Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of pro football as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work, a multi-part series on the greatest players in pro football history.

---

Players 125-111

This is the second article in a twelve-part series profiling the greatest pro football players of all time. If you haven’t already read part one, I recommend you start there. Please keep in mind, if a player’s ranking seems low or if I highlight potential negatives to explain why he’s not even higher, that making this list at all essentially puts the player in the top one-third of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Best Players of All Time: 101-110

110. Dutch Clark
Quarterback (Pre-Modern)
Portsmouth Spartans, 1931-32; Detroit Lions, 1934-38
1,507 yards, 11 TD, 26 INT, 40.3 rating; 2,772 rush yards, 4.57 avg, 36 TD
6 All-Pro, 1930s All-Decade Team

Something you’ll notice occasionally in this series are contemporary players from the same position ranked back-to-back. When it’s hard to differentiate players within their own era and position, it seems intellectually dishonest not to rank them together. Benny Friedman (#111), who played in the late 1920s and early 1930s, was the final entry last week, but he’s back-to-back with another Pre-Modern QB, charter Hall of Famer Earl “Dutch” Clark. Friedman was a much, much better passer. Clark’s eyesight was so weak he had trouble seeing his receivers, and Friedman threw six times as many TD passes, despite that his best seasons (unlike most of Clark’s) were before passing was legal anywhere behind the line of scrimmage.

Clark wasn’t a quarterback in any modern understanding of the word. He passed for about half as many yards in his career as Mitchell Trubisky did in 2018. Clark was a pretty good passer for his era, but at that time, QBs weren’t judged on their passing. He led the NFL in rushing touchdowns four times — a telling accomplishment playing at the same time as Bronko Nagurski (1930-37) and Cliff Battles (1932-37) — and he had a famous 40-yard touchdown run in the 1935 NFL Championship Game. Clark was also a talented dropkicker, who led the NFL in scoring three times. He was a six-time All-Pro in seven seasons, and he joined Sammy Baugh as the only signal-callers in the first Hall of Fame class. Clark was particularly renowned for his intelligence and savvy, the best play-caller of his generation, at a time when that was among the QB’s most important duties.

Was he better than Friedman? He was a wildly different player. Friedman was the best passer of his era; Clark was a great runner and kicker. Friedman was a braggart who backed up his talk on the field; Clark was humble, and famously reluctant to call his own number. Friedman never won a championship; Clark was the hero of Detroit’s 1935 championship victory. If I were choosing a quarterback, I’d take Friedman in a heartbeat. Choosing the better overall player, I lean ever so slightly toward Clark. [continue reading…]

Chase is a little preoccupied at the moment. I just had back surgery and have little else to but lay in bed. When Chase mentioned he needed some ideas to keep The Streak alive, I offered to make a series of posts briefly detailing my picks for each division’s all-time team. It’s a pretty straightforward concept that has probably been done before, and I’m fine with that. My version comes with a twist: as I warned Chase, I am on quite a few different medications and may not be functioning at 100%. Thus, my stipulations for writing this series are as follows:

1. that I do it before my prescription runs out,
2. that I write it completely off the top of my head and don’t do any research,
3. that I don’t have to proofread this when I finish it, and
4. that Chase doesn’t edit my nonsense out of the article.

Because I had the idea and made my own rules, I got to set up rosters however I wanted. I landed on the following: one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, two tight ends, two tackles, two guards, one center on offense; and two defensive ends, two defensive tackles, two outside linebackers, two middle/inside linebackers, three cornerbacks, and two safeties on defense. I also went with a kicker and punter, but no return man because I’m lazy and did this for Chase off the top of my head at the eleventh hour.

I also maintained modern division designations. That means if a Packers player from the 1990s makes the team, he does so as part of the NFC North rather than the NFC Central. I don’t have all day, folks. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of pro football as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work, a multi-part series on the best players in pro football history.

---

Best Players in Pro Football History: 111-125

I’m in semi-retirement as a football writer and historian, but my passion for pro football history hasn’t diminished even as my willingness to engage the modern game wanes. I recently re-read and admired the all-time pro football roster constructed by Bryan Frye following the 2014 season, and Bryan was gracious enough to offer me a platform for assembling my own all-time roster to challenge his. It was a fun exercise, and it required a lot of thought about the greatest players in history. That, in turn, led me to this project.

Over the next six weeks, I’ll reveal my personal list of the 125 best players in the history of professional football, with brief profiles on all of them. It’s probably the most ambitious sports project I’ve ever undertaken, so I hope you’ll be understanding about any disagreements. Inevitably, there are some heart-breaking omissions in any project like this. If I left off your favorite player, please understand that I didn’t “forget” him; I just had to make some hard choices. There are 280 players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and that doesn’t include active or recently retired players who have already established HOF-worthy legacies. There are historically great, Hall of Fame-caliber players who are not on my list of the top 125 — most of them, in fact. Making this list is a much higher standard than making it to Canton, and missing the list shouldn’t be interpreted as an insult.

Let’s be clear: making this list at any point indicates that I have extraordinary regard for that player. I would like to write about the players in exclusively positive terms, but since this series is organized as a ranking, some of the comments will highlight weaknesses by way of explaining why the player isn’t even higher. I try to anticipate arguments that a player should be ranked higher or lower, and tailor the summaries accordingly, but please don’t misinterpret these justifications as disrespect for the player’s accomplishments. Everyone on the list was (or still is) incredible. [continue reading…]

Field goal efficiency continues to improve in the NFL. Every once in awhile, it’s worth checking in on the league average rates to get a sense of “what’s normal” when it comes to NFL kickers. For example, it’s now expected that a 50-yard field goal will be successful. In fact, over the last 5 years, kicks from 50-53 yards were made nearly 70% of the time!

The graph below shows the NFL success rate on field goals over 4-yard increments. Even from 54-57 yards, kickers are now expected to make those kicks.

We can also use those rates to take a simple look at how each kicker has fared relative to league average, based on the length of their kicks. This covers all field goals from 2014 to 2018, and you won’t be surprised to see Justin Tucker as the NFL’s top kicker over that period.

On January 3, 2019, the St. Louis Blues had the worst record in the NHL. But by the end of the year, the Blues had captured their first championship. There is no similar success story in NFL history, but I was curious: which Super Bowl champion had the worst record after X games, for all X?

There have been 9 Super Bowl champions that began the year 0-1. That is not a very big hole from which to escape. But only three teams — the 1993 Cowboys, the 2001 Patriots, and the 2007 Giants — have won the Lombardi Trophy after an 0-2 start. And in the first two cases, it’s noteworthy that Emmitt Smith and Tom Brady were not part of that 0-2 start, but entered the starting lineup in week 3.

What about the worst team after 3 games to win a Super Bowl? 5 teams have begun the season with a 1-2 mark; the three teams mentioned above, along with the 1981 49ers and the 2018 Patriots.

After 4 games? Just one team has started 1-3 and won the Super Bowl: the 2001 Patriots.

After 5 games? Two teams have started 2-3 and won the Super Bowl: the 2001 Patriots and the 1980 Raiders.

After 6 games? No team has been 2-4, with the ’01 Patriots, ’80 Raiders, and the 2010 Packers.

After 7 games? Only team, the 2001 Patriots, had a losing record at 3-4 after 7 games.

After 8 games? Only the 2001 Patriots were 4-4 after 8 games; the other 52 Super Bowl champions had a winning record at this point in the season.

After 9 games? No team had a losing record and won the Super Bowl; in addition to the ’01 Patriots, the ’00 Ravens were the only other team at 5-4 after 9 games that won it all in the Super Bowl era (the ’57 Lions also pulled off this feat).

After 10 games? Yes, once again, we have a field of one: the 2001 Patriots are the only team without a winning record after 10 games, as New England began this season 0-2, 1-3, 3-4, and 5-5. That was the team’s last loss of the season.

After 11 games? Three teams started 6-5: the ’88 49ers, ’01 Patriots, and a new entry: the ’11 Giants.

After 12 games? Just one Super Bowl champion, the 2011 Giants, failed to have a winning record at this point in the season.

After 13 games? The 2011 Giants, at 7-6, are the lone entry here.

After 14 games? The 2011 Giants were 7-7! Only one other team, the 2010 Packers at 8-6, had even 6 losses after 14 games.

The 2011 Giants were the only team to win the Super Bowl with 7 losses, so they are the Super Bowl champion with the worst record after 15 and 16 games, too.

So the Patriots had the single worst record, either alone or tied with other teams, of any Super Bowl champion through X games, for all values of X from 1 to 11. At 6-5, the 2011 Giants were tied with the Patriots (and ’88 49ers) for worst record, and the 2011 Giants hold the mark for worst record of any Super Bowl champion through X games, for all values of X from 11 to 16. The graph below shows the winning percentages of both teams after each game of the regular season.

What do you think?

Like the AFC East, the AFC West has been home to some of the best quarterbacks in NFL history. You know that the Broncos have been fortunate to have John Elway and Peyton Manning bring home 11 division titles, and that the Chargers have 7 from Philip Rivers and Dan Fouts. For Oakland, Daryle Lamonica (5), Ken Stabler (4), Rich Gannon (3) and Jim Plunkett (2) have led them to division crowns, But don’t forget that Joe Montana and Drew Brees have led AFC West teams to division titles.

In the early AFL days, it was Jack Kemp, Len Dawson, John Hadl and Tobin Rote bringing home division crowns. The AFL / AFC West has always been a remarkably competitive division, with the Raiders, Chiefs, Broncos, and Chargers always fighting for division superiority. And two times, it was the Seahawks — behind Dave Krieg in ’88 and Jon Kitna in ’98 — winning the division.

The graph below shows the AFL / AFC West division winner in each year since 1960. [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post comes from one of the longest followers of this blog (and its predecessor), Richie Wohlers. Richie is 44-year-old accountant from Southern California who is a Dolphins fan despite never being to Florida. As always, we thank our guest posters for contributing.

---

One of the stereotypical traits of a great quarterback is to be able to rescue his team from certain defeat in the fourth quarter by leading his team to a come-from-behind win. Thanks to the awesome work of Scott Kacsmar, we now have definitions for what it means to have a “4th quarter comeback”.

I began watching football in the early ’80s, and for most of the late ’80s and early ’90s I had heard that Dan Marino and John Elway were battling for the title of most 4th quarter comebacks (4QC). You can run a query on Pro Football Reference and see that when Elway retired, he was tied with Marino for most 4QC. Marino picked up 2 more 4QC after Elway retired and then Marino retired as the all-time leader in the regular season.

In this game in 2009, Peyton Manning recorded his 34th 4QC to become the new all-time leader. Entering the 4th quarter trailing by 3 points and scoring the winning touchdown with 5:23 left isn’t the most exciting of comebacks, but it counts, nonetheless.

Manning remains the leader with 8 more 4QC than Tom Brady and 9 more than Drew Brees.

I was a Dan Marino fan, and always loved when he was listed at the top of the unofficial leaderboard for 4QC, but it felt a little hollow to me. Joe Montana also had a lot of comebacks, but it seemed to me that his team trailed in 4th quarter far less often than Marino’s teams. This meant that Marino had far more chances to rack up his 4QC than did Montana. In fact, Marino’s teams lost almost twice as many games during his career as Montana.

So which QB’s have had the best success rate for 4QC given the number of chances they had?

In order to figure out the 4th Quarter Comeback Percentage (CB%), I am dividing the number of successful 4QC by the number of opportunities. By Kacsmar’s definition, a QB can only earn a comeback if the team trailed or was tied at some point in the fourth quarter, and some type of offensive scoring drive put points on the board in the 4th quarter while the team trailed by one possession or were tied and of course the team had to win the game.

I calculated a 4QC opportunity as the sum of all of a quarterback’s losses, plus all his ties, plus all his successful comebacks. There is a little bit of slop in these numbers for a few reasons.

• A QB’s W-L-T record on PFR is based on games started, so if a QB came on in relief and trailed in the 4th quarter but did not get a 4QC it will not count as a failed opportunity for him. Likewise, if he does get a 4QC, PFR still won’t credit him with a win.

• If the defense scored the winning points it would not be a 4QC and would also not count as a failed opportunity.

• If a team never trailed in the 4th quarter, but the game ended up as a tie, this would have never been an opportunity to earn a 4QC for the QB.

• I think the 25 points by Neil Lomax was the largest 4th quarter comeback in history. So, any deficit of more than 25 would be nearly impossible, but it will still count as a failed opportunity. I’m fine with that, because any team trailing by more than 25 points probably got there because the QB wasn’t playing well to begin with.

There are probably a few other exceptions, but this should still create a reasonable approximation of 4QC success rate. The denominator is therefore (QB Losses + QB Ties + Successful 4th Quarter Comebacks). The numerator is Successful 4th Quarter comebacks plus QB Ties divided by 2, so a quarterback gets half-credit for each tie.

On average, these quarterbacks have a 19% success rate. The table below shows every QB who has had at least 5 opportunities for 4QC since the merger (including pre-merger stats for quarterbacks who played after the merger, but only back to 1960 for Len Dawson, John Brodie).

The final column shows how each quarterback fared relative to the average 19% success rate. Let’s use Peyton Manning as an example. He had 79 career losses, 0 ties, and 43 successful 4th quarter comebacks: therefore, he had 122 opportunities. Given the 19% success rate for the average quarterback, we would expect an average quarterback to have 23.1 successful comebacks. Instead, Manning has 43, or 19.9 more than expected. That’s the most of any quarterback; his father has the fewest. [continue reading…]

When the Giants traded Odell Beckham to the Browns, I noted how rare it was for young, talented wide receivers to change teams. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve calculated the fantasy value – as measured by VBD – of every player since 1970.

The graph below shows all WRs to enter the league since 1970 and produce at least 200 points of VBD. The X-Axis shows the year that player switched teams for the first time. The Y-Axis shows how much VBD they had in their career prior to switching teams.

As you can see, OBJ is a bit of an outlier when it comes to being both very good with his first team and leaving his first team at a young age.

The table below shows the 95 wide receivers with 200+ points of VBD since 1970. Here’s how to read the table below. John Jefferson played from 1978 to 1985, and was 25 years old when he first switched teams. He had a whopping 318 points of VBD with his first team, and 320 points of career VBD through age 26.

As for Beckham, he ranks 4th in career VBD through age 26 among all wide receivers to enter the NFL since 1970. The top three? Randy Moss, Jerry Rice, and Larry Fitzgerald.

The AFC/AFL East has been around since 1960. Since that time, the Patriots (21) and Dolphins (14) have won the majority of division titles, while the Jets are behind one team no longer in the division and one team that hasn’t been in the division since the merger.

The graph below shows the winner of the AFC/AFL East in each year of existence.

[continue reading…]

In 1998, Glenn Foley started the season as the Jets quarterback. He went 0-3 but was replaced by Vinny Testaverde, who went 12-1 as a starter that year. Testaverde led the Jets to an AFC East Division title that season.

In 2002, Testaverde had switched roles. He began the season as New York’s starter, but went 1-3, and was replaced by a young Chad Pennington. In his first year as a starter, Pennington led the NFL in completion percentage, touchdown percentage, and passer rating, and led New York to an 8-4 record. That included a win over the Patriots … in New England… on Sunday Night Football in week 16, that meant neither New England nor New York would control their own destiny for the playoffs. Entering week 17, Miami was 9-6, with the Jets and Patriots at both 8-7; Miami would win the division with a win over New England in week 17, New England would win the division with a win over Miami and a Jets loss to Green Bay, and New York would win with a win over the Packers and a Dolphins loss to New England.

Miami led 24-13 over the Patriots with 4 minutes to go, but New England completed a wild comeback to force overtime. The Patriots ultimately won, 27-24, and the stadium full of Jets fans erupted when news was blasted on the big screen. New York routed the Packers, giving the Jets the AFC East.

Why such lengthy descriptions about a pair of division titles? Because those are the only two times the Jets have ever won the AFC East. In 1968 and 1969, Joe Namath led the Jets to division titles over the Bills, Dolphins, Patriots, and Oilers to capture the AFL East crown, in those final two seasons prior to the merger.

But that’s it. In 59 seasons, the Jets have won just 4 division titles. How bad is that? Well, consider the following. For the first 6 seasons of the Jets franchise, they played in a 4-team division in the AFL East. The last 17 years, the Jets have played in the 4-team AFC East. So for 23 seasons, the Jets — if all teams were average — would have a 25% chance of winning the division. That would mean we would have expected New York to win 5.75 division titles those years. And for the 36 years from 1966 to 2001, the Jets played in a 5-team division, so you would expect 7.2 division titles with a 20% chance each season.

So over the 59 seasons, you would expect an average team in the Jets position to win 12.95 division titles. Instead, the Jets won 4, just 31% as many division titles as you would expect. That’s the fewest of any team.

The table below shows the results for every team in the NFL. The Cowbyos were in 7- and 8-team divisions for a couple of years, but like the Jets, entered the NFL in 1960. Dallas, like the Jets, was in a 5-team division from 1970 to 2001, and a 4-team division since; as a result, the Cowboys would be “expected” to have 12.38 division titles, with that number slightly lower than New York due to those early years in big divisions. In reality, Dallas has won 24 division titles, or 194% relative to expectation. That’s the most of any team. [continue reading…]

Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin will always be remembered as the triplets that took the NFL by storm in the early 1990s. But the best fantasy triplets ever? That honor belongs to the 1982 Chargers.

That year, shortened to 9 games by the strike, saw some of the best fantasy production ever. Wide receiver Wes Chandler had 1,032 yards and 9 touchdowns despite missing one game; he had arguably the most dominant fantasy season since 1970 by any wide receiver. Quarterback Dan Fouts averaged 320 passing yards per game, an NFL record that stood until 2011; he was the top fantasy quarterback that season. San Diego had a bit of a shared running back situation, as backup James Brooks was the 25th-most valuable fantasy RB that year, but starter Chuck Muncie was the 4th best fantasy runner. If you want to look at the best fantasy quartets, the 1982 Chargers stand out even farther from the pack. That year, tight end Kellen Winslow had one of the most dominant seasons in fantasy history, and was easily the top fantasy TE in the NFL.

So the 1982 Chargers had the best QB, best WR, and best TE, and the 4th-best RB. Can any other team come close to matching that? The 1993 and 1994 49ers come very close, with Ricky Watters, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, and Brent Jones. Both years, Young and Rice were the top fantasy players at their positions; in ’93, Watters was the #2 RB and Jones the #5 TE; in ’94, Watters was the #5 RB and Jones the #3 TE. Last year’s Chiefs nearly matched what the ’82 Chargers did: Patrick Mahomes was the top fantasy QB, Tyreek Hill the top fantasy WR, and Travis Kelce the top fantasy TE. RB Kareem Hunt was a top-5 fantasy RB through 12 weeks, when the Chiefs released him.

But my vote for the best fantasy triplets goes to the Chargers. I found the VBD score for the top QB, RB, and WR for every team since 1970, and then calculated the geometric mean of those three scores. The table below shows the top 200 seasons by this metric. Here’s how to read the table below. The top trio was the Chargers group from 1982. That year, Fouts had 130.2 points of VBD, Muncie had 116.8 points of VBD, and Chandler had 218.4 points of VBD. Fouts was the top QB in 1982, Muncie was the #4 RB, and Chandler the number one wide receiver. The geometric mean of the three VBD scores was 149.2, the best ever. [continue reading…]

Over the last week, I’ve looked at the best fantasy players since 1970. Here are those links:

QB single-season
QB career
RB single-season
RB career
WR single-season
WR career
TE single-season

We conclude this series with a look at the top fantasy TEs, by career VBD, since 1970.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Over the last week, I’ve looked at the best fantasy players since 1970. Here are those links:

QB single-season
QB career
RB single-season
RB career
WR single-season
WR career

Today, we use the same methodology to analyze the top TE seasons in fantasy history (or, at least, since 1970). Todd Christensen has the best season by a fantasy tight end catching 92 passes for 1,247 yards with 12 TDs at a time when many tight ends were doing nothing. Cincinnati’s Dan Ross was the 12th-ranked TE in adjusted fantasy points (he ranked 10th overall and played in 16 games) and he had a 42-483-3 stat line. Suffice it to say, having Christensen on your team was like a cheat code: other than a rookie Eric Dickerson, the Raiders TE was the most valuable player in fantasy football in 1983.

The other names in the top five — Christensen has the 5th best season, too — are much less surprising: Kellen Winslow, Rob Gronkowski, and Tony Gonzalez.

The table below shows the 200 most dominant seasons by a tight end in fantasy football since 1970. [continue reading…]

Over the last week, I’ve looked at the best fantasy players since 1970. Here are those links:

QB single-season
QB career
RB single-season
RB career
WR single-season

Today, the WR career list. It will come as no surprise that Jerry Rice is, by far, the greatest fantasy football wide receiver. His dominance is unmatched. After him comes three contemporaries in Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Marvin Harrison. You might be surprised to see Steve Largent come in at #5, who had 7 different seasons where he was a top-5 fantasy wide receiver. [continue reading…]

On Saturday, I looked at the top fantasy seasons by running backs since 1970. On Tuesday, I looked at the top fantasy seasons by quarterbacks, and today, we will do that for wide receivers. I am using the same scoring system throughout this series: 1 point per 20 yards passing, 1 point per 10 yards rushing/receiving, 5 points per passing TD, -2 points for each interception, 6 points per rushing/receiving TD, 0.5 points per reception.

In 1995, Jerry Rice had one of the best seasons in NFL history. He caught 122 passes for 1,848 yards and 15 touchdowns, and also rushed for 36 yards and a touchdown. That translates to 352.5 fantasy points.  Meanwhile WR30 had 148.7 adjusted fantasy points (using the same system described in the running backs article).  That translates to 203.8 fantasy points of VBD.  That’s probably the best fantasy season by any wide receiver, with perhaps one exception.

In 1982, during the 9-game strike-shortened season, Wes Chandler of the Chargers caught 49 passes for 1,032 yards and 9 TDs, and also rushed for 32 yards. That translates to 184.9 fantasy points, a remarkable amount given that he just played in 8 games. WR36 in 1982 averaged 6.5 fantasy points per game, which means over a full 9-game season Chandler would be worth 191.4 fantasy points. That year, WR30 had 68.5 fantasy points, giving Chandler 122.9 points of VBD. If we pro-rate that to a 16-game season, that is worth 218.4 points of VBD. [continue reading…]

Peyton Manning is the best quarterback in fantasy football history. That much is not open to debate. What separates Manning is not just his remarkable longevity, or his remarkable peak, but sustained level of very, very good play.

Here were Manning’s yearly fantasy ranks:

1998-9
1999-3
2000-3
2001-5
2002-4
2003-2
2004-2
2005-3
2006-1
2007-3
2008-6
2009-5
2010-3
2011-dnp
2012-4
2013-1
2014-3
2015-34

That’s a whopping 10 top-3 seasons, and 14 top-5 seasons, marks that will be difficult for any quarterback to ever match. Drew Brees and Tom Brady each have 7 top-3 seasons, while Aaron Rodgers has 6; Brees has 9 top-5 seasons, while Brady and Rodgers are at 7 and 6, respectively. That’s right: Peyton Manning has more top-5 fantasy seasons than Brady and Rodgers have combined.

The graph below shows each of the four superstar fantasy quarterbacks of our era shown in their primary team colors. This shows their VBD score by year — and remember, a player gets 0 VBD points if he was not a top-12 player in adjusted fantasy points (as described in yesterday’s post). [continue reading…]

On Saturday, I looked at the top fantasy seasons by a running back since 1970. Today, let’s look at quarterbacks.

As a reminder, I am using the following scoring system throughout this series: 1 point per 20 yards passing, 1 point per 10 yards rushing/receiving, 5 points per passing TD, -2 points for each interception, 6 points per rushing/receiving TD, 0.5 points per reception. Let’s use Dan Marino 1984 as an example. That season, Marino threw for 5,084 yards and 48 TDs, while throwing 17 interceptions. He finished with no rushing touchdowns and -7 rushing yards, for a total of 459.5 fantasy points.

Now, Peyton Manning in 2013 threw for 5,477 yards, with 55 TDs and just 10 interceptions. Like Marino, he wasn’t doing much on the ground, with -31 rushing yards and 1 TD. That’s a total of 531.8 fantasy points, which remains the most fantasy points any single player has every produced in a season of fantasy football.

But in 2013, Manning was probably not even the most valuable player in fantasy football that season, even if he scored the most points of any player ever. That’s because in fantasy football, your value is based on how you perform relative to your peers, the bedrock of VBD, which measures a player’s value relative to the worst starter. When calculating VBD scores, in this series, I used the 12th-ranked quarterback, 24th-ranked running back, 30th-ranked wide receiver, and 12th-ranked tight end. This assumes that the average league starts 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2.5 WRs, and 1 TE.

In 2013, the 12th-ranked QB (after adjusting for games played) had 339.8 fantasy points, so Manning finished with 192.0 points of VBD.  In 1984, the 12th-ranked quarterback had 252.2 fantasy points.  Therefore, Marino had 207.3 points of VBD, making it a more valuable season than Manning.

The table below shows the top 200 fantasy seasons by a quarterback since 1970.  For a full description of the methodology, including how VBD incorporates missed games and non-16 game NFL seasons, click here. [continue reading…]

On June 15, 2012, Football Perspective was born. Since that day, Football Perspective has published at least one new article published every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 7 years. This is the site’s 2,731st post: You can view every article ever written at FP here, and at the top of each page on this site is a link to the Historical Archive, which is also updated after each post is published.

At some point, The Streak will end: it is now up to 2,559 days in a row. A few weeks ago, I chronicled my 17-year writing history and provided some writing tips I’ve picked up along the way. It remains important to me to pay it forward, and to remind younger writers that you are the sum of your connections. And nobody is more fortunate than me in that regard.

Today is a different sort of appreciation post: this one is about you. The readers of this site have already made Football Perspective way more successful than it ever should have been. It is never lost on me how lucky I am to have a community where people are willing to take time out of their busy lives to check Football Perspective. Many of you check in here every day. And in an era where civility is moving in inverse relationship to interception rate, it’s inspiring the way you conduct yourselves.

The comments sections on the internet are known for being awful and trending downward, but you go out of your way to be kind to others and to provide thoughtful, intelligent, helpful, and meaningful responses. There really is a Football Perspective community, and it’s a very cool thing. Getting to know you, getting help from you, and just learning and enjoying football with you is an awesome experience.

I have been influenced by some of the best people — and minds — in our football world: David Dodds and Joe Bryant at Footballguys.com, Sean Forman, Neil Paine, and Mike Kania at Sports-Reference.com, and the incomparable Doug Drinen at both sites. Without each of those six people actively and continuously supporting me, my life would be materially worse, and oh yeah this website wouldn’t exist. [continue reading…]

Yesterday, I wrote that in 2006, LaDainian Tomlinson had the best fantasy season any running back has ever had. He produced a record 282.4 points of VBD that year, but Tomlinson was no one year wonder. In 2003, he had 245.8 points of VBD, the 6th-best season by any running back since 1970. He had 186.6 points of VBD in 2005 and 183.6 points in 2007, and was a top-3 fantasy running back every year from 2002 to 2007. Take a look at his career:

That number at the bottom right — 1,487.3 — shows how many career points of VBD Tomlinson produced. That’s the most of any running back since the merger, slightly edging out Marshall Faulk and Emmitt Smith. Those three overlapped from ’01 to ’04, and in some ways the fantasy torch was passed from Smith (#1 fantasy RB from ’92 to ’95) to Faulk (#1 from ’99 to ’01) to Tomlinson (top-3 each year from ’02 to ’07).

The graph below shows the VBD each player had from ’90 to ’01:

Of course, if we really want to compare those three, let’s do it by age. This chart is pretty interesting, because the three stand out in different ways: [continue reading…]

As I have done before, over the next few days, I want to look at the top fantasy players throughout history.

I will be using the following scoring system throughout this series: 1 point per 20 yards passing, 1 point per 10 yards rushing/receiving, 5 points per passing TD, -2 points for each interception, 6 points per rushing/receiving TD, 0.5 points per reception. Let’s use LaDainian Tomlinson in 2006 as an example. That year, he rushed for 1,815 yards and 28, caught 56 passes for 508 yards and 3 touchdowns, and even threw for 20 yards and 2 touchdowns.

That means Tomlinson scored 457.3 fantasy points that year. How valuable is that? In fantasy football, using principles of VBD, a player’s value is determined based on how much better he was than the worst starter. When calculating VBD scores, in this series, I used the 12th-ranked quarterback, 24th-ranked running back, 30th-ranked wide receiver, and 12th-ranked tight end. This assumes that the average league starts 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2.5 WRs, and 1 TE.

In 2006, the 24th-ranked running back scored 174.9 fantasy points. Therefore, the traditional methodology would say that Tomlinson produced 282.4 points of VBD in 2006, which is the most of any season since 1970. That is the standard, straightforward way to analyze fantasy production. However, that baseline is probably a bit low because some of the top 24 RBs missed games. Assuming a league where everyone plays two starting running backs, that makes RB30 the backup. So I then sorted all players by fantasy points per game, and added the FP/G from the 30th-best RB in that metric to each player’s fantasy total. Doing this raises the RB24 baseline to 190.2 fantasy points. That means Tomlinson would have 267.1 points of VBD, rather than 282.4.

There are two other adjustments I am making in this series, although neither impact Tomlinson’s 2006 season.

Let’s look at the second-most famous season that O.J. Simpson had in Buffalo. In 1975, Simpson rushed for 1,817 yards and 16 touchdowns, but what made it a historic season was that he also caught 28 passes for 426 yards and 7 touchdowns. That gave him 376.3 fantasy points, while the RB24 that year had just 130.9 fantasy points. However, using adjusted fantasy points, RB24 that year had 134.5 fantasy points. Therefore, Simpson had 241.8 points of VBD that season, but remember: in 1975, the league’s season lasted just 14 games. Therefore, for all non-16 game seasons, I multiplied each player’s VBD by 16 and divided that result by the number of team games that year. Therefore, Simpson gets an era-adjusted VBD score of 276.3, just a hair ahead of Tomlinson’s 2006 campaign. So by this methodology, it’s actually Simpson’s 1975 season that is the best in running back history.

Finally, let’s look at what Marshall Faulk did in 2001. The Rams legend had 1,382 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns, while catching 83 passes for 765 yards and 9 TDs. That means Faulk scored 382.2 fantasy points. However, Faulk missed two games that season due to injury. It’s better to score 382.2 fantasy points in 14 games than in 16 games, because from a fantasy perspective, you can play someone else in those two games and get more points. If you owned Marshall Faulk in fantasy that year, you would have played your backup RB those two weeks, and that’s worth something. It would have really been worth something if you played Marshall Faulk’s backup Trung Canidate, who gained 358 yards and scored 3 touchdowns those two weeks. But for these purposes, I took the average FP/G for the average backup — after sorting by FP/G, the results for QB18, RB30, WR36, and TE18 — and added that to each player’s VBD score. For Faulk, this raises his fantasy points total from 382.2 to 400.2, because the average backup running back that year produced 9 points per game. Since RB24 (on an adjusted basis) that year had 170.3 fantasy points, this means Faulk gets 229.9 points of VBD [continue reading…]

The table below shows the oldest QB, RB, WR, and TE in the NFL each season that ranked at least (i) in the top 30, for quarterbacks and tight ends, (ii) in the top 50, for running backs ,or (iii) in the top 70, for wide receivers.

The age is the player’s age as of September of the season in question. So last year, a 41.1-year-old Tom Brady was the oldest quarterback, Frank Gore at 35.3 years was the oldest running back,Larry Fitzgerald (35) was the oldest wide receiver, and a 38.2-year-old Antonio Gates was the oldest tight end. [continue reading…]

There were only 2,214 punts last season, an average of just 4.32 per team game. That number is low, and it’s really low considering the low number of turnovers. Meanwhile, NFL teams scored 1,286 rushing or passing touchdowns last season and kicked 947 field goal attempts, meaning there were a total of 2,233 drives last year that ended in a touchdown or a field goal attempt.

You won’t be surprised to know that offensive production is on the way up, and we’ve long known that turnover rates are declining, scoring is up, and punting is down. But the 2018 season became the first since the merger with more drives ending on a scoring play or potential scoring play than on a punt.

The graph below shows the number of punts per team game, and the number of combined touchdowns and field goal attempts per team game, for each season since 1970. [continue reading…]

Suppose you know for certain that prior to kickoff, a team has a 30% chance of winning.

Question: What are the odds that at some point in the game, this team has a win probability of at least 50%? And here I mean real win probability, not just that some win probability model says they have a 51% chance.

Now, here come the real two questions I want you to answer.

1) Is the answer question: (a) something that is just trivia, or (b) relevant information for NFL analyst?

2) Is this something that you can/should use data to answer, or something that can/should be answered using logic and intuition?

There were over 11,000 players drafted from 1970 to 2018. You might think that those players were evenly distributed in terms of what day of the week they were born. For example, 1 out of every 6.9 were born on Monday, which is pretty close to what you would get by random chance. And 1 out of every 6.9 players were born on Tuesdays and Saturdays, respectively, too. In between those days, 1 out of every 6.7 or 6.8 NFL players were born on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. All pretty even, until we get to the day dominated by pro football: only one out of every 8.2 NFL babies were born on a Sunday.

The graph below shows, for all NFL players drafted from ’70 to ’18 on whom I have birth data (generally those who actually made it to the NFL), how many were born on each day. As you can see, Sunday is a huge outlier. [continue reading…]

Thirteen years ago, Doug Drinen first looked at NFL player birth days (the month and the day, not the year) at the old PFR Blog. Six years ago, I took a second look at that study.  And over the last two days, I spent time looking not just at when NFL players were born, but when people are born in the United States. Today is a continuation of those studies.

There have been 17,027 players to enter the NFL and play in a game since 1970.  Given what we know about the birth rate in the United States, we can then estimate how many NFL players should have which birth date.  For example,  the most common birthday, according to one study, is September 9th.  Roughly 0.303% of all U.S. babies are born on this day, which means we would “expect” there to be 51.5 players in this time period with 9/9 birthdays. It turns out that there have been 48, which is pretty close. September 8th is the date with the most NFL players since 1970 — 72 — compared to an expected result of 50.2 players.

Those are just two dates, of course, so let’s look at the entire calendar. I performed this same calculation for every date.  As it turns out, January 1st is the biggest outlier: it is a very rare day for babies to be born, but it’s actually an above-average day for NFL players.  More on that in a minute.  To smooth out the chart, I looked at 31-day periods, so the month of July would be captured by looking at July 16th on the draft (each data point represents that day, along with the 15 days before and after).

Two other notes.  For the ends of the year — early January and late December — I pro-rated the numbers to make them work while still using just calendar year cut-offs. ^[1]Specifically, here’s what I did.   For days before January 7th, I excluded due to small sample size.  Beginning on January 7th, I looked at the 7 days from the 1st to the 7th, and then … Continue reading The blue line represents the actual number of NFL players born in each 31-day window.  The orange line? That represents the estimated number of NFL players based on the birth rates for the United States. [continue reading…]

Yesterday, I looked at the day on the calendar when players in the 2018 NFL season were born. To do this, I looked at birth rates in 31-day increments. The days from late July to mid August produced a lot of NFL players, while the Geminis of the world — those born from in the window from late May to late June — produced comparably few NFL players.

We also looked at how this compared to the United States as a whole, which tends to have more kids in the summer and few in the winter. In that respect, the Leos of the world — born from late July to late August — didn’t stand out quite as much. June babies, though, looked really low, while January/February seemed to produce more NFL players than you would expect (those are low birth rates for the United States).

Today, let’s examine all players to enter and play in an NFL game since 1970. Once again, we are looking at 31-day periods. Now, that Tom Brady peak has disappeared, and it is players born on or around February 25th that produce the most players. There is another peak in early September, and September 8th is the birthday of the most NFL players since 1970. [continue reading…]

Tom Brady was born on August 3rd, 1977. In the Super Bowl, Brady’s Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams, who had two players — running back Todd Gurley and pass rusher Dante Fowler — who were born on August 3rd, 1994. Rookie defensive back and All-Pro Derwin James was born two years later, on August 3rd, 1996.

Those four were not picked at random: there were 12 players active in the NFL last season who were born on August 3rd, making it an extremely popular birthday in pro football circles. What’s more, there were 203 players who played in the NFL in 2018 who were born “around August 3rd” — i.e., within 15 days of either side of that date. For fans of astrogoloy, these are your Leos, natural born leaders described as “dramatic, creative, self-confident, dominant and extremely difficult to resist, able to achieve anything they want to in any area of life they commit to.”

In the abstract, knowing that 203 players were born in one 31-day window probably means nothing to you. But I did this same analysis for every day in the calendar year. Christian McCaffrey was born on June 7th, the only such player active last season. As it turns out, the 31 days including and surrounding June 7th (i.e., May 23rd through June 22nd) produced only 147 players.  These are your Gemini, who are generally thought to dislike repetition and routine. Oh, and that window just brings in June 22nd, notable for being the only day on the calendar where no 2018 NFL players were born.

The graph below shows each of the 365 days of the year on the X-Axis. ^[1]Eric Kendricks is the only February 29th birthday, and to make life simple, I included him with the March 1 birthdays The Y-Axis shows how many players were active in the NFL last season with birthdays plus or minus 15 days of each date. As you can see, Brady’s August 3rd birthday comes in the middle of an extremely popular window for NFL birthdays, while McCaffrey’s June 7th birthday is at the center of one of the graph’s valleys. [continue reading…]

Jameis Winston and Carson Wentz provide an interesting pair of quarterbacks to evaluate by age. Winston was the first pick in the 2015 Draft, while Wentz was the second pick in the 2016 Draft. And yet Winston is actually one year younger than Wentz, meaning he entered the NFL at an age two years younger than the Eagles star.

It actually becomes more confusing if you look at their ages on Pro-Football-Reference, since that page makes Wentz looks three years older. That’s because Wentz was born at the end of the year (12/30/1992) while Winston was born at the beginning of the year (1/6/1994). So in 2018, PFR lists Wentz at 26 years old, the age he was for just the last two days of the calendar year; meanwhile, Winston is listed at 24, even though he turned 25 just days after the season ended.

Wentz was born 372 days before Winston, making him almost exactly one year older. If we want to compare their seasons by age, we shouldn’t use age as of 12/31, which is an arbitrary cut-off that masks the real age difference between the two quarterbacks. Instead, we should use each passer’s age at the start of each football season. And, you will soon see, Winston has been the better quarterback for 5 of those 6 ages, beginning when both players entered college.

[continue reading…]

Outstanding. Now the real question? Want to be a Footballguy?

That was the e-mail I received from David Dodds on June 6, 2002. The co-owner of Footballguys.com then and now, Dodds was replying to a freelance article I submitted to his site. Two days later, my article was posted, and I had become a paid writer. Today, I will share some of what I have learned over the last 17 years with you.

• The more you write — and read — the easier writing becomes. Writing every day or writing a long piece sounds daunting, but you will be aided by momentum for most of the journey. Reading other work in your field will naturally elicit a thought that you can put to paper. And anytime I write an article, there’s always an idea for a future piece embedded in that work. I have now written a post for 2,548 consecutive days, and I can promise you it gets easier.
• Serious writers need to do three things: Write, Publish, and Promote. Many want to write, or think they would be good writers, but that’s about as far as they ever go. There are no barriers to entry when it comes to writing. Other people will write but delay to publish their work. For me, reader feedback is an incredibly important (hence the promote part) part of the process. Vince Lombardi said it best: “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” Without outside feedback and criticism, you are likely to continue making the same mistakes. You are essentially living in a one person bubble, and that’s a bad environment in which to grow. There are many problems with people on the internet, but one thing people on the internet are really good at is telling you when you did something wrong. For writers, I think that’s a good thing.
• Read good writers. As often as you can. It remains the cheat code to becoming a good writer.
• There is no money in writing. There are exceptions, of course, but readers of this blog don’t get blinded by exceptions. I wish there was money in writing, but that’s just not the case. Do not go into writing to make money. I think of writing the way I think of exercise: it’s just plain good for you in ways that, ironically, are difficult to articulate. But it’s for you the way exercise is for you: do it because you enjoy it, not to make money. Please don’t go into writing to make money.
• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This applies in a couple of ways.
  • Occasionally, my posts will have typos or errors. That happens and it doesn’t bother me. 100% accuracy should not be your goal in writing just like your goal in life shouldn’t be to never make a mistake. I post something every day, and being 95% accurate every day of the week is preferable, I think, to being 100% accurate three times a week. Also, nobody is 100% accurate.
  • We all want to write that seminal piece that changes the way people think forever. That’s great, but it takes also takes forever to write that piece. And here’s a neat trick: if you publish Part 1 of your topic early on, you can use reader feedback to get to your destination much quicker than you can by brainstorming. I have also found that you are more likely to write That Great Article if you write 10 articles that you think are decent than one article that you think is The One. That’s because you will be shocked at how bad you are at predicting what reader reaction will be to your article. Unless it’s about Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.

Remember the golden rule: it may sound hokey, but treating others the way you would like to be treated is excellent advice for everyone in every field. I’ve found and maintained a lot of great friends by following this advice. Don’t be a bad person.

Be humble and honest with your audience. If you don’t know all the answers (and you probably don’t), say that. If you are unsure of something, say that, too. People are pretty good at detecting these sorts of things, anyway, and you earn reader credibility by treating your audience with respect. I maintain that this very small site has some of the best commenters in the community, and I think that’s because I write with this rule. Whenever I have found myself drawing a lot of criticism for my work, it’s because I have violated this principle. Also, listen to good criticism and ignore bad criticism. Trust your gut on that one.

From time to time people ask me how I got into football writing. The rest of this post (an update from 2013) will explain just that. Seventeen years ago, there was no twitter, and neither blogging nor fantasy football was mainstream. My brother was and is a sports anchor/reporter (and a great one at that), and he was the writer in the family. I was just an 18 year old who hated writing and was good at math. [continue reading…]