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 ...

The Rest Of The Rest

If you've been following the first round matchups in our all-time head-to-head playdowns,  you're no doubt wondering what happened in all the non-marquee games. You know, the games Kevin Harlan and Randy Cross call every week.

Wait no more. Here are the results, shorter and sweeter than Christina Aguilera on a stick.

Chicago Bears vs. Houston Texans: All the history in the world vs. no history. Mario Williams bites Sid Luckman on the ankle and Matt Schaub avoids death, but to no avail. Bears 47-6.

New Orleans Saints vs. Detroit Lions: Which is to say, the 2009-10 New Orleans Saints versus the Lions. The Lions lack a quarterback but don’t lack for anything else, especially in the secondary. Barry Sanders runs for 187 and the Lions triumph 31-10.

Cleveland Browns vs. Carolina Panthers: That would be the old Cleveland Browns, plus Joe Thomas. Cleveland piles up 354 yards rushing, and Cam Newton makes a cameo as the kicking-tee retriever. Browns 37-7.

New York Giants vs. Seattle Seahawks: Closer than you might think, since the Seahawks are pretty good everywhere. But real good beats pretty good 27-17.

Baltimore Ravens vs. Tennessee Titans: If the Ravens were allowed to be the Browns this would be a different story. As it is, Munchak and Matthews neutralize the Ravens' front seven, Earl Campbell rushes for two and Warren Moon throws for one, and the Ravens still don’t have an offense. Baltimore bows 24-10.

Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Pittsburgh Steelers: Fifty years of backstory a/k/a everything prior to Chuck Noll doesn’t help the Steelers much. But they don’t really need the help. Steelers 20-6.

Philadelphia Eagles vs. Indianapolis Colts: See above. Pete Pihos and Alex Wojciehowicz don’t add much to the bottom line. Peyton Manning throws for 346 in a 37-20 shootout.

Buffalo Bills vs. San Francisco 49ers: Too much San Fran offense makes up for a so-so defense. San Fran wins the Battle for O.J. 31-20.

New York Jets vs. Oakland Raiders: The Jets at their best have never been as good as a pretty good Raider team. Joe Namath throws four picks in a 28-3 Oakland win.

Cincinnati Bengals vs. Minnesota Vikings: Too much D, too much O, and zero Ochocinco. Minnesota 41-13.

Atlanta Falcons vs. Green Bay Packers: Reminiscent of their first matchups, when it was Nitschke, Davis & Co. versus Cannonball, the Hawk and the Wheel. Starr throws for two and Favre (in a mop-up role) throws for one, and the running game runs. Packers 38, Falcons 7.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Dallas Cowboys: Tampa’s defense tries to make it close, but tires in the fourth. Aikman throws for one and Dorsett runs for two in a 27-13 ‘Boys win. Jerry Jones dances on the Texas Stadium star to celebrate.

You eagle-eyed readers no doubt detected a missing matchup. That game is just finishing up as we speak, and if we can ever get Kenny Albert to shut up we may have the results for you later this week. In the meantime, pray for laryngitis.

Bad, Bad Lomas Brown

Many years ago, when one of the authors was editing one of the very first fantasy-sports magazines to grace the planet, he made the seemingly insane proposal that offensive linemen should be drafted onto fantasy teams. Yes, offensive linemen, and linebackers, and while we're at it, why not punters?

The sticking point in such a marvelous idea, of course, is how you measure the effectiveness of an offensive lineman. If a running back can turn nothing into 20, a la Barry Sanders, then the offensive line, in the words of the ol' Duke, bastes in the glory of the running back. If the running back makes three yards out of five, like Darryl Thompson, the line could run Munoz to Mix, tackle to tackle, and those five yards still come out three.

The answer is to look at the averages of all the players who run the ball for a team in a given season, not just the star running back. If you average Barry Sanders' five yards per carry with Touchdown Tommy Vardell's four yards and Cory Schlesinger's 1.8, you get an average of around 3 yards, which isn't that great in the panoply of great rushing years -- even for the Lions, who have had their years rushing and then not.

This approach has its problems, notably this: One of the reasons the Lions ran Barry Sanders 40 times a game was because the alternatives were Schlesinger and Vardell, who posed not quite the breakaway threat of a Dairy Queen. But even so, taking this approach points out an interesting truth about the Barry Sanders-era Lions: They were a team that ran the ball a lot but were not a good running team because they did not have a very good line. 

And that leads us to Lomas Brown. Brown was Barry Sanders' best blocker and made the Pro Bowl enough times for Brown to qualify as a borderline HOFer. But was he really? Sanders was renowned for making something out of nothing, and for there to be nothing there had to be an absence of something, namely holes to run through. The lack of holes to run through is the line's fault, and that means Lomas Brown.

So what we ultimately have with Lomas Brown is someone who was perceived as a very good lineman yet who was not good enough to consistently create the semblance of holes for the best running back in football history.

Brown Power

Before we get into the nuts of Jim Brown, a story. A friend who lives in Green Bay met Dick Schaap in a bar and asked him about Jim Brown as a lacrosse player. Brown played lacrosse at Syracuse and crossed paths (and sticks) with Schaap, who played goalie at Cornell. At the time Brown was Brown-shaped and completely healthy, which meant he had muscles on the outside of his shorts, and Schaap was at his adult height of five-foot-eleven, of which an honest eight inches was hair.

Schaap intercepted some of Brown's shots but wasn't religious about it. As he told my friend, "Brown wasn't much of a lacrosse player, but he didn't have to be. No one wanted to get in his way."

That might be the essence of Jim Brown the athlete right there. People got in his way but no one wanted to. Not even Sam Huff at the height of his manic-insurance-salesman powers said, "Man, I can't wait to get me a piece of that Jim Brown."

But the thing of it was, when Jim Brown was on the field everyone knew he was going to get the football, because the Browns offensively had two options: hand the ball to Brown or punt. The QB of Brown's Browns was either math whiz Frank Ryan or Milt Plum, the magician behind the Lions’ dynamic punting game of the mid-‘60s. Gary Collins, who ran like a fully loaded game-show host, was the split end. At the other end was Johnny Brewer and the mattress attached to his back. Rich Kreitling was in the mix too, to the amusement of D-backs throughout the league.

Given a choice between Jim Brown and that in the NFL of the late '50s, what did Browns GM Brown tell Coach Brown to have RB Brown do? Exactly.

The numbers tell the story. Jim Brown represented 32 percent of the Browns’ offense for his career, just rushing the ball. Add in his catches and that number jumps to 38 percent.

No running back in the postwar era comes close to those numbers for a career. O.J. Simpson was half the Bills’ offense in his 2,000-yard season, but he couldn’t sustain it. Neither could Earl Campbell or Gale Sayers. In Barry Sanders’ best year his rushing yards were 35 percent of the offense -- less if you factor in Scott Mitchell’s givebacks.

Here’s another way of looking at it. Here are the differentials between Brown and the second-place rushers for the eight seasons Brown won a rushing title.

Year      Brown's Yards      Runner-Up Yards     Differential     % Differential
1957      942                       700                          242               25.69%
1958      1,527                    791                          736               48.20%
1959      1,329                    1,036                       293               22.05%
1960      1,257                    1,101                       156               12.41%
1961      1,408                    1,307                       101                 7.17%
1963      1,863                    1,018                       845               45.36%
1964      1,446                    1,169                       277               19.16%
1965      1,544                    867                          677               43.85%

Two times in his career Brown had almost twice as many rushing yards as the league’s second-best rusher. Only once was the gap single digits.

By comparison, in Barry Sanders’ huge 1997 season he won the rushing title by 295 yards over Terrell Davis – roughly a 14-percentage-point cushion. Brown beat that gap six times out of eight.

The one-dimensional Neanderthalism of the Browns’ early ‘60s offense hadn't been seen in the NFL since Ernie Nevers took his Duluth Eskimos on a three-month romp through the playgrounds and garden spots of central Ohio, and Jim Brown took it with him when he left. In the post-Brown era every great RB required a posse, even if it was Willie Gault and Matt Suhey. The DIY ethos was gone forever.

You start with a whole lot of running backs, and what you’re left with in the end is Jim Brown. Jim Brown was his own video game before video games were invented. Jim Brown had Jim Brown and some blockers taking on platoons of HOFers, all with steel plates in their heads, and Jim Brown dominated. He was as black and proud as the truth.