The Mud And The Blood And The Bears And The Steelers

On to the second round, and arguably the marquee matchup: Chicago-Pittsburgh.

Hoo doggie. You can smell the concussions from here. And you don’t even have to close your eyes to picture the scene: 38 degrees, wind off the lake, occasional showers, lights on, grass in the end zones only, no heaters on the benches, Papa Bear storming up one sideline and Chuck Noll cooling it on the other, capes for everyone, Grantland Rice and Red Smith up in the press box banging it out for their respective papers, Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier up in the TV booth for CBS and Lindsey Nelson on the radio side, wearing a sport coat in a natty DNA pattern.

And then the game itself: Two teams almost completely of different eras going at it.

No kidding. The most amazing thing about this matchup is that it’s nearly devoid of overlap. Of the Bears’ top 25 players, only six date from the ‘70s and later, with only one (Walter Payton) on offense. Of the Steelers’ top 25, 20 date from the ‘70s and later, with none playing before 1950. If you’re looking for head-to-heads, you’re pretty much reduced to Sweetness vs. the remnants of the Steel Curtain, with Kevin Butler around to kick field goals.

So how does one go about evaluating such an out-of-phase matchup?

One goes to the eternal places: the lines and the defense.

The Bears have had a disproportionate share of the game’s best linemen of whatever era they happened to be playing in, except now. That is not to say that Bulldog Trafton is better than Jonathan Odgen. Can’t be said, can’t be compared. Any linemen comparison works its way around to the size of one versus the size of the other, and you’re forced to conclude that bigger and great is better than smaller and great.

The Steelers have had good offensive linemen over the last 40 years, including two Hall of Famers. They have had good D-linemen over the last 50 years, including two HOFers.

Defensively the Steelers prefer to emphasize linebackers, and have produced two HOFers at the position. They back it up with three HOF-caliber D-backs – Mel Blount, Rod Woodson, and Troy Polomalu – and an HOF defensive coach.

The problem is that the Bears can trot out two nearly complete sets of HOF O-linemen, D-linemen, and linebackers, and they throw in a couple of HOF D-backs (albeit two-way players) for good measure.

How do you get around that? More specifically, how do the Steelers get around it?

They can’t. They simply cannot.

The Steelers can’t because they don’t have enough offense to negate the Bears’ tangible advantage in the lines. Terry Bradshaw is a wobbly QB. Jerome Bettis and Franco Harris are merely Bettis and Harris, not Jim Brown or Barry Sanders. Throwing on the Bears is never a bad idea regardless of the reality level, but it’s Terry Bradshaw throwing to Stallworth and Swann and, oops, Gary Ballman, and even Red Grange, who had to be on his toes for five passes a game, can shut that down. And, heaven forbid, if the Steelers went completely against type and spread the field, they’d be trotting out Hines Ward and Roy Jefferson, and they don’t exactly overmatch the motely assortment of short Ivy leaguers and slow cover corners that have been favored by the Bears through the generations.

Which is not to say the Bears have it sussed on the offensive end. Sid Luckman is the best QB on the field and ditto Payton for the running backs, and Gale Sayers delivers speed and versatility, but the passing targets are woeful and depth is an issue. Grange and Bronko Nagurski are HOFers more on legend than performance, and the third and fourth wide receivers are the worst you’ll find anywhere. I would honestly take Kevin Walter and Jabar Gaffney over Morris and Kavanaugh, and they’re the K-cars of second-string wide receivers. The all-time Bears would be better off splitting out George McAfee and Devin Hester than trotting out Morris and Kavanaugh on third down, and they’re the bloody second-string kick-returners.

For any other team the Steelers’ secondary strength would put them in a pickle. For the Bears, it just plays to their strength. Does it really matter than Rod Woodson shuts down Harlon Hill? Nope; Luckman wasn’t going to throw to him anyway.

So all signs point to a defensive struggle – a misnomer, since it’s the offenses that struggle. Even Lindsey Nelson, as gifted with the tongue as Gale Sayers was with the hips, is struck dumb by the stupefaction produced by this game. Three yards and a cloud of mud is treating this game too kindly.

Ah, but something happens eventually. George Halas falls asleep on the bench. No! Running a two-minute offense consisting of over-the-middle dumps to Mike Ditka and incomplete passes heaved in the direction of Bill Hewitt, Luckman throws a screen pass to Gale Sayers, who gets wide and takes it 34 yards for a score. Butler misses the extra point, and the Bears go into halftime with a 6-0 lead.

And then the defenses really get stingy.

Bradshaw and Luckman are content to run sweeps and dives. The sweeps work better for the Bears, who have the superior speed to the outside. The dives don’t work for anyone.

As time winds down in the fourth the Steelers are forced to throw the ball. Passes to Swann and Stallworth work the ball down to the Bears’ 24, where two incomplete passes and a Dick Butkus sack bring up fourth and 17.

Bradshaw drops and lofts a wobbler in Gary Ballman’s direction. Ballman goes up, Dave Duerson goes up, the crowd rises to its feet, the ball nestles in Ballman’s hands, the two men collide, and Ballman falls to the turf cradling the ball … nine yards short of a first down.

Luckman takes a knee three times and the game ends.

The stats are woeful. Luckman goes nine-of-14 for 113 yards and the only score. Bradshaw is 13-for-27 for 163 and a pick. Bettis carries 12 times for 26 yards; Harris rushes 18 times for 39. The Bears are led by Payton with 81 yards rushing and Sayers with 57. Sayers is also the leading receiver, with five catches, and sets up the lone touchdown with a 54-yard punt return.

There’s nothing that says that the higher up the ziggurat you go the better the football games automatically get. This one is ugly as they come. But as Tom Brookshier would remind you, neither team would have it any other way.

(Incidentally, after I wrote this I ran it past one of my more football-savvy friends, and he was vehement in asserting that not only would the game be more high-scoring, but that Pittsburgh would win. His argument was something along the line of the Pittsburgh teams of Terry Bradshaw’s day were offensive powerhouses, and after that it trailed off into invective.

Interesting assertion, invective notwithstanding, so I checked it out.

First, as a previous column pointed out, Bradshaw ranks with Joe Namath and George Blanda as the worst HOF QBs ever.

“Aha!” you exclaim. “Blanda’s with the Bears!”

Yeah, but Blanda’s not getting anywhere near the field in this game. Jim McMahon and Ed Brown and even Sleepy Jay Cutler are going to hit the turf before Blanda sheds the cape.

Second, Bradshaw’s teams were the league’s top offense exactly once, in 1979. Most of the time they were between fifth and seventh. And even in that magical year of 1979 Bradshaw threw 25 picks against 26 TDs and finished with a decidedly mediocre passer rating of 77.0.

Now, the interesting thing about Bradshaw vs. Luckman is that the two QBs finished their careers with similar passer ratings (79.0 for Bradshaw; 75.0 for Luckman). But Luckman’s bad numbers came after 1947, when players were back from the war, the AAFC teams were integrated into the NFL, the Bears were less talented than Chad Hutchinson, and opponents were hip to their offense. Furthermore, passer rating is not era-corrected. A 75 rating in 1943 is equivalent to a 110 rating today. Sammy Baugh was a 72.0 passer over his career, and he was the Peyton Manning Peyton Manning has yet to become.

Looking at the two QBs’ numbers and studying the way their teams played, eventually you come to understand the key difference between Bradshaw and Luckman. The Bears were an effective offense because of Luckman. The Steelers were an effective offense in spite of Bradshaw.

What I told my friend still holds: Can you conceive of a scenario where Pittsburgh would win? Only if the Bears self-destruct – and the Bears under Halas almost never self-destructed. Given that – given all that – the original judgment stands. The Bears win 6-0.)

Rams vs. Pats: Good Now Vs. Previously Good

One of the unfortunate aspects of the current wave of sports narcissism – come to think of it, they’re all unfortunate aspects – is that it trivializes the past. This is totally true in basketball, slightly less true in football, and somewhat true in hockey and baseball, though baseball in particular will claim otherwise.

Compare this to non-sports history, which trivializes the present. Time will show that the 2000 election was a watershed moment in American politics, 9/11 a foreign-policy turning point and George Bush a barmy gink the likes of which haven’t appeared in a leadership role since George III, but right now feeling our way through with all three.

This whole dichotomy comes to the fore when dissecting the first-round matchup between the all-time CleLaStl Rams and the all-time BostoNe Patriots.

The Patriots have been the most successful NFL franchise over the last 15 years. The Rams have been feeling their way for most of the last decade.

Both teams have known fairly equal measures of success and failure over their history and are near .500 only by virtue of several sizable spurts.

The difference between the two teams is the timing of their spurts. The Rams’ spurt occurred in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The Patriots are spurting right now.

Because the Pats are spurting and sports memories are short the instantaneous response would be that the Patriots’ all-time team would wallop the Rams’ all-time team in a head-to-head matchup. And nothing would be further from the truth except for this book (sent my way by the ever-helpful John B. Seals): The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy.

The Pats are a curious team in that their recent successes have been accomplished largely without the aid of talent. Outside of Tom Brady, who is marvelous in much the same way that Penelope Cruz is marvelous (though not nearly as pregnant), what do the Pats bring to the table? Vince Wilfork? Several tight ends? Logan Mankins? BenJarvus Green-Ellis? New Boston is the definitive whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts team, because the sum of this team’s parts is null-point-seven.

What Bill Belichick PLC has accomplished is admirable, but admirable and five bucks get you a Fatte Latte at Starbucks in this man’s game. The bald fact is that when New England lines up its contemporary talent against the Rams’ historical talent, the Pats fall over dumbstruck.

For all their accomplishments, the Patriots have had four HOFers, none of them exactly top-shelf talent – John Hannah, Nick Buoniconti, Mike Haynes, and Andre Tippett. They have two more sure HOFers in the pipeline in Brady and Belichick.

The Rams trot out six HOFers on offense – Bob Waterfield, Eric Dickerson, Tom Mack, Tom Fears, Jackie Slater, and Elroy Hirsch – with one (Marshall Faulk) in the pipeline for sure and a possible in Torry Holt. They add five more HOFers on defense (Deacon Jones, Jack Youngblood, Merlin Olsen, Les Richter, and Night Train Lane) plus one on special teams (Ollie Matson). They augment this with a couple of possibles (Kevin Greene and Maxie Baughan) and perennial All-Pros in Ed Meador, Leroy Irvin, and Larry Brooks. Dick Vermeil may be no Bill Belichick, but he’s going to be an HOF coach someday.

Depth counts for a ton in these games, and the Rams are all about depth. Where the Pats have Steve Grogan backing up Tom Brady and then, oh all right, Drew Bledsoe, the Rams have Bob Waterfield – and behind him Norm van Brocklin, and behind him Kurt Warner, and behind him Roman Gabriel. The Rams bring in Lamar Lundy, Hacksaw Reynolds and Roger Brown as situational pass rushers; the Pats throw out Tedy Bruschi and Jesse Richardson into the meat grinder known as Dennis Harrah and Rich Saul. When the Rams go to five wides the five are Fears, Hirsch, Holt, Isaac Bruce, and either Henry Ellard or Harold Jackson; the Pats counter with Irving Fryar, Stanley Morgan, Terry Glenn, Randy Moss (all three-plus years of him), and, yes, Darryl Stingley. The fifth defensive back for the Rams – not a team abounding in D-backfield talent by any means -- is Jerry Gray or LeRoy Irvin; the Pats offer up – who? Don Webb? Tebucky Jones? The more you look at the Pats, the less there is to see.

Given the setup, the conclusion is inevitable. The Pats’ only real hope lies in bad weather at Foxboro, and when that doesn’t materialize the BostoNe bench hangs its collective head and the groundskeeper reattaches the mower deck. The Rams spread out the Patriots, tucking Marshall Faulk in the slot, and it becomes immediately apparent that all of King Belichick’s horses ain’t nearly enough. Mark Haynes does fine, but the other D-backs – Ray Clayborn, Ty Law, and Asante Samuel – struggle against the Giulietta Alfas and Lancias that are the Rams’ wideouts. Defensively Merlin Olsen et cie. dismantle the Pats’ undermanned O-line, shut down a running game that was asking for it, and force Tom Brady into throw after ill-advised throw, turning Captain Cool into Spec Four Favre.

Once the Rams get a lead, the Greatest Show on Turf makes its astonishing transformation into Ground Chuck, riding Eric Dickerson and his mates straight out through the fourth quarter and on to the next round.

This one’s a rout, over almost before it begins. Waterfield and van Brocklin go a combined 24-for-39 for 327 yards, four TDs and a pick; Hirsch, Holt, Faulk, and Fears each get one; the Rams’ backs rush for a combined 187, pushing the team-total-offense total over 500 yards. Brady throws for 292 with a TD and a pick, but it’s not nearly enough. Rams 48-10.

The Rest Of The Rest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cards-Dolphins: The Old Souls

Okay, so here’s one of the things with these all-time-team matchups: the team with the better record doesn’t always win.

But shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t 90 years of NFL history pound randomness into something that looks like the North Dakota of distribution curves? After a team has spent that many years proving it’s better (or worse) than a given team, when you add everything up and pit x + 2x + 3x … + 90x versus y + 2y + 3y … + 90y, shouldn’t the largest sum automatically win?

Let me see if I can put this into layman’s terms: no.

Let me see if I can put this further into layman’s terms: Randomness always exists, even if you have 1,500 pieces of data as opposed to one. The 1,500 pieces of data draw a tighter circle around the randomness than the one piece of data, but randomness hasn’t gone away. It’s just spent a month at Outward Bound.

Besides, you have to remember that these matchups are being played in the friendly confines of my head, and few places are more random. Just ask my wife.

This is important as we consider today’s matchup: ChiStlAz at Miami.

Lord knows I am no fan of the ChiStlAzers. They have been managed more poorly than Lindsay Lohan by a family that if it were not ruining professional football in three cities would be running for office for the sole purpose of texting lewd pictures of themselves to constituents. They have a defensive line comprised of Cheez Doodles, indifferent linebackers, and a star running back whose best years occurred in Duluth. They have had more losing seasons than Vince Wilfork has had hot meals – and they’re playing a legitimate dynasty, or two.

The Dolphins have had two distinct periods when they were very, very good, almost exactly coinciding with the times they were led by Hall of Fame coaches. There was the Bob Griese Era of game management, a multifaceted running game, and power line, and a nondescript defense. Then there was the Dan Marino Era of South Beach tossaround, a power line, and a nondescript defense.

Are you honing in on the Dolphins’ problems? The two times in their 50-year history when the Dolphins were good they were essentially the same team. This is great for long-term success, since it shows constancy. In that regard, a successful team is a bit like the Foreign Service. The Ambassador to England gets all the press when he arrives and departs every four years, but what matters is that the chargé d'affaires sticks around for 20 and keeps the port glasses washed and the secrets swept under the rug and the receptionist puts in 30 and doesn’t goober on the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

However, when a successful team’s traits run toward defensive anonymity, this advantage becomes a problem. It’s like palming off the Queen on the lavatory attaché because he’s been at the embassy the longest.

For a football team to have a solid body of work it needs balance over time. A team can be great offensively for a long stretch, but eventually they need to swing around to defense. And vice versa.

Consider the Rams. They offer up a smashing smorgasbord of all-time talent despite a middling record, because they alternated periods of stellar defense with decades of powerhouse offense. The Rams ping-ponged from the Flying Dutchman to the Fearsome Foursome to Ground Chuck to the Greatest Show On Turf. Over time, that’s going to play like D-Wade.

The Dolphins, on the other hand, offer Dan Marino backed up by Bob Griese on one side of the ball and Bill Stanfill backed up by Bob Matheson on the other. It’s like sitting on a teeter-totter with a blue whale. There’s no balance point nohow, no way.

Not that the Cardinals are immune from imbalance. They flip from Jim Hart backing up Kurt Warner to Tom Wham backing Leo Sugar. But the remaining supporting casts are stronger for the Cardinals. There’s more balance in more places. It’s one of the positive byproducts of hanging around for 50 more years than the Dolphins. No matter how bad your team is, there’s almost always someone good collecting a paycheck.

On to the game. There is no QB better at picking apart a secondary than Dan Marino. Unfortunately, there is only one other all-time secondary better than the Cardinals. They roll with three HOFers, including the prototypical modern cornerback and the inventor of the safety blitz, plus three high-quality backups in Pat Fischer, Adrian Wilson, and Jim Hill. They also turn up the heat with two of the better situational pass rushers in Jamir Miller and Simeon Rice (who suffered from being essentially the same player on the same team).

The Cardinals counter with a pretty good QB and some very good wideouts pitted against a defense that is challenged to pressure the passer and defend the pass. The result is several long, sustained, pass-heavy drives culminating in TDs.

The Dolphins counter—the Dolphins always counter – with some vintage Miami ball-control offense, but they simply have no answer for the Cardinals’ – wait for it – running game. The fact that the Cards can trot out five HOF runners, including three that double as passers, overheats the ‘Fins D like a Hupmobile in Death Valley, and Ronnie Brown’s wildcat is as potent as an MGD 64 on the rocks compared to a straight-T featuring Ernie Nevers, Paddy Driscoll, and Charlie Trippi operating behind a surprisingly strong line.

The Cards get the nod in special teams, too, especially when it comes to kick returns. Fulton Walker is a piece of lint compared to Terry Metcalf, Ollie Matson, Vai Sikahema, and Stump Mitchell. Meanwhile, Paddy Driscoll is the best drop-kicker ever.

One of the more tantalizing what-ifs in pro-football history is this: What if the Cardinals had ever had a good D-line – especially in the Air Coryell days of the ‘70s? They would have been seriously tough. As it stands, they were more than tough enough for this game. Warner goes 26-for-37 for 366 and two scores, Nevers scores two TDs from in close, and the Cards win 31-16. For the Dolphins, Marino goes 24-for-41 for 321, two TDs and two picks, but the running game generates only 117 total yards.

It’s hard for the tykes to grasp, but sometimes being old is sufficient. The Cards are old, and for this one game, that’s enough.

Chargers-Broncs: Kickin' It AFL-School

In the days of the old AFL, no true rivalry was more one-sided than the Chargers and the Broncos. The Chargers were good and the Broncos were bad for as long as the AFL was the AFL; almost as soon as the ink was dry on the merger papers the Chargers began careening into the Dickie Post/Steve Tensi era, while the Broncos rode Floyd Little, Bill Thompson, Charley Johnson, and Haven Moses up and over the .500 mark. The teams drew even towards the end of the decade, as the Chargers retooled behind Dan Fouts and Air Coryell, only to see the Broncos pull away again in the ‘80s.

The ‘90s was more give-and-take – Ground Marty vs. Team Elway – but always with the edge to Denver. And by and large, the 21st century has been more of the same.

In fact, if the Chargers-Broncos rivalry was a classic rock album, it’d be Houses of the Holy. Its basic riffs just keep getting recycled.

So looking at the two teams involved, who has the better riffs? Is it Jimmy Page through a Supro Thunderbolt or Bonzo Bonham bashing out the bottom end?

My first thought was to go with Bonzo … er, the Broncos. However, upon further review the edge goes to the Chargers.

The answer is in the lines. One of the mantras of this project is: Lines win games. Over time, teams with dominant offensive and defensive lines win more games than teams with top-notch skill players, or linebackers, or D-backs.

Neither team’s lines are brimming over with HOFers. Both teams have a HOFer in the O-line (Ron Mix, Gary Zimmerman); the only D-line HOFer is Fred Dean, and he made his reputation in San Fran. But San Diego’s lines are deeper. San Diego could run out a second team in both lines almost as good as its first team. Denver can’t.

Everything else – everything else – is a wash between the first teams. Denver’s secondary is better, but San Diego’s wide receivers are much better. Running backs are even. Linebackers are even. Both teams have HOFers at QB and tight end. Punters and kickers are nondescript. Returners are even. Coaches are HOFers.

So let’s take this game through to a conclusion. Sid Gillman has a high-octane game plan (devised with the help of his offensive coordinator, Don Coryell) and comes out firing, attacking the Broncos’ secondary and stripping the Broncs of their ability to run a ball-control game. Turnovers let the Broncos back in the game, as the ballhawking Denver secondary capitalizes on Dan Fouts’ miscues. However, despite being the home team and ostensibly used to the mile-high air up there, the Broncos’ lack of depth in the D-line and at skill positions catches up with them. San Diego runs out most of the fourth quarter and triumphs 31-24.

Individually, Fouts has a big day, completing 21 of 34 for 347 yards, three picks and three scores, two to Lance Alworth and one to second tight end (!) Antonio Gates. Ladanian Tomlinson runs for 87, but the big news is what everyone else does: Natrone Means rumbles for 55, Marion Butts goes for 45 and a score, and even Chuck Muncie gets into the act.

John Elway has a so-so game, going 17-for-37 for 236 yards and a touchdown, with two sacks and a pick. Terrell Davis and Floyd Little are a potent one-two punch, combining for 184 yards on 31 carries and a score. Bill Thompson returns an interception for a TD for the Broncs’ final score.

The postmortem for this game is pretty straightforward: Don’t expect to win with just your starters. If your all-time team doesn’t have depth, it’s not going very far. Think of the modern game, and place these all-time teams into that context. Fourth wide receiver? The Chargers send out Anthony Miller. The Broncos trot out Brandon Marshall. (Conversely, the Broncos’ sixth D-back is John Lynch, so advantage there.) Situational pass rusher? Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison versus Trevor Pryce and Elvis Dumervil. Second tight end? The aforementioned Mr. Gates vs. Riley Odoms.

Without question it’s arbitrary and borderline unfair to place all-time teams in a modern context where specialization rules. Bobby Bell is a great linebacker, but is he a better situational pass rusher than Clay Matthews III? Is Dick LeBeau a nickel back? The people most affected by specialization are the really good generalists. Being an all-arounder doesn’t count for near as much as it used to.

Thankfully the non-scientific nature of this exercise wins the day. Good generalists are not punished in these games. Ray Nitschke is not a liability in pass coverage. Red Grange can catch the ball out of the backfield. Don Hutson can beat anyone down the field. Johnny Unitas runs neck-and-neck with Peyton Manning.

But here’s a spoiler alert that trumps all of the above: Deep teams with good lines do well in this competition. Get used to it.

The Games Begin

Okay, here’s where we are in this particular bog. The whole idea of all-time teams for football teams is utterly pointless if the teams don’t eventually play each other down to a championship of sorts. It’s semi-pointless even if they do – sort of the Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things of American sport.

Determining who plays who can’t be done in terms of record … oh, wait. Yes, it can. That's exactly what I did. I ranked teams on the basis of their all-time win-loss record and then paired them off, worst with best, second-worst with second-best, and so on.

You shall argue that this is a relatively unscientific means of pairing off, and you are completely correct. But the scientific methods take too much time. They’re like playing the fictitious games without playing the fictitious games, and playing the fictitious games is the whole point. If forced to choose between arbitrary methods, always choose the more fun of the two.

So teams were ranked worst to first and paired off, creating the following matchups:

Top Bracket (years; winning percentage)

Chicago Bears (1920-2010; 57.9%)

Houston Texans 2002-2010; 38.2%)



Arizona Cardinals (1920-2010; 41.4%)

Miami Dolphins (1966-2010; 57.6%)



New Orleans Saints (1967-2010; 42.8%)

Detroit Lions (1930-2010; 45.6%)



Cleveland Browns (1946-2010; 54.9%)

Carolina Panthers (1995-2010; 46.5%)



New York Giants 1925-2010 636 524 33 0.548

Seattle Seahawks 1976-2010 262 286 0 0.478



Baltimore Ravens (1996-2010; 53.5%)

Tennessee Titans (1960-2010; 49.2%)



New England Patriots (1960-2010; 52.6%)

St. Louis Rams (1937-2010; 50.9%)



Jacksonville Jaguars (1995-2010; 52%)

Pittsburgh Steelers (1933-2010; 52%)


Bottom Bracket

Washington Redskins (1932-2010; 51.5%)
Kansas City Chiefs (1960-2010; 52%)



San Diego Chargers (1960-2010; 50.5%)

Denver Broncos (1960-2010; 52.2%)



Philadelphia Eagles (1933-2010; 48.5%)

Indianapolis Colts (1953-2010; 53.2%)



Buffalo Bills (1960-2010; 46.9%)

San Francisco 49ers (1946-2010; 54.8%)



New York Jets (1960-2010; 46%)

Oakland Raiders (1960-2010; 54.9%)



Cincinnati Bengals (1968-2010; 43.5%)

Minnesota Vikings (1961-2010; 55.1%)



Atlanta Falcons (1966-2010; 42.4%)

Green Bay Packers (1921-2010; 55.9%)



Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1976-2010; 39.9%)

Dallas Cowboys (1960-2010; 57.6%)



Games are played in my head, again because the scientific methods don’t get you any further than the non-scientific methods, and because I just lost my APBA card of Mack Yoho. You can make a case for the occasional upset, or not. If upsets are allowed they’ll be brought into any pseudo-scientific algorithm through some brand of fake randomness, so why not make them not random at all but subject to your whims? At least the marshmallow scent of faux science is removed.

The first round has plenty of interesting matchups, starting with the all-Native American Redskins-Chiefs tussle. Two teams 30 games over .500 for their history, two teams that found success via ball control, and two teams that drifted away over time from the things that made them great.

The Redskins trot out arguably the most transformational QB ever (Sammy Baugh), three HOF wideouts (Charley Taylor, Bobby Mitchell, and Art Monk, lined up as a tight end in this matchup), two HOF running backs (John Riggins and Cliff Battles), an HOF O-lineman, and two HOFers each in the linebacking corps (Huff and Hanburger) and the secondary (Green and Houston).

The Chiefs, meanwhile, offer no HOFers in the O-line, the O-backfield, or the wide-receiving corps, and a QB (Len Dawson) widely considered to be the Trent Dilfer of HOF QBs.

It’s not a high-scoring game as it unravels in my head, despite the offensive firepower on the ‘Skins side. Baugh, continually under pressure from a combination of an aggressive Chiefs’ defense and a porous offensive line, goes 17-for-33 for 245 with two picks, a score, and three sacks; Riggins runs for 68 and Battles goes for 37 with a fumble; and Taylor and Mitchell combine to catch 11 for 187 and a TD.

On the Chiefs’ side Dawson is 18-for-29 with a score, Holmes and Johnson get a TD apiece, and Jan Stenerud tacks on three FGs at the end of short drives. Jerrel Wilson averages 45-plus yards per punt and the Chiefs win 23-17.

Good game.

So why do the Chiefs win? Because non-HOFers win football games – in reality and fantasy. Steve Young and Jerry Rice can do their Steve Young and Jerry Rice thing all over the football field, but without Keith Fahnhorst and Earl Cooper and Bill Ring they’re nothing.

In the case of Chiefs vs. ‘Skins, the quality of the Chiefs' non-HOF players is better than the quality of the Redskins' non-HOFers. Budde, Tyrer, Roaf, Shields, and Rudnay could block anything. Two of the five will be HOFers, and at least one more ought to be. They'd make golden-raisin mincemeat out of Gene Brito et. al., and Priest Holmes and Larry Johnson are more than capable of running behind that.

The Hogs have less luck moving Neil Smith, Buck Buchanon, Curley Culp, and Art Still, with Bill Maas and Jared Allen in reserve and Bobby Bell, Willie Lanier, and Derrick Thomas backing the line, just like their name implies.

The pass rush rattles Baugh, not the most accurate passer even when given protection, and largely shuts down his long-bomb game. Baugh doesn’t lack for targets, but Tony Gonzalez is better than Art Monk and Charley Taylor vs. Otis Taylor is a wash, so the fact that Bobby Mitchell whips the snot out of anything KC can trot into the slot is sort of moot, especially since Deron Cherry and Emmitt Thomas are killers in coverage.

Darrell Green and Ken Houston would be doing the same if Dawson threw the ball down the field, but here’s the thing: Dawson doesn’t throw the ball down the field. The Chiefs attack the Redskins’ weaknesses. They run the ball, pass to the backs, play a field-position game, and turn it over to the defense to hold the day. The Chiefs have the punter, the kicker, the kick returner, the D, and the coach to make it happen, so it happens.

The Chiefs advance.

Line Power, via Neil Smith

This thing about lines, lest you think I'm just doing some sort of Jackson Pollock splash-painting with football words, really does exist. Really really. You can prove it for yourself using a spreadsheet and the simplest of analytical tools: your brain.


Go to pro-football-reference.com. Call up the page that lists all current teams and their all-time records. Copy it and dump it into an Excel spreadsheet. Then eliminate all the extraneous stuff, such as who the all-time leading receiver was for a given team. Yeah, there is some sort of hungover eyebrow-raising to be done at the revelation that Eric Martin is still the Saints' all-time leading receiver, but you know that record's going to last all of about another 10 months. Or 15 years, at the current rate of negotiations.

Once the non-essentials have been banished to Deleteville, sort the teams by won-loss percentage -- winningest teams at the top, if you don't mind. You should wind up with a spreadsheet that starts with the Chicago Bears and ends with the Houston Texans. (It's not an oldest-to-youngest search by any means, thanks to those Clint Hurdles of the football world, Detroit and ChiStlAz.)

Now go though the spreadsheet and identify the part of the team that has historically been the strongest -- QB, RB, O-line, D-line, LB, DB, WR, special teams. Use your memory; not statistics. It’ll be more accurate, unless you’re Barry Bonds, too.

Do that and you wind up with something like this:

Team                    Win %       Strength(s)

Miami Dolphins     0.576         O-line, QB

Green Bay Packers 0.559        Lines, QB, RB

Minnesota Vikings  0.551        D-line, RB

Cleveland Browns  0.549         O-line, RB

Oakland Raiders    0.549         Lines, WR

New York Giants   0.548         O-line

San Francisco 49ers 0.548       QB, WR

Baltimore Ravens    0.535        DB, D-line

Indianapolis Colts   0.532        QB, WR

New England Patriots 0.526     QB, LB

Denver Broncos      0.522        QB, lines

Jacksonville Jaguars 0.52         WR, O-line

Kansas City Chiefs 0.52          Lines, LB

Pittsburgh Steelers  0.52          Lines, LB

Washington Redskins 0.515    O-line, QB

St. Louis Rams       0.509       QB, WR

San Diego Chargers 0.505       Lines, WR

Tennessee Titans    0.492        O-line

Philadelphia Eagles 0.485        QB, LB

Seattle Seahawks    0.478        D-line, RB

Buffalo Bills           0.469        O-line, RB

Carolina Panthers   0.465        LB

New York Jets       0.46          RB

Detroit Lions         0.456         RB, DB

Cincinnati Bengals 0.435         Nothin'

New Orleans Saints 0.428       Zip

Atlanta Falcons      0.424        RB

Arizona Cardinals   0.414       ST, DB

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 0.399 D-line

Houston Texans     0.382        Zilch


Sehr interresant, nicht wahr, that nine of the 10 teams have been characterized by at least one dominant line -- and have been able to perpetuate those lines over time and changes in personnel, rules, game play, and coaching staffs?

Nothing else comes close. You can win some games with a great QB, about as many with a great RB, proportionally less with great pass-catchers and D-backs. But you ain't perpetuating nothin' unless you're committed to building powerhouse lines every season, regardless of coach or quarterback. And while Kansas City isn't the winningest team out there, its whirpool runneth over with really solid D-linemen like Neil Smith -- a stout run-stuffer, a sack machine, and very, very comparable to Buck Buchanan. If you're wondering what a perennially great team is made of, here's your answer: Neil Smith. Four Neil Smiths, ideally.

The Super Bowl And The Death Of The Balanced Offense

The carcass of the Super Bowl is now a week along in the decomposition process, and most of the pack has moved on to more burning issues, such as whether Plaxico Burress is truly healed or merely incubating, or whether Cam Newton’s deal truly breaks the record for Most Money Paid A Future CFL Quarterback To Schlep Underwear.


I would prefer to linger on the Super Bowl an instant longer, in part because I’m a Packer fan and realize these moments will not come along every day, every year, or every decade (though it will come along more frequently for Packer fans than for, say, Jaguar fans), and in part because it validates what’s been repeatedly stated in these electronic pages.

That is: The balanced offense is a myth. And more than that, it’s irrelevant.

Think about the Packers and the Steelers. The Steelers ran a reasonably balanced offense and lost. The Packers ran an unbalanced offense and won.

Okay, that’s as misleading as the GOP budget. Beyond offensive strategy, the Steelers did a billion things and lost. The Packers did a billion things and won.

For instance: The Steelers turned the ball over three times and lost. The Packers didn’t turn the ball over and won. The Steelers sacked Aaron Rodgers three times and lost. The Packers sacked Ben Roethlisberger once and won. The Steelers lost a wide receiver and a defensive back and lost. The Packers lost a wide receiver and two defensive backs and won.

You can play these games ‘til the cows come home, which in Wisconsin these days is around 6:20 CST.

But here’s why I think the balanced-offense thing is so important. The Steelers did everything conventional wisdom says you should do to be effective offensively. They ran for 126 and passed for 263, with a TD each way. Perfection. If Katherine Hepburn was a series of offensive stats, she’d look like the Steelers’ line in Super Bowl XLV.

The Steelers ran to set up the pass, and to set up more runs. Their second-half-opening drive was as impressive a series of smash-mouth running plays as I saw the entire 2010 season.

They passed to set up the run, and to set up more passes. Their second TD drive of the second half was a paean to the multiple offense, right down to the faux option of the two-point conversion.

But the Steelers lost, and they deserved to lose. Play the game another 10 times and the Steelers lose most of them.

And here’s why: In modern football, it is far more effective to do one thing very well than to do two things well, especially when that one thing is passing the football.

There are several huge reasons for this. The first is that when things get tight and you need a big play it’s far easier to put your finger on the play to call. When the game was absolutely on the line, the Packers were deep in their territory and needed to hold the ball and bust out, what’d they do? Pass. Seam route to Greg Jennings. Thirty-one yards.

There was never any question the Packers would pass their way down the field, even with a set of fresh legs in James Starks in the backfield (though Starks did contribute a huge 14-yard run in that clinching drive).

When the Steelers got the ball with a little more than a minute left, the choices were not so obvious. There was time to run, and Rashard Mendenhall had run the ball well. There was time for short passes against a depleted secondary. There was time for the bomb.

There was time for the Steelers to balance their way down the field, in other words, but their indecision was palpable. It was a Brett Favre press conference of a drive, and it ended the way it should have, with an incomplete pass.

The Packers are a comically bad running team. Their rushing offense often appears to have been choreographed by Mr. Bean. On stretch plays it always appears like the running back is three yards further away from Aaron Rodgers than Rodgers expects him to be. In other instances the Packers load the backfield with fullbacks with the same heavy hand of Ted Nugent optioning a Hummer and scream, “We’re running the ball now!” For all the shout-outs to Lombardi executed by Packers during SB XLV, Vince would find the Packers’ running game as appealing as Hawg Hanner in a dirndl.

The Packers pass. Their best offensive players are in the passing game. There are only so many plays an offense can run in a game. Biggest game of the year, you use most of those plays to put your best players in position to make the biggest plays.

The Steelers … well, the Steelers do a little of everything, and their best offensive players are a quarterback, a running back, and a wide receiver (Mike Wallace). When a play absolutely has to be made, how’s it going to be made?

Hmmmm. You look at this and say, “Ben Roethlisberger is either going to galumph for a first down or he’s going to do laps in the pocket, shed tacklers like Lady Gaga sheds costumes and make an impossible heave downfield.”

He did it earlier in the game but couldn’t do it late, which should surprise no one. As a basis for an offense it’s sketchier than Twitter’s value proposition.

There’s a reason why six of the last seven Super Bowl teams (counting the Steelers once) have run unbalanced offenses unbalanced in the direction of the pass. It makes sense. It’s the most efficient way to make the most of the plays an offense is allotted, and gain a few more plays in the process.

Rave all you want about the Steelers offense, but like one of the robots in the eponymous (and largely lousy) movie, it’s an outmode. That doesn’t mean it’s destined for the scrap heap, but it’s going to take more than an animated movie and the voice of Robin Williams to save it.

Truth And Heresy, But Mostly Heresy

Since I have been flamingly wrong with my playoff predictions in a manner not seen since last Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, and since I can disarmingly offend with at least as much panache as Ricky Gervais, I herewith present my AFC and NFC championship picks.

To dispense with the undercard, Pittsburgh will beat the Jets because Pittsburgh can shut down the run like nobody’s business, and the Steelers’ success is even less predicated on offensive prowess than the Jets’. The Steelers are perfectly comfortable winning a game 9-7, and feel no compunction to push that nine to a 12 or a 16. The Steelers will simply not care what the Jets do defensively, and if there’s one thing the Jets can’t handle, it’s the guys on the other side of the ball shrugging their shoulders.

In their sloth-like fashion Pittsburgh will catapult the Jets into that dark night of the soul they so richly deserve. Ever see a 58-minute 78-yard drive? You might Sunday.

Now, onto the main event. The Packers-Bears game is creating a furor in these parts that has never been seen since the Creation (or, if you prefer, since unicellular organisms became so last epoch). The early line is that it will be the most-watched non-Super Bowl game since the infamous Heidi game, which was witnessed by all of North America south of the Arctic Circle, including an estimated 9.8 million fans who would not be born for another six years.

The Packers are favored, largely on the strength of running around and over a collection of cardboard cutouts wearing Atlanta Falcons uniforms. The problem for the Packers is the Bears are not the Falcons, Soldier Field is not the Georgia Dome, 18 degrees on the Chicago lakefront is cold, and no one on the other side is going to be made of wood pulp.

Now you could argue convincingly that the Bears are highly illusory as well. Their offensive line is a work in progress the same way that the reconstruction of Chernobyl is a work in progress. Jay Cutler is the spiritual descendant of James Thurber’s anti-hero Pal Smurch (from “The Greatest Man In The World”). Brian Urlacher is in line to be the most undeserving Hall of Famer since Lynn Swann, and Mike Martz hasn’t found a big game yet he can’t screw up.

But assuming that both teams have their reality goggles on, who will win?

The Bears.

Here’s why: There are three basic situations any football team eventually faces in the course winning or losing a game: way ahead, way behind, or late-and-close.

The Packers are adept at winning one of those three: way ahead.

Coming back from a significant deficit has not been the Packers’ forte in 2010. The deficits they erased (including one against the Bears) have been small and early. Get ahead of the Packers two touchdowns and their defense, which functions like a sheaf of swords stabbed into a magic box, ceases to frighten.

Failure to finish in late-and-close situations cost the Packers almost every one of their losses in 2010 – New England, Washington, Miami, Detroit, and yes, Chicago.

Figure that because this is an evenly matched game there’s a 30 percent chance the Packers will be way behind. There’s a 30 percent chance the game will be late-and-close. And because the Packers are favored, there’s a 40 percent chance they will be way ahead.

60 percent of the scenarios have the Packers losing. 40 percent of the scenarios have them winning.

60 percent beats 40 percent. The Packers lose.

I realize this is about as scientific as your shoe and as simplistic as a CCR song. But sometimes we make football into something that’s equal parts Machiavelli and motherboard repair. It’s a game, and in more than half the ways the game can play out the Packers lose. So what do you want me to say?
All right, I’ll say it: Pittsburgh-Chicago Super Bowl. Bank it.

Leonardo Chryst Strikes Again

I don't watch a lot of football, pro or college, for someone who writes and talks about football as much as I do. Mostly I watch the Canadian Football League because it's what's on at 5 in the morning when I'm working out, only now it's a bummer because it's January in Wisconsin and the last thing you want is scenes of western Canada. Regina in November does not engender warm, fuzzy thoughts of crocuses, pastel gift bags, Starburst jelly beans, and pulling half-digested Easter grass out of my cat's posterior for a month.

But I digress. Unproper admiration for Weston Dressler notwithstanding, my comparative lack of America-football viewing pays dividends because when I do watch a football game start to finish I see more than people who spend their weekends on the couch with a bag of chips watching something other than the recent Courtship of Eddie's Father marathon.

New Year's Day is an exception. I love watching football on New Year's Day – the more football the better. I even love the Ticket City Bowl, though I'm confused. I never knew Dallas was the Ticket City, but if it's not, why hold the Ticket City Bowl there? And if you're telling me the Ticket City Bowl is held somewhere other than the Ticket City and played in a stadium other than the Ticket City Bowl, I'm betting George W. Bush is behind the whole thing.

Watching football was particularly important this year because the home team was playing on New Year's Day. The University of Wisconsin had earned a No. 5 ranking on the basis of the off-tackle play. It had won a share of the Big But It Isn't Really Ten by virtue of the off-tackle play. So Wisconsin gets on the biggest stage of the year in the biggest game of the year if you're a Big 10 Or More fan, and what does it do?

That's right. Wisconsin establishes it can run the off-tackle play – and not just run the off-tackle play, but gain seven yards a pop running the off-tackle play – and then it stops running the off-tackle play until it absolutely has to score to stay in the game, whereupon it runs the off-tackle play right down the field, scores a touchdown and chokes on the two-point conversion, which is – you guessed it – not an off-tackle play.

In the time between Wisconsin alternated between giving up points and running wide, with the occasional slow-developing sidearmed pass.

The A-number-one problem with offensive genii and their offenses at any level is that they outsmart themselves. They're Michaelangelos who think they ought to be Leonardo da Vincis. Michaelangelo may have been the greatest painter ever, but he never invented a helicopter. Paul Chryst, the Wisconsin offensive coordinator, wanted to invent the helicopter. He wasn't content running the ball up the middle 50 plays and gaining seven yards a pop doing it. He wanted to prove to the world he could throw the skinny post, and the tight-end bubble screen, and the toss sweep, and all manner of offensive fish and fowl that wasn't the off-tackle play.

Well, he couldn't – not against TCU, anyway. And in the process, he lost the most important game of his life.

If a football team is very good at one thing – like the Wisconsin Badgers are at running the football up the middle – it should be Michaelangelo. You do that one thing, and you do it and you do it and you do it and you do it and then you die, and they put all your stuff in a museum.

In the specific case of the Badgers, they were gaining seven yards every time they ran the ball up the middle, and last I checked you only need to gain three and one-third yards per carry to keep the chains moving forever.

Okay, so the other team figures out you're running the ball up the middle all the time and devotes all its resources to stopping you. If the defense's adjustments mean you're only half as effective running the ball as you were, you gain three and one-half yards per carry. And the chains still move.

Let's get real funky and suppose the other team's adjustments are super-ooper-duper effective and you only gain two and one-half yards per play. This is one area where the CFL has it over the NFL. If it's fourth and a yard or two almost anywhere on the field, the Canucks run it. They bring in their 230-pound quarterback and sneak it up the middle.

Now, there are some differences in the size of the neutral zone up there – hey, all of Canada is a neutral zone, if you want to play that game – but the point remains that if you can run a football two and one-half yards every time, you can still keep the chains moving forever.

The diversified offense is the hobgoblin of small minds. Having the courage and faith to do what you do well regardless is the mark of a great offense – pro, college or high school.

This is one area where small schools and teams with otherwise diminished means have it all over the well-endowed cheerleaders of the football world. Think Navy gives a rip that the bubble screen is not a part of its offensive repetoire? Think Appy State feels sorry for itself because it doesn't have the personnel to play smash-mouth with Big Approximately 10 teams? By Odin's wicked beard, no. They do what it can with the resources they have on hand, and c'est vrai, baby. When life gives them lemons they make the wingbone. Or the run 'n' shoot. Or the pistol.

As we head into the NFL playoffs and a whole new round of offensive-coordinator chest-beating, the lesson is simple: Forget about being Leonardo and inventing the helicopter. Do what you do best, over and over and over again. Run the damn ball --or, in the case of the Green Bay Packers, not.

Shame On This Debunker

I have an apology for all of you who have been patiently waiting the next installment of "The Debunkers," the weekly fantasy-football podcast featuring Brad Rutta and myself. We were felled by a combination of illness and technical malfunctions, meaning that this week's cast could not possibly be accomplished in time for the firset games this week. Again, I apologizee, and offer in humble supplication my script for this week, which will get you some of the way there.

what makes this week's problems doubly painful is the fact that I had prepared a special mashup of Patsy Cline and Jim Mora Sr. for your listening pleasure. That at least will hold until next week.

My recommendation, lest you wonder: Play Patriots. Even if you don't have them.

And now, without further ado, the script:


Hey, and welcome one more time to the oft-imitated but never duplicated Debunkers, the fantasy-football podcasters who dare to ask the question, “Will Derek Anderson be the next Cardinals quarterback to wind up on a reality show, this time, 'Whose Quarterback Job Is It Anyway?'” I am Kit Kiefer, founding editor of Fantasy Sports magazine and little else, and over there is professional poker player and part-time thesis writer Brad Rutta, and Brad, how is that thesis coming along?


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You know, Brad, something very strange happened this past Sunday, and you know what that is?

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Well, let me tell you. The very strange thing that happened this past Sunday is – are you ready for this? – I was right.

That doesn’t happen much I know, but I was right. And here’s how I was right. You remember last week when we were talking about Vernon Davis and Troy Smith, I said that for Vernon Davis to play a role in this offense he has to be sent further down the field because Troy Smith is not a good intermediate-range passer and he does not as a rule look for his tight end, and you know what? That’s exactly what the ‘Niners did with Vernon Davis. I went to the game and made a point of watching Davis. They sent him further down the field, they lined him up off the ball standing up, and he had a great day – the day that all those Vernon Davis owners were hoping he’d have had a whole lot sooner.

Now, there a couple of things I want to talk about with this. First, Vernon Davis’ success came at the expense of Michael Crabtree, who had three catches for 45 yards. Next, all you ‘Niner fans who haven’t yet realized this need to know that one of the reasons Troy Smith does not throw the ball down the middle and does not throw the ball off the bootleg is that he’s really bad at it. Troy Smith is a collection of quarterback parts as opposed to a true quarterback. And then finally, if I am of one brainwave-length with one of the most antediluvian offenses in football I don’t know what that says. I mean, I’d much rather be dead-on with an offense like the Patriots.

So now we have Alex Smith back at the helm, and Smith is an intermediate-range passer, though still no more effective at it than Troy Smith is at throwing the long ball, so what does that mean? Based on everything I saw last week and what I know of the ‘Niner offense, I’d say play Davis, sit Crabtree if you can, and sit both Westbrook and Anthony Dixon. I don’t see enough there to merit playing time.

Speaking of the Patriots, what do you think? Is what we saw from the Patriot offense against the Jets on Monday night what we’re going to see from the Patriots offense the rest of the season?

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Elsewhere, it finally seems like some of the running backs that people expected would have good seasons are starting to have those seasons. We’re talking about Adrian Peterson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Michael Turner who you mentioned earlier, and Brandon Jacobs. Is this what we can expect from these guys the rest of the way down the stretch – and is this that running time of year, when teams try to run the ball more?

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Oh, and by the way, I should point out that teams do not run the ball more the last month of the season, which makes sense when you think about it. A team’s offense is its offense, within parameters. They may be better at running the ball from one week to the next, but their basic underlying philosophy doesn’t change as much as they’d like you to believe. Just because a team rolls up 207 yards rushing against the Indianapolis Colts does not make them a running team, the same way that rolling up 70 yards rushing against the Steelers does not not make them a rushing team. Football teams do what they do within the philosophy of their offense with the goal in mind of maximizing their return on the number of offensive plays they have. That can be dictated by the weather or the opponent, but it is not dictated by the time of year.

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Brad: Is Sydney Rice the man in Minneapolis again? He went from two points to 30 in one week. How does the QB situation change the dynamics of his role. Does Rice have the chance to outperform Moss for the year in the last 4 games of the season? He's roughly 50 fantasy points behind.


I’d rather have Rice, for a simple reason. The Titans don’t know how to use Randy Moss. That’s apparent from last week’s game. They haven’t yet figured out how he figures in an offense that’s already in turmoil. Oh, and by the way, can we please put to bed the idea that adding a top-shelf gimme-the-ball kind of receiver makes a stud running back even studier? It didn’t happen for Adrian Peterson in Minnesota when Moss arrives, it didn’t happen in New York when Santonio Holmes got healthy, and it hasn’t happened in Tennessee. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen – I think back to Herman Moore with the Lions when Barry Sanders was the guy – but it’s just as likely to fail as it is to succeed.

But back to Rice. Last game he was in I believe the X slot in the Vikings’ offense where he was so successful last year, and he had a great game. He’s back in his comfort zone with whatever QB is throwing to him, and the Vikings know what they have and how to use him. Rice is going to have more points than Moss because he’s always been in a useful place when he’s been on the field.

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Now, I have one for you. Let’s suppose Dez Bryant is on your team. Happy happy joy joy – right? But now he breaks his ankle. Your league plays three wide receivers and for whatever reason your best backup wide receiver is Chansi Stuckey. And believe it or not, you’re in the playoff hunt. Who do you pick up at this late date? Answer that question, and then we’ll go around the positions and name our All-Stopgap Team.

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My wide receiver? Robert Meachem. Available in our league, playing for a productive offense. Hey, it’s always a crapshoot with those New Orleans wide receivers, but the good news is they all get some action – just not always as much action as you’d like. Otherwise available in our league, Roy Williams. Dez Bryant’s gone and Williams has always thought of himself as Dez Bryant Sr.

Running back?

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You like Michael Bush and Tashard Choice, my guy is … no one. Those are the two guys. John Kuhn if you like cheap touchdowns. That’s it.

Quarterback?

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Well, Ryan Fitzpatrick is still out there in our league. So, surprisingly, is David Garrard. You know, sometimes the best passing performances come when you don’t have to throw, and that’s the situation Garrard finds himself in. He has people he likes throwing to in Sims-Walker, Mike Thomas, and Marcedes Lewis, and you know about the running game. So my vote right now is for Garrard over Fitzpatrick – and if I said the exact opposite last week, well – that was last week.

Tight end?

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Still a lot of depth out there, and that includes Rob Gronkowski. I really like the Patriots down the stretch, and I really like Gronkowski against some of the teams the Pats will be facing. I know in some leagues there are guys like Jermaine Gresham available, but I really like Gronkowski.

Defense?

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The Atlanta defense is still available in many leagues, and with some favorable matchups down the stretch, they’re my pick.

Finally, Kicker?

If you can get Josh Brown down the stretch, he’s my choice. They have a lot of dome games left, and I like kickers in domes at this time of year.

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In many leagues it might be time to evaluate keepers for next year. Now we don't have this option, however, we should discuss. So give me a list of potential keepers at each position.

Running back: Peyton Hillis. If you’re in a bidding league – and I know not many of you are – you’re probably not into Hillis for a huge amount. So you can afford to pay any upcharge (if your league works that way) to keep him around. One note on Hillis: next year’s role for Hillis may be colored by the presence of Montarrio Hardesty, who had a very good preseason before going down with an injury. So I would guess that Hillis will put up around 80 percent of this year’s numbers, which is still plenty good. Lagarrette Blount and Arian Foster are keepers for the same reason, with slightly different particulars.

Wide Receiver: Steve Johnson. This is a slightly more tricky category because the teams with low-cost breakout receivers are in a state of flux. I went with Johnson because Buffalo has so many other needs – both lines as well as linebacker – that my hunch is that they’ll leave the running backs and wide receivers alone. If they do that Johnson is the top guy and Lee Evans is No. 2, much like the situation with Greg Jennings and Donald Driver in Green Bay.

Tight end: Brandon Pettigrew. Undrafted in many leagues and in the best situation to garner catches and TDs over time.

Quarterback: Sam Bradford. I know he was the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft but went undrafted in many leagues because of concerns about his supporting cast. Let me tell you: the supporting cast is not bad already, and next year Donnie Avery comes back. Right now I would rather have Sam Bradford than any other young quarterback in football. Yeah, even Tim Tebow.

Brad: Give me your receiver of choice of these situations:

1. Roy Williams - Dez out with injury, is Roy a pick-up and play going into the playoffs. Roy Williams is a good play for someone, but not for me. I am so over Roy Williams. We talked about this earlier, but he’s a very good stopgap. He’s nothing more.

Chad Ochocinco - Has the TO show taken over OCNN? Would you play Ocho over Roy, Moss, or Kenny Britt?

Ocho is going to get four catches a game the rest of the way with 50 yards a game and no more than two TDs. Is that better than the three guys you mentioned? It’s better than Moss, certainly, and probably better than Roy Williams and Kenny Britt. So yeah, you’d rather play Ocho over those guys if that’s your choice. But Ocho over Deion Branch, Donald Driver, Mike Thomas, even Jacoby Ford? Not in my book.

How do the tight races for division championships and playoff berths impact fantasy playoffs? No teams beside the Pats have a real concern here in my opinion

You look at the division races, and the team with the largest lead is the Kansas City Chiefs. No matter what that team does to rest its key players for the playoffs, it’s not going to have a major impact on fantasy football the way the Colts had an impact last year when they shut down Peyton Manning. Otherwise, the plethora of close races means more key players playing hard all the way to the end, which is good for the fantasy playoffs. After all, the playoffs should be about the best roster winning, not the roster with the most players still playing the entire game.

Okay, let’s talk about this week. Who do you like?

Shame On The Debunkers

The long-awaited (since last week, anyway) fourth episode of "The Debunkers," the fantasy-football podcast featuring myself and Brad Rutta, is now available at http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/KitKieferandBradRuttaDebunkers_4__ShameOnTheDebunkers_/.

You'll find out why it's titled "Shame on the Debunkers" fast enough. And sorry about the coughing. It's that time of year.

Bad, Bad Lomas Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell Me More, Tell Me More

If the thrill of seeing "Football With 1 Stick Gum" on the printed ... uh, screen is not enough stimulation for your cerebral cortex, check out the fantasy-football podcast featuring F1SG creator Kit Kiefer and his colleague Brad Rutta. The latest installment is available here: http://bit.ly/bt1P5k

If you play fantasy football this may be the most important 35 minutes you spend all week. Of course, if you play fantasy football that's not saying much.

Faulk + Manning < James + Manning

You look at the one-year teamup of the dynamic talents Marshall Faulk and Peyton Manning and wonder: So how much better would the Colts have been if they had hung on to No. 6 all-time in all-purpose yards instead of dealing him to the Rams for the Draft Picks Known As Mike Peterson and Brad Scioli and parlaying their 3-13 record into Edgerrin James, a/k/a No. 19 all-time in all-purpose yards? Uh, how about not any better?

When Faulk was dealt, he was done with the Colts and vice versa. The team was evolving from Marshall Faulk's Team With Jim Harbaugh, a play-the-plan, improvise-in-open-space, run-first kind of team, to Peyton Manning's Team, a change-it-at-the-line, throw-it-around kind of team, and that just wasn't Faulk's deal. It wasn't that he went all Oprah; his just weren't the right set of talents, so there was nothing to be gained on either side by Faulk sticking it out in Indy.

James came in and caught swing passes and ran one-cut stuff, and that was what Manning needed to complement the slants and quick outs that are the meat of his game. Look at the backs who have filled the halfback chair since Faulk left: James, Dominic Rhodes, Joseph Addai, Donald Brown. It's not like they're Faulk-esque at all. The best you can say about their speed and elusiveness is they have a little wiggle. Otherwise they run like a diesel locomotive: plenty of torque, but if the tracks don't go there they ain't going there. No. 19 was simply a better fit than No. 6 for P-Man's Colts -- and it turned out okay for Faulk, too.

Debunk The One You're With

It's with great pleasure that fantasy-football expert Brad Rutta and I announce the birth of our second fantasy-football podcast, available here: http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/KitKieferandBradRuttaTheDebunkers_2__DebunkTheOneYou_reWith_/. You want to know what's so bad about good NFL offenses? You'll find out here. Check it out.

Greatness By Committee

There’s a book called The Pro Football Abstract that purports to do what The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract does – and not only does it purport, it pretty much moves well beyond the purporting stage to the purloining stage, right down to aping the breakout boxes.

It’s not a bad read, but the author’s biases show through like a panty line in the days before Underalls.

He boots Gino Marchetti down the stairs by saying that while Marchetti was the first modern defensive end, he was far from the best. There are a bushel-basket of barrier-breaking athletes you can knock from their perches if you take that approach. Don Hutson. Sammy Baugh. Bill George. Bob Cousy. Bobby Orr. Bruce Sutter. Babe Ruth. Joe DiMaggio was just Carl Crawford with slick hair, if you want to play that game.

John Sandusky, who was coaching the Colts’ defensive line at the time, didn’t coach Gino Marchetti any differently or scheme with him any differently than he did with Don Joyce or Jim Mutscheller or any of the others. But only Gino Marchetti became Gino Marchetti. Only Gino Marchetti became the first. Only Gino Marchetti leapfrogged O-linemen and scared the prunes out of Milt Plum. And if he was eating up Lou Groza and Forrest Gregg and the rest, as the testimony shows he was, then he must have been pretty special. More special than Bruce Smith? At least as special as Bruce Smith.

The author also uses this sort of logic in reverse and plays favorites. He ranks Gene Hickerson third all-time among guards on the premise that the Browns ran the ball well in part because Jim Brown was carrying it and in part because Hickerson was leading the way.

Well, Hickerson was the first southern guard to pull out in front of a HOF running back with a monosyllabic last name, but he was far from the best. (See?) And seriously, while the numbers do show that the Browns were a great running team, the numbers also show that the Browns were a great running team not only before Hickerson cracked the starting lineup but also after, when it was Doug Dieken, Pete Adams, Bob DeMarco, John Demarie, and Gerry Sullivan leading the way. In fact, once Forrest Gregg got his system in place in the mid-‘70s, they were actually a better running team than they had been in Hickerson’s last five years, when he was a Hall of Fame guard leading the way for HOF running back Leroy Kelly.

What was the difference? The Browns transitioned from a scheme where one back did almost all the running to one where carries were shared. From 1960 to 1980 the Browns averaged 2,000 yards rushing a season. However, those yards were divvied up far differently in the ‘70s than they were in the ‘60s.

Instead of Jim Brown getting 80 percent of the work Greg Pruitt, Bo Scott, Leroy Kelly, and Ken Brown all took a hack at it. And it really didn’t matter who blocked. The Browns got their yards anyway.

Gene Hickerson – and by association, Dick Schafrath – benefitted from being very good players in a scheme calculated to net 2,000 rushing yards every year. After Otto Graham retired, the Browns’ success hinged on the passing game. A good passing year for the Browns’ QBs meant a good year for the Browns. Those incremental passing yards made the difference. And there at last you can’t say Hickerson or Schafrath made a difference.

Slapsie Maxie

Maxie Baughan is a head-scratcher. You don't figure the NFL is holding against Maxie Baughan the fact that he slept with an assistant coach's wife when he was head coach at Cornell, do you? Isn't that what assistant coaches (and their wives) are for? But it must be that, because there are a whole bunch of HOFers besides Trippi and Hornung with worse credentials than Mad Max.

Consider that Baughan was All-Something nine times out of 10 in the Decade of the Linebacker, when teams finally concluded that, hey, it's pretty neat to have a guy who runs up into the hole and tackles Tucker Fredrickson for a loss and runs back and nails Aaron Thomas in the ribs when Gary Wood overthrows him.

Nine times out of 10 for Baughan beats Dave Wilcox's seven, which is not the same thing as Baughan being better than Wilcox. If Baughan had laid down these numbers playing the middle instead of the outside he'd have been in Canton 20 years ago, because the Decade of the Linebacker was all about the middle, and arguing middle versus outside -- especially back then -- is like arguing over which Jonas Brother has the most talent and picking the one in the middle because ... well, because he's in the middle. And he wears recycled band uniforms.

Just because Sam Huff was miked and Ray Nitschke had a steel plate in his head and Dick Butkus screamed at people and Tommy Nobis was the most fought-over No. 1 draft pick ever middle linebackers got an aura in the '60s, even though they were playing a position that five years earlier centers played in their free time. That stinks for Baughan, who really was a corker.

Grant Vs. Jackson, Uncivil-War Edition

Since this an election year, my current-affairs spiel.

When Ryan Grant went down for the season with an ankle injury, the pundits among us (which does not include me; I am merely a researcher with a mean streak) immediately ticked off two imperatives:
1) Fantasy-football players must pick up Brandon Jackson; and
2) The Packers must trade for Marshawn Lynch. Even noted fantasy baller (what he does can't be real) Aaron Rodgers made that call.

Sorry to stick a pin into the hot-airheads of the blogosphere, but the chances of that happening are less than the chances of a remake of Can't Stop The Music, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as the Village People.

There are two reasons for this, both of which are obvious as the rhymes in a Jonas Brothers song:
1) Ted Thompson doesn't want to; and
2) The Packers don't need Marshawn Lynch -- in fact, the presence of Marshawn Lynch on the field -- on the field, not in the locker room -- would be a detriment to the Packers.

The first reason is pretty obvious. Ted Thompson's guys are Ted Thompson's guys,and if you're not one of Ted Thompson's guys it's really hard to be one. A friend of mine got drunk with Ted Thompson one year at the Senior Bowl, and he said that Thompson was the sorriest drunk he'd ever seen, in the sense that even when he was ready to curl up with a bottle of Cutty Sark on the top of a pool table Thompson was still analyzing football talent, and expounding on the shortcomings of Whisper Goodman. Football is Ted Thompson's life, and his afterlife, and his after-after-afterlife. He wants to come back as The Duke. All he wants out of this life is a six-foot-seven 350-pounder who can run a 4.2 40 and keep his pads two inches from the ground.

The second reason is less obvious, and has to do with the underlying message of this blog, which is that teams have tendencies and play to tendencies, and the best teams fit their personnel to their tendencies. The Packers are a passing team. They are all about Aaron Rodgers spreading around the ball to Jennings and Jones and Driver and Finley, because that's where the talent is, where the yards are, and where the points are. The Packers run one running back almost exclusively and ask comparatively little from him: 15 carries, four yards a carry, catch passes out of the backfield, pick up the blitz.

Brandon Jackson can do this. Marshawn Lynch is not going to do significantly better than this, and he might do markedly worse, in the sense of the Packers netting fewer yards with him than without him.

Here's what I mean. The Packers are not currently tempted to run Brandon Jackson 20 times a game. They want to run him 15 times a game, get their 60 yards, and fling the ball all over the field with the rest of their plays. If the Packers were to pick up Lynch they might possibly be compelled to run him five more times a game. The Packers gain an average of eight yards per pass and three and a half yards per run. Taking five plays away from the passing game and adding them to the running game costs the Packers four and a half yards per play, or 22.5 yards. That may not seem like much, but what team wouldn't want an extra 22.5 yards to mess around with? They come in handy.

Swapping around football players like Pokemon cards is fun. Who doesn't like to dabble in human trafficking now and then? The problem is that people get so wrapped up in proposing the most lopsided trade possible -- Breno Giacomini for Randy Moss, anyone? -- that they neglect to think about how a team behaves and what it really needs to function properly. In the case of the Packers, they simply need a running back to play the part of a pantomime horse, to stand up there and pretend to be something it's not without distracting from the main activity on stage.

Ted Thompson would understand.

So Sad (To Watch Good Teams Go Bad)

Just so you know, I am the only writer in the world who would dare to explain Jerry Sherk and Walter Johnson by way of Gale Gillingham.

The HOF has been extremely reluctant to recognize players from teams that used to be great but were absolutely useless when these players played for them. Actually, “extremely reluctant” is not quite right. They haven’t done it, period.

Players who played their whole career for a bad team? That’s a different story. Larry Wilson, Roger Werhli, Dan Dierdorf, and Jackie Smith played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1960-80, a team that went 136-134-12 with a near-HOF coach for half the time. The Cardinals couldn’t yank the flags off a second-grade Pop Warner halfback and ran the ball collectively as well as Sonny Jurgensen after a brewery tour, and they have four HOFers? It must have been everyone else’s fault. Larry Stallings’ fault. Johnny Roland’s fault. Jim Hart’s fault. Ernie McMillan’s fault. Okay, it was Sam Silas’ fault, but still. Good players on traditionally bad teams skate. Good players on recently bad teams suffer.

Leroy Kelly is not an example of this. The Leroy Kelly Browns were an extension of the latter-day Jim Brown Browns. And anyway, Kelly had Gene Hickerson blocking for him.

Neither is Claude Humphrey. Humphrey really was the diamond in the dungheap. There was nothing he could do to make the Atlanta Falcons anything more than unremittingly awful. And someday he’ll be in the Hall of Fame for it.

Compare their cases to that of Gale Gillingham. Gillingham didn’t get a shot with the Packers until most of the good players blew the Bay in the wake of Vince Lombardi’s departure, and while everyone and everything around him went instantly bad under Phil Bengston’s somnolent non-leadership Gillingham stayed good – great, almost. He was a five-time All-Something playing for an offense that did not exactly trot Taylor and Hornung out there, and yet there is no one touting Gale Gillingham for the HOF.

And honestly: Who is going to push enshrinement for a player whose plaque might read, “Was the anchor of a Packers’ line that went from legendary to lousy over his 11-year career”? Who among you is willing accept that Gale Gillingham played better in 1968, the year the Packers went 6-8, than the year before, when the Packers went 9-4-1? This stuff might get written about in the hopeful between-the-seasons stories, but it’s the first to escape from long-term memory when the past is re-evaluated and players are separated good from bad.

The same applies to Mike Curtis. Curtis won a Super Bowl, but the worse the Colts got the better Curtis played. He was the definitive middle linebacker of the post-definitive-middle-linebacker era, Joe Schmidt when everyone was focused on Bubba Smith. If anyone talks about Mike Curtis for the Hall of Fame they do it under their breath.

And Pete Retzlaff, whose star rose as the Eagles slowly sunk into the east, who supplied the best early definition of a pass-catching tight end and made Norm Snead look good. (Try that sometime.) And John Gordy, Alex Karras, and Roger Brown, O-line and D-line stars on a team whose offense was built out of melted-down Edsels. And Bruce Bosley, who got to block for Ken Willard instead of Joe Perry, Hugh McElhenny, and John Henry Johnson.

While it’s a fact that going down on the up escalator is not the way to get to Canton, this is not a way of making a compelling case for Walter Johnson and Jerry Sherk as Hall of Famers. Can't be done. Sherk, a Joe Klecko-type white tornado in the middle of the line, was a four-time All-Something and Johnson, a Humphrey-like pass rusher, was a three-timer, which makes them the equivalent of a Tom Keating or a Larry Hand. They’re good players, but there are better. Their teammate Jim Houston, for one.

So given that Sherk and Johnson were anchoring the D-line, Houston was linebacking, Doug Dieken was blocking his limbs down to the nubbins, and the Greg Phipps and the rest of the running-back-by-committee were cracking off 2,000 yards a season, who gets the blame for the Browns’ steady slide into mediocrity?

Forrest Gregg, just because he was rotten in Green Bay. The receiving corps, who had nothing going for them but cool names (Billy LeFear, Fair Hooker, Chip Glass, Jubilee Dunbar, Gloster Richardson). A nasty secondary beyond Clarence Scott. The rest of the linebackers and D-line. The fact that Mike Phipps had to learn on the job because Bill Nelsen couldn’t execute a five-step drop without rupturing his patellar tendon.

Guilt-by-association is easy when good teams go bad. Sherk and Johnson are undeserving of being lumped in with undeserving players. But other players deserve even better.

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.