George Allen's Grades on NFL "Dekes" From 1976

 By John Turney

Art Credit: E. Keith

In the mid-1990s we got to visit, as a guest of Jennifer Allen, the home of her mother and father George to go through Allen's library and glean some facts and figures and whatever else we could from his volumes.

One of those things we found were the grades of NFL players (other than his own club). We thought our readers might like to see some of them.

Allen called defensive backs "Dekes" and his names for the specific players were "Lou" for left corner, "Rose" for right corner, "Jill" for weak safety, and "Sam" for strong safety.

Here is his scoring system and explanations—

Here is a chart of the 1976 starters with grades—

Here are the units graded as a whole—

Here are the top strong safeties—

Here are the top free safeties—

Here are the backups—

Here are the right cornerbacks with grades—

Here are the left cornerbacks (Lous) with grades—

Here are the backups ar corner, both left and right—