On June 15, 2012, I launched Football Perspective. Since that day, Football Perspective has posted a new article every single day. This the site’s 445th post, so I won’t blame you if you’ve missed an article here or there. At the top of every page is a link to the Historical Archive, a page that is updated after each post is published. To get in on the celebration, you can enter the Football Perspective Birthday Contest.

A couple of weeks ago, I thanked many of my friends and colleagues who helped mold me into the writer and person I am today. All of those people are responsible for this site getting to see its first birthday, so I thank them again right now. I also want to give an added thank you to Neil, who occasionally adds another voice to this site and is a wonderful sounding board. And I want to thank you, the reader: without you, there wouldn’t be a site. It means a lot to me that you’ve chosen to come here and stop by every day, once or week, or whenever you like.

I checked the stats, and the five most viewed posts in Football Perspective history were:

• What are the odds of that? – July 23rd
• The youngest and oldest NFL teams in 2012 – March 19th
• The best drafting teams from 2000 to 2007 – March 26th
• Chip Kelly is as likely to be the next great coach as anyone else – November 15th
• The History of Black Quarterbacks in the NFL – February 13th

If you’ve been to this site, there’s a good chance you’ve read at least one of those posts. But to the newer readers, I thought I’d take a quick a stroll through the Historical Archive and point out some of my more memorable (at least, for me) articles.

• Before last season, I looked at running back records in the context of Steven Jackson‘s adjusted sub-.300 career winning percentage. And now he’s on a Super Bowl contender in Atlanta.
• I projected Peyton Manning to help the 2012 Broncos set the record for the largest increase in pass completions in a post-Tim Tebow world. That’s one prediction that came true.
• I enjoyed researching this post from before the 2012 season that seems even more true today: unlike for most of NFL history, the best quarterbacks are now passing most frequently. That’s one of the reasons the league average passing averages are rising.
• Does it get any worse than predicting Jacksonville Jaguars coach Mike Mularkey to win Coach of the Year?
• One of my favorite posts ever breaks down what percentage of each receiver’s yards came from which quarterback.
• Before the season, I highlighted how impressive it was for Ray Lewis and London Fletcher to still compete at high levels. Fletcher is back for 2013, which is mind-boggling for an inside linebacker.
• Neil wrote a really interesting article last October: how to estimate NFL win probabilities for matchups between teams of various records – Neil is a very smart dude.
• I argued against taking a left tackle high in the draft a few months before three teams took right tackles with the first four picks. Nice.
• In November, I said Joe Flacco had the 9th most ‘it’ of any quarterback in the NFL. You might think that rating was off, but I’d argue that my low ranking of his “it” caused him to have even more ‘it’ going forward, which ended up in a Super Bowl victory.
• On December 1st, I noticed that the Buccaneers were in the midst of one of the greatest statistical turnarounds ever. As it turned out, Tampa Bay jumped from 32nd and 31st in rushing yards allowed and yards per carry allowed in 2011 to 1st in both categories in 2012.
• In December, Larry Fitzgerald caused me to look at other great receivers who had terrible years in their primes. The two most promising examples were Randy Moss and Steve Smith, who rebounded with new quarterbacks (Tom Brady, Cam Newton) in Year N+1. Will Carson Palmer be enough of an upgrade for Fitzgerald?
• We’ve done a lot of data dumps here at Football Perspective, but Neil’s post of SOS-adjusted Pythagorean Records for every team since 1970 may set the record for packing the most information into one post.
• I know I’m a sucker for graphs, but I loved how this graph on passing turned out.
• My playoff predictions: Denver 31, Baltimore 13 based on stats; Baltimore 23, New England 21 based on gut; San Francisco 27, Baltimore 21 based on Xs and Os. I am sure we can all learn a valuable lesson here. I just don’t know what it is.
• I had no idea that pick-sixes were steadily rising before shooting through the roof in 2012.
• My most time-consuming project might have been figuring out the salary cap values for veteran players.
• I think the discovery that scoring is 60% of the game has a lot of applications.

If you had a favorite post or two from this year, let me know in the comments. One of my goals for Year Two is to get comments section to become a little more active.