Sports Reference Blog

Speaking from experience, Pro-Football-Reference has been a godsend to fans of the National Football League who want to investigate and sift through its near-century of history. For that reason, small additions to fill out the league's history are always appreciated, and today we've added in third-team All-Pro selections by The Green Bay Press-Gazette and Collyers Eye Magazine, where available, from 1923 to 1935. In an era where we don't have many of the statistics we can use to evaluate modern players, honors like All-Pro selections become all the more useful to help us understand how good a player was viewed by contemporaries.

Some interesting notes that come from this addition:

1. We get to fill out some additional honors for Pro Football Hall of Famers such as Johnny "Blood" McNally, Joe Guyon and Cal Hubbard. 
2. Cub Buck (aren't names from 100 years ago fun?) gets three consecutive third-team selections added to his ledger. That includes his 1924 season where he not only scored eight extra points and three field goals, but also threw a touchdown to Curly Lambeau. His reign as heaviest player to throw a TD was unrivaled until the likes of Daunte Culpepper and JaMarcus Russell emerged in the 2000s. 
3. Milt Romney was a third-team selection at wingback for his rookie season in 1923. If that name sounds familiar to you, he is indeed a first cousin once removed of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

So if you're a fan of the NFL's history, then dig into our All-Pro and other Awards and Honors pages and see what other new names and personalities from an era long gone you can discover.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2018 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Announcement, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.