Pro Football Reference Blog

The Patriots beat the Jets 45-3 on a Monday Night massacre in Foxboro just six weeks ago. Sixty-one times in league history has a team lost by 30+ points and then later beat that same opponent in a rematch that season. It's only happened 12 times, though, where the first defeat came by 40 or more points. The full list of 61, below:

A quick note on two features Sean recently added to the Pro-Football Reference Play Index:

• Team & Opponent 2nd-half scores added to Team Game Finder - In the past, we just listed 1st-half and final point totals for games, making it impossible to answer questions like, "Which team scored the most points in a game where they were held scoreless in the second half?" But now that Sean added "Second Half Score" to the criteria, you can find the answer:

  											Points			Score by quarter								Score by half
  Rk	Tm	Year	Date		Opp	W#	G#	Day	Result	OT	PF	PA	PD	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	OQ1	OQ2	OQ3	OQ4	H1	H2	OH1	OH2
  1	CHI	2006	2006-10-29		SFO	8	7	Sun	W 41-10		41	10	31	24	17	0	0	0	0	0	10	41	0	0	10
  2	CIN	1983	1983-11-20		HOU	12	12	Sun	W 38-10		38	10	28	17	21	0	0	3	0	0	7	38	0	3	7
  3	CRD	1950	1950-10-22	@	WAS	5	5	Sun	W 38-28		38	28	10	10	28	0	0	7	7	7	7	38	0	14	14
  4	PIT	1973	1973-10-07		SDG	4	4	Sun	W 38-21		38	21	17	17	21	0	0	0	0	0	21	38	0	0	21
  5	CHI	1971	1971-10-10		NOR	4	4	Sun	W 35-14		35	14	21	7	28	0	0	0	7	0	7	35	0	7	7
  6	CHI	1980	1980-11-09		WAS	10	10	Sun	W 35-21		35	21	14	21	14	0	0	0	0	14	7	35	0	0	21
  7	CHI	1987	1987-10-04	@	PHI	3	3	Sun	W 35-3		35	3	32	7	28	0	0	0	3	0	0	35	0	3	0
  8	NOR	1980	1980-12-07	@	SFO	14	14	Sun	L 35-38	OT	35	38	-3	14	21	0	0	0	7	14	14	35	0	7	28
  9	NYG	1985	1985-12-08	@	HOU	14	14	Sun	W 35-14		35	14	21	14	21	0	0	0	14	0	0	35	0	14	0
  10	NYJ	1985	1985-11-03	@	IND	9	9	Sun	W 35-17		35	17	18	14	21	0	0	0	3	7	7	35	0	3	14
  11	PIT	1990	1990-12-23		CLE	16	15	Sun	W 35-0		35	0	35	21	14	0	0	0	0	0	0	35	0	0	0
  12	SDG	1979	1979-12-09	@	NOR	15	15	Sun	W 35-0		35	0	35	14	21	0	0	0	0	0	0	35	0	0	0
  13	SDG	2007	2007-10-28		HOU	8	7	Sun	W 35-10		35	10	25	14	21	0	0	0	3	0	7	35	0	3	7
  14	SEA	2003	2003-11-16		DET	11	10	Sun	W 35-14		35	14	21	14	21	0	0	7	7	0	0	35	0	14	0
  15	SFO	2008	2008-11-16		STL	11	10	Sun	W 35-16		35	16	19	7	28	0	0	0	3	6	7	35	0	3	13
  16	NYG	1945	1945-10-07	@	PIT	1	1	Sun	W 34-6		34	6	28	6	28	0	0	0	6	0	0	34	0	6	0
  17	RAM	1972	1972-09-17		NOR	1	1	Sun	W 34-14		34	14	20	13	21	0	0	0	7	0	7	34	0	7	7
  18	SEA	1977	1977-12-11	@	KAN	13	13	Sun	W 34-31		34	31	3	14	20	0	0	21	0	3	7	34	0	21	10

  Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
  Generated 1/13/2011.
• Total Offense added to Player Season & Game Finders - We have always featured yards from scrimmage (rushing yards + receiving yards) in the PI finders, but that category doesn't help us rank the performances of QBs who pass and run. Enter Total Offense, which equals Rushing Yards + Passing Yards - Sack Yards. Here are the single-game leaders (1960-2010):

  												Passing					Rushing			Total Yds
  Rk	Player	Age	Date	Lg	Tm		Opp	Result	G#	W#	Day	Cmp	Att	Yds	TD	Int	Att	Yds	TD	TotOff
  1	Warren Moon*	34-028	1990-12-16	NFL	HOU	@	KAN	W 27-10	14	15	Sun	27	45	527	3	0	4	2	0	529
  2	Boomer Esiason	35-207	1996-11-10	NFL	ARI	@	WAS	W 37-34	10	11	Sun	35	59	522	3	4	3	1	0	523
  3	Dan Marino*	27-038	1988-10-23	NFL	MIA		NYJ	L 30-44	8	8	Sun	35	60	521	3	5	1	0	0	521
  4	Phil Simms	30-344	1985-10-13	NFL	NYG	@	CIN	L 30-35	6	6	Sun	40	62	513	1	2	2	5	0	518
  5	Vince Ferragamo	28-246	1982-12-26	NFL	RAM		CHI	L 26-34	8	8	Sun	30	46	509	3	2	1	2	0	511
  6	Drew Brees	27-308	2006-11-19	NFL	NOR		CIN	L 16-31	10	11	Sun	37	52	510	2	3	0	0	0	510
  7	Elvis Grbac	30-084	2000-11-05	NFL	KAN	@	OAK	L 31-49	9	10	Sun	39	53	504	2	2	1	3	1	507
  8	Y.A. Tittle*	36-004	1962-10-28	NFL	NYG		WAS	W 49-34	7	7	Sun	27	39	505	7	0	1	1	0	506
  9	Jake Plummer	29-317	2004-10-31	NFL	DEN		ATL	L 28-41	8	8	Sun	31	55	499	4	3	2	5	0	504
  10	Doug Williams	25-099	1980-11-16	NFL	TAM	@	MIN	L 30-38	11	11	Sun	30	55	486	4	2	2	13	0	499
  11	Steve Young*	30-338	1992-09-13	NFL	SFO		BUF	L 31-34	2	2	Sun	26	37	449	3	1	7	50	0	499
  12	Tommy Kramer	31-240	1986-11-02	NFL	MIN	@	WAS	L 38-44	9	9	Sun	20	35	490	4	1	3	8	0	498
  13	Joe Namath*	29-116	1972-09-24	NFL	NYJ	@	BAL	W 44-34	2	2	Sun	15	28	496	6	1	1	1	0	497
  14	Billy Volek	28-235	2004-12-19	NFL	TEN	@	OAK	L 35-40	14	15	Sun	40	60	492	4	1	1	1	1	493
  15	Matt Hasselbeck	27-095	2002-12-29	NFL	SEA	@	SDG	W 31-28	16	17	Sun	36	53	449	2	2	7	42	1	491
  16	Boomer Esiason	29-173	1990-10-07	NFL	CIN	@	RAM	W 34-31	5	5	Sun	31	45	490	3	0	2	0	0	490
  17	Ken O'Brien	25-298	1986-09-21	NFL	NYJ		MIA	W 51-45	3	3	Sun	29	43	479	4	1	1	8	0	487
  18	Neil Lomax	25-303	1984-12-16	NFL	STL	@	WAS	L 27-29	16	16	Sun	37	46	468	2	1	3	18	1	486
  19	Don Meredith	25-214	1963-11-10	NFL	DAL	@	SFO	L 24-31	9	9	Sun	30	48	460	3	1	3	24	0	484
  20	Kurt Warner	36-156	2007-11-25	NFL	ARI		SFO	L 31-37	11	12	Sun	34	48	484	2	2	0	0	0	484

  Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
  Generated 1/13/2011.

  And the single-season leaders:

  							Games	Passing							Rushing			Total Yds
  Rk	Player	Year	Age	Draft	Tm	Lg	G	Cmp	Att	Yds	TD	Int	Sk	SkYds	Att	Yds	TD	TotOff
  1	Drew Brees	2008	29	2-32	NOR	NFL	16	413	635	5069	34	17	13	92	22	-1	0	4976
  2	Dan Marino*	1984	23	1-27	MIA	NFL	16	362	564	5084	48	17	13	120	28	-7	0	4957
  3	Daunte Culpepper	2004	27	1-11	MIN	NFL	16	379	548	4717	39	11	46	238	88	406	2	4885
  4	Tom Brady	2007	30	6-199	NWE	NFL	16	398	578	4806	50	8	21	128	37	98	2	4776
  5	Dan Fouts*	1981	30	3-64	SDG	NFL	16	360	609	4802	33	17	19	134	22	56	0	4724
  6	Matt Schaub	2009	28	3-90	HOU	NFL	16	396	583	4770	29	15	25	149	48	57	0	4678
  7	Jay Cutler	2008	25	1-11	DEN	NFL	16	384	616	4526	25	18	11	69	57	200	2	4657
  8	Kurt Warner	2001	30		STL	NFL	16	375	546	4830	36	22	38	233	28	60	0	4657
  9	Warren Moon*	1990	34		HOU	NFL	15	362	584	4689	33	13	36	252	55	215	2	4652
  10	Rich Gannon	2002	37	4-98	OAK	NFL	16	418	618	4689	26	10	36	214	50	156	3	4631
  11	Peyton Manning	2010	34	1-1	IND	NFL	16	450	679	4700	33	17	16	91	18	18	0	4627
  12	Dan Marino*	1986	25	1-27	MIA	NFL	16	378	623	4746	44	23	17	119	12	-3	0	4624
  13	Warren Moon*	1991	35		HOU	NFL	16	404	655	4690	23	21	23	174	33	68	2	4584
  14	Jeff Garcia	2000	30		SFO	NFL	16	355	561	4278	31	10	24	155	72	414	4	4537
  15	Philip Rivers	2010	29	1-4	SDG	NFL	16	357	541	4710	30	13	38	227	29	52	0	4535
  16	Dan Fouts*	1980	29	3-64	SDG	NFL	16	348	589	4715	30	24	32	210	23	15	2	4520
  17	Mark Brunell	1996	26	5-118	JAX	NFL	16	353	557	4367	19	20	50	257	80	396	3	4506
  18	Peyton Manning	2004	28	1-1	IND	NFL	16	336	497	4557	49	10	13	101	25	38	0	4494
  19	Drew Bledsoe	1994	22	1-1	NWE	NFL	16	400	691	4555	25	27	22	139	44	40	0	4456
  20	Trent Green	2004	34	8-222	KAN	NFL	16	369	556	4591	27	17	32	227	25	85	0	4449

  Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
  Generated 1/13/2011.

Note: This post was originally published at CFB at Sports-Reference, S-R's new College Football site, so when you're done reading, go over and check it out!

Whenever a team wins a championship, the temptation is always to compare them to other champions from the past, and the 2010 Auburn Tigers are no exception. Using the Simple Rating System (SRS), let's take a look at where the newest title-holders stand among BCS champs...

On Monday, ESPN asked its users to rank the BCS Champions from #1-13, coming up with this list:

The SRS, though, comes up with a different ranking:

This is a sequel to Draft stories: 1967 and possibly a precursor to Draft stories 1969 through whenever.

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All four of this weekend's playoff matchups feature rematches of regular-season games:

How much extra information (above & beyond the Simple Rating System) can we glean from these previous matchups of playoff foes?

Player Touchdown Finder - Pro-Football-Reference.com

At the end of last week, Sean was able to add a new category to the Player Touchdown Finder: Combined Offensive TDs (rushing + receiving).

To use this new feature, just look under "Touchdown Type" and select "Offensive". It will allow you to execute queries like this one for the most offensive TDs in a playoff game since 1940:

Today, I look at how the Patriots are succeeding on offense thanks largely to undrafted and late round picks. In fact, if the Patriots win the Super Bowl, their skill position players on offense will have the worst draft pedigree of any Super Bowl winner, including offensive-challenged teams like the '02 Bucs and '00 Ravens. It's fascinating to look at how much Patriots production comes from the scrap heap:

Tom Brady, the presumptive M.V.P. winner this year, was the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. The Patriots’ leading rusher, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, wasn’t drafted. Neither was their leading receiver, Wes Welker. Danny Woodhead ranks just behind Green-Ellis in yards from scrimmage but he wasn’t one of the 23 running backs selected in the 2008 draft. The rookie tight end Rob Gronkowski, who caught 10 touchdown passes, qualifies as a superstar by Patriots standards: he was the 42nd pick in last April’s draft. Of New England’s eight most productive offensive skill position players — Brady, Green-Ellis, Woodhead, Welker, Deion Branch, Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez and Brandon Tate — only Gronkowski was a top-60 draft pick.

After the season is over, I'll do a full post on all Super Bowl teams based on their entire rosters, not just the offensive skill position players. And, of course, I'll use AV as the input. I suspect New England -- you know, if they manage to win the Super Bowl -- would still fall at the bottom of the list.

In other posts...

In mid-December I took a look at Jacksonville's surprising success.

The following week? How good is Jamaal Charles? Very, very good.

Before the final week of the regular season, I noted how Brady and Brees had impressive passing touchdown streaks that they maintained in week 17. Both quarterbacks threw a touchdown pass in every game in 2010.

After the season ended, I wondered how Kubiak and Del Rio kept their jobs and took a quick look at past playoff rematches.

In the original Tecmo Super Bowl, Christian "The Nigerian Nightmare" Okoye was nearly impossible to tackle thanks to his monstrous "Hitting Power" attribute. How extreme were Okoye's abilities in the game? The Colts had only one player on their entire roster (Jon Hand) with sufficient HP for a chance at stopping him. As a result, Okoye was the undisputed king of "popcorning", Tecmo slang for defenders bouncing off of a ballcarrier with practically no effect, en route to the end zone.

Well, Okoye was undisputed before Saturday... But as Jordan Slocum shows us, Marshawn Lynch is apparently gunning for Okoye:

The really crazy part is that the real-life version might be more videogame-like than the digital recreation!

PFR Player Name Linker / Add your Site to our Player Newsfeeds

Just a reminder that we now have newsfeeds on the PFR player pages, showing the latest player news from KFFL, injury reports and links to relevant PFR blog posts. If you have a blog or website with an RSS feed you can add your site to relevant player pages as well. Our Player Linker Tool will take your blog posts as you've written them and run them through a program and add links to PFR player pages where appropriate. So while you don't have the resource to create your own player pages for your site, you can treat us as your site's statistics partner, linking LT's name to our stats or any player all the way back to Y.A. Tittle and Otto Graham.

If the links then appear in your rss feed and you let us know to look for them, we'll pull them out of your feed and then link back to you from LT's page, or Otto Graham's or whomever you link to.

If you help your users find our great content, we'll help our users find yours. And best of all it is all automated except for one click of an easy-to-install bookmarklet. Check the Player Newsfeeds page for details. This link share will also work for tables you share using the SHARE tooltip found above every stats table on the site.

Curious after Peyton Manning & the Colts scored 16 points at home against the Jets on Saturday, I wanted to calculate how many points we should have expected them to put on the board, knowing the opponent and game location.

According to the Simple Rating System (SRS), the Jets' defense was +4.2 this season -- meaning they allowed 4.2 fewer PPG than an average team after accounting for strength of schedule. The average NFL team scored 22.0 PPG during the regular-season, so at a neutral site we'd expect an average team to score 17.8 PPG against the New York defense. And since the Colts were at home, 0.95 PPG (half the overall home-field advantage in 2010) should be added in as well, giving a final expectation of 18.8 PPG for a league-average team against the Jets at home. Since the Colts actually scored 16, we can score this performance as -2.8 points relative to average.

Additionally, we wouldn't have expected the Colts' offense to be average based on the regular season. Their offensive SRS was +3.7, which means Indianapolis "should have" scored 22.0 + 0.95 + 3.7 - 4.2 = 22.5 pts against the Jets at home. This yields a score of -6.5 pts relative to regular-season expectations.

Here's Peyton Manning's entire playoff career according to this methodology:

I've really been enjoying perusing old newspaper articles in the google news archives lately, so I figured I may as well put that time to good use by blogging some interesting tidbits. This post contains a random assortment of details and stories from the 1967 draft, along with some offshoots.

Jason Lisk (f/k/a JKL of the PFR Blog) continues to kill it over at the Big Lead. You can read all of Jason's work here, and I highly advise you to do so. His latest piece? A large rant against the idea of a rookie wage scale in the NFL. Jason, Doug and I are in the tiny minority of NFL fans who don't think rookies are overpaid, even the most highly drafted ones. My favorite piece in his article today? A link to a sportswriter complaining in April that Ndamukong Suh was going to recieve similar guaranteed money to Albert Haynesworth. What an injustice!

We've discussed this on the PFR blog before. In February 2009, Jason wrote that some proof that first round picks, as a group, are not overpaid. In May 2008, I came up with a modern Draft Pick Value Chart, which confirmed my believe that the top rookies are not overpaid. Brian Burke wrote an insightful article on how NFL players are gladiators, not bricklayers, and I believe Burke is with the PFR Crew w/r/t rookie salaries.

And then, today, I got bored and did a tongue-in-cheek rant over at the Footballguys message boards. You can read it and follow the anticipated ridiculous comments here, but I'll re-post it as well below:

How in the world can it be justified to pay Jim Harbaugh 7 or 8 million dollars are you? Are you kidding me? Putting aside that, ya know, that's more money than most people will make in their entire lives, what has Harbaugh done to deserve it? He did a good job coaching in a decent conference in college? He never even won his conference! Yet all of the sudden he's somehow worthy of one of the richest contracts in NFL history?

Mike Tomlin has won a Super Bowl and has Pittsburgh as an annual contender, and he's making 4.8 million per year. Jeff Fisher, one of the most respected coaches in the league, is making just shy of 6 million per year. Tom Coughlin, after he won the freakin Super Bowl, is making just over 5 mill per year. How in the world can you justify paying Jim Harbaugh more than all of them? More than Bill Belichick, who's making 7.5 per year?

It's just absurd. Harbaugh's a college guy who hasn't proven a single thing in the NFL. Why not make him PROVE his worth first, then pay him? Wouldn't a 3-year, 6 million dollar deal still put him in the top .0001% of rich people and not cripple the franchise if he's a bust? If Harbaugh's actually a good NFL coach, surely his next contract would be in the 6-7 million dollar a year range. So if he's a good coach, he'll make a ton of money. If he's a bad coach, he'll still make good money but not crazy money. Why won't Roger Goodell step in and do something about this? As an average NFL fan, I have to say it turns me off to the whole sport to see an unproven whippersnapper like Harbaugh come in and make more money than my family will make for generations. For coaching freakin' football. Make him prove it, then pay him. Isn't that how every other industry in the world works?

Please, NFL and Goodell, do something.

I'm currently working on a two-part series discussing the Miami Dolphins' decision to draft Jake Long instead of Matt Ryan in the first round of the 2008 draft. It may be a few days, or a few weeks, but it's on the to-do list. That said, I thought I'd throw out a few questions to the commentators first:

1) Where do you rank Matt Ryan among NFL QBs right now, regardless of age? Where do you rank Ryan including age, i.e., if you were building a franchise?

2) Where do you rank Jake Long among NFL LTs right now, regardless of age? Where do you rank Long including age, i.e., if you were building a franchise?

3) In retrospect, who has been a more valuable player over the past 3 seasons, Ryan or Long? To the extent that your answer is different, who has been the better player over the past 3 seasons, Ryan or Long?

4) Suppose the NFL threw every single player into an open dynasty draft in the summer of 2011. There would be a lottery for the first pick, every player would have his contract revoked, and the league would essentially have a 32-team expansion draft. Some lucky team would get the first pick, while the 32nd team would pick 33rd, in a typical snake draft. There would be no salary cap, and the draft would last forever (i.e., we would not renew this process in the summer of 2012).

• a) Who would be the first pick in this draft? A few years ago, Peyton Manning (or Tom Brady) would have been the obvious choice, but now I'm not sure there is a clear number one.

• b) Who would go first, Ryan or Long? At what spot would each go?

• c) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you believe Long to be the best left tackle in the league. Considering the respective ages of the players, how good would Ryan need to be to be selected ahead of Long? Top 5? Top 10? Top 15? Essentially, at what QB rank would you stop taking Ryan over long (assuming, of course, that if Ryan was the best QB in the league, you'd take him, and if he was the second best QB, you'd take him, etc. At what point does it stop)?

As a follow-up to the 2010 team passing ratings I posted Tuesday, I ran the same process on team rushing performances. The formula for adjusted rushing yards per attempt was:

ARY/A = (Rush Yds + 18 * Rush TD) / Rush Att

(The 18 comes from Chase's post on the value of TDs.)

Using the PFR Team Game Finder, I plugged every team single-game rushing performance of the 2010 season into the formula above, then adjusted for strength of schedule and game location using an SRS-style recursive loop. The result was a set of ratings that best predicted every game according to these equations:

Home ARY/A = Lg Avg  ARY/A + .5*HFA + Home Rush Offense Rating + Away Rush Defense Rating

Away ARY/A = Lg Avg ARY/A - .5*HFA + Away Rush Offense Rating + Home Rush Defense Rating

Here were the ratings (again, negative is good for defenses):

Friend of the PFR Blog Carl Bialik is hosting a sports reading event in NYC this week for Gelf Magazine. This week, it's an all-NFL edition with guests Anthony Gargano (sharing an inside look at the brutal life of a player), N. Jeremi Duru (speaking on the history of the Rooney Rule), and Chad Millman (talking about the 1970s Steelers).

It's at Pacific Standard in Brooklyn, so check it out if you're in the area and like NFL-themed books.

Taking into account opponent and game location, which 2010 teams had the best passing offenses and defenses according to Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt? Let's use the PFR team Game Finder and Doug's SRS methodology (or, if you prefer, Chase's Rearview Adjusted Yards Per Attempt methodology) to find out...

With the team game finder, I called up every team passing performance of the 2010 season. Using the CSV option, I dumped the results into Excel and was quickly able to create a table listing the home and road teams' passing stats for each game of the season:

2010 Game-by-Game Passing Stats

From there, I set up an SRS-style recursive loop where every game's home and road ANY/A are predicted by the following formulae:

Home ANY/A = Lg Avg  ANY/A + .5*HFA + Home Pass Offense Rating + Away Pass Defense Rating

Away ANY/A = Lg Avg ANY/A - .5*HFA + Away Pass Offense Rating + Home Pass Defense Rating

Here were the results (negative is good for defenses):

Which player has intercepted which quarterback the most? Who has picked off Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Dan Marino or Joe Montana more than anyone else? Against which quarterbacks did Rod Woodson, Deion Sanders and Mel Blount pad their numbers? Those answers and more, below.

I used the same methodology I used in the most pick-sixes in NFL history post to determine which quarterback threw which interception to each defender. For the purposes of this study, I included all interceptions in any post-season game in league history and interceptions in any regular season games since 1960. For each interception thrown in any of those games, the defensive player was given X/Y interceptions against the quarterback, where X represents the number of interceptions thrown by that quarterback in that game and Y stands for the number of team interceptions thrown by the quarterback's team in that game. As a result, this post is more of an approximation than an exact science.

The leader in quarterback-defensive player pairing interceptions? Over a six-year period, Broncos cornerback Steve Foley terrorized Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts. Foley had two interceptions in a 17-0 shutout against the Chargers in November 1976; Fouts threw two picks while Clint Longley had three more, which means Fouts is blamed for 40% of the two interceptions Foley had that day, or 0.8 INTs. In December '77, with the Orange Crush at full bore, Foley picked off Fouts in a 17-9 Broncos victory. Their next matchup came in September 1978, and Foley intercepted Fouts again in a Denver win. On Monday Night Football in the 1979 season finale, Foley caught two passes from Fouts, only one fewer than Charlie Joiner. Fouts and Air Corywell was running at top speed in 1980, but Foley picked him off in both matchups, first in Denver and then in a road victory in San Diego. Their next meeting came in September '81, and Foley intercepted three Fouts passes. Maybe after that, Fouts learned not to throw the ball in Foley's direction. All told, including the "0.8 interceptions' in that '76 game, and Foley recorded 9.8 interceptions against the Hall of Fame quarterback.

File this under "I know that most stuff that happened before I was born was quaint, but not this quaint"....

As the final week of the 1970 season approached, the Vikings had clinched the NFC Central, but the West and East were up for grabs, as was the wildcard (or, as it was known at the time, "the playoff berth for the best second-place team"), with the Cardinals, Cowboys, Giants, Lions, Rams and 49ers all in the mix for three available slots. Back then, the tiebreakers were simpler: (1) head to head, (2) conference record, (3) coin flip.

As the various scenarios were examined, it began to dawn on people that a coin flip was not a remote possibility at all. A Lions/Cowboys coin flip seemed somewhat likely, and some newspaper articles referred to a potential three-way "telephonic coin flip" between the Lions, Cowboys, and Giants. My search for an explanation of the mechanics of the three-way flip ended without success.

But if Lions' GM Russ Thomas had his way, there would have been no mechanics necessary. From this UPI article:

Lions' General Manager Russ Thomas has proposed that the Lions be allowed to meet the Dallas Cowboys in a special playoff game next Wednesday instead of conducting a coin toss if the two teams tie for the playoff spot.

Lions' coach and former broken-glass-eating middle linebacker Joe Schmidt was, of course, ready to play anyone any time. Uh, but only because it was less "lousy" than a coin flip. Unfortunately, Pete Rozelle informed Thomas that such a proposal would require unanimous approval from all 26 owners, and speculated that that was extremely unlikely.

In the end, the Rams saved us the hassle by dominating the Giants 31-3. This allowed both Dallas and Detroit to control their own destinies, and both won their games easily.

Just a few weeks later, Rozelle admitted that the situation had him worried (exact words: "we damn near got burned and had to flip a coin.") and that the competition committee would probably be making some changes, but that pre-playoff playoff games were not a possibility.

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