While you, our reader, is probably engaging in some sort of pagan solstice ritual, like beating the drums at Stonehenge, we're shut in like always, wasting away the impending summer hours in the cool, dank basement of the Cold, Hard Football Facts cardboard-box world headquarters, awaiting the only date that matters to the pagan of pigskin: opening day of the football season.

 

We tackle myriad topics in our Summer Solstice Mail Pouch, including a slew of quarterback comparisons, our reflections on D-Day, some new potential members of Pigskin Detention and, of course, our own sexual inadequacies.

 

TROLL: Were you guys right, or what? Your recent article on over-inflated quarterback proficiency in modern football was intriguing, but it really hit home when I saw the standings of the top 20 career passers in efficiency rating.

Your site is as close to being non-biased as there is today. Thanks for the great job. – Jim Kelly

 

CHFF: Well, Jim, we wish we could be as gracious toward you. We’re really sorry about those four Super Bowls. Basically, you sucked (as seen here being carried off the field during another crushing Super Bowl defeat). And your choice in hotties doesn’t even impress us, which is really saying something, because we get laid about once every Ice Age.

 

Also, real quick: you forgot some of the Top 20 guys: Steve Young and Joe Montana rank Nos. 1 and 3, respectively, in all-time passer rating, so 15 of the top 20 are still active.

 

With that said, your analysis of our analysis is pretty much dead on: we didn’t get into the yards-per-attempt information, but you nailed it. Basically, teams today throw shorter, higher percentage passes. The result is higher completion percentages, fewer INTs and better passer ratings.

 

Look at a receiver like HOFer Lance Alworth, who led the AFL in receiving yards three times. He averaged 18.9 YPC over the course of his entire career (542 catches for 10,266 yards). Nobody today comes close to that average. The NFL wasn’t much different than the AFL in that era, either. Harold Jackson joined the NFL in 1968, led the league in receiving yards twice, averaged a mere 36 receptions per season, and caught a career-best 65 passes in his second year in the league. But Jackson averaged a remarkable 17.9 YPC for his career and should probably be in the Hall of Fame.

 

The closest we got to Alworth or Jackson last year was Detroit’s Roy Williams, who hauled in 82 passes for 1,310 yards, an average of 16.0 YPC. That led the NFL for the 2006 season, yet doesn’t even come close to the career numbers put up by the better receivers in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

The numbers are also obvious when we look at quarterbacks. Bart Starr (pictured here) was, hands down, the best, most efficient passer of the 1960s, maybe even of all time. He averaged more than 7.5 YPA every single year of the decade, and reached 8.2 YPA or better in six of those 10 seasons.

 

To put Starr’s numbers into context, look at Peyton Manning, the best, most efficient passer of the 21st century. He’s reached 7.5 YPA or better in seven of his nine NFL seasons, and averaged 8.2 YPA or better just twice.

 

Truly amazing: Starr played in an era when defenders could knock the snot out of receivers. Yet Starr, playing outdoors in a foul-weather city, consistently averaged more yards per attempt than the most productive passer of the 21st century - a guy who plays indoors in a league built to highlight the skills of a passer.

 

Bottom line: passing offenses have grown much more efficient, but much more conservative, over the past 10 to 20 years. Passing in the 1960s was much more of a high-risk, high-reward venture.

 

TROLL: Good Morning Gentlemen. It's Staff Sergeant Darrell Gunter from Japan again. Have you guys seen the latest Pete Prisco article (Top 50). He needs his a$$ kicked, and should be fired. CBS should ban him from ever writing about football. – Semper Fi, and and Happy Father's Day to all the fathers on your staff.

 

CHFF: Not a lot of father’s on our staff, Sergeant. In fact, it’s hard to get a dad on the staff when few of us have ever had a woman on his staff. Ba-dum-bump!

 

We’ve tried with Prisco, a borderline illiterate hack who clearly has never looked at a stat sheet, and writes all of his analyis based upon conjecture, opinion and assumption. Sadly, we’ve failed to enlighten him and his bosses have refused to see the error of their ways in giving him a forum to spread his ignorant doggerel.

 

TROLL: Dude, check out Salisburys MySpace!!

 

CHFF: We Love Joe Sports Fan. We worked with them last year and hope to do so again this season. Those guys do a great job and these MySpace pages are a riot. Actually, the Chief Troll just had drinks with them a few weeks ago when he was in St. Louis. Thanks for the heads up about another great piece from them.

 

TROLL: I enjoyed your article about Pennsylvania vs. Ohio.  Did you consider Blue Ball as one of your PA cities instead of Intercourse? – Eric Weaver

 

CHFF: Yes, we did. In fact, it was originally in the story, the first penned for us by Boy Wonder intern Mark Sandritter. (You guys might remember him as the eagle-eyed journalism student who busted the Broadsheet Bully … that’s right, we hired him, if you count working for us free as hiring.) In any case, he had the town of Blue Ball in the original piece, but we figured it would have been funnier if the town was Blue Balls, instead of just Blue Ball. None of us have ever had a single Blue Ball … that would really be something. Of course, none of us have ever been to second base, either. So that would be a start.

 

TROLL: That "Dogfight" article was hilarious. They had a "Y2K" asshole of the year contest on Boston's WEEI years ago and O.J. Simpson won it. O.K., he was an un-convicted murderer so maybe he doesn't make the Dogfight list. Here's another name you might be interested in: Randall Brent Woodfield.

Randy Woodfield was drafted by the Packers in 1974 but he didn't make the team. I'm not sure if he qualifies for the "dogs" list, since he was cut in training camp following a number of indecent exposure incidents. But after his Packers career was over he took to murdering women along the I-5 corridor in Washington state. By the time the authorities caught him he had been linked with (at least) 13 murders and quite probably many more. There's a book on this fellow, "The I-5 Killer" by Ann Rule, a well known true crime writer. In case this sounds too heinous to be true, you should do a google search on "Randy Woodfield" and see for yourselves. All the best - Jack Young

 

CHFF: Interestingly, Green Bay coach Dan Devine landed a job at Notre Dame soon after drafting Woodfield.

 

TROLL: Although nobody read or cared for a couple weeks, it looks like Ron Borges is back. Pro Football Weekly seems to have hired the fat back hack and employed him to continue his obsession with bringing down the legend of Belichick. – Mr. Wizard

 

CHFF: Well, you know what they say: pussies have nine lives. Pro Football Weekly is a great publication. We can only wish to be that successful. But they've made a mistake here in giving this guy a forum.

 

TROLL: Nice work on Borges. Now can you do something about Jay Marriotti of the Chicago Sun-Times? Please. – Thomas Kracun

 

CHFF: We don’t get a lot of e-mails about Marriotti, not the onslaught that we got about Borges. In fact, Noah never faced the kind of deluge we did when it came to Borges. With that said, send us a few links about what’s botherin’ ya and we’ll check ‘em out. We’re not above a little verbal thrust and parry with the factless.

 

TROLL: I am close to finishing a 53-man squad of the best players to ever play in the NFL. I need help though. I am having great difficulty finding out how many times a player has been an All-Pro selection. If I gave you a list of the players I need that info for, will you be able to tell me? – Joshua Dinwiddie

 

CHFF: We can probably help. Send along the list and let’s see what we can do.

 

TROLL: Great site and great item on D-Day. However, some meaningful mention of the Soviet contribution (caused 8 of every 10 German combat deaths), the despicable regime notwithstanding, would have been in order. It is indeed fascinating that a government arguably as foul as Hitler's was seemingly the evil necessary to confront the Nazis on suitably savage terms. Nonetheless, thanks for reproducing the Reagan speech (and FDR's words, too). – Chris of Arabia

CHFF: Nice to hear from you, Chris. Tell Lawrence we said “hi.”

 

Certainly, the Soviets did the bulk of the dying in World War II – some 20 million dead. Hard to minimize that fact and clearly the nation deserves credit and remembrance for their losses. The difference, we suppose, is that the Soviets had no choice – they were invaded and forced to protect their very homeland. Plus, they essentially enslaved everyone in their path as they sought retribution against the Germans, then turned their enslaved nations into polluted, dysfunctional festering shitholes. The western Allies returned their defeated territories to their rightful owners and inhabitants and built all of them into functioning, politically stable and economically prosperous nations. If Soviet leaders had done the same, the staggering deaths their people endured might be remembered more fondly. Instead, most of those deaths went in vain, serving no other purpose but to replace one savage dictatorship with another. That's the true miracle of D-Day: for the Brits, Canadians and Americans, anyway, the losses came for the liberation of others.

 

TROLL: Good story on D-Day. As a combat veteran of WWII (Marines in the Pacific before D-Day) I was interested in your report on that day, and pleasantly surprised with it. Can you imagine today, a President going on national radio and asking the country to pray with him? The ACLU would be slobbering in their teabags with fury; and then plans to sue of course. Wish we had more of that kind of brotherhood. – Jerry McConnell

 

CHFF: Thanks for your service, Jerry, and for the kind words about the piece. The problem with the ACLU is that they attempt to suppress public displays of faith by some religions (i.e., Christianity) yet promote public displays of faith by other religions (i.e., Islam). The ACLU certainly has served some noble purposes in the past, but religion is one area where they've been inconsistent at best and destructive at worse.

 

This doesn't detract at all from the soundness of your column. I just thought you'd be interested. Best regards – David Taylor

 

CHFF: Well, it's not exactly a small error. In our defense, William of Orange had a lot of support in England, so it wasn't so much an invasion as it was, well, we don't know what else to call it. We guess it's all semantics and, in the end, you may be correct in calling it a successful invasion. But William of Orange was, in many respects, invited into England. Eisenhower forced his way into Europe.

 

The guides at the Bayeux Tapestry in Normandy actually say that William the Conquerer was the last successful cross-channel invasion before D-Day. But we should probably know better than to trust a tour guide.

 

TROLL: Thank you for your remembrance of D-Day. My father served in the 101st during World War II. He spoke of very few battles, and never in much detail. When I asked him if he was proud of what he had accomplished he answered that it needed to be done, and if it hadn't, freedom would die. He didn't pound his chest, nor was he ashamed, he just lived life and did what needed to be done. Your words are testament that his ideals won't be lost, and real men will always be here in the defense of freedom. – Jim Kelly

 

CHFF: Let’s hope we'll always have men like your dad around. As they say, freedom of the press wasn't given to us by the reporter. It was given to us by the soldier.

 

TROLL: Hey guys. Great site. Been reading for a few years now and was a little surprised at your "respect" for Len Pasquarelli. He's a hack of the highest order in my humble opinion. He put up another woofer today. Calling Champ Bailey the best defender in the league, he states on multiple occasions that he puts up huge numbers while being rarely thrown at. However, I just recently saw stats that he was only thrown at a couple of times less than Williams last year. If Len spent as much time researching as he does eating, he just might be a decent sportswriter. – Jamie

 

CHFF: Hey, let’s not criticize the man for a prodigious appetite! Our own average diet is about 4,000 calories per day, with 90 percent of it coming from chicken-fried bacon, and the rest coming from day-old leftovers we pick out of the Appalachian State hoodies that serve as the CHFF team uniform. With that said, Pasquarelli (like Marriotti above) is not one of those guys we get a lot of negative e-mail about, and we’ve never really noticed much in the way of hackery when we read his stuff. But we usually only look into a fella after getting a lot of e-mail about him. We’ll see if this e-mail is the start of something.

 

TROLL: It’s funny I was going to email you about Old (Yeller) Lenny Pasquarelli. But not for what you would think. Seems he would take Shawne Merriman if he were starting a franchise. I mean who would take a steroid freak if you could have any player in the NFL?  Maybe it is the time to put Him out of his misery. – Paul in Boston

 

CHFF: Well, maybe this is the start of something. We'll see how the L'affaire de Pasquarelli plays out.

 

Anyway, since you guys strive to find stats that are heavily associated with winning, I figured I would give you the heads up ... if you didnt already know about it.  At the very least, it would be an interesting article (Passer rating vs. QYPA vs. AYPA). – Polar Guy

 

CHFF: First, we offered a better way to look at passer rating last season, in an article by accomplished author Allen Barra, who's written significantly about this topic.

 

With that said, your info here is very interesting. If the correlation to winning is in fact that high consistently, it’s quite impressive and something we should look at more closely. The only problem with their system is that it’s not exactly easy to explain and it creates a number that exists in a vacuum – those are the same two problems that plague the NFL’s passer rating formula.

 

We do find the NFL system fairly effective, just hard to explain in context of the game on the field. That’s why we put a lot of stock in our Yards Per Attempt figure – it moves pretty much in lock step with passer rating, and is extremely easy to explain.

 

With that said, very interesting and we’ll take a closer look.

 

 

CHFF: What does this look like, the National Enquirer? Pro Football Talk? How about some evidence ... maybe some police reports, a conviction? Would that be too much to ask?

 

TROLL: Was just wondering if I could get my website added to the fan links and message boards on your Bengals info page. It's a "Bengals Only" draft site. – BDG

 

TROLL: I'd love if you would add my site to your Chicago Bears fan site section: UltimateBearsFan.com. – Reed Rizzo.

 

TROLL: Hello I would like to get my web site added to your Rams football links page. My site is www.stlouisramfan.com. I would love to be part of your page for Rams fans! – Vince Vitale

 

TROLL: Hello Cold, Hard Football Facts: We're "It's JerryTime!" the animated Emmy-nominated podcast. We like your site and have listed a link to it on our Links Page. Please check us out and if possible, add a link to our homepage on your site or an affiliated links page. Thank you! – Jerry

 

CHFF: Done. Done. Done. And done. Check out those sites, folks, and let us know what you think.

 

TROLL: Your Troll Poll question about which was the most important battle in U.S. history was a terrific and difficult question, and appropriate for Memorial Day! A compelling argument could be made for any of the choices (Lexington & Concord, Saratoga, Gettysburg, Belleau Wood, Midway, Normandy). I chose Gettysburg, in part because it was the only one that, had it gone differently - and it could have - the course of our country's history would have been changed from within. By the way, it's "Belleau Wood" not "Woods." – Bruce Smith.

 

CHFF: Thanks for the kind words and the correction. We really liked your work with the Bills.

 

TROLL: Hey, I was just reading your article about Jack Lummus, and noticed a small grammatical mistake. When talking about the book "Flags of our Fathers" you say "It will be released as a movie last year." Keep up the good work writing about football and our veterans. – Matt T.

 

CHFF: Thanks for the note, Matt. That was a reprint of an article we published a year earlier. We have since updated it to make it more evergreen.

 

TROLL: Don’t be the little guy in the club.  Try the Ramrod 2100 and watch your penis – and her pleasure – grow, grow and grow!

 

CHFF: Wow, talk about target spam marketing. Well, believe you us, you truly found a collection of guys who need help. We'll take two of the smallest ones you have.

 

TROLL: The battle between the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis took place off the eastern coast of England, several miles from Flamborough Head in Yorkshire, rather than off the coast of Scotland. – Kirke Wheeler

 

CHFF: You’re right. We’ve since made the correction.

 

TROLL: Get your facts straight: McAuliffe was a colonel – Commander of 101st Division Artillery – not a general at Bastogne. He was acting commander of the division at the time. It’s Medal of Honor, not Congressional Medal of Honor; 29/137ths is not more than a quarter, it’s a fifth. Bonus question: who was McAuliffe’s XO at Bastogne? Don’t Google this or I will know. It was none other than Harry W. O. Kinnard, later to be commanding General of the 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam. I think he was Lieutenant Colonel at Bastogne. Seriously guys, love your football analysis. – Chickenman

 

CHFF: Thanks for the note. We think, in most cases here, that our original reporting here was correct. Everything we’ve seen has McAuliffe listed as a one-star (brigadier) general at Bastogne. Numerous TV shows and historical accounts (“Band of Brothers” for example), show him with a single star. The U.S. army’s own web site also shows that a brigadier general serves as the deputy to the commander of a division. Remember, at Bastogne, McAuliffe was the acting commander of the 101st airborne, as the second in command to Major Gen. Maxwell Taylor, who was in the States or in the U.K. at the time. Also, it is in fact the Congressional Medal of Honor. As for Kinnard, great bit of trivia! Some reports say it was Kinnard who told McAuliffe that he should reply “Nuts!” to the German demand of surrender. As for our math, your correction is duly noted.

 

TROLL: In the Defensive Hog Index, I think Opponent’s Time of Possession is somewhat worthless. It's a measure of your own offense, as much if not more than a measure of your own defense. And since you're ranking defenses on that page it skews your attempt to validate a defense.

Otherwise, a decent rating. I'd just tweak that opposing time of possession to better reflect a pure defensive measurement. Thanks – Robert 

 

CHFF: We’re always looking to tweak and improve our Quality Stats. In fact, we made a similar change to both Hog Indexes last year at the prompting of some readers, looking at Negative Pass Players as a percentage of pass plays, not just as a raw number, which is how we handled it initially. You make some sense here. Our general thinking is that a good defense will, in general, be on the field for shorter periods than a bad defense (and good offenses, in general, on the field longer than bad offenses). With that said, if we can set up our system to use the time of individual drives, your proposal might work better. We’ll let you know if we can make it happen.

 

TROLL: Am I the only one that believes the NFL fixed the playoffs so that two black coaches could play each other in the Super Bowl? The penalties called against both the Patriots and the Saints in the conference title games were at key moments and there were far more penaties called against the Saints and Pats then against the Colts and Bears. The refs definitely gave key advantages to the Bears and Colts. All week long on the NFL channel they were talking like the Bears and Colts were playing in the Big Game....How did they know? Thanks – Rick Langis

 

CHFF: You’re probably not the only one who believes the NFL fixed the playoffs. But maybe you should be. Hey, people like Michael Moore think that Cuba has better healthcare than the U.S. So, kooks and conspiracy theorists are everywhere.

 

TROLL: It doesn't seem likely that Doug Flutie will be inducted to the Hall of Fame in Canton, but do you think that he should be? – Nathan

 

CHFF: Well, our fearful leader Kerry thinks Flutie walks on water and should be enshrined at the right hand of the Father. The rest of the crew isn’t quite so high on him. The truth is that he really didn’t do enough in the NFL to be inducted into the (inappropriately named) Pro Football Hall of Fame. But, had he not been railroaded by a bunch of ignorant stiffs like Jim McMahon or Wade “the real bum” Phillips, we’d probably be talking about him today as a likely Hall of Fame candidate.

 

Flutie produced, and won, on every team he’s ever played on at every level. He made the playoffs with nine different pro teams – a record likely never to be broken. Football fans in Canada last year named him the greatest CFL player of all time. Sports Illustrated named him one of the QBs on their all-time college football team a couple years ago. He was, when he left college, the most prolific offensive player in the history of the game.

He produced and won in the NFL, despite the stupidity of the coaches he played for. His list of accomplishments goes on and on. It was truly a remarkable career – but not one that will earn him a spot in Canton.

 

TROLL: It would be interesting to see a comparison between Drew Bledsoe's and Tony Romo's performances last year. From my not very deep look at both, Bledsoe comes out the better of the two, but I am sure you will set me right. – Bill Truesdell

 

CHFF: Well, Bill, there’s always an easy way to get the answer: look at the Cold, Hard Football Facts. We just did it, and Romo comes out way ahead in every single statistical category. Romo’s ahead in raw numbers, but he played in more games – 10 starts and three other appearances, to just six starts for Bledsoe. But he also blows away Bledsoe in the more important efficiency humbers.

 

Here’s how they stacked up by raw numbers in 2006:

 

	Attempts	Comp.	Yards	TD	INT	Sacked (yds)
Bledsoe	169	90	1,164	8	9	16 (-107)
Romo	337	220	2,903	19	13	21 (-124)

 

Now, let's look at how they stacked up in terms of efficiency in 2006:

Romo was the better performer by every single imaginable statistical measurement. However, in Bledsoe's defense, the Cowboys had the same winning percentage in the five games he started and finished (3-2) as they did in the 10 games Romo started and finished (6-4). They Cowboys also averaged more PPG under Bledsoe (29.4) than they did under Romo (25.6), though the 45-point explosion Bledsoe sparked against Tennessee, probably the worst defense in football last year, skews the data a bit. But the point is that the offense did not struggle with Bledsoe at the helm.

 

Still, if we're comparing players, Romo was more likely to complete his passes, averaged more yards on every attempt, threw TDs more often, threw INTs less often and was less likely to be sacked.