By TJ Troup 
This past Sunday afternoon Brock Purdy had one of those games all quarterbacks dream of, victory and perfection. His 158.3 passer rating puts him on a list with all the other passers who for one afternoon found open receivers, and delivered strikes that resulted in yards and touchdowns, without throwing an interception. 
The list of other passers will not be examined today, yet one of them is a guy named Montana. The 1989 San Francisco 49ers again took home the silver trophy and during that championship campaign and Joe achieved perfection. We don't know if any other quarterback this season will achieve perfection, but if that does happen, no doubt will be written about.
Shifting to a team that the Niners might play against in the NFC playoffs the Lions I want to pose a question to all of you? Will Dan Campbell be voted coach of the year? If not, who should get the award? The Lions have now won 16 and lost 4 in their last twenty games, and a victory over the Packers on Thanksgiving is on the horizon.
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| Dan Campbell |
Since they play in two days, and read an article earlier today by some guy named Jared Ramsey, wanted to again rail against writers who read, and accept historical articles, but don't watch film. Ramsey in the article talks about Milt Plum, and his success that year. Folly, pure folly!
The team MVP was Gail Cogdill, and was so honored years ago to talk with him, and we went back and forth about the famous game in '62, and the passers that threw to him in his time in Detroit. He had very little to say about Plum (that speaks volumes). Ramsey eventually mentioned Shula and the Lion defenders, but never once mentioned the alignments, and strategy of Detroit on defense in '62. Film study of this team is fascinating on many levels.
How I wish there would have been a long sitdown discussion with coach Shula on how he arrived at his defensive game plan for the victory over Green Bay in November of '62.
Every year there is a team that leads the NFL in team pass defense, and some of you might cringe since the defensive passer rating will be mentioned again and is my go-to stat. Leading the league so far this year is Cleveland at 71.6, and of course, they may falter, but until they do they?
Who is the most improved defensive back in the league this year you ask? Why none other than Martin Emerson of the Browns. Over the last three weeks, Cleveland has allowed opponent passers to complete 39 of 71 for 387 yards, with just 1 touchdown allowed and 4 intercepted.
Emerson has been a key factor, along with his counterpart at the other corner Mr. Ward. Is this the second coming of Dixon & Minniefield? Since team pass defense has been mentioned, it is time to go back in history to detail two secondaries that stood out.
November 19th, 1961 the Chargers gain just three yards rushing, yet win 24-14 over the Dallas Texans. San Diego at this point in the season is 11-0 and has recorded 43 interceptions, of which 8 were returned for touchdowns. Are the '61 Chargers the best ever at team pass defense?
Would relish all of you telling me who you think ranks at the top. Come on now, don't be shy. The title of today's saga comes from Barry Gottehrer and his superb book "The Giants of New York", and he is telling the reader about former Fullerton Junior College defensive back Howie Livingston.
Though the Giants earned a playoff berth in '43, they are even better in 1944. Paschal leads the offense in his "A"-formation power runs, yet it is the defense that carries the Giants to a division title. Opponent passers in the eight games New York won completed 101 of 226 passes, and allowed only ONE touchdown pass, while intercepting 30.
The defensive passer rating for the Giants in victory that year was 21.7. No, that is not a misprint. Ward Cuff continued to play outstanding pass defense, but when Livingston joined the team the Giants soon became the best in the league at shutting down opponent passers and receivers.
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| Mel Hein picks off a pass |
Watching film of the 21-all tie against the Eagles we see Coach Owen align his defenders in varied 5-3-3 and 6-2-3 defenses. Since New York has tied and lost to Philadelphia the margin for error is simple—you cannot lose another game.
A very strong Green Bay Packer team comes to the Polo Grounds on November 19th in what looks to be the game of the year. The best weak-side linebacker in the first 30 years of the NFL is without a doubt Mel Hein, and his ability to drop deep into the area in front of the Alabama Antelope restricts Irv Comp and the other Packer passers to get the ball to the best of his generation in Hutson.
Livingston is a willing run defender when called upon, but today he drops deep, at times very deep, and when the ball is lofted in the air, there goes Howie! Twice he pilfers the pigskin and gains more yards on his two interception returns than Hutson gains receiving. Have watched this game film many times, and the defensive strategy is cutting-edge.
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| Howie Livingston intercepts a pass in the 1946 title game vs the Bears |
Ten New York Giant defenders stop the run, and the best in the league—Hein not only stops the run, but helps Livingston limit Hutson. New York wins the East, while Green Bay holds on in the West....setting up the rematch in the title game. That is a story for another day—Eric Goska are you listening?
See ya next week.
of course this is PRO Football Journal and not normally a place to (despair) on the NIL/portal/realignment <$$$$, it's all about the benjamins> of contemporary college football, but as a Washington State alum who is seriously p-----d at the collapse of the Pac-12 (at the duplicitous hands of the 'traitorous ten), it's great that the bookends of this week column TJ, are Wazzu Cougs Gail Cogdill and the immortal Mel Hein......now if only people would stop inferring that 1961 AFL games should be measured as "equal" in weight to NFL seasons....yup, the Chargers picked off a bunch of passes that year, but geez, the retreads/never wazzes chucking it up to where the guys in powder blue and yellow could camp under them include such luminaries as Butch Songin, Al Dorow, George Herring, MC Reynolds, Frank Tripucka, and Cotton (54, 57 Colts) Davidson.....sheesh!
ReplyDeleteseparate cumudgeonly rant/request dept.: sometime I hope you will write an article (or send a reference) to who and by what criteria this "QB rating" thing was created and why it seems to be sooooo significant.....Brock Purdy had a great game....was it "perfect"? If a qb exceeds the required yards/ypa/completion %, yadda yadda yadda does that make him "more" perfect? what's Slingin' Sammy's qb rating? Below Matt Ryan's I'll bet....Johnny U's below Ryan as well I'm guessin without looking it up....so if the qbr doesn't make (my pinata) Matt "better" than Sammy or Mr. Hightops, what the heck good is it? (serious question)
That is a good suggestion as to the QB rating... I know you asked TJ... but here is brief explanation. Pete Elliott of the Pro Football Hall of Fame headed a committee that created it. The purpose was to have one statistic to show as wo who was the leage leader and also the all-time leader. At the time the All-time leader would change from year to year rendering any books obsolete the minute they were published "Such and such is the NFL's all time leading passes" -- it gets published... then whoops, I guess such and such isn't>
ReplyDeleteOver the years the NFL used various methods including average gain, then an inverserse ranking of complettion percentage, avg. gain, TDs and INT percentage --- those four catagories.
So, the committee took those four categories and tried to make a formula thta weighted them as equally as they could. It meant a guy that didn't throw a lot could still be the top passer --- like a Bob Greise for example.
So, they changed TDs to TD percentage ...
the four categories are average gain, completion percentage, touchdown percentage and interception percentage. Completion percentage stands alone, average gain is multiplied by 5, touchdown percentage is multiplied by five and then there is a small adjustment. All those are added together and then interception percentage is multiplied by 5 and subtraced. So you have three positive categories and one negative. All that is then converted to a scale of 100 ... with 66.7 being average, 90 outstanding, 158.3 "perfect" and 39.6 also significant for "bad".
because there are limits on each of the categories---77.5% for competion percentage, 12.5 yards an attempt, 11.9% is TD percenate and I think 9.5 is INT percentage - that is what creates the 158.3, it means a guy hit the high limits on three positive categories and had no INTs.
There are also lower limits that tied into the 39.6 -- but that really, really gets into the weeds.
So, if you took limits off you could have a 225 rating or higher. Some have sone that
https://nflfootballjournal.blogspot.com/2019/11/highest-nfl-passer-rating-without-limits.html
So, "perfect" is maxing out on all categories.
The limits came from "historical averages" they were determined on by the committee based on their study of the NFL passing game. Obviously it as changed a lot since then.
Martin Emerson Jr was one of my favorite rookies in 2022. He was one of the key players on Cleveland that made me pick them to make the playoffs in 2023.
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