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.
Showing posts with label Bart Starr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bart Starr. Show all posts
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Friday, December 30, 2011
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.
Friday, November 11, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Last(ish) Line On Linemen
I really can’t leave Dick Schafrath alone.
All the buzz these days is that left tackle is the hardest line position to play. It's the QB's blind side, there are speed rushers coming off the edge, he rarely has help -- oh, and he has to get out and lead the way on running plays. Dick Schafrath was the Browns' left tackle from 1959-71. He was All-Something six seasons and is about as far away from Canton as Pago Pago, and he's going to stay there, thanks in part to a highly obscure restriction called the Rule Of One Or Two.
I hadn't known such a thing as the Rule Of One Or Two existed until I started writing about Schafrath and thinking of reasons why he wasn't getting more consideration for Canton. The only thing I could think of that might work against him was that if he were elected to the HOF, three of Jim Brown's blockers would be in Canton, and that's a lot. That's more than every other running back ... because almost every postwar HOF running back has a lineman who blocked for him in the Hall of Fame, but never more than two, and almost every postwar HOF offensive lineman blocked for an HOF running back. Look at the list:
PLAYER -- POSITION -- YEARS PLAYED -- HOF RUNNING BACK/OL
Dwight Stephenson C 1980 1987 None
Mike Webster C 1974 1990 Franco Harris
Jim Langer C 1970 1981 Larry Czonka
Frank Gatski C 1946 1957 Marion Motley, Jim Brown
Jim Ringo C 1953 1967 Ollie Matson, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor
Alex Wojciechowicz C 1938 1950 Steve Van Buren
Bulldog Turner C 1940 1952 George McAfee
Russ Grimm G 1981 1991 John Riggins
Randall McDaniel G 1988 2001 None
Gene Hickerson G 1958 1973 Jim Brown, Leroy Kelly
Bruce Matthews G 1983 2001 Earl Campbell
Joe DeLamielleure G 1973 1985 O.J. Simpson
Mike Munchak G 1982 1993 Earl Campbell
Tom Mack G 1966 1978 None
Larry Little G 1967 1980 Larry Czonka
John Hannah G 1973 1985 None
Stan Jones G 1954 1966 Gale Sayers
Gary Zimmerman T 1986 1997 None
Rayfield Wright T 1967 1979 Tony Dorsett
Bob Brown T 1964 1973 Ollie Matson
Jackie Slater T 1976 1995 Eric Dickerson
Ron Yary T 1968 1982 None
Anthony Munoz T 1980 1992 None
Lou Creekmur T 1950 1959 John Henry Johnson, Doak Walker
Dan Dierdorf T 1971 1983 None
Bob St. Clair T 1953 1963 Jim Perry, Hugh McElhenny
Art Shell T 1968 1982 Marcus Allen
Mike McCormack T 1951 1962 Jim Brown
Forrest Gregg T 1956 1971 Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung
Rosey Brown T 1953 1965 Frank Gifford
George Connor T 1948 1955 George McAfee
Lou Groza T 1946 1967 Marion Motley, Jim Brown
Jim Parker T 1957 1967 Lenny Moore
Jim Taylor FB 1958 1967 Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo
Jim Brown FB 1957 1965 Frank Gatski, Mike McCormack, Gene Hickerson
Joe Perry FB 1948 1963 Bob St. Clair
Marion Motley FB 1946 1955 Frank Gatski
Paul Hornung HB 1957 1966 Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo
Doak Walker HB 1950 1955 Lou Creekmur
Frank Gifford HB 1952 1964 Rosey Brown
Lenny Moore HB 1956 1967 Jim Parker
Hugh McElhenny HB 1952 1964 Bob St. Clair
Emmitt Smith RB 1990 2004 Larry Allen*, Big Cat Williams*
Thurman Thomas RB 1988 2000 Ruben Brown*
Barry Sanders RB 1989 1998 Lomas Brown*
Marcus Allen RB 1982 1997 Art Shell
Eric Dickerson RB 1983 1993 Jackie Slater
Tony Dorsett RB 1977 1988 Rayfield Wright
Leroy Kelly RB 1964 1973 Gene Hickerson
Walter Payton RB 1975 1987 Jay Hilgenberg*
John Riggins RB 1971 1985 Russ Grimm
Earl Campbell RB 1978 1985 Mike Munchak, Bruce Matthews
Franco Harris RB 1972 1984 Mike Webster
Larry Csonka RB 1968 1979 Jim Langer
O.J. Simpson RB 1969 1979 Joe DeLamellieure
Gale Sayers RB 1965 1971 Stan Jones
Ollie Matson RB 1952 1966 Jim Ringo, Bob Brown
John Henry Johnson FB 1954 1966 Bob St. Clair
As with any chart like this, some compromises were made in the interest of proving a point. Ollie Matson spent most of his career behind linemen other than Brown and Ringo, and Shell and Allen’s careers overlapped exactly one year. Stan Jones was playing defense when Sayers came to town – and Sayers is in Canton at least as much for his skill as a kick returner. Furthermore, linemen and running backs who played most of their careers in the AFL are out, because those players were chosen more on individual merit (on, in Floyd Little’s case, individual reputation) than on continuity or team performance. Ron Mix is in the Hall of Fame because he’s a great lineman, not because of the job he did blocking for Dickie Post. Little is in despite – or perhaps because he was – running behind no one better than Bobby Maples. You see some of this on the NFL side with Mack, Stephenson, Hannah, and Munoz, but they were clearly miles above their contemporaries and the tomato cans playing behind them, and they are decidedly exceptions.
The asterisked players are not HOFers but probably will be. The only reach here is Ruben Brown, and he could be balanced by adding Chuck Foreman behind Ron Yary’s name and the RB-esque John Elway behind Gary Zimmerman.
Some previously baffling inclusions and omissions come into focus when the Rule Of One Or Two is applied. A Hog had to make it into the Hall of Fame; John Riggins’ presence required it. Duane Putnam should have been the guy riding in on Ollie Matson’s coattails, but Matson the running back is covered and Matson the kick returner doesn’t need anyone. Conversely, the only way Mick Tinglehoff, John Niland, and Marvin Powell are going in is if the crystal doors mysteriously swing open for Dave Osborn, Calvin Hill, and Freeman McNeil. Dick Stanfel is worse off; he never even blocked for John Henry Johnson. Leon Gray is definitely out because there can’t be two HOF linemen from a Patriot team whose best runner was Steve Grogan. Instant Replay aside, Jerry Kramer isn’t a HOFer because Gregg and Ringo are already there, and three Packer linemen, even with the entire Packer backfield already enshrined, would be overkill. Schafrath isn’t going in because the voters chose Hickerson instead, and they’re not going to add a fourth guy who blocked for Jim Brown. At some point, their reasoning must go, Brown has to be given credit for what he did on his own.
It will be interesting to see how this phenomenon plays out. Unless Willis McGehee kicks it into sixth, Jonathan Ogden will go into Canton without ever having blocked for a HOF RB. Walter Jones squeaks by through his limited association with Edgerrin James. Speaking of which, someone from the Colts’ line is going to have to start looking good over time. Jeff Saturday is the likely candidate, but is Canton really going to open its gates for a four-time All-Something just because he passed the ball between his legs to Peyton Manning?
Time, and the Veterans’ Committee, has a habit of rewriting history from the way things happened into the way things should have happened. It should have happened that a great running back always had a great lineman leading the way. The fact that it didn’t always is just another inconvenient truth.
BUT WHAT ABOUT QBs?
Now, Jim in L.A. asks, "Is there a lineman-QB connection?" There’s a connection all right, but less of a one than there is for RBs:
PLAYER -- POSITION -- YEARS PLAYED -- HOF RUNNING BACK/OL
Dwight Stephenson C 1980 1987 Bob Griese, Dan Marino
Mike Webster C 1974 1990 Terry Bradshaw
Jim Langer C 1970 1981 Bob Griese
Frank Gatski C 1946 1957 Otto Graham, Bobby Layne
Jim Ringo C 1953 1967 Norm Van Brocklin, Bart Starr
Alex Wojciechowicz C 1938 1950 None
Bulldog Turner C 1940 1952 Sid Luckman
Russ Grimm G 1981 1991 None
Randall McDaniel G 1988 2001 None
Gene Hickerson G 1958 1973 None
Bruce Matthews G 1983 2001 Warren Moon
Joe DeLamielleure G 1973 1985 None
Mike Munchak G 1982 1993 Warren Moon
Tom Mack G 1966 1978 Well …
Larry Little G 1967 1980 Bob Griese
John Hannah G 1973 1985 None
Stan Jones G 1954 1966 Well …
Gary Zimmerman T 1986 1997 John Elway
Rayfield Wright T 1967 1979 Roger Staubach
Bob BrownT 1964 1973 None
Jackie Slater T 1976 1995 None
Ron Yary T 1968 1982 Fran Tarkenton
Anthony Munoz T 1980 1992 None
Lou Creekmur T 1950 1959 Bobby Layne
Dan Dierdorf T 1971 1983 None
Bob St. Clair T 1953 1963 Y.A. Tittle
Art Shell T 1968 1982 Well …
Mike McCormack T 1951 1962 `Otto Graham
Forrest Gregg T 1956 1971 Bart Starr
Rosey Brown T 1953 1965 Y.A. Tittle
George Connor T 1948 1955 Well …
Lou Groza T 1946 1967 Otto Graham
Jim Parker T 1957 1967 Johnny Unitas
Troy Aikman QB 1989 2000 Larry Allen*, Big Cat Williams*
Warren Moon QB 1984 2000 Mike Munchak, Bruce Matthews
Dan Marino QB 1983 1999 Dwight Stephenson
Steve Young QB 1985 1999 None
John Elway QB 1983 1998 Gary Zimmermann
Jim Kelly QB 1986 1996 None
Joe Montana QB 1979 1994 None
Jim Finks QB 1949 1955 None
Dan Fouts QB 1973 1987 None
Bob Griese QB 1967 1980 Larry Little, Jim Langer
Terry Bradshaw QB 1970 1983 Mike Webster
Len Dawson QB 1957 1975 Well …
Fran Tarkenton QB 1961 1978 Ron Yary
Joe Namath QB 1965 1977 Well …
Roger Staubach QB 1969 1979 Rayfield Wright
Sonny Jurgensen QB 1957 1974 Chuck Bednarik
George Blanda QB 1949 1975 Well …
Johnny Unitas QB 1956 1973 Jim Parker
Bart Starr QB 1956 1971 Jim Ringo, Forrest Gregg
Y.A. Tittle QB 1948 1964 Rosey Brown, Bob St. Clair
Norm Van Brocklin QB 1949 1960 Chuck Bednarik
Bobby Layne QB 1948 1962 Lou Creekmur, Frank Gatski
Otto Graham QB 1946 1955 Frank Gatski, Mike McCormack, Lou Groza
The ones with “Well …” in the spot where an HOFer should go are up for debate. Tom Mack played with Joe Namath for four games over the course of one season. No one associates Tom Mack with Joe Namath. Can you really say Mack blocked for Namath in the same way Larry Little blocked for Bob Griese? I say no. I also say no to every HOF lineman who played with George Blanda, since they played with him when he was a benchwarmer and a kicker, no to George Connor because Luckman was done when Connor was playing offense, and no to every HOFer who played with Len Dawson when he was mucking around with Detroit and Cleveland prior to the genesis of the AFL.
I’ll believe in the QB-OL relationship when they start putting in guys like Len Hauss and Randy Cross.
All the buzz these days is that left tackle is the hardest line position to play. It's the QB's blind side, there are speed rushers coming off the edge, he rarely has help -- oh, and he has to get out and lead the way on running plays. Dick Schafrath was the Browns' left tackle from 1959-71. He was All-Something six seasons and is about as far away from Canton as Pago Pago, and he's going to stay there, thanks in part to a highly obscure restriction called the Rule Of One Or Two.
I hadn't known such a thing as the Rule Of One Or Two existed until I started writing about Schafrath and thinking of reasons why he wasn't getting more consideration for Canton. The only thing I could think of that might work against him was that if he were elected to the HOF, three of Jim Brown's blockers would be in Canton, and that's a lot. That's more than every other running back ... because almost every postwar HOF running back has a lineman who blocked for him in the Hall of Fame, but never more than two, and almost every postwar HOF offensive lineman blocked for an HOF running back. Look at the list:
PLAYER -- POSITION -- YEARS PLAYED -- HOF RUNNING BACK/OL
Dwight Stephenson C 1980 1987 None
Mike Webster C 1974 1990 Franco Harris
Jim Langer C 1970 1981 Larry Czonka
Frank Gatski C 1946 1957 Marion Motley, Jim Brown
Jim Ringo C 1953 1967 Ollie Matson, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor
Alex Wojciechowicz C 1938 1950 Steve Van Buren
Bulldog Turner C 1940 1952 George McAfee
Russ Grimm G 1981 1991 John Riggins
Randall McDaniel G 1988 2001 None
Gene Hickerson G 1958 1973 Jim Brown, Leroy Kelly
Bruce Matthews G 1983 2001 Earl Campbell
Joe DeLamielleure G 1973 1985 O.J. Simpson
Mike Munchak G 1982 1993 Earl Campbell
Tom Mack G 1966 1978 None
Larry Little G 1967 1980 Larry Czonka
John Hannah G 1973 1985 None
Stan Jones G 1954 1966 Gale Sayers
Gary Zimmerman T 1986 1997 None
Rayfield Wright T 1967 1979 Tony Dorsett
Bob Brown T 1964 1973 Ollie Matson
Jackie Slater T 1976 1995 Eric Dickerson
Ron Yary T 1968 1982 None
Anthony Munoz T 1980 1992 None
Lou Creekmur T 1950 1959 John Henry Johnson, Doak Walker
Dan Dierdorf T 1971 1983 None
Bob St. Clair T 1953 1963 Jim Perry, Hugh McElhenny
Art Shell T 1968 1982 Marcus Allen
Mike McCormack T 1951 1962 Jim Brown
Forrest Gregg T 1956 1971 Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung
Rosey Brown T 1953 1965 Frank Gifford
George Connor T 1948 1955 George McAfee
Lou Groza T 1946 1967 Marion Motley, Jim Brown
Jim Parker T 1957 1967 Lenny Moore
Jim Taylor FB 1958 1967 Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo
Jim Brown FB 1957 1965 Frank Gatski, Mike McCormack, Gene Hickerson
Joe Perry FB 1948 1963 Bob St. Clair
Marion Motley FB 1946 1955 Frank Gatski
Paul Hornung HB 1957 1966 Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo
Doak Walker HB 1950 1955 Lou Creekmur
Frank Gifford HB 1952 1964 Rosey Brown
Lenny Moore HB 1956 1967 Jim Parker
Hugh McElhenny HB 1952 1964 Bob St. Clair
Emmitt Smith RB 1990 2004 Larry Allen*, Big Cat Williams*
Thurman Thomas RB 1988 2000 Ruben Brown*
Barry Sanders RB 1989 1998 Lomas Brown*
Marcus Allen RB 1982 1997 Art Shell
Eric Dickerson RB 1983 1993 Jackie Slater
Tony Dorsett RB 1977 1988 Rayfield Wright
Leroy Kelly RB 1964 1973 Gene Hickerson
Walter Payton RB 1975 1987 Jay Hilgenberg*
John Riggins RB 1971 1985 Russ Grimm
Earl Campbell RB 1978 1985 Mike Munchak, Bruce Matthews
Franco Harris RB 1972 1984 Mike Webster
Larry Csonka RB 1968 1979 Jim Langer
O.J. Simpson RB 1969 1979 Joe DeLamellieure
Gale Sayers RB 1965 1971 Stan Jones
Ollie Matson RB 1952 1966 Jim Ringo, Bob Brown
John Henry Johnson FB 1954 1966 Bob St. Clair
As with any chart like this, some compromises were made in the interest of proving a point. Ollie Matson spent most of his career behind linemen other than Brown and Ringo, and Shell and Allen’s careers overlapped exactly one year. Stan Jones was playing defense when Sayers came to town – and Sayers is in Canton at least as much for his skill as a kick returner. Furthermore, linemen and running backs who played most of their careers in the AFL are out, because those players were chosen more on individual merit (on, in Floyd Little’s case, individual reputation) than on continuity or team performance. Ron Mix is in the Hall of Fame because he’s a great lineman, not because of the job he did blocking for Dickie Post. Little is in despite – or perhaps because he was – running behind no one better than Bobby Maples. You see some of this on the NFL side with Mack, Stephenson, Hannah, and Munoz, but they were clearly miles above their contemporaries and the tomato cans playing behind them, and they are decidedly exceptions.
The asterisked players are not HOFers but probably will be. The only reach here is Ruben Brown, and he could be balanced by adding Chuck Foreman behind Ron Yary’s name and the RB-esque John Elway behind Gary Zimmerman.
Some previously baffling inclusions and omissions come into focus when the Rule Of One Or Two is applied. A Hog had to make it into the Hall of Fame; John Riggins’ presence required it. Duane Putnam should have been the guy riding in on Ollie Matson’s coattails, but Matson the running back is covered and Matson the kick returner doesn’t need anyone. Conversely, the only way Mick Tinglehoff, John Niland, and Marvin Powell are going in is if the crystal doors mysteriously swing open for Dave Osborn, Calvin Hill, and Freeman McNeil. Dick Stanfel is worse off; he never even blocked for John Henry Johnson. Leon Gray is definitely out because there can’t be two HOF linemen from a Patriot team whose best runner was Steve Grogan. Instant Replay aside, Jerry Kramer isn’t a HOFer because Gregg and Ringo are already there, and three Packer linemen, even with the entire Packer backfield already enshrined, would be overkill. Schafrath isn’t going in because the voters chose Hickerson instead, and they’re not going to add a fourth guy who blocked for Jim Brown. At some point, their reasoning must go, Brown has to be given credit for what he did on his own.
It will be interesting to see how this phenomenon plays out. Unless Willis McGehee kicks it into sixth, Jonathan Ogden will go into Canton without ever having blocked for a HOF RB. Walter Jones squeaks by through his limited association with Edgerrin James. Speaking of which, someone from the Colts’ line is going to have to start looking good over time. Jeff Saturday is the likely candidate, but is Canton really going to open its gates for a four-time All-Something just because he passed the ball between his legs to Peyton Manning?
Time, and the Veterans’ Committee, has a habit of rewriting history from the way things happened into the way things should have happened. It should have happened that a great running back always had a great lineman leading the way. The fact that it didn’t always is just another inconvenient truth.
BUT WHAT ABOUT QBs?
Now, Jim in L.A. asks, "Is there a lineman-QB connection?" There’s a connection all right, but less of a one than there is for RBs:
PLAYER -- POSITION -- YEARS PLAYED -- HOF RUNNING BACK/OL
Dwight Stephenson C 1980 1987 Bob Griese, Dan Marino
Mike Webster C 1974 1990 Terry Bradshaw
Jim Langer C 1970 1981 Bob Griese
Frank Gatski C 1946 1957 Otto Graham, Bobby Layne
Jim Ringo C 1953 1967 Norm Van Brocklin, Bart Starr
Alex Wojciechowicz C 1938 1950 None
Bulldog Turner C 1940 1952 Sid Luckman
Russ Grimm G 1981 1991 None
Randall McDaniel G 1988 2001 None
Gene Hickerson G 1958 1973 None
Bruce Matthews G 1983 2001 Warren Moon
Joe DeLamielleure G 1973 1985 None
Mike Munchak G 1982 1993 Warren Moon
Tom Mack G 1966 1978 Well …
Larry Little G 1967 1980 Bob Griese
John Hannah G 1973 1985 None
Stan Jones G 1954 1966 Well …
Gary Zimmerman T 1986 1997 John Elway
Rayfield Wright T 1967 1979 Roger Staubach
Bob BrownT 1964 1973 None
Jackie Slater T 1976 1995 None
Ron Yary T 1968 1982 Fran Tarkenton
Anthony Munoz T 1980 1992 None
Lou Creekmur T 1950 1959 Bobby Layne
Dan Dierdorf T 1971 1983 None
Bob St. Clair T 1953 1963 Y.A. Tittle
Art Shell T 1968 1982 Well …
Mike McCormack T 1951 1962 `Otto Graham
Forrest Gregg T 1956 1971 Bart Starr
Rosey Brown T 1953 1965 Y.A. Tittle
George Connor T 1948 1955 Well …
Lou Groza T 1946 1967 Otto Graham
Jim Parker T 1957 1967 Johnny Unitas
Troy Aikman QB 1989 2000 Larry Allen*, Big Cat Williams*
Warren Moon QB 1984 2000 Mike Munchak, Bruce Matthews
Dan Marino QB 1983 1999 Dwight Stephenson
Steve Young QB 1985 1999 None
John Elway QB 1983 1998 Gary Zimmermann
Jim Kelly QB 1986 1996 None
Joe Montana QB 1979 1994 None
Jim Finks QB 1949 1955 None
Dan Fouts QB 1973 1987 None
Bob Griese QB 1967 1980 Larry Little, Jim Langer
Terry Bradshaw QB 1970 1983 Mike Webster
Len Dawson QB 1957 1975 Well …
Fran Tarkenton QB 1961 1978 Ron Yary
Joe Namath QB 1965 1977 Well …
Roger Staubach QB 1969 1979 Rayfield Wright
Sonny Jurgensen QB 1957 1974 Chuck Bednarik
George Blanda QB 1949 1975 Well …
Johnny Unitas QB 1956 1973 Jim Parker
Bart Starr QB 1956 1971 Jim Ringo, Forrest Gregg
Y.A. Tittle QB 1948 1964 Rosey Brown, Bob St. Clair
Norm Van Brocklin QB 1949 1960 Chuck Bednarik
Bobby Layne QB 1948 1962 Lou Creekmur, Frank Gatski
Otto Graham QB 1946 1955 Frank Gatski, Mike McCormack, Lou Groza
The ones with “Well …” in the spot where an HOFer should go are up for debate. Tom Mack played with Joe Namath for four games over the course of one season. No one associates Tom Mack with Joe Namath. Can you really say Mack blocked for Namath in the same way Larry Little blocked for Bob Griese? I say no. I also say no to every HOF lineman who played with George Blanda, since they played with him when he was a benchwarmer and a kicker, no to George Connor because Luckman was done when Connor was playing offense, and no to every HOFer who played with Len Dawson when he was mucking around with Detroit and Cleveland prior to the genesis of the AFL.
I’ll believe in the QB-OL relationship when they start putting in guys like Len Hauss and Randy Cross.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Of Greatness, Real And Presumed
In 1950, when the NFL swelled from 10 teams to 12 with the addition of the Browns and 49ers, the NFL must have thought it had invented the sports equivalent of color TV. I mean, 12 teams? The league hadn’t had that many teams since the days when every town in Ohio was required by law to have a team, and a Nesser brother playing on it. Twelve teams was the outer bound of the universe; go any further and one would surely fall off the edge – right?
Possibly. But a funny thing about that huge new NFL. There were 12 teams, and eight HOF QBs. Nine, if you count George Blanda with the Bears.
Think about that for a minute. Twelve teams, and eight or nine HOF QBs.
That would be like every team in the modern NFL having an HOF QB except the Bills, Browns, Jags, Chiefs, Redskins, Lions, Bucs, and Rams. My God! That would make Bruce Gradkowski an HOF QB!
Now, there is a little fudge going on. The Bears had two HOF QBs on the roster in Blanda and Luckman but started Johnny Lujack. The Rams had Waterfield and Van Brocklin and split their snaps. Still, you’d have to think there will never again be a time when the density of HOF QBs is that … uh, dense.
So when you’re smacked in the face with a question like this, you have to ask why. Why were there proportionally more HOF QBs in the ‘50s than any other decade? And once you ask this question you had best strap yourself in for the answers.
The first answer is that the position evolved in the ‘50s, and the game evolved with it. In 1940 teams passed for 13,788 yards. In 1950 they passed for 25,856. For the first time since the NFL’s inception, every NFL team in the ‘50s had a QB who was primarily a passer. More passers meant more passes. More passes meant more passing records. Baugh, Layne, Luckman, Waterfield, Van Brocklin, Tittle, and Graham – and later in the decade, Starr and Unitas -- rewrote the record books. (Trippi and Blanda didn’t.) Halls of Fame recognize rewriters of record books.
Had these QBs played 10 years earlier the game wouldn’t have been ready for them. Had they played 10 years later they would have been Babe Parilli or Frank Ryan.
The second answer is that defenses were slow to catch on. Whenever someone throws three shutout innings in a spring-training game you hear, “Oh, that’s because the pitchers are so far ahead of the hitters right now.” That was the NFL of the early 50s. Frankie Albert was in the shotgun and Norm Van Brocklin was bombing Nagasaki, and Steve Owen was still stuffing nine slow guys in the box. Once the Detroit Lions started to figure out pass defense in 1955 league passing numbers fell fast and far – from 27,593 yards in 1954 to 23,009 in 1955 to just over 21,000 passing yards in 1956. It took the rest of the decade for total passing yards to approach 1950 levels.
The ‘50s also had the greatest concentration of football talent spread among the fewest teams. There were rival leagues at the end of the ‘40s and the start of the ‘60s, but the NFL had the ‘50s all to itself. African-American players finally infiltrated the game, raising the level of athleticism. The perception has been that these HOF QBs were supremely talented players excelling in a realm of supremely talented players. True that, but also realize that pro scouting was in its infancy and the college game was still running antiquated offenses, and many potentially great NFLers went right into beverage distributorship instead of taking the scenic route through Green Bay. It was largely impression that the NFL was at its zenith.
And not just the NFL. The two Golden Ages of Sport in the 20th century were the ‘20s and the ‘50s. Media was infatuated with sport in the ‘50s and got the populace squarely behind them. Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon, Grantland Rice, Bill Heinz, Dan Daniel, and Joe Palmer were spinning the yarns of Mickey Mantle and Jim Brown and building Bobby Thomson into a Scottish Paul Bunyan. Television in the ‘50s put games and athletes into every bar and living room. Cooperstown and Canton (and Toronto, too) are filled with players from these decades who would have lived the life of Ron Santo, minus the squeals, had they played at a different time. Charlie Trippi and Doak Walker had their equals in Hal Newhouser and Bobby Doerr.
In the pro game, the writers were paying attention to quarterbacks and running backs, largely to the exclusion of everyone else. That’s why there were 13 HOF QBs in the ‘50s (counting Trippi and Blanda but not Jim Finks, who made it to Canton on the strength of assets other than his right arm) and 16 running backs (though teams ran the ball less in the ‘50s) against seven HOF receivers, though the ends and flankers were just as responsible for the offensive explosion as the QBs.
So to sum up, in the ‘50s you had the prime movers of hot offenses playing against bum defenses at a time when great writers were in the business of glorifying QBs and everybody was paying attention.
In fact, by the end of the ‘50s every NFL team had had an HOF QB for at least two seasons – except for the Giants, who were coincidentally one of the league’s most successful teams.
If that seems preposterous now, rest assured it wasn’t preposterous then – but only because it wasn’t true. Every Lions-49ers game did not pit a backfield of two HOFers against a backfield of four HOFers, with John Henry Johnson rotating out on passing downs. We’ve simply made it out to be that way.
Possibly. But a funny thing about that huge new NFL. There were 12 teams, and eight HOF QBs. Nine, if you count George Blanda with the Bears.
Think about that for a minute. Twelve teams, and eight or nine HOF QBs.
That would be like every team in the modern NFL having an HOF QB except the Bills, Browns, Jags, Chiefs, Redskins, Lions, Bucs, and Rams. My God! That would make Bruce Gradkowski an HOF QB!
Now, there is a little fudge going on. The Bears had two HOF QBs on the roster in Blanda and Luckman but started Johnny Lujack. The Rams had Waterfield and Van Brocklin and split their snaps. Still, you’d have to think there will never again be a time when the density of HOF QBs is that … uh, dense.
So when you’re smacked in the face with a question like this, you have to ask why. Why were there proportionally more HOF QBs in the ‘50s than any other decade? And once you ask this question you had best strap yourself in for the answers.
The first answer is that the position evolved in the ‘50s, and the game evolved with it. In 1940 teams passed for 13,788 yards. In 1950 they passed for 25,856. For the first time since the NFL’s inception, every NFL team in the ‘50s had a QB who was primarily a passer. More passers meant more passes. More passes meant more passing records. Baugh, Layne, Luckman, Waterfield, Van Brocklin, Tittle, and Graham – and later in the decade, Starr and Unitas -- rewrote the record books. (Trippi and Blanda didn’t.) Halls of Fame recognize rewriters of record books.
Had these QBs played 10 years earlier the game wouldn’t have been ready for them. Had they played 10 years later they would have been Babe Parilli or Frank Ryan.
The second answer is that defenses were slow to catch on. Whenever someone throws three shutout innings in a spring-training game you hear, “Oh, that’s because the pitchers are so far ahead of the hitters right now.” That was the NFL of the early 50s. Frankie Albert was in the shotgun and Norm Van Brocklin was bombing Nagasaki, and Steve Owen was still stuffing nine slow guys in the box. Once the Detroit Lions started to figure out pass defense in 1955 league passing numbers fell fast and far – from 27,593 yards in 1954 to 23,009 in 1955 to just over 21,000 passing yards in 1956. It took the rest of the decade for total passing yards to approach 1950 levels.
The ‘50s also had the greatest concentration of football talent spread among the fewest teams. There were rival leagues at the end of the ‘40s and the start of the ‘60s, but the NFL had the ‘50s all to itself. African-American players finally infiltrated the game, raising the level of athleticism. The perception has been that these HOF QBs were supremely talented players excelling in a realm of supremely talented players. True that, but also realize that pro scouting was in its infancy and the college game was still running antiquated offenses, and many potentially great NFLers went right into beverage distributorship instead of taking the scenic route through Green Bay. It was largely impression that the NFL was at its zenith.
And not just the NFL. The two Golden Ages of Sport in the 20th century were the ‘20s and the ‘50s. Media was infatuated with sport in the ‘50s and got the populace squarely behind them. Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon, Grantland Rice, Bill Heinz, Dan Daniel, and Joe Palmer were spinning the yarns of Mickey Mantle and Jim Brown and building Bobby Thomson into a Scottish Paul Bunyan. Television in the ‘50s put games and athletes into every bar and living room. Cooperstown and Canton (and Toronto, too) are filled with players from these decades who would have lived the life of Ron Santo, minus the squeals, had they played at a different time. Charlie Trippi and Doak Walker had their equals in Hal Newhouser and Bobby Doerr.
In the pro game, the writers were paying attention to quarterbacks and running backs, largely to the exclusion of everyone else. That’s why there were 13 HOF QBs in the ‘50s (counting Trippi and Blanda but not Jim Finks, who made it to Canton on the strength of assets other than his right arm) and 16 running backs (though teams ran the ball less in the ‘50s) against seven HOF receivers, though the ends and flankers were just as responsible for the offensive explosion as the QBs.
So to sum up, in the ‘50s you had the prime movers of hot offenses playing against bum defenses at a time when great writers were in the business of glorifying QBs and everybody was paying attention.
In fact, by the end of the ‘50s every NFL team had had an HOF QB for at least two seasons – except for the Giants, who were coincidentally one of the league’s most successful teams.
If that seems preposterous now, rest assured it wasn’t preposterous then – but only because it wasn’t true. Every Lions-49ers game did not pit a backfield of two HOFers against a backfield of four HOFers, with John Henry Johnson rotating out on passing downs. We’ve simply made it out to be that way.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Why Bart Starr is Better Than Brett Favre, Ch. 1
Starr: 9-1 record in the playoffs, five NFL championships, two Super Bowl wins, 94-57-6 record as a starter.
Favre: One Super Bowl win, one Super Bowl loss, 2-3 record in NFC championship games, 160-93 record as a starter.
Any questions? Good. On to Chapter 2.
Favre: One Super Bowl win, one Super Bowl loss, 2-3 record in NFC championship games, 160-93 record as a starter.
Any questions? Good. On to Chapter 2.
Why Bart Starr is Better Than Brett Favre, Ch. 2
I work for a place that insists everything can and should be measured in numbers. Happy? There’s a number for that. Successful? A number for that. Depressed, choleric, pregnant, bloated, fast, slow, hard-working, lazy, fond of beets? Numbers for all of those.
Kinda like Chapter One above. Everything measured in numbers.
But in this great process to numberize everything, things that can’t be measured in numbers are being measured in numbers. How sweet and bracing the first Diet Mountain Dew of the morning tastes, for instance. It’s part of our ongoing effort as a species to explain everything around us, even Jillian Michaels Yelling At Fat People, in stark contrast to Van Morrison’s First Universal Truth, which is: It ain’t why, it just is. And nothing beats a good saxophone break.
Who’s a better football player falls right in on that list of Sisyphean challenges. You can come up with numbers that show that Ruben Brown is better than Chad Clifton, but you can also come up with numbers that show Clifton is better than Brown, and numbers that show that neither one is as good as, oh, I don't know, Anthony Clement. And unless you run them up against each other in a big mud wallow you won’t know – and once that’s done, all you’ll really know is who’s better in a mud wallow.
So seeing as we can’t pit the real Bart Starr against the real Brett Favre in any meaningful fashion, and we don’t want to play the Misleading Numbers game, let’s talk about the way they go about quarterbacking.
First, let me say that I know Brett Favre personally a little, and I consider him the most competitive man I have ever met. When he signed autographs for my client, he wanted to sign them faster and better than Drew Bledsoe. When he had lines to speak, he wanted to speak them more clearly than Troy Aikman.
Being competitive is an admirable quality in a quarterback. It’s certainly better than not being competitive. Which is why Matt Flynn still has an NFL career and JaMarcus Russell doesn’t.
However, I have never known Brett Favre to be the most competitive person ever when it comes to contests of intelligence. In words, actions, choices, and family situations (he’s a bloody grandfather! I’m 10 years older than Favre and have an eight-year-old!) Favre has never shown any reason why the stereotype of the tractor-driving southern hick should not apply in his case. When he opens his mouth to speak you’re almost surprised to hear words and not .38 Special songs. If he would ever stop agonizing over retirement long enough to take on the kids in Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, I would pay hard money to watch. The apocryphal story is that Aaron Rodgers in his rookie season had digested more of the playbook than Favre had in year 13 – but they don’t give prizes for memorizing the playbook.
In so many ways Brett Favre ought to be every creative person’s wet dream of a QB – always willing to go off-script, to yield to the wildest flights of imagination, to extemporate, to do things his way – but to this creative person at least Favre’s freelancing comes off as wholly self-serving and doltish.
The reason for that is when Favre’s competitiveness mingles with Favre’s creativity the result is an overpowering belief in his ability to make something spectacular out of any situation. In other words, when life gives you lemons, make lobster Newburg. Or a nuclear-powered sub. Or the Crab Nebula.
As a result, Brett Favre does not so much run an offense as he allows certain plays to be called from the sidelines and run on the field until he decides it’s time for him to play his game, which involves high-risk passes often improvised in the huddle or at the line of scrimmage. It’s the football equivalent of traveling to Africa for the expressed purpose of sleeping around. Yeah, you might be able to get away with it, but there are more prudent things, if you catch the drift.
Watching Favre is like watching Evel Knievel. You know it will end badly, but you’re not exactly sure when – and the greater the fan, the more they secretly hope for the largest mushroom cloud, the most pretzelized pileup, the longest fall off the highest cliff, with the deepest, most satisfying BOOM! at the end.
Contrast this with Bart Starr. It’s not hard. In a world of shadows Favre is starless and Bible-black, and Starr is the color of the moon on a cold night.
Favre will say whatever springs to mind. Granted, it’s not much content-wise, but it’s definitely off-the-cuff. Nobody who was that bad in There’s Something About Mary is a good enough actor to summon tears at will.
Starr always gives the impression of someone who carefully chews his thoughts 32 times before speaking. As a head coach, he enjoyed calling out someone in public as much as BP executives enjoy gulf shrimp packed in oil. His life outside of football has been devoted to his church, his charities, and an enlightened brand of capitalism. He has rarely scrawled an autograph.
That class extends to his family. When his wife, Cherry, shilled furniture, she was absolutely as classy a furniture-shiller as someone in a beehive hairdo and a bullet bra could be.
Fine. So Bart Starr does not encourage 14-year-olds to marry or advocate deer hunting off the back of an International Harvester. That alone doesn’t make him even as good a quarterback as Steve Walsh (who for sheer inability to perform every significant task required of a modern professional QB had no peer). What made Starr great?
First, his ability to completely subsume personal goals for the good of the team. Starr was not a great quarterback as far as physical tools go; he wasn’t a 17th-round draft pick, either, but football teams in the 1950s had absolutely no clue when it came to drafting QBs . You may as well have been asking them to choose BlackBerry or iPhone. (Consider the QBs drafted ahead of Starr in 1956: Earl Morrall, John Roach, Fred Wyant, Em Lindbeck, John Polzer, Tom Spiers, George Herring, and George Welsh. Only Morrall was a legitimate NFL starter. And no, I have no idea what an “Em Lindbeck” is.)
Starr often expressed his disregard for personal accomplishments, and the sport took that to heart. He was first-team All-NFL once and a Pro Bowler four times. Randall Cunningham has done as much.
Starr’s willingness to do whatever was asked of him made the players around him better. That’s not to say Jim Taylor would not have been a HOFer with a different QB. Jim Taylor was enough of a Marine that he would have been a HOFer if John Tesh had been the QB. On the other hand, without Bart Starr Paul Hornung would have been a drunk French soccer player taking a dive after having been breathed on by another player. And as he stands up, grimacing more profoundly than a gutshot Samuel L. Jackson, there’s … Bob Lilly. Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
Right along with that, Starr was smart enough to know that not doing it his way does not make him any less of a leader. Think about the QB position for a minute. Even the most ornery, bull-headed, independent Texan cuss of a QB is the tool of a head coach. If he doesn’t do enough of what the coach wants he’s more gone than Blind Melon. This is immutable; even Brett Favre is bound to follow the offense to an extent, under threat of a trade to the Saskatchewan Roughriders for the rights to Don Trull (who, experts agree, is a fine backup who will one day be the number-one quarterback, and one of the top-notch passers in the league). However, the test of a QB is whether he can make his teammates in the huddle believe that a 47 Cross Trap on third-and-34 is his idea, and absolutely the play that needs to be run to its utmost in this particular situation.
The trouble starts when the willing suspension of disbelief breaks down, when the QB starts thinking he’s a better coach than the coach, that instead of a 47 Cross Trap what needs to be run is a skinny post, to a slow receiver with poor hands, against an All-Pro corner. Convincing a bunch of football players in a huddle that this is the thing to do is not like winning over the Supreme Court; there’s a lot of gullibility amidst the avoirdupois. Besides, at $3.72 million a season going for broke is relative.
Starr escaped all that by running the offense persuasively and authoritatively. He didn’t do just what Lombardi asked; sometimes he did things that out-Lombardied Lombardi. It would just have been ineptitude in synergy if the coach had been Rich Kotite, but with Starr and Lombardi it was gorgeous. Even so, there was never any question in the huddle of who was in charge and who was going to make this play work. It was going to start with Bart Starr and everyone was going to do their job, and if not, they were going to hear about it from Starr and Lombardi – and some players genuinely feared Starr’s wrath, gentle and Christian as it was, more than Lombardi’s.
In the end Starr proved out a winner, which is different than performing acts that win games. In the 2009 season Brett Favre performed at least three acts that you could definitively say won games for the Vikings – oh, but he also performed an act that definitively lost the NFC Championship and cost his team a trip to the Super Bowl. The 2010 NFC Championship (and for that matter, the 2008 NFC Championship) will be remembered long after the pass that beat the ‘Niners has been forgotten.
In Bart Starr’s career only one dumb play and one truly bad game come to mind: the ball he fumbled away to George Andrie that was returned for a touchdown in the 1967 Ice Bowl, and a 1962 Thanksgiving Day game against the Lions where Starr was sacked what seems like 31 times. The Packers won the Ice Bowl, and the Turkey Day game? The only game the Packers lost all year. And the wins are games that will never die.
Quarterbacking is way more like advertising than either the quarterbacks or the ad guys would like to admit. Brett Favre is the hyperproduced ad that leaves the world breathless but doesn’t sell a crumb more cake. Bart Starr is the simple ad that simply sells and sells and sells.
Selling is winning. Winning is selling. Bart Starr sold, the Packers bought, and together they created a dynasty.
Kinda like Chapter One above. Everything measured in numbers.
But in this great process to numberize everything, things that can’t be measured in numbers are being measured in numbers. How sweet and bracing the first Diet Mountain Dew of the morning tastes, for instance. It’s part of our ongoing effort as a species to explain everything around us, even Jillian Michaels Yelling At Fat People, in stark contrast to Van Morrison’s First Universal Truth, which is: It ain’t why, it just is. And nothing beats a good saxophone break.
Who’s a better football player falls right in on that list of Sisyphean challenges. You can come up with numbers that show that Ruben Brown is better than Chad Clifton, but you can also come up with numbers that show Clifton is better than Brown, and numbers that show that neither one is as good as, oh, I don't know, Anthony Clement. And unless you run them up against each other in a big mud wallow you won’t know – and once that’s done, all you’ll really know is who’s better in a mud wallow.
So seeing as we can’t pit the real Bart Starr against the real Brett Favre in any meaningful fashion, and we don’t want to play the Misleading Numbers game, let’s talk about the way they go about quarterbacking.
First, let me say that I know Brett Favre personally a little, and I consider him the most competitive man I have ever met. When he signed autographs for my client, he wanted to sign them faster and better than Drew Bledsoe. When he had lines to speak, he wanted to speak them more clearly than Troy Aikman.
Being competitive is an admirable quality in a quarterback. It’s certainly better than not being competitive. Which is why Matt Flynn still has an NFL career and JaMarcus Russell doesn’t.
However, I have never known Brett Favre to be the most competitive person ever when it comes to contests of intelligence. In words, actions, choices, and family situations (he’s a bloody grandfather! I’m 10 years older than Favre and have an eight-year-old!) Favre has never shown any reason why the stereotype of the tractor-driving southern hick should not apply in his case. When he opens his mouth to speak you’re almost surprised to hear words and not .38 Special songs. If he would ever stop agonizing over retirement long enough to take on the kids in Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, I would pay hard money to watch. The apocryphal story is that Aaron Rodgers in his rookie season had digested more of the playbook than Favre had in year 13 – but they don’t give prizes for memorizing the playbook.
In so many ways Brett Favre ought to be every creative person’s wet dream of a QB – always willing to go off-script, to yield to the wildest flights of imagination, to extemporate, to do things his way – but to this creative person at least Favre’s freelancing comes off as wholly self-serving and doltish.
The reason for that is when Favre’s competitiveness mingles with Favre’s creativity the result is an overpowering belief in his ability to make something spectacular out of any situation. In other words, when life gives you lemons, make lobster Newburg. Or a nuclear-powered sub. Or the Crab Nebula.
As a result, Brett Favre does not so much run an offense as he allows certain plays to be called from the sidelines and run on the field until he decides it’s time for him to play his game, which involves high-risk passes often improvised in the huddle or at the line of scrimmage. It’s the football equivalent of traveling to Africa for the expressed purpose of sleeping around. Yeah, you might be able to get away with it, but there are more prudent things, if you catch the drift.
Watching Favre is like watching Evel Knievel. You know it will end badly, but you’re not exactly sure when – and the greater the fan, the more they secretly hope for the largest mushroom cloud, the most pretzelized pileup, the longest fall off the highest cliff, with the deepest, most satisfying BOOM! at the end.
Contrast this with Bart Starr. It’s not hard. In a world of shadows Favre is starless and Bible-black, and Starr is the color of the moon on a cold night.
Favre will say whatever springs to mind. Granted, it’s not much content-wise, but it’s definitely off-the-cuff. Nobody who was that bad in There’s Something About Mary is a good enough actor to summon tears at will.
Starr always gives the impression of someone who carefully chews his thoughts 32 times before speaking. As a head coach, he enjoyed calling out someone in public as much as BP executives enjoy gulf shrimp packed in oil. His life outside of football has been devoted to his church, his charities, and an enlightened brand of capitalism. He has rarely scrawled an autograph.
That class extends to his family. When his wife, Cherry, shilled furniture, she was absolutely as classy a furniture-shiller as someone in a beehive hairdo and a bullet bra could be.
Fine. So Bart Starr does not encourage 14-year-olds to marry or advocate deer hunting off the back of an International Harvester. That alone doesn’t make him even as good a quarterback as Steve Walsh (who for sheer inability to perform every significant task required of a modern professional QB had no peer). What made Starr great?
First, his ability to completely subsume personal goals for the good of the team. Starr was not a great quarterback as far as physical tools go; he wasn’t a 17th-round draft pick, either, but football teams in the 1950s had absolutely no clue when it came to drafting QBs . You may as well have been asking them to choose BlackBerry or iPhone. (Consider the QBs drafted ahead of Starr in 1956: Earl Morrall, John Roach, Fred Wyant, Em Lindbeck, John Polzer, Tom Spiers, George Herring, and George Welsh. Only Morrall was a legitimate NFL starter. And no, I have no idea what an “Em Lindbeck” is.)
Starr often expressed his disregard for personal accomplishments, and the sport took that to heart. He was first-team All-NFL once and a Pro Bowler four times. Randall Cunningham has done as much.
Starr’s willingness to do whatever was asked of him made the players around him better. That’s not to say Jim Taylor would not have been a HOFer with a different QB. Jim Taylor was enough of a Marine that he would have been a HOFer if John Tesh had been the QB. On the other hand, without Bart Starr Paul Hornung would have been a drunk French soccer player taking a dive after having been breathed on by another player. And as he stands up, grimacing more profoundly than a gutshot Samuel L. Jackson, there’s … Bob Lilly. Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
Right along with that, Starr was smart enough to know that not doing it his way does not make him any less of a leader. Think about the QB position for a minute. Even the most ornery, bull-headed, independent Texan cuss of a QB is the tool of a head coach. If he doesn’t do enough of what the coach wants he’s more gone than Blind Melon. This is immutable; even Brett Favre is bound to follow the offense to an extent, under threat of a trade to the Saskatchewan Roughriders for the rights to Don Trull (who, experts agree, is a fine backup who will one day be the number-one quarterback, and one of the top-notch passers in the league). However, the test of a QB is whether he can make his teammates in the huddle believe that a 47 Cross Trap on third-and-34 is his idea, and absolutely the play that needs to be run to its utmost in this particular situation.
The trouble starts when the willing suspension of disbelief breaks down, when the QB starts thinking he’s a better coach than the coach, that instead of a 47 Cross Trap what needs to be run is a skinny post, to a slow receiver with poor hands, against an All-Pro corner. Convincing a bunch of football players in a huddle that this is the thing to do is not like winning over the Supreme Court; there’s a lot of gullibility amidst the avoirdupois. Besides, at $3.72 million a season going for broke is relative.
Starr escaped all that by running the offense persuasively and authoritatively. He didn’t do just what Lombardi asked; sometimes he did things that out-Lombardied Lombardi. It would just have been ineptitude in synergy if the coach had been Rich Kotite, but with Starr and Lombardi it was gorgeous. Even so, there was never any question in the huddle of who was in charge and who was going to make this play work. It was going to start with Bart Starr and everyone was going to do their job, and if not, they were going to hear about it from Starr and Lombardi – and some players genuinely feared Starr’s wrath, gentle and Christian as it was, more than Lombardi’s.
In the end Starr proved out a winner, which is different than performing acts that win games. In the 2009 season Brett Favre performed at least three acts that you could definitively say won games for the Vikings – oh, but he also performed an act that definitively lost the NFC Championship and cost his team a trip to the Super Bowl. The 2010 NFC Championship (and for that matter, the 2008 NFC Championship) will be remembered long after the pass that beat the ‘Niners has been forgotten.
In Bart Starr’s career only one dumb play and one truly bad game come to mind: the ball he fumbled away to George Andrie that was returned for a touchdown in the 1967 Ice Bowl, and a 1962 Thanksgiving Day game against the Lions where Starr was sacked what seems like 31 times. The Packers won the Ice Bowl, and the Turkey Day game? The only game the Packers lost all year. And the wins are games that will never die.
Quarterbacking is way more like advertising than either the quarterbacks or the ad guys would like to admit. Brett Favre is the hyperproduced ad that leaves the world breathless but doesn’t sell a crumb more cake. Bart Starr is the simple ad that simply sells and sells and sells.
Selling is winning. Winning is selling. Bart Starr sold, the Packers bought, and together they created a dynasty.
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