Cold, Hard Football Facts.com: Who will laugh last?

August 29 2008

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Who will laugh last?
Cold, Hard Football Facts for November 28, 2007

Well, we're hours away from what the Cold, Hard Football Facts likes to refer to as the "Greatest Game in NFL History This Month": the 10-1 Dallas Cowboys hosting the 10-1 Green Bay Packers.

Consider this Dallas-Green Bay central, a little slice of everything you might need today as you wait impatiently for another interminable Thursday of labor slavery to end so you can go home, strip to your underwear and (hopefully, if you have the right cable package) watch the game.

Here's what we've got:

The official CHFF breakdown of the game, based largely on our own Quality Stats. It's a tough game to figure, but the winner will be ... well, you better read it for yourself.

Check out all of our Quality Stats, and see how the Packers and Cowboys shape up against the rest of the NFL this year.
Take our special Packers-Cowboys 1st and 10 poll here, but remember, all votes must be in by game time, so get cracking!
Dallas fans will like the look of reader Brian Sheppard's "Relatvity Index," which has the Cowboys well ahead of the Packers on the NFL's power scale. But Packer fans will like our own Power Rankings, which have seen Green Bay rank ahead of Dallas each week since the end of Week 6.
Sound off on the CHFF forum, where the official Cowboys-Packers discussion thread went up late Wednesday night -- like camping out in front of the stadium waiting for the doors to open.

And follow any of these links for more info:

Also today, we offer a look back into the archives a bit. In addition to being a huge game between two great teams, it's a battle of all-time great franchises. We've written a lot about both in recent and more distant memory, and offer a second look at some of those pieces today in advance of a new chapter.

BRETT FAVRE: BEFORE AND AFTER

Some folks in Wisconsin and Packer Nation at large still hate us for pointing out Brett Favre's horrible season-and-a-half between 2005-and-06. Yes, we called him "Old Yeller." And yes, as you can read here, we meant it.

A cringeworthy excerpt:

It’s time for Green Bay management to heed the lesson of Old Yeller and put Favre out of his indecisive misery. Cut him today and reclaim the franchise from the feeble mind, wayward arm and rabid jaws of a slobbering old quarterback. Favre was the biggest dog in the NFL 10 years ago. Today, he’s an aging mongrel who’s infected with the quarterbacking equivalent of rabies: the INT bug.

Oops. Guess the CHFFs led us astray on that one.

Less than two years later, we capped a 2007 season full of Maddensian Favre love with this ultimate pro-Brett piece. Who's the best 38-year-old NFL quarterback in league history? Hands down, it's Brett Favre, 2007.

Of all the great QBs to play the game, only John Elway even came close to the type of mastery Favre is showing at this ripe “old” age. We assembled a general list of the 25 greatest retired QBs of all time, Hall of Famers and Hall of Almost Famers, and Favre’s incredible season shines like a beacon of hope to aging passers everywhere. Of the 25, 11 didn’t even make it to 38. And most of them wished they hadn’t. Only Elway turned in a full season in keeping with his career numbers, leading the Broncos to the Super Bowl in 1998 (and he missed three games with injury).

AND THE BEST PACKER QB OF ALL TIME IS ...

After some thoughtful debate between two of the game's greats, we determined that Bart Starr was greater than his Royal Brettness.

While Favre is one of the best regular-season winners to ever grace the gridiron, Starr is the greatest postseason winner ever. Period. He has a postseason record of 9-1, including five championship victories. His 104.9 QB rating in the playoffs is by far the best in history, an even more impressive feat when you consider Starr played in an era where quarterback ratings were so low Rex Grossman would look good. The truth about Favre is simply that he did not elevate his game the way his predecessor did. Favre's playoff passer rating of 84.0 is marginally below his regular-season rating of 85.3. He's also played some of his worst games in the playoffs, including seven multi-INT games. In 2001, Favre threw six picks in a single game, tying a mark last set by Norm Van Brocklin back in the NFL Stone Age. In his most recent playoff game, a 31-17 loss to Minnesota in 2004, Favre threw four INTs in 33 attempts. Starr threw just three playoff INTs ever, in 213 attempts.

TOM LANDRY AND THE 'ICE BOWL'

Frankly, we're fascinated with this classic Cowboys-Packers game to a disturbing level.

It's no surprise one of our favorite books is "The Ice Bowl," which we reviewed with great pleasure this summer (when it was like 104 degrees).

The book detailed one of the most mythical and meaningful games in NFL history, the 1967 title game between two great teams, in an era when the NFL title game was much bigger than the Super Bowl.

One of the best parts of the book was its reaffirmation of Dallas coach Tom Landry's greatness.

Landry made his chops as a defensive genius – most prominently before the Cowboys as the defensive coordinator for the Giants of the 1950s, opposite the team’s offensive coordinator, Vince Lombardi. Writes Gruver: “Landry had designed the ‘umbrella’ defense to stop the aerial artistry of Paul Brown’s Cleveland Browns in 1950, and created the coordinated 4-3 to slow down Jim Brown in 1958. His response to Lombardi’s cut-back features was to take away the gaps in the (defensive) line.” He attempted to plug these gaps through the flex defense – featuring two defensive linemen situated back off the line of scrimmage – that the Cowboys utilized right through their glory days of the 1970s. Gruver also credits Landry with creating the all-out blitz, and writes that he ushered in the era of the modern 4-3 and the dominant, roving middle linebacker that reinvented football in the 1960s and still defines the prominent defensive formation today.

Oh, and he was also a fantastic player, a DB who had 32 interceptions in an 80-game career ... one shortened by his WWII career as a B-17 bomber co-pilot. That military service always plays well in our book.

DALLAS DYNASTY VS. N.E. DYNASTY

Only two teams have won three Super Bowls in four seasons: the 1992 Cowboys and 2004 Patriots. We put the two best teams of the dynasty through the Tale O' The Tape to see which the Cold, Hard Football Facts favored.

The 2004 Patriots were ...

the best big-game team ever. New England’s opponents in 2004 were 126-130 (.492), 17 games tougher than Dallas’ opponents, who were just 109-147 (.426). The 2004 Patriots went 7-1 vs. Quality Opponents in the regular-season, and 10-1 including playoffs. Their only loss to a Quality Opponent was the 34-20 defeat at Pittsburgh that ended New England’s record 21-game win streak. That 2004 Steelers team, by the way, was no pushover. It went 15-1.

The 1992 Cowboys were ...

dominant. They outscored their three playoff opponents by an average of 23.0 PPG, compared with an average playoff victory of just 11.3 PPG for the 2004 Patriots. The blowouts for the 1992 Cowboys reached a crescendo with their 52-17 win over the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII. The 35-point margin of victory was the third most ever, trailing only the 1985 Bears (who beat the Patriots by 36) and 1989 49ers (who beat the Broncos by 45). The 2004 Patriots did not beat a postseason opponent by more than 17 points. And instead of a 35-point blowout on Super Bowl Sunday, the Patriots held on for a 3-point victory over the Eagles

So, who was better? Read the rest ...

HALL OF AWESOME

If you missed it this summer, we inducted an inaugural class into the Cold, Hard Football Facts "Hall of Awesome," the players, coaches or contributors we thought most deserved to be in Canton but aren't.

Not surprisingly, the Packers and Cowboys both had members of the team: Dallas' Chuck Howley and Green Bay's Jerry Kramer.

On Howley: Howley was a happy-go-lucky hick with incredible wheels and a knack for the big game. He'd have been a legend in baseball, but he came of age in an NFL that was still looking for exposure, and his crowd-pleasing plays were missed by most. He has everything a Hall of Famer is supposed to have: a long, decorated career, a key role on a great team, and shining moments on the game's biggest stage.

On Kramer: Like Alex Karras, Kramer did the heavy lifting and did it incredibly well – and above and beyond Karras, he did it at the highest stage. If teammate/Golden Boy Paul Hornung deserves a spot in the Hall of Fame – and we're not saying he doesn't – Kramer deserves it more.

PRESEASON POWER RANKINGS: OOPS.

Our preseason power rankings are based on the only thing the Cold, Hard Football Facts can judge: the previous season's numbers.

So, with Green Bay coming off an 8-8 season and Dallas coming off first-round playoff loss, they were nowhere near the top of our pack. Dallas was No. 13, Green Bay was No. 22.

For each team, we offered an optimistic outlook and a pessimistic one. Not surprisingly, both teams lived up to the optimistic view:

Optimism: Packers have rebuilt nicely, and Brett Favre was just waiting for the guys to catch up. Lombardi would be proud.
Pessimism: Another year older, another year worse for Favre. End this charade already.

And,

Optimism: Maestro coach Wade Phillips conducts all that talent perfectly, Cowboys win East.
Pessimism: Romo never gets over “the botch,” Jerry Jones is calling Jeff George's agent by Week 9, Phillips reviled as a bum.

ODDS AND ENDS

When we detailed some of the oddest pairings in NFL history, the Packers and Cowboys both popped up with their own version of Felix and Oscar.

And the Cowboys had two of the best running back tandems of all time.

Several Packer and Cowboy tandems get mentioned in our Dynamic Duos piece that ran this past summer in honor of the 50th anniversary of Lennon-McCartney's first meeting.

Terrell Owens, terrific winner? That's right, we said it.

If you're not seeing this game tonight, blame Comcast, who we ripped a new one this past summer.

In comparison with his era, Roger Staubach had two of the 20 greatest passing seasons of all time (through 2005).

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