This article kind of blew my mind. There was more scoring in the 1950s and 1960s than in the past few decades. I would like to see an in-depth analysis of this. The writer's idea that teams may need to run the ball more does not ring true to me.

My best guess, off the top of my head, is that lack of parity led to a lot of blowout games that inflated the scoring totals. Baseball was kind of like that in the old days too.

Anyway, it's a really interesting article:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/kerry_byrne/08/26/passing/index.html 

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Paul would agree, teams need to run to win.

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A complete b.s. article.

Today's defenses will shred those offenses. They're too fast. The DLs are too big and surprisingly quick. Guarantee that if you took the best Os from 1948 and put them against even the Lions' D, it would be a shutout or 7 points at the most.

Several things:
1) they didn't punt so much back then. You know how I feel about punting. We should be going on a lot of fourth downs,
2) they didn't settle for field goals. Didn't they say something like the top scoring O had only 8 field goals that year?
3) the tackling wasn't as good back then. It would be AP's or Ryan Grant's wet dream to play against those D's. Much easier to run the ball if you know you're going to break the first tackle almost every time.

So of course it's going to be skewed.

In fact, Ds got so good that the NFL intervened and made it easier to pass, because they absolutely did not want the NFL to turn into soccer. That would be a snooze fest.

Imagine how nice it would be if you're a CB and you can hit the guy you're covering all the way down the field. They had to change that.

By today's rules, which were entirely different from the rules back then, passing makes more sense. Elite teams today need an elite QB with very few exceptions. Today's elite teams are (in no order) the Saints, the Packers, the Vikings, the Colts, the Patriots, and the Cows. What do they all have in common? An elite QB.

Imagine if the Jets or the Ravens had an elite QB. Heck, look what will happen to the Cardinals without their Hall of Fame QB this year.

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Zombie, I'd say the Jets and Ravens both belong in that elite list rather than the Patriots. The Pats have had a bad D for a while now, and it looks like things are about to get worse. Ravens have 2 playoff berths in two years, whereas the Pats only have one, and Ravens raped them last year in the playoffs.

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Patriots find ways to win. They've done it all last decade and as long as Belichick is coach, they'll continue to do it.

To be honest, I'm more scared of the Patriots than the Jets or the Ravens. The Jets are obsessed with being able to beat the Colts. We'd slaughter them if we played them in the SB.

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I think you completely missed the point with this statement. The article was not claiming that the offensive players of past eras were better than today's offensive players. That would be absurd.

I like your suggestions, though, for why there was more scoring back then.

As I said, I think the article presented a lot of interesting facts but took a stupid angle by suggesting that teams nowadays would be better off running the ball more.

I think most of us tend to overrate today's NFL offenses for three reasons:

1. A lot of us began watching football in the 70s, when defense dominated. Everything since then has been high scoring by comparison.

2. Because of the increase in number of games per seasons (reaching 16 in 1978) most seasonal statistical records have been set in recent years.

3. The West Coast Offense, with its emphasis on the short passing game, has inflated QB's completion percentages, decreased their number of interceptions, and increased TD passes, as it is easier for most teams to pass the ball into the end zone rather than running it in, because the short passing game is tailor made for that.

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Greg had a good point about parity for teams. And the parity of individual players was huge back then. Lots of professional football players had second professional lifes. Football wasn't a 24-7-365 industry back then. The gifted athletes were able to really shine. Nowadays with football training programs available to kids in elementary school on up there are so many more players that are near each other. The gifted ones still stand out, but it isn't as dramatic anymore. Back then I believe pro football was much like college football, there were the juggernauts and the little bitches. The worst cliche I don't think existed as much in the 50s/60s of "Any given Sunday".

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