerson take over from there. Three straight-and-I-mean-straight runs make it 14-7.

The Packers can't get into a shootout with the Colts, but they're willing to try. Starr continues to exploit the Colts' suspect secondary, in particular on a  57-yard Max McGee route with Hutson playing the part of ol' Max. Jim Taylor bashes it in from the five and we're tied.

Games sometimes veer from flurries of scoring to flurries of ... well, flurries, in the sense of tiny snowflakes being all the announcers have to talk about (except for Kevin Harlan, who never seems to talk about anything). In the case of this game and the Packers, it's Willie Wood, Charles Woodson, and Herb Adderley asserting themselves on the back end of the D and Willie Davis, Henry Jordan and Reggie White asserting themselves on the front. For the Colts, it's using Ted Hendricks as he was meant to be used – as a rogue force playing the whole field.

All of which is a long way of saying that Hendricks blocks a field goal as time expires in the first half, and the Packers and Colts go into halftime tied.

The teams come out in the second half to heavier snow – and if snow isn't Manning's kryptonite it's his triple-decker sauerkraut-and-toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce. After the Packers go nowhere after the second-half kickoff, Manning makes his first mistake. A pass steered in the direction of Ray Berry ends up in Adderley's hands instead. He returns the interception to the Colts' 39 and the Packers are in business.

It's not much of a business, as it turns out. A pass to Sharpe and a couple of Jim Taylor runs move the ball to the 30, where Chester Marcol is called on to not run with a blocked field goal, and he performs his task admirably, putting the Packers ahead 17-14.

At this point the snow takes over, and Eric Dickerson tries to. He bulls the ball downfield into field-goal range, leaving the kicking duties in the hands of long-time bad-weather kicker Adam Viniatieri.

Now is the time when poetic justice should assume power, and the Green Bay Ted Hendricks should block the kick of his former team, forcing the Baltimapolis Ted Hendricks back out on the field to stop the Packers, but that doesn't happen. Fred Carr doesn't even get an island-sized paw on it. Instead, Viniatieri simply pulls it left.

There's not much after that, fans of offense, lovers of the Washington-Baylor Alamo Bowl. Everyone sort of slips and mucks around for 10 minutes, Manning throws a pick to Dave Robinson, and Reggie White supplies the exclamation point with an exuberant belly-whopper of a sack. The gun fires and the Packers escape with a 17-14 win.

What a gyp! What a dirty, rotten gyp of a game! To have a absolute upset-in-the-making, one of the greatest pretend games in the entire history of made-up football games, ruined by the oldest trick in the book – a blast of stage snow in the face.

Okay, but think about it. The game is played in Green Bay in winter. It snows in Green Bay in winter. One of the greatest real games in history, the Ice Bowl, was played in Green Bay and was made great in part by the temperature. See, it gets cold in Green Bay in the winter. The game itself minus the temperature was no greater than a score of other games. Add the temperature and – voila! – instant classic. And a cup of instant coffee to go with it.

Besides, there's nothing that says the Packers wouldn't have won the game on a dry Green Bay field on a placid Green Bay winter's day. The superior Packers lines and a better Green Bay secondary were starting to assert themselves before the snow. Bart Starr didn't have a multitude of weapons to attack the colts with; he just had the right weapons. You don't need four great running backs and seven great wide receivers; two of the former and three of the latter work fine.

Of all the great players in this game, Sterling Sharpe really stands out. The receiver was on his way to a Hall of Fame career before the neck injury. As it stands, his seven-year numbers compare very favorably to Lofton, Steve Largent, Berry, and Bob Hayes. Sharpe pulls down 11 balls in this game for 117 yards. Hutson is fine – five catches for 87 yards and a TD – but no one matches up with Sharpe.

Dickerson has a nice game for the Colts – 97 yards rushing, mostly in the second half – but Manning's numbers fall off a ledge once the snow starts. He finishes 21 of 38 for 225 yards and two scores, but also an interception and three sacks. Manning's had better games, and that's part of the point. Most of Manning's better games have not occurred in big games in bad weather. This game is completely in character for Peyton Manning and the Colts – even if it took a silly vaudeville prop to do it.

So the stage is set for the last game in our all-time playdowns. Sorry, all you non-traditionalists and disavowers of the NFL's prewar past: It's Packers-Bears.

Let the railleries begin.

Bears-Rams: Let's Try A Run, Nagurski

Final Four is trademarked, so I can’t use it in this context. I can’t even think it in this context. In fact, I had to pay $275 just to mention it in my lead. Hey, NCAA: You take PayPal, right?

Okay, $275 poorer I press on. The four remaining teams in our all-time playdown are the Colts, Packers, Bears, and Rams. Disappointed that the Cowboys and 49ers didn’t make it? Tell them to get better players. Disappointed that the Cardinals didn’t make it? Just be thankful that that D-Line of Don Brumm, Chuck Walker, Eric Swann and Leo Sugar made it out of the first round. Baby steps. And no more Kevin Kolb experiments.

If the here-and-now suggests the Colts, Bears and Rams are all-time nothings (I can hear the shouts now: “You’d rather have Dan Orlovsky over Kevin Kolb? And you call yourself an expert?”, to which I reply, using my best expert tone, “Braaaaaaaaaap!!!”) don’t get your Victoria’s Secrets in a wad. It’s the norm for at least one of the four to stink at any given time. There has only been one year when all four teams have been truly bad (1982), no years when are four have been really good, and lots of years when three of the four have been really bad (1953, 1973, and 1974) or really good (2002, 2003, 2010, and most of the '60s). It’s more a matter of how good they are when they’re really good than how bad they are when they’ve been really bad. The Chad Hutchinson years are a mulligan, in other words.

The thing that distinguishes these four teams is in fact just how good they’ve been when they’ve been good. I hesitate like Colin Firth to use the word “dynasty” to apply to professional football. In my opinion there were only three true dynasties in sports: the Canadiens, the Yankees, and the Celtics. Every other proto-dynasty was just an extended period of goodness. In fact, if we were doing this exercise in any other professional sport the fix would be in – not because the fix was actually in in the sense of pretend Mafiosos rigging the pretend results so that all the pretend betting in pretend Las Vegas would tilt their way, but because the top teams were that much better for that much longer over so many more decades. You really think the all-time St. Louis Baseball Cardinals could take down the all-time New York Baseball Yankees? Albert Pujols could be swinging the hammer of Thor and Bob Gibson could be throwing sub-atomic particles at the speed of light and the Yankees would still prevail in five.

The sketchy initial impressions of our four all-time teams are that the Bears and Rams are the “defensive” teams of the foursome and the Packers and Colts are the “offensive” teams. Of course, the initial impressions are wrong, and also of course, the two defensive teams play each other.

The Rams resemble a defensive team the same way that Newt Gingrich resembles the Dalai Lama. They’ll have three Hall of Fame quarterbacks once Kurt Warner makes it in, they’ll have four HOF wide receivers once Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt make it, they have three HOF running backs, and they throw in a couple of HOF linemen just for giggles. They actually have more offensive firepower than any of the four, but they have Deacon Jones, who holds the trademark on the quarterback sack (whoops – there goes another $75. Hey, Deacon: You take PayPal, right?) and Merlin Olsen, arguably the third-greatest athlete (after Lou Brock and Ferdinand the Bull) to while away his toast-'n'-jelly days schlepping flowers.

Actually, the most fascinating thing about the Rams-Bears matchup is how archetypical it is. How many games have been characterized as a clash between a running team that plays tough defense and a wide-open passing team that plays swinging-gate D? Well, this is that game, and on Mt. Olympus. Instead of Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson versus Tim Tebow and Von Miller, this game offers Walter Payton and Dick Butkus against Norm van Brocklin and Deacon Jones. The only way this game could be more souped-up is if they were throwing around lightning bolts instead of The Duke.

As so often happens with games like these, what each team does well lines up with the other team’s weaknesses. The Rams don’t need to run, and pass defense (including a pass rush) is the Bears’ sole weakness. The Rams get after the quarterback like no one else but are lacking ‘50s-style run stuffers in the line – pity, because the Bears come right after their opponents with a battalion of ill-tempered linemen and a fleet of big-boned running backs.

Most of these games go off-script. Rodgers runs a mess of pitch sweeps to Ryan Grant and Tim Tebow dazzles (okay, not really dazzles, but doesn’t suck) with flag pattern after flag pattern to Eric Decker, and the whole sloppy mess causes fantasy-football players everywhere to throw handfuls of nacho-cheese Doritos at their big-screens.

This game doesn't. The Bears run, the Rams pass, the Bears block, the Rams shoot the gaps, the Bears control the line of scrimmage, the Rams go vertical, both teams get really dirty, and one team goes home.

That team is the … well, not so fast. It’s still the pregame show.

The only way we’re going to make any headway here is to send James Brown in search of more Doritos, and while he’s gone, look more closely at the areas of discord – the Rams against the run and the Bears against the pass.

The Rams have had a top-two defense six years (1947, 1966-67, 1970, and 1974-75). The Bears have had a top-two defense nine seasons since 1942 (1942, 1948, 1963, 1965, 1985-86, 1988, 2001, and 2005), which should tell you something right there.

In the six years where the Rams had one of the league’s top defenses, they were (going from earliest to most recent) first, third, second, fourth, first, and second against the run, and second overall every year except 2004.

The Bears were first, second, first, second, first, first, first, first, and second overall and third, second, second, ninth, third, first, 25th, 29th, and fifth against the pass.

The best Rams defenses (where most of the Hall of Famers are) are better against the run than the best Bears defenses are against the pass.

The way to beat the Bears, in other words, is to pass against them. The way to beat the Rams is not necessarily to run against them.

So does any of this matter?

Not much, because the Bears also have the greatest kick returners in history. I absolutely hate – I mean, Black-Eyed Peas levels of hate -- to have a game like this come down to special teams, because that would mean Kevin Harlan is right (“Big games like these ALWAYS come down to special teams!!”), but kick-returning is a huge plus for the Bears.

Gale Sayers didn’t get into the Hall of Fame on the strength of his 4,956 rushing yards alone. He got there on the strength of 4,956 rushing yards plus a kickoff-return yardage average that’s still the best in NFL history, a kickoff-return TD number that’s still top-three, and an all-purpose-yards-per-game number that isn’t tracked as an official statistic but which is large enough to make Mark Cuban want to buy it and move it to Dallas.

The reason Devin Hester is serious Canton material isn’t because he’s a pretty good third receiver. He’s Rust Belt-bound because when you kick the ball to him … you don’t want to kick the ball to him. Ever, under any circumstances. And that’s why he’s HOFesque.

The other reason why kick returns matter is because Deacon Jones, inventor of the quarterback sack (damn – another $75 out of my pocket) doesn’t play on kick returns.

Okay. So the Rams kick off to a split-back tandem of Sayers and Hester, and … hold on. Just think about that for a second. The Rams kick off, and if they kick it long it’s going to The Greatest Kick Returner In Football History, numbers 1 and 1a. Of course they’re going to run the kickoff back a long way. There is not a number out there that would suggest otherwise.

So the Rams kick off and Hester runs it out to the Rams’ 43. A mess of runs and an incomplete pass take it down to the 21, where Kevin Butler kicks a field goal. 3-0 Bears.

The Bears kick off to the Rams and Ollie Matson, no mean returner hisownself, flies it out to the Rams’ 40. Two runs and three passes take the ball down to the Bears’ 37, where the drive bogs down. Max Zendejas comes in to kick a field goal, but Doug Atkins blocks it with his island-size paw. Fortunately there’s no Devin Hester to return the blocked kick, and the Bears go three-and-out.

The Rams are set up nicely at their 39, and a series of quick slants and sideline routes take the ball down to the Bears’ 29. A screen to Marshall Faulk seemed like a good idea at this point, but Dick Butkus strips him clean and Bill George recovers. Faulk stumbles off the field holding his forearm by the hair, like it’s a Cabbage Patch Kid, and another drive goes a-glimmering.

The Bears pound it up the middle for about 17 yards, and that’s about it for the first quarter. The Rams lead in the excitement category 17-3, but excitement only matters in Battle of the Network Stars football, and then only when they hand the ball to Loni Anderson.

The Rams get the ball to start the second quarter, and they go right to work. A draw play to Eric Dickerson gets them their first positive rushing yards, and it’s quickly followed by a swing pass to Ollie Matson that nets 14. At this point Norm van Brocklin gets the bright idea to air it out to Crazylegs Hirsch and … it works. Whaddya know. Hirsch takes it 48 yards for a score, and suddenly it’s 7-3 Rams.

Oh, but then they kick it to Gale Sayers. First down Bears at midfield.

The problem with long kick returns, even for a defense as good as the Rams and an offense as woefully one-dimensional as the Bears, is that it asks the offense to do about 37 percent less to achieve the same result. And doing about 37 percent less is what the Bears’ offense is all about.

In the case of this drive, it means one middling 16-yard pass to Mike Ditka, a couple of nice eight-yard runs by Walter Payton, a little swing pass to Gale Sayers, and ultimately a two-yard plunge by Bronko Nagurski that puts the Bears up 10-7, taking us to halftime.

The halftime stats are nothing to write home about, even if you’re just writing home to ask for money. The Bears rush for just short of 70 yards and pass for 35. The Rams rush for 11 and pass for 139, but the fumble and the interception are, in the immortal words of The Philadelphia Story’s Macaulay Connor, a great levelerer.

The Rams get the ball to start the second half and take off down the field like they’ve been shot out of a gun. Unfortunately, it’s my son’s BB gun, and so they wind up about 20 yards short of the target. Max Zendejas knocks it through from 35 and we’re all tied at 10.

All things considered, the Rams would have been better turning over the ball on downs, because Hester takes the kick inside the Rams’ 40. Perhaps buoyed by this, Luckman does the unthinkable and lobs one between the arms of Deacon Jones in the direction of Lake Michigan. Harlon Hill jumps, Ed Meador jumps, and since Hill jumps better than Meador it’s a touchdown. Butler’s extra point makes it 17-10, and you can sense all the water leaking from Merlin Olsen’s Birthday Party Bouquet.

The Rams do their best to respond. Pinned back deep in their territory for the first time all afternoon, the Rams mix draws, screens, sideline patterns, and one sweet seam route to Torry Holt to move inside the Chicago 20 before the roof caves in, courtesy of Joe Stydahar and Dick Butkus. Two QB sacks plus an incompletion force Zendejas to attempt his third field goal. He knocks it through and the Bears’ lead shrinks to 17-13.

Finally the Rams squib a kickoff, forcing the Bears to start inside their 40. A three-and-out is matched by a five-and-out from the Rams, which is matched by another three-and-one, then a six-and-out, then a five-and-out, and before you know it it’s the Rams’ ball on their 27 with less than three minutes on the clock.

Van Brocklin is masterful. He works over the overworked Bears’ secondary with quick passes to fast receivers. The Rams thrust-and-parry down to the five, but then the angles tighten and the passes don’t get through. Zendejas is called on once again and delivers the field goal that brings the Rams within three.

The Bears get the ball with less than two minutes to play and a simple task to accomplish: Get a first down – just one. With the game on the line, Payton rushes for four and then two, bringing up a key third and four. The Rams are out of timeouts; a first down seals the game.

As has happened so many times in their existence, the Bears’ survival will be determined by their ability to run for four yards when they need it. True to character, they hand the ball to Bronko Nagurski and let a line-full of HOFers attend to their business. Nagurski gains five. Luckman takes a knee and Bears fans go home slightly less ornery than when they came.

It’s not a pretty game – again – but once again, it epitomizes Bears football. Payton runs for 87, Nagurski adds 36, and Luckman throws for 121 with no interceptions. Between them Sayers and Hester return nine kicks for 217 yards.

The Rams’ numbers are more impressive by far. Van Brocklin throws for 286, Hirsch has a long TD, Holt and Bruce each catch four, Dickerson and Faulk combine for 117 yards rushing – but those numbers are ultimately irrelevant. Two empty sorties into Chicago territory are fatal in a game this close.

So, yeah, Kevin Harlan, you called it all right. It did come down to special teams. Play the game tomorrow and it might have a different outcome. But today the Bears move on. The Final Four now numbers three.

Drat. I hope the NCAA takes Visa.

Packers-Niners: Twisting by the (Talent) Pool

Packers-Niners. Just the mention of those teams conjures images of California-cool quarterbacks kneeling down at the end of games. If sometimes you toy with the notion that every game that has ever been won in the National Football League has been won by one of these teams, you wouldn’t be toying alone. And yet why does this game have the feeling of anticlimax?

Could it be that it’s because it’s been done better in real life? The bookend Packers-Niners playoff games – the Packers’ win in the rain in 1996 and the Niners’ down-to-the-wire win two years later – have everything you could want in a football game, including bratwurst and large, inexpensive beers. If they don’t include every player on each all-time team they include a more-than-representative sampling, especially in the Niners’ case.

But enough dealing with reality. Let’s jump back into the unreal world and take a hard look at these two make-believe teams. The Niners have a HOFer everywhere, but not always multiple HOFers. The Packers have multiple HOFers everywhere. Advantage Packers. But in certain key areas the Niners’ HOFers are better than the Packers’ HOFers. Would you rather have Joe Montana, Steve Young and Y.A. Tittle or Bart Starr, Brett Favre, and Aaron Rodgers? Jerry Rice and Terrell Owens or Don Hutson and James Lofton? Ronnie Lott and Jim Johnson or Herb Adderly and Willie Wood (and Charles Woodson)? Advantage Niners.

However, in the lines and at running back, those brutal locales not too dissimilar from eastern Colorado, the Packers dominate. Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo, Cal Hubbard, and Mike Michalske trump Bob St. Clair et al. Leo Nomellini and the interchangeable pack horses of the Bill Walsh era, Dana Stubblefield and Bryant Young cower in the massive shadows of Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, and Reggie White. Joe Perry and Hugh McIlhenny (and the criminally underappreciated Roger Craig and Rickey Watters) are strictly second-tier guys compared to Hornung, Taylor, Clarke Hinkle, Johnny Blood, Tony Canadeo, and Arnie Herber. And sorry Bill Walsh, but Vince Lombardi, Curley Lambeau, and Mike Holmgren take you down.

But it’s close. It’s very close. When you run the two-deeps on a continuum and cut off the top 15 players, they’re virtually identical. But when you get to players 47 and 48, it’s clear that the Packers have better talent.

So let’s do it that way. Let’s take the two-deep starting lineups of both teams, put them on continuums, and then see how the bottom tiers of both look.

Using a combination of Pro Football Reference’s Weighted Average Value and Elo Rater scores, here are the players scoring more than 100 on a combined index where the lower the score, the better the player:

Niners Packers


Roger Craig Dave Robinson

Bob St. Clair James Lofton

Harris Barton Jerry Kramer

Hugh McIlhenny Charles Woodson

Billy Wilson Donald Driver

Joe Perry Chad Clifton

Gene Washington Fred Carr

Brent Jones Hawg Hanner

Bruce Bosley John Anderson

Abe Woodson Bobby Dillon

Keena Turner Sterling Sharpe

Tommy Hart Lionel Aldridge

Ken Willard Mark Tauscher

Cedrick Hardman Ken Ellis

John Taylor Aaron Kampman

Dana Stubblefield Gale Gillingham

Merton Hanks Paul Coffman

Roland Lakes Mike McCoy

Guy McIntyre Willie Buchanon

Frank Nunley

Ken Norton Jr.

Eric Wright

Dwight Hicks

Forrest Blue

Woody Peoples

Kermit Alexander

Tim McDonald

Monty Stickles

Bruno Banducci

Howard Mudd

Hacksaw Reynolds

These lists don’t lack for good players, but they point up the problem with the Niners: there’s more bottom, and it goes deeper. Ken Ellis, Aaron Kampman and Gale Gillingham (and what is it with Gillingham getting nothing from history? I know the guy just died and we’re all rosy-eyed about his worth as a football player, but he was absolutely the best thing about the Packers after Lombardi left, and was every bit as good As Jerry Kramer, who gets plenty of forearm shivers from the football cognoscenti as-is) are very comparable to Hacksaw Reynolds, Tim McDonald (another head-scratcher as far as history goes), Forrest Blue, and Woody Peoples. But where the Niners offer up Bruno Banducci and Merton Hanks the Packers counter with Buckets Goldenberg and Jug Earpe – different, but better different. In this world, where a replacement-value guy is a five-time All-Pro, the Packers have better players.

Okay, so we’ve beaten that particular dead horse to death. Talent wins most but not all of these games. How does talent fare here?

Pretty well.

It’s a different sort of game, a little like a modern-day Jets-Patriots game minus the chubby guys in hoodies. The Niners want to throw it all over the field and worry about defense when they get there, while the Packers want to pound the ball and play defense and keep Brett Favre staked to the ground, Gulliver-style, on the sideline. (and yes, Aaron Rodgers is in charge of the little hammer.)

The result is much like the recent Jets-Patriots tussles, where the Patriots get the best of the stat sheet but the Jets win. In this case, as the snow swirls around Lambeau and the in-ground turf heaters create a surface of a consistency similar to those things they called “steaks” you used to get at Ponderosa, the Niners take the opening kickoff, run it out to the 47 courtesy of a great Abe Woodson return, march it down to the 24, and miss a field goal. The Packers stumble out to the 32 and punt. The Niners run the punt out to midfield, run and pass it down inside the 15, and throw an interception (Bobby Dillon). The Packers run back the interception to the 21, pound it out to the 24, and punt. The Niners take a penalty on the runback that lands them at their own 33 and fly down the field to the Packer 42, where the drive stalls and the Niners punt it into the end zone. When the quarter ends at this point it’s a mercy-killing.

Perhaps energized by the Packer band’s version of “Ride My Seesaw” at the quarter break, the Packers mount a drive … actually, they get a first down. Overwhelmed by this display of offensive prowess, Abe Woodson fumbles the ensuring punt and the Packers recover at the San Francisco 38. The Packers don’t do much with the field position; a Starr-to-Hutson square-out takes the ball down to the Niners’ 19 before the demi-drive stalls. Chester Marcol doesn’t miss, however, and the Packers take a middlingly late 3-0 lead.

At this point San Francisco has 87 yards, two turnovers and no points. The Packers have 30 yards and three points.

And the beat goes on. The Niners roll up 53 yards on a drive that ends in a field goal blocked by Fred Carr and Ted Hendricks. The Packers go three-and-out. The Niners roll up 31 yards and punt. The Packers go five-and-out. The Niners roll up 40 yards before two penalties and a sack end their drive. The Packers get the ball on their own 32 with 1:53 left in the half.

Finally, some semblance of offense. A 13-yard Tony Canadeo scamper is followed by a Starr-to-Lofton post pattern that takes the ball down to the San Francisco 22. A flare pass to John Blood McNally takes the ball down to the 5, and that’s close enough for Jim Taylor to bash it into the end zone in three tries. Marcol’s extra point makes it 10-0 Packers as the halftime gun fires.

The Niners can’t be expected to stay down forever, and they don’t. After another Green Bay three-and-out to start the second half, Steve Young enters the game in relief of Joe Montana and immediately catches fire. He hits Jerry Rice for 19 yards and Terrell Owens for 23, scrambles for 11 and hits Hugh McIlhenny on a swing pass that goes for 18 yards and a score. Tommy Davis’ extra point (at last! Something through the uprights!) makes it 10-7.

At this point, the lid is officially off and the game is officially not the game of the first half. Starr begins to click hisownself. On a 77-yard drive Starr hits Lofton for 22, Hutson for 31 and Sharpe for 11 and a touchdown. Young answers with a 73-yard drive that culminates in an eight-yard Brent Jones TD strike. On the Packers’ ensuing series, Starr audibles out of a dive play to Jim Taylor and calls an option pass. Cecil Isbell hits Sharpe in stride from 57 yards out, and suddenly it’s halfway through the fourth quarter and 24-14 Green Bay.

The Niners make it interesting. Young alternates Perry runs and passes to Rice and Jones on a 65-yard drive that takes the ball down to the 8 – field-goal range for Tommy Davis. Now it’s 24-17 and a seven-point game.

With six minutes left the Niners kick off to the Packers. The Niners get the ball back with 47 seconds left in the shadow of their own goalposts.

They don’t go gentle into that good-and-cold eastern Wisconsin night. Young’s bomb in the direction of Terrell Owens draws a pass-interference penalty, bringing the ball out to midfield. Two more passes, and the Niners are inside the Packer 30 with 25 seconds left.

With no timeouts left Young rolls right, Reggie White hot on his trail. Young underestimates White’s closing speed one last, fatal time. White closes the gap, flings a huge paw around Young, drives him to the turf and refuses to get off the quarterback until the clock reads triple zeroes. The gun fires, the game ends, and the Packers survive.

“Survive” is the operative word. The Packers are outgained by 85 yards, 462 to 377. Surprisingly, no one runs much, not even the Packers. Jim Taylor gains 71 yards in 15 carries, Canadeo 19 in six, Hinkle 14 in three, and Ahman Green 11 in one. McIlhenny gains 37 yards on six carries, Joe Perry 22 in 12, Craig 21 in three, John Henry Johnson five in three, and Young 24 on two scrambles.

Starr throws for 306 yards and two TDs, but his numbers are eclipsed by the combination of Montana (174 yards, two interceptions) and Young (179 yards, two touchdowns).

The Packers came in feeling like they had to run to win, and they won it by passing. Football is funny that way.

Determining who is best positioned to win a game is a question of talent. Actually winning a game is something else altogether.

Lions and Bears: Get your "Oh, My"'s Elsewhere

The Bears win; you know that. It’s like watching a movie with the Rock. There is a 100 percent probability that when things really get down to the stove bolts the Rock will cold-cock Charlemagne with a short, sweet right, sweep Nefertiti in his arms without dislodging a single sacred hair of that funky Kid ‘n’ Play ‘do of hers, and vine-swing from tree to tree until he reaches the battlestar. It’s inevitable. Moviegoers expect the Rock to save Timmy from the well and toss June Lockhart over his shoulder (okay, and pet Lassie) and they’re going to go all Arab Spring on you if he doesn’t.

So for the Lions to somehow beat the Bears? My God, it would be like Shirley Temple taking down the Rock, flipping his batteries and getting him to play house and have tea parties, like Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 2. In an alternate universe maybe, where the sun orbits the earth and Herman Cain makes sense, but not here.

Fine, but let’s run the matchup anyway. Quarterback is a nonfactor with these teams. You could stick a lump of pot cheese back there and the result would be about the same. The Bears haven’t had a truly great quarterback since Sid Luckman, and the Lions haven’t had one since Dutch Clark, which means they haven’t had a quarterback since a quarterback was a quarterback and not a running back playing a position called quarterback. (see Tebow, Tim.) The Bears have the greatest running back ever and so do the Lions, only the Bears have Gale Sayers too and the Lions have … well, they have Dutch Clark again, or Doak Walker, who was Dutch Clark 2.1.1.

Both teams also trot out meh-level receivers – Harlon Hill and Bill Hewitt for the Bears, and Herman Moore and Calvin Johnson for the Lions. The Lions have the more productive receivers no doubt, and you can’t even draw the Bears wideouts into the what-if-he-played-today game you can play with a Don Hutson. Too many variables. Too many bad quarterbacks. And Harlon Hill? However, both teams have HOF tight ends -- blocking tight ends, naturally -- of roughly the same vintage.

So far so good on the matchups, so let’s move to the lines. The Lions have three HOFers (assuming Dick Stanfel gets in) and a couple of borderline guys. The Bears have nine.

Nine? Oh.

On the other side of the ball, the Lions have one HOFer in the front seven and a couple of maybes. The Bears have eight to 10, depending on how many guys you want to play both ways.

Cue the ominous Emimem music from the Chrysler ad, but leave the Baptist choir out of it.

It would matter that the Lions have an all-HOF secondary if the Bears threw the ball, but they have four HOF running backs and nine HOF O-linemen, and Harlon Hill as their best deep threat. You really think they’re gonna throw?

And herein lies the problem with the Lions against the Bears. The Lions are strong where it doesn't count against a team built to live by a lake, chew mud and spit snowflakes and pound the ball between the tackles. Lions-Colts would be fascinating. Bears-Lions not so much. Bears-Colts would – (spoiler alert) will – be interesting. It would also make a difference in this game if the Lions could do things that the Bears might have trouble stopping – throwing the ball, for instance. Once out of the hotel bar, Bobby Layne never scared no one as a passer.

In fact, this is one of those football games that makes you wonder why football is the titular American pastime. The only stat worth keeping is how many horsecollar tackles Night Train Lane makes. (Answer: nine.) The only person breaking off yardage in adult-size chunks is Gale Sayers, and most of those come on punt returns. And there are plenty of punt returns.

There are 13 punts all told in this game, seven by the Lions, who never seem to be on the side of the 50-yard line where the touchdowns are.

So you can figure out how it goes. Punt-punt-punt-punt-field goal-punt-punt-punt-touchdown pretty much sums up the first half. The touchdown comes after a 43-yard Sayers punt return took the ball inside the 20, setting up seven brutal plays (including a fourth-and-one conversion) culminating in a four-yard Walter Payton TD. The field goal comes after a 37-yard Sayers return and an eight-yard drive.

Up 10-0, the Bears come out in the second half and do the unthinkable: They throw a pass... and naturally it’s intercepted by Lem Barney, who returns it 19 yards to the Chicago 16. Three plays later Layne throws an end-over-end jump ball in the direction of Calvin Johnson, who comes down with the ball in the back corner of the end zone.

After that it's punt-punt-field goal-interception-fumble-punt-punt-interception-missed field goal-punt-ballgame. Sayers sets up the field goal with another 30-plus-yard scamper off of a punt  (and even the presence of all those great D-backs on special teams does little to take the edge off of Sayers' mad dashes), putting the capper on a day spent lazing in an offense as poorly suited to his skills as the current Bears' desired game is to modern-day Sayers Matt Forte.

Layne's day is mean, nasty, brutish, and not nearly short enough: 13-for-31, 174 yards, a touchdown and two picks. Barry Sanders runs for a subpar (for Barry Sanders) 113 yards on 21 carries, but 174 plus 113 doesn't equal victory.

Luckman's numbers are virtually identical to Layne's save for the highs and lows: 15-for-24 for 187, null and zed. Running back is strictly by committee; Payton runs for 82, Sayers 63, McAfee 51, Grange 44, and Nagurski 39. More rushing yards don't always equal victory, but it's a good start. Especially if you have a D-line full of HOFers backed by the game's definitive linebackers.

So the Bears move on, completely unsurprisingly and without a caveat in the world save for this: If the Bears would ever play a hotshot passing team this all might be different.

Not now, but soon ...