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This week in football
Cold, Hard Football Facts for November 14, 2008
(Ed. note: Baseball has its TWIB notes while the average CHFF reader made his way through high school and community college thanks to those venerable old Cliffs Notes. In fact, if not for Cliffs Notes, we never would have appreciated the works of Stanley Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe, the guy who invented poetry. Now we have our TWIF notes – This Week in Football – our new weekly wrap-up of the best stats, data and facts from the week that was the CHFF. See last week's TWIF notes here.)
The Giants now lead the NFL in every meaningful rushing category, including yards (1,520), average per attempt (5.15) and average per game (168.9). In fact, you have to go all the way back to the 1954 49ers, a team that fielded two Hall of Famers in the backfield (Joe Perry and Hugh McElhenny) to find a team that ran the ball as effectively with so many different players as the Giants do.
Kurt Warner has completed 70.62 percent of his passes this year, which puts him on pace to rewrite the single-season record set by Cincinnati's Ken Anderson back in the strike-shortened 1982 season (70.55 percent).
The 2007 Jets, before Brett Favre, averaged just 16.8 PPG – 25th in the NFL. The 2008 Jets, with Brett Favre, average 28.9 PPG – 3rd in the NFL and tops in the AFC.
The J-Men have ranked in the top three in scoring just twice since a guy named Namath last passed the pigskin, most recently in 1982.
Ben Roethlisberger has tossed eight INTs over the last three games and has now thrown more picks (11) than INTs (10).
With a win over the Jets Thursday night, Bill Belichick would have joined the list of 10 winningest coaches in NFL history, knocking Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs out of the No. 10 spot.
Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme picked the right time to sh*t the bed – even with four INTs and a dreadful 12.3 passer rating, the Panthers still had enough gas in the tank to beat the horrible Raiders by double digits (17-6) last week.
With 462 yards of total offense against the Jets Thursday night, Patriots quarterback Matt Cassel easily surpassed the top mark his predecessor Tom Brady had produced in his Hall of Fame career (412 back in 2002).
The Bears (an original NFL team from 1920) and the Packers (who joined the NFL in 1921) meet for the 175th time this Sunday, making it the most-played regular-season rivalry in NFL history.
The Bears hold an 89-79-6 edge in the series. Believe it or not, they've met just once in the playoffs – a western division tiebreaker after both teams went 10-1 in the 1941 season.
Aerosmith guitar god Joe Perry is a man after our own hearts: he loves to hunt and barbecue and even makes his own line of hot sauces. Hell, if he were fat, poor and never got laid, we'd be like the same person. In any case, he shared some of his favorite recipes with the Chief Troll and we share them here with you.
Throughout the Bill Belichick Era in New England, unknown players have consistently risen from nowhere to become major impact players. J.R. Redmond, for example, caught three straight passes for the Patriots in their last-second, game-winning drive in Super Bowl XXXVI. He'd catch just two more passes in a Patriots uniform after that day.
Tennessee remains the only undefeated team in the NFL and, according to our Relativity Index, 11.3 PPG better than the average performance for their opponents – easily the best mark in the league.
Teams that can't stop the pass can't win in the NFL. Just ask fans in Detroit. The Lions are among the worst in the league in every pass defense category, surrendering an eye-popping 8.9 yards per pass attempt, allowing 15 TD passes, picking off just 2, and surrendering an average passer rating of 111.2. It all adds up to one of the worst pass defenses in history.
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