How fair are football comparisons?

[hndog609]

This may be quite the tagent on the eve of a big game and with all the coaching yadda yadda going on but, then again, some may find it an interesting break. At any rate I entered into a pretty serious discussion with someone who was big in comparing this guys accomplishments vs that guys accomplishments based on what I would consider "team" criteria. Once we got started I even found myself taking the stance that, more than any other sport, even "individual" accomplishments can be hugely impacted by forces beyond any individual's control.

Golf/tennis etc are pretty straight forward/no brainers. One person does or doesn't succeed. Assuming you're healthy you win or lose by yourself out there. Basketball and baseball are certainly team sports but c'mon. There's a ton of individualism in those sports.

Then there's football, the ultimate team sport. In fact, there's actually two entirely different "teams" (O/D) per team, and that doesn't include ST. (and even THAT includes punting/kickoff/FG)

How can you compare players with any real accuracy in that environment? Were Smith and Sanders both great backs? Sure. How good would Sanders have been behind that Dallas line? Are we sure that Fouts/Winslow/Joiner/Chandler weren't at least as good as Montana/Rice/Clark/Taylor but the latter had the benefit of Ronnie Lott et.al? What if, say, Pickens had landed in San Fran or Dallas as opposed to the Bengals?

Everybody here could come up with a wave of examples but it all comes back to with a QB so dependent on his line and WR and RB's on the line and WR's on all of the above and on and on how accurate can any of us be in making these sweeping generalizations we all like to make as sports fans about football teams and players?

Opinions?

 

[gsvol]

Golf/tennis etc are pretty straight forward/no brainers. One person does or doesn't succeed.


How can you compare players with any real accuracy in that environment?

How accurate can any of us be in making these sweeping generalizations we all like to make as sports fans about football teams and players?

Opinions?

Well when I was younger the regional manager, district manager, station manager and their ace salesman, yours truly, who was the one earning all our pay checks had occasion to get together for a brief nine holes of golf and the district manager wanted to show off and challenged us all to play for five a hole. I was the only one who took him up and was 7 up after 8 holes and he wanted to go double or nothing, so we agreed and I hit a n almost perfect 7 iron into a par three but is grazed a tiny little limb that redirected the ball to the edge of the green and the ball trickled down off the green and rolled all the way into a concrete drainage ditch, he on the other hand hit a terrible skull shot with lots of slice that went into the ditch about half way to the par three green, hit the opposite side of the ditch, bounced out into the fairway and rolled up to within about four foot of the pin. I miraculously managed to get up and down but he made the four footer, the longest putt he had made all day and we broke even. And that was back when five bucks would fill up your tank. There is always some amount of luck involved with any game. The longer the time period examined, the better one has of making valid comparisons, imo.

In team sports comparisons can be way off because of many factors, for instance I once was talked into going to a high school game in south Texas. Boy was I ever surprised, they had about twice as many people there as Vandy does it seemed. It was an exciting game that ended up something like 37-34. Warren McVea was on one team and had scoring jaunts of like 42, 50 and 70 yards, the 70 yarder was near the end of the game and gave his team the winning score. The other team was for the most part carried on the shoulders of a big bruiser who never made more that 15 or 20 yds but he did get about 9 yds every time they gave him the ball, he just ran over people, he was a man among boys as they say. His team had the ball last and if their had been a few more ticks on the clock, he would have pulled it out. The last play of the game saw him make nine yards and he had nine players on his back before they brought him down. ( I counted them.) His team was out of time outs and he almost made it to the side line to stop the clock. I've never seen a player with more heart. Most people remember the exciting McVea but i never heard of that other guy again, if he had caught some breaks along the way he could have been another Jim Brown, there is no doubt in my mind on that.

Here is another example. Eddie George was averaging 5.5 ypc before the Titans traded away FB Lorenzo Neal and 2.5 afterwards. Did George suddenly get worse, no, the scheme changed and he didn't have the same opportunity.

Thanks for starting an interesting thread, unfortunately I'm headed out the door headed for the lake. Have fun everyone, if you don't you have no one to blame but yourself!

 

[hndog609]

Well when I was younger the regional manager, district manager, station manager and their ace salesman, yours truly, who was the one earning all our pay checks had occasion to get together for a brief nine holes of golf and the district manager wanted to show off and challenged us all to play for five a hole. I was the only one who took him up and was 7 up after 8 holes and he wanted to go double or nothing, so we agreed and I hit a n almost perfect 7 iron into a par three but is grazed a tiny little limb that redirected the ball to the edge of the green and the ball trickled down off the green and rolled all the way into a concrete drainage ditch, he on the other hand hit a terrible skull shot with lots of slice that went into the ditch about half way to the par three green, hit the opposite side of the ditch, bounced out into the fairway and rolled up to within about four foot of the pin. I miraculously managed to get up and down but he made the four footer, the longest putt he had made all day and we broke even. And that was back when five bucks would fill up your tank. There is always some amount of luck involved with any game. The longer the time period examined, the better one has of making valid comparisons, imo.

In team sports comparisons can be way off because of many factors, for instance I once was talked into going to a high school game in south Texas. Boy was I ever surprised, they had about twice as many people there as Vandy does it seemed. It was an exciting game that ended up something like 37-34. Warren McVea was on one team and had scoring jaunts of like 42, 50 and 70 yards, the 70 yarder was near the end of the game and gave his team the winning score. The other team was for the most part carried on the shoulders of a big bruiser who never made more that 15 or 20 yds but he did get about 9 yds every time they gave him the ball, he just ran over people, he was a man among boys as they say. His team had the ball last and if their had been a few more ticks on the clock, he would have pulled it out. The last play of the game saw him make nine yards and he had nine players on his back before they brought him down. ( I counted them.) His team was out of time outs and he almost made it to the side line to stop the clock. I've never seen a player with more heart. Most people remember the exciting McVea but i never heard of that other guy again, if he had caught some breaks along the way he could have been another Jim Brown, there is no doubt in my mind on that.

Here is another example. Eddie George was averaging 5.5 ypc before the Titans traded away FB Lorenzo Neal and 2.5 afterwards. Did George suddenly get worse, no, the scheme changed and he didn't have the same opportunity.

Thanks for starting an interesting thread, unfortunately I'm headed out the door headed for the lake. Have fun everyone, if you don't you have no one to blame but yourself!

Wow. That was a better answer than the question.

Thanks for the input and great examples of what I was talking about.

 

[tm3]

the statement that alludes to this concept, and bugs the #@$%& out of me every time i hear it, is, "peyton manning never beat the Gators."

as far as i know, peyton manning never lined up all by himself and beat any team.

the supporting cast plays a critical role. danny woofy had a much better supporting cast than did peyton. look danny up between him closing deals on the used car lot and he will 'splain it.