Friday, November 5, 2010

IT'S BEEN A GOOD WEEK FOR THE BAY AREA: The NFL Network last night unveiled the final results of its blue-ribbon panel voting on the 100 greatest players in league history. While I can't imagine much disagreement on #1, the rest might merit some comment.

36 comments:

  1. Benner9:52 AM

    Montana at 4 is too high, and Tom Brady at 21 is just indefensible.  I hate to say this, but I think Peyton Manning should be higher than 8, and Randy Moss is way too low.  Dig seeing Ronnie Lott at 11, but maybe he's top 10?  (I only feel qualified to judge players i've actually seen, but the top 3 are dead-on balls accurate.)

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  2. Heather K9:56 AM

    Dude, seriously, how pissed is Joe Namath this morning that he just made the top 100?

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  3. Joseph J. Finn10:03 AM

    Honestly, I wasn't sure he was making the list.  So #100 seems about right.  (Also, how great is the name Crazylegs Hirsch?)

    Walter Payton is in the top 10, so the rest is gravy to me.  Best player I've seen personally in my lifetime.  (Including TV, Jerry Rice is easily the best player I've ever seen.)  Though I'm quite surprised that Red Grange didn't make the top 100 in the fan vote.

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  4. It's hard evaluating Brady fairly during a down year, but his peak years are ridiculously good.  QB is also an incredibly difficult position to evaluate across eras -- Sid Luckman wasn't asked to do the things which modern quarterbacks do.

    I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: I can't think of another QB in my lifetime -- even Montana -- who gets so much respect that a good team would rather go for it on 4th and 2 from its own 28 rather than give him the ball back.  And I get to see him this weekend in person for (presumably) the last time, and I can't imagine booing him.

    You know whom I'm glad to see get major respect on this list?  Deion Sanders at #34.<span> </span>

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  5. Heather K10:13 AM

    I am not saying I like him or that he should be on this list, football is not my bag.  I am saying that he thinks he should be on this list and a lot higher than #100 because I do a decent job of recognizing egomaniacs.

    And Crazylegs Hirsch is an AWESOME name!

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  6. Look--it goes without saying that rushing the ball is like makin' romance.

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  7. Jerry Rice is the reason I watch football. I grew up watching he and Montana and thought all football looked like that. I have no issue with Montana at 4 because of that, but Barry Sanders not even cracking the top ten is all kinds of crazy.

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  8. ChinMusic10:27 AM

    The interesting thing about the NFL is the lack of respect for its history.  If MLB fans were to make a list of the greatest players ever, it would be topped with guys like Ruth, Gehrig, Mays, Cobb and Williams, but fans have a hard time equating modern players with the legends of the past.  In the NFL, the older stars are mostly forgotten and the modern stars are much more likely to be at the top of fans' lists of greatest players. That said, I don't know much about football history, but I find it hard to believe that any player active in the past 20 years is ranked ahead of Barry Sanders. 

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  9. I think it's about two things: (1) many positions can't be evaluated statistically at all, or weren't until relatively recently (the introduction of the "sack"), and (2) changes in the style of the game across eras.  In baseball, we know how to make those translations; we don't in football.

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  10. Joseph J. Finn10:53 AM

    Well when you've had the goal since training camp, you'll make Chicago the Super Bowl champs.

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  11. Phil Rivers, apparently.

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  12. I don't know what to do with Manning. On one hand, he is really, really good in the regular season, as Adam noted above.  On the other hand, how much do you detract for the playoffs?  He's got a .500 career record, and the year they did win it, they won it with defense and by Manning handing the ball off (3 TDs, 7 INTs in the '07 playoffs; bested Sexy Rexy in the final game).  I don't know where you put him. 

    From what I've read (mainly from Dr. Z on this point), I tend to think Fran Tarkenton doesn't get enough respect.  He played on a bunch of crap teams and carried them rather far with both arm and legs, one of the first guys to play with that style.  Obviously never saw him - or many of the people on this list - play, but history was not kind to a guy who held all the passing records before #13 came along.

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  13. Wasn't that at midfield?

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  14. The other thing is that it's pretty clear that the football players of 30 years ago (much less 50-75 years ago) were inferior to the players of today.  Anthony Munoz, the top-ranked offensive lineman, was a dominant tackle in the 1980s at 6'6"-280; the Bengals' 2009 LT, Anthony Whitworth (who?) is 6'7"-325. Joe Greene was a giant at 6'4"-275 in the 1970s; that's undersized today.  Now, maybe Munoz puts on another 40 pounds of muscle and 5 pounds of fat if he's around today, but I think that if the 2010 Cowboys (1-6) got in a time machine to play any of the 1970s Cowboys Super Bowl teams with 2010 rules, the modern teams win a lopsided game.  There are college teams today that would outperform 1970s NFL teams.

    It's less obvious that today's baseball players are facing superior competition to what Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio faced.

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  15. Yeah, and I think it was actually fourth and one or shorter.  I think your point stands.

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  16. There are at least three issues to filter: (1) changes in strength and conditioning training; (2) the rate of tactical/strategic modernization and change in each sport (much more in football than baseball); and (3) racial integration/global talent pool, the latter of which is much less of an issue in the NFL (except at QB) than in baseball insofar as the NFL's pre-1950s history is so much less important than in baseball.  And, obviously, it's the NFL and NBA which are the beneficiaries of the trend of America's best young athletes choosing away from baseball as a career path.  

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  17. Added, via Aaron Schatz's tweets:

    <span><span>

    4 curious folk: Other players my ballot would have put in NFL top 100: M.Harrison W.Wood C.Eller A.Robustelli A.Gates O.Pace W.Sapp R.Yary

    JUNIOR SEAU! I shall scream it from mountaintops. RT: @SI_PeterKing Top 5 snubs: Largent, RoseyBrown, LarryWilson, DwStephenson, BillWillis.
    </span></span>

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  18. Joseph J. Finn12:10 PM

    Plus, Manning's one Super Bowl win (and this pains me to say it) was against a vastly overmatched Bears team.

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  19. Andrew12:40 PM

    I suspect there's a lingering feeling in the NFL and sports media that Sanders is a quitter or something because of his abrupt retirement when he was still at the top of his game. (The exact opposite of the inexplicable Farve fellating.)

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  20. Dan Suitor12:41 PM

    <p>I literally yelped in surprise and happiness when I saw John Hannah at 24. He's the single greatest guard in NFL history, and you can make an argument for him over Muñoz for best offensive lineman ever. Lineman are generally forgotten men to begin with, but Hannah played on some very bad-to-mediocre teams. They made the playoffs just 4 times, and the Super Bowl just once in his 13 year career.
    </p><p> 
    </p><p>That said, he was the driving force behind the 1978 team which rushed for 3,165 yards, still an NFL record. Bear Bryant said he was the best lineman he ever coached. He missed just 5 games TOTAL in his career (3 of which were a holdout). He really gave his heart and soul to a New England franchise that was known nationwide as "The Patsies", and it's just nice to see him get some much deserved love on this list.
    </p><p> 
    </p><p>For a good read, see SI's cover story "The Best Offensive Lineman Of All Time": http://is.gd/gKImV
    </p><p>Note: Muñoz was going into his 2nd season
    </p>

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  21. isaac_spaceman1:23 PM

    As much as I love Largent (as a football player -- NO POLITICS) and grew up worshipping him, he's exactly the kind of player that Peter King would put on this list.  He had great hands -- maybe better than anybody other than Rice -- and ran great, precise routes that gave him separation despite his lack of speed relative to other receivers (or defenders).  But he never stretched a defense, never beat a team all by himself, never forced a defense to build its game plan around him.  He was never the best player on a good team, and people have even forgotten some of the players that were better than him (Curt Warner?).  When in the middle of your peak you play on a team as the check-down option after Daryl Turner, you are not one of the best players in NFL history.  You are a great teammate, an important locker room leader, one of the best possession receivers ever to have played the game.  But outside of Peter King's leafy suburban dream world, you are not one of the 100 best players of all time. 

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  22. Adam C.1:26 PM

    Totally agree re: BSanders.  If Jim Brown (and his equally stunning and abrupt retirement after 9 years) is No. 2 , I don't know how you dock Barry for leaving when he did, particularly after carrying the load of some AWFUL Lions teams.  I was growing up in Tampa for much of Barry's career, and getting to see him twice per season was alternately thrilling and maddening.

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  23. Joseph J. Finn1:42 PM

    I'm 1000% percent in agreement with you, Adam.  Not to go all Joe Morgan on this, but Sanders was the epitome of exciting consistency on the field.

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  24. Adam C.1:55 PM

    And hell, Brown retired to act!  

    I don't mean to say Barry was empirically better than Brown -- honestly, I don't know how you'd begin to compare even RBs across eras.  But Barry excelled in all aspects of his position for his entire career in exactly the same way Brown did, and I'd argue was -- as Brown was -- the most feared RB of his era.  I'm not certain which way it cuts that Barry played in (a) a more pass-happy era and (b) a 16-game regular season era, but my initial inclination is to give him extra credit for both.  My ultimate point is that Barry Sanders at #17, and not somewhere MUCH closer to Brown is absurd, ridiculous, and indefensible.

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  25. I disagree.  First off, when making the comparisons please recall (as OtherAdam notes) that Brown played in an era of 12- and 14-game seasons; Sanders 16.  In other words, Brown "missed" 26 games compared to a modern NFLer playing the same number of seasons, or an additional ~2700 rushing yards and 24 tds.

    Secondly: okay, who do you bump down?  What players at less-statistically-quantifiable positions can you really say were worse than Sanders, who is still the #3 back on the board.  

    Brown, on the other hand, led the league in rushing in 8 of his 9 seasons; Sanders, 4 times.  

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  26. Isaac, you're not suggesting that race has something to do with this, are you?

    (Also: anyone tracking King's weekly MVP watch?  It's more erratic than Anne Heche.)

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  27. isaac_spaceman3:32 PM

    I don't think King has anything against black people.  He just really, really loves white men. 

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  28. Adam C.4:49 PM

    My quick response, without thinking too much about it or looking at numbers (and before I get a parking ticket, so sorry about the lack of research, but really), is that Sanders also took more punishment because of those extra games, and yet the quality of his performance was undiminished.  Sanders also played in an era with a lot of good backs, some of whom, it's true, managed to record more yards rushing than he did in 6 of his 10 seasons.  Brown's output, based on my recollection of those numbers, dwarfed that of the other runners of his era.

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  29. Adam C.5:13 PM

    Following up.  Notwithstanding the fact that Brown played every game of every season during his career, you can't just assume he'd have played all of those additional games -- or that he wouldn't have been injured, perhaps grievously, in one of them, a la Gale Sayers -- had he been subjected to the 16-gm season.  

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  30. The Pathetic Earthling5:27 PM

    The Favre fellating is understandable.  If he sends pictures of his junk to enough people, some are bound to take him up on it.

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  31. isaac_spaceman7:20 PM

    My list of the best players in baseball history starts with a pretty recent one -- Barry Bonds.

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  32. Daniel Fienberg8:32 PM

    Michael Strahan should have been excluded from the list for "Brothers" alone.

    I would replace him with Alex Karras, for "Webster" alone.

    -Daniel

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  33. Benner9:24 AM

    Speaking of, per Simmons:  <span>EAGLES (-3) over Colts</span>

    I don't gamble and have a rooting interest in the Eagles, but it appears that Las Vegas is giving away money this week.  A team whose pass defense got lit up by Kerry Collins giving points, even at home, further indicates Manning is actually underrated.  (PLEASE make me eat these words, Trent Cole and Asante Samuel!) 

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  34. Andy Reid has never lost a game coming out of the bye week.  11-0.  And the Eagles' weakness -- rushing defense -- isn't a problem against them.<span> </span>

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  35. I know nothing about football.  I just checked out the list to see if OJ was on it.

    For those of you who do know football - what are your thoughts on his placement?  40 seems to be pretty good, no?  Would he have been higher without the "baggage"?

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  36. katiya9:49 PM

    What no Merlin Olsen love here for LHOTP Daniel? :)

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