Long, Long Halls of Pretty-Good-Ness

This is my Finnegan’s Wake. Like James Joyce’s impenetrable opus, this represents a whole lot of work to prove a very simple point – namely, that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

Let me back up. I was scheming, Pinky and the Brain-fashion, how to prove two favorite points: That George Blanda was the most unworthy Hall of Famer ever and the Eagles were the most overrated band of all time.

These are not bad points. Blanda had staying power and a great knack for the dramatic, but he threw the ball to players without consideration for the color of their jerseys. As a producer of net yards and net points for his team he was no more effective than Billy Kilmer or Jack Kemp and far less efficient than long-lived system types like Ken Anderson and Jim Hart.[1]

Speaking of long-lived system types, the Eagles didn’t invent the California sound or even perfect it (listen to “Already Gone” if you want to hear a great song ground to a halt by a complete lack of comprehension of the beat); they simply rode it to reasonable fame and substantial fortune, leaving no clues behind. It's spooky; you go into their back catalog trying to figure out what made them great, and it's like someone stole the good stuff and left behind "Visions" and "Good Day In Hell."

So in considering these favorite targets, I considered their respective halls of fame. The Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame have roughly the same number of members – amazing, when you consider that rock ‘n’ roll is half as old as long as pro football, yet it's had a hall of fame since 1986. It's less preposterous than an Angry Birds Hall of Fame, but not by much.

This has led the RNRHOF down all sorts of interesting paths. Instead of waiting around 20 years for Chris Brown to become eligible, it threw in Charles Brown. Instead of waiting for Rhianna or Adele, it opted to fill the joint with Jesse Stone, the Dells, Darlene Love, Mo Ostin, the Flamingoes, and Gene Pitney, performers whose pro-football counterparts would be Gil Brandt, Buckets Goldenberg, Gob Buckeye, Ron Wolf, John Brockington, and Norm Snead. That’s not to say these people weren’t instrumental to the growth and development of their vocations, or that they didn’t have their moments. They did – but that’s not the point.

(This is one reason why I hate the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, though it’s far from the most important one.)

Since the numbers roughly align, you can put the pro-football hall of famers in one column and the rock-‘n’-roll hall of famers in another column and try to match them up. That’s the Sisyphean project I’ve been tackling for the last six months.

Certain things are obvious. James Brown = Jim Brown. Same name, same impact, similar attitude. Dinah Washington = Night Train Lane. Night Train got his nickname by listening to Dinah. Dion = Gino Marchetti. Italian stallions, kings of the streets, looked good in leather jackets, successful, influential, completed each other perfectly. You can see Marchetti running down quarterbacks to the strains of “Runaround Sue.”

It starts to bog down when you have to find a rock-‘n’-roller for Mike Michalske or a football player for Doc Pomus [2]. And the top-heavy nature of rock ‘n’ roll causes some big problems. If Jim Brown = James Brown, who equals Bob Dylan? Who was white and semi-poetic and prolific and incredibly influential? Johnny Unitas? Okay, if Unitas was Dylan, then who’s the Beatles? Bart Starr? It has internal logic, but it’s ridiculous on its face.

The challenges only get worse. If Unitas and Starr are the Beatles and Dylan, who’s the Rolling Stones? The Beach Boys? Muddy Waters? Stevie Wonder? Elvis? [3]

You can argue that I'm comparing two things that shouldn't be compared, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rock 'n' roll is danceable anarchy with sharply defined transition points: Little Richard. Its progress depends on volcanic performers forcibly redirecting the soundtrack of adolescence and dragging society along by the hair. Popular music is also art, and art requires periodic cataclysmic explosions (cf., The Shock of the New).

Pro football, on the other hand, is about incremental change in the service of continuity: Joe Montana to Steve Young. Once you get past Brown and Unitas and Don Hutson and Sammy Baugh, and maybe Dick Butkus, what players broke the mold and changed the game for everyone who came after? The majority of football hall-of-famers achieved success within a system that had already been defined. In that respect, they were a whole lot more like the Eagles than they were like Chuck Berry or Little Richard.[4]

Rock ‘n’ roll is also more inclined to celebrate the moment. Someone could get into the RNRHOF on the strength of the greatest single or album ever. Thirty minutes of brilliance over a 40-minute album is enough: Patti Smith's Horses. But neither Dwight Clark nor David Tyree are getting anywhere near Canton with their versions of “The Catch.”

But to get back to the Eagles – the music Eagles. They’ve been together on and off for 40 years and produced nine Top 20 singles. Bachman-Turner Overdrive did about as well in a decade, and generated a couple of laughs along the way.[5] Looking at the best Eagles songs that do not involve Jackson Browne, only “Hotel California” stands out, and then only as a skillful summary of clichés that permeates the group’s work from “Witchy Woman” on. Take a pinch of “Desperado,” the rhythms of “Tequila Sunrise,” the melancholy of “My Man,” and the guitar sound from “One of These Nights,” and you’re there. [6] 

It's not unfair to say the Eagles were a long-lived and commercially successful band, a popular album band and a middling singles band with negligible influence on popular music or culture.

That doesn't sound overwhelmingly hall-of-fame-ish. It sounds like the pop-music equivalent of an insurance salesman – yet the Eagles were a slam-dunk choice for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

Saying the Eagles are overrated doesn’t get you anywhere. Suppose they are overrated; does that instantly instill dissatisfaction in the 16 million people who bought Hotel California? Even if 10 million of them scream at Glenn Frey halfway through “Life In the Fast Lane,” as I do, “Play the damn lick already!”, the fact is they listened to the song enough to get hugely annoyed by it.

Similarly, saying George Blanda is overrated doesn’t change a thing. His bust isn’t leaving Canton. The sight of his shaggy, sideburned visage plugged with George Washington dentures and heaving steam like a Clydesdale under a stadium cape is an image for the ages. NFL Films isn’t suddenly going to say, “Oh, he’s overrated,” and replace that image with one of Ken Anderson throwing a seven-yard out to Isaac Curtis.

One of the problems with all halls of fame is that they’re levelers. In looking at the two enshrinee lists and matching Traffic with Joe Namath (the low spark of high-heeled boys), or John Mellencamp with Mel Hein (ex-Cougars), the overwhelming impression is that true greatness has been discounted and near-greatness is elevated.

Don’t get me wrong; near-greatness is pretty great. But when the creator of “Pretty Maids All In A Row” is allowed to sit as an equal with the creator of “A Day In The Life,” or when Dick Stanfel, who had a five-year career as an excellent blocker on some so-so teams, is placed on a literal pedestal alongside Jim Brown, it usurps one of the basic premises of life: greatness is a pyramid, and it doesn’t get wider at the top.


[1] The name “Tim Couch” comes up several times in Blanda's career-comps section on Pro Football Reference, as does the name “John Friesz.” And “Bubby Brister.”
[2] It’s hard enough finding contemporary comps within their field for guys like Michalske and Pomus. How many great fullback-guards are kicking around the NFL? And I will never equate Doc Pomus with Swizz Beatz, even if it is logical.
[3] I’ve tried. I have the Beach Boys with Lance Alworth and Red Grange with Elvis. I have Sammy Baugh with Buddy Holly and Dick Butkus with Little Richard. The rest throw me.
[4] You can argue that both systems have already been defined, that pro football is using the same formations it used in 1953 and rock ‘n’ roll is using the same three chords it used in 1954, but that doesn’t mean anything. Nothing has happened in football over the last half-century to compare to what Elvis, Dylan and the Beatles did to popular music. No one stopped speaking to their children because Frankie Albert started throwing the ball out of the shotgun. The streets never filled with disaffected young people running the power-I. Saying the basic chord structures haven’t changed is like saying football players still wear shoes.

[5] The Eagles, meanwhile, accomplished the near-impossible: They turned Joe Walsh into a curmudgeon.

[6] It’s also instructive that the Eagles songs with the greatest staying power come from the solo albums of their members – Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good” and Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer.” Group efforts tend towards singalongs like “Heartache Tonight” and overblown weepers like “The Last Resort.”


Okay, I read this and realized that I was too much like Joyce for my own good. I was bloviating and declaiming and never getting around to the point. Here's the point: George Blanda was a less successful passer than Dave Krieg and a worse kicker than Nick Mike-Mayer. If you prefer your mediocre talents in a package, Blanda was less productive at what he did combined than Jerry Kramer for certain, and arguably Pat Summerall or Lou Michaels. Of the bunch, Kramer is the most appropriate HOFer based on his accomplishments as a guard, followed by Summerall, for his general contributions to football, then Blanda, and finally Michaels. 

The Eagles were less inventive than Poco, less heartfelt than Dan Fogelberg, less poppy than America, less comfortable with a hook than Andrew Gold, less skilled at choosing (and performing) covers than Linda Ronstadt, less rocking (and adept at rocking) than the Outlaws, less talented than Pure Prairie League, less trippy than Moby Grape or the New Riders of the Purple Sage, less socially conscious than Jackson Browne, less cynical than Warren Zevon, less polished than American Flyer, less devil-may-care than the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, less diverse than the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, less country than Commander Cody, less bluesy than the Sir Douglas Quintet, and less swingy than Asleep At The Wheel -- and nowhere near as influential as the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Stills & Nash. However, outside of the last three, only Jackson Browne and the Eagles are RNRHOFers, and none of the others are close to being locks. 

And I consider myself an Eagles fan.

Packers-Bears: The Pretend End of the Pretend Road

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Packers are here because it snowed.

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

And because it snowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's play this out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let the railleries begin.

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.