Design Notes for the 1980 NFL (SOM FB V12)
Friday, May 18, 2012 2:06:36 PM
“Redemption”
1980 NFL Season for SOM Football - Initial Publication Date: November 17, 2011 (et. seq.)
1980 NFL Season for SOM Football - Initial Publication Date: November 17, 2011 (et. seq.)
OTHER SOM PRO FOOTBALL POSTS:
Dedicated to Mike and Sara Payne – you have my prayers.
Special thanks to David Bowman and Tommy Nobis, this season is also for you.
In Memoriam, Al Davis, 1929-2011.
Oh Hell, Yes!
From the first jolt of the season – Detroit’s Billy Sims performing The Airplane in the end zone after a long TD in front of a stunned LA crowd at The Coliseum:
http://www.gifsoup.com/view/2045170/billy-sims-airplane.html
- to the last gasp - San Diego clinching the AFC West and home field advantage in a ‘win or go home’ game on the season’s final day while Eagles came back to lose by just enough to win the NFL East – 1980 provided many thrills and chills and unusual outcomes. This was the first season that illustrated the concept of parity in the NFL. After a decade of dominance by the Dolphins, Rams, Vikings, Cowboys and Steelers, we would start to see playoff teams arise from last place, and we got our first champions from the Wild Card round in 1980.
1980 is a labor of love, since I was old enough to be a Lions season ticket holder by this time, and I followed the year with high intensity. 1980 is an immense season, the largest that I have attempted or likely will attempt, ending at 28 teams and 847 sides. I started 1980 in April of 2009, before I took over the project and thus I had to shelve it for 1970, and I did not complete it until nineteen months later. During the V11 run up I continued to work on it on and off for over a year; it was restarted no less than three times while I did other projects. It took eight and half continuous months and six hundred hours to complete, in part because it needed some sixty extra players in addition to those found on the original cards. Every player needed for a 1980 replay is in here, and this includes men like Cleveland’s Calvin Hill, San Francisco’s Paul Hofer, Los Angeles’ Drew Hill, and Miami’s Don Strock, players that were critical in limited duty, but originally uncarded.
This season is one of the most interesting teamsets I have ever done, because it represents a unique moment in NFL history. 1980 was the tipping point between the modern offensive driven passing game, and the seventies ethic of playing defense and running the ball first. As such there are teams from both eras represented here – Philadelphia, Minnesota, and San Diego could win by throwing first and often, while Buffalo and Oakland rely on defense first while pounding the rock. Dallas, New England, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Atlanta can strike both on the ground and through the air, and as such they are very dangerous offensively in SOM.
1980 features eight thousand-yard rushers, seven QBs over thirty five hundred passing yards, and eight thousand-yard receivers. It is the year of the Superback – Billy Sims had 1303 yards on the ground, 621 through the air and posted 16 TDs to lead the NFL, but Curtis Dickey (13 TDs), Joe Cribbs (12 TDs), Walter Payton (1827 total yards) and Tony Dorsett (11 TDs) also excelled as receivers and runners. Dan Fouts threw for 4,715 yards and 30 TDs, while Earl Campbell pounded out 1934 yards on the ground. 1980 is a season of many such strengths and contrasts.
Sunday's Cinderellas
Quite a few journeymen QBs weathered this long season to provide some of the signature performances of their careers:
Brian Sipe is still a household name because of his performances in 1979 and 1980. Prior to 1979 he was only 22-22 as an NFL starter and he had never thrown for 3,000 yards or made a Pro Bowl. Even in 1979 he led the league in both TDs and interceptions – but in 1980 he put it all together as the NFL’s MVP, throwing for 4,132 yards and 30 TDs while leading the Browns to several late game comebacks in an 11-5 season. Sipe is not even in the top 500 players of all time – he passed for a mere 23,000 yards and made exactly one Pro Bowl, and yet, particularly in Cleveland, he is beloved. This was his year, at least until his final pass landed in the hands of Oakland safety Mike Davis in the AFC Divisional Playoffs.
For many years, there was always someone ahead of Ron Jaworski at QB before he finally earned his shot at stardom. James Harris, Roman Gabriel, and Pat Haden had kept him on the bench while for half a dozen seasons he struggled to complete 50% of his passes. The 1979 Eagle resurgence had been led by the defense and Wilbert Montgomery on the ground, but a funny thing happened the next year – Montgomery spent a lot of the season hurt, and coach Dick Vermeil turned to Jaws to shoulder the load. Jaworksi responded with his best season ever, throwing for a career-high 27 TDs and 3529 yards. Similar to Sipe, he would have only one more year after 1980 even close to this peak, and it would come very near the end of his NFL career, like a star that shines brightly again, just before it finally burns out.
Philadelphia game films of that year reveal a clever and multi-layered deep passing offense, the horizontal sight-adjusted attack favored also by Don Coryell, a scheme that looks very similar to the St. Louis Rams offense Kurt Warner runs twenty years later. The 1980 Eagles had several big play receivers and they would set up Jaworki back in the pocket a good nine yards back of the line of scrimmage and allow him to just howitzer the ball downfield for huge gains. At his best Jaworski made big throws to Harold Carmichael and Keith Krepfle and he just could not be stopped, and of course the Eagle defense did not allow for much error once he got a lead. The Eagles won ten of their first eleven until teams started to figure out how to get an extra man downfield to disrupt these routes, but by the playoffs Montgomery was back, and once again, opponents needed at least seven in the box to stop the run.
Steve Bartkowski was drafted by the Falcons in the first round of the 1975 NFL draft. And while he had had a taste of winning during the 1978 season, he still had thrown more interceptions than TDs during his career in every season he had played in as the new decade dawned. Previews of the Atlanta season predicted a 4-12 record, bemoaning that Bartkowski’s new TE, Junior Miller, was still playing behind Russ Mikeska in the preseason and that his team still was weak in the secondary, the main pinch point in 1979. They did not reckon on Bartkowski becoming an All Pro QB while triggering a league high 31 TDs, including nine to Miller, who led the team.
Bartkowski was adept at both throwing downfield and handing off to William Andrews and Lynn Cain, and he led his team to its first Division Championship and the top seed in the NFC at 12-4, before the clock ran out suddenly in the fourth quarter against the Cowboys in the NFC Divisional Playoffs. Had the Falcons held on they would have hosted the Eagles in Atlanta, and they might have made their first Super Bowl much earlier than the 'Dirty Birds'.
Danny White was quite possibly the best player produced by the World Football League, and the only quarterback who really had long term success in the NFL after that entity folded. Dallas had originally chosen him for his punting, but he carved out a rather nice career for himself as a starting signal caller between 1980 and 1985. He led the Cowboys to consecutive NFC Championship games in 1980, 1981 and 1982 and in 1983 he set a Dallas record for passing yardage that would stand for 25 years. Under his tutelage the 1980 Cowboys led the league in scoring and won 7 of their last 8 before dropping the NFC Championship Game to the Eagles on a cold day in Veteran’s Stadium.
The old white ’80 Cowboy cards were disappointing, but this team should contend. They have all the pieces; this is one of the top Cowboy offenses of all time. Tony Dorsett leads a deep and interlocking ground game, and Dallas can field good receivers at every position. On defense they sack and intercept well, and this team will battle Philadelphia for the East, something the old cards generally prevented.
By the time the curtain closed on the Rams’ shocking first round playoff loss to the Cowboys, Vince Ferragamo’s NFL career had already peaked. He had led the Rams to a 17-7 overall record in parts of two years, including an impressive fourth quarter lead in Super Bowl XIV over the eventual champion Pittsburgh Steelers the previous season. Ferragamo threw for nearly half of his career TDs in this season alone (30), and while he would post a 500 yard game against the Bears in the strike-shortened 1982 season he was never quite at the same swashbuckling best as he was walking in LA in 1980.
¡Sympatico!
Even now, some two decades after it has ended, it is hard to judge Jim Plunkett’s career. Clearly statistics alone do not tell the story. Of all the reclaimed QBs who found a reason to celebrate in 1980, no one could have anticipated what this year would mean to the former Stanford signal caller. He had endured so much losing since being chosen in the first round by the Patriots in 1971 that his choice to serve as a backup behind the more highly regarded Dan Pastorini in the preseason barely raised any eyebrows. The Raiders had traded an All-Pro Tight End, Dave Casper, to get Pastorini from the Oilers, and he was entrenched as the starter as the season began. The Raider line was porous early in the season, and Pastorini endured a pounding before finally being sidelined with his team at 2-3.
The Raiders had Plunkett’s arm and his wits left in reserve, and these turned out to be enough. He also had a fine coach in Tom Flores, a fellow soft spoken Mexican-American who had also played QB in the old AFL. Flores had been the NFL’s first minority QB, Plunkett would be the first Hispanic QB to win a Super Bowl. Plunkett led his team to a 13-2 finish, including road playoff victories over the Oilers, Browns, Chargers, and a win over the Eagles in Super Bowl XV. The defense, featuring Lester Hayes and Ted Hendricks, was strong throughout, but the real spark for the team was The Big Indian, who stood firm against enemy rushers while firing deep to receivers Bob Chandler and Cliff Branch.
The Raiders under Plunkett changed the NFL, because, offensively, they were not really a great third down team all year long. Teams at that time used to play to keep third down manageable. The Seventies goal for each offense was to convert more third downs, while defensively preventing the other team from doing the same. This style of play was a war of attrition that played into the hands of the teams with the most talent up front. The Raiders had the most talent downfield, and so what they set out to show the NFL was that it did not matter if you were three for thirteen on third down in a game if you hit enough plays for 20-30 yards on your first and second downs.
When the Raiders played the Eagles during the regular season at the Vet their offensive line was still in flux and they could not stop the Philly pass rush, which descended on the immobile Plunkett like a hive of angry wasps to the tune of eight sacks. But for Super Bowl XV Tom Flores devised some new blocking schemes and screen pass plays that kept Plunkett on his feet just long enough to throw over the Eagles’ umbrella defense. He responded with an MVP performance. Plunkett’s Raiders would go 8-1 in 1982 and he and Flores would also win another championship in 1983.
I'm more sanguine about this Raider team now, but at the time I was a Charger fan. I watched in disbelief as the perfect San Diego set-up - Fouts, Muncie, that defensive line, and those receivers all playing at home at Jack Murphy Stadium - got run out of their own ball park in the first quarter of the AFC Championship game by Oakland. I knew it was not going to be Don Coryell's day after that tipped ball to Chester. People forget Plunkett got those key runs on the final drive that sealed the win. I tend to view championships as the true test of a player’s worth under fire, and so to me, based on his playoff performances at his peak, Jim Plunkett is a Hall of Famer.
A look at a few items from a design perspective:
1) The Eagles are really two teams – one team with Wilbert in, the other with him on the bench. Montgomery has a top ten or so rushing card based on his limited play and 8 TDs, but when he is out you have to piece together a backfield out of Leroy Harris and Louie Giammona. Giammona and mate Billy Campfield are better receivers than runners, and so it is important to work them into the screen game by keeping down and distance manageable on passing downs. While Jaworski can move the ball on anybody, it will be important (as it was to Dick Vermeil) to broaden the lineup with your play calling to get the most out of the talent on hand.
(This was also Charlie Smith’s best SOM year, he keeps his sneaky and somewhat overcarded deep card in this set. It’s nice to go 12-4).
Thankfully the backstop is the Eagle defense. In the old set it was Excellent-Average to Good but upgrades to several opponents in the modern carding patterns have changed the balance. The Eagles are now Good-Excellent both ways, and the only limitations are the turnovers, where they are merely average. But you can expect to coach a grinding game out of their defense every week while scoring just enough to win.
2) No team gets a more interesting handling in this recreation than 1980 Dallas. As they were carded before it seemed that there was no way they could finish 12-4, not with their offensive and defensive limitations. They were not really a top six team. What a difference 30 years and a new quantitation makes. This team should battle Philadelphia in most simulations very evenly.
The second best pure runner in the 1980 NFC behind Walter Payton is not Billy Sims nor Williams Andrews nor Ottis Anderson. It is Tony Dorsett. Dorsett has fewer carries than some of the other dreadnoughts in this season, but the defenses he faced and the offense he is a part of help to ‘card him’ in such a way as to make him very tough to stop. Dorsett gets help from Ron Springs, who can be sneaky out of the backfield on pass plays, and Robert Newhouse, who can sledgehammer opponents inside.
The old Danny White could not throw long and had a lot of interceptions on his card, and while this version still does not have a booming deep card he is deadly short and solid flat. He can throw interceptions, but if you spot him well he has enough targets to choose from that he will be very effective. The line is strong enough to negate most weak side pressure, and he has great receivers in Tony Hill, Drew Pearson, Jay Saldi, and Billy Joe Dupree. They need to get it in close, but if they do Raphael Septien is a good finisher (2-10 inside forty yards).
The old Cowboy defense finished Average-Poor, but this team gets an upgrade to Average-Average to Good. They still have those two zero rated cornerbacks, but there is enough open space on the card and enough pressure up front to give coaches a chance at stopping the pass. They intercept well and force a few fumbles; this is a much more complete team than before.
3) The Redskins do one thing better than anyone else in 1980 – they play pass defense. Excellent pass defense. The division gives the Skins Hart, Jaws and White twice, they also faced San Diego, Minnesota and Atlanta, and they led the NFL with 33 interceptions. The run defense is terrible, but if you can get opponents into passing downs you can get Rich Milot on the field, and he gives you a second PR ten LB to bring some heat. The offense is pedestrian, but they do have some nice runners.
4) I may catch heat for it, but there are two kickers with 2-11 close-in ranges, Eddie Murray, Detroit’s NFC Pro Bowl starter (and Pro Bowl MVP), and John Smith of New England, the AFC starter. I have my reasons – the two men’s teams led the NFL in kicks made, and both were Pro Bowl starters. In this era consistency was more important than distance, and both men were very consistent for their careers in close. Fred Steinfort of the Broncos also had 26 made kicks and by modern standards would be the AFC Pro Bowl kicker (and he is a Fred); but 1980 was his only year over 57% kicks made and he was 22/26 (85%) for his career inside 30 yards. Smith may not have had the range of Steinfort but he was 48/52 inside 30 yards for his career; Murray 107/116, each a bit over 92%. These ratings thus reflect their “body of work” as much as this season.
5) Atlanta had a pair of defensive Rookies of the Year in Al Richardson and Buddy Curry, but the player who put them over the top defensively was rangy linebacker Joel Williams. Williams went from the taxi squad in 1979 to an All-Pro with 16 sacks in 1980. His Falcon record for sacks would last almost thirty years. This kind of emergence is astonishing; it is very rare to find a Pro Bowl level player languishing on the bench as a twice released free agent.
It came down to a subtle change in scheme – Falcon coach Leeman Bennett saw his potential in the 1980 preseason. Bennett installed a 3-4 scheme that used pressure from its outside linebacking in place of a hard rush from a second defensive end. This allowed Atlanta to play its zone packages while still rushing four men. It worked very well, from the moment Williams went into the lineup until he hurt his knee early in the 1981 season the Falcons went 15-4 with him as a starter.
6) This Charger team may represent the high point of the Air Coryell teams, with the great defensive line up front and Dan Fouts firing to no less than three thousand yard receivers in Charlie Joiner, Kellen Winslow, and John Jefferson. They also have midseason acquisition Chuck Muncie to hand off to. San Diego really does not get stopped so much as they sometimes stop themselves; the offense is a high wire act of big plays and occasional turnovers.
God, I loved this team. They really had talent everywhere, they had All Pros on the line, at LB and DB, on the offensive front, at QB, RB and receiver, and even the kicker. They should have won it this year, and that still stings, more than thirty years later. (This wound was reopened by Schottenheimer's '06 team.)
7) The Rams and Cowboys both have great ensemble running attacks, my favorite type of teams to card. The Cowboys can always hand off to Dorsett, while LA has a solid group of plodders (Cullen Bryant and Mike Guman) and burners (Elvis Peacock and Jewerl Thomas) who can sting enemy defenses under the cover provided by Ferragamo’s strong arm. Thomas has the season’s best freaky card, with only 65 carries but at 6.6 yards per crack. They also pick up Drew Hill as a deep threat.
8) All they needed was heart – this is a very talented New England team, particularly offensively, where two completely different quarterbacks drive the team. Matt Cavanaugh is a typical drop back QB, but this was Steve Grogan’s best year. He can throw it deep with the best of them, but he also throws 7.2 percent interceptions. They have great runners and receivers, and when they bring Mack the Sack (Tony McGee) off the bench they can get to enemy passers. But the defense is just too inconsistent, and the team will struggle to catch Buffalo, just as in the real 1980 season.
Fred Bobberts
Clearwater, Florida
November 17, 2011
REDUX:
The Central Challenge
The 1980 AFC has three great pennant races, with Buffalo and New England in the East, the Chargers and Raiders in the West, and a three team race in the Central. And of them, the 1980 Central is the best race and the toughest to win, because the Browns, Oilers and Steelers are all teams with great strengths and deep weaknesses. The Bengals have the running game and defense to occasionally beat any of the three, too.
Though the pass defense is poor, Cincinnati has one of the season's best run defenses. FB Pete Johnson and RB Charles Alexander each contribute more than 700 yards on the ground while WR Issac Curtis and TE Dan Ross can each hurt you on pass plays. This is not one of QB Ken Anderson's better down field years but he is near-maxxed flat, which gives Cincinnati the ability to move the ball well on half of their passing attempts using V3 rules. And they can be tough in replays. What will relegate them to last place in attempt-limited replays, especially with human replayers, is the need to sub in The Overthrowin' Samoan, Jack Thompson, for 230 plays. They also have the worst place kicker in the set, Ian Sunter, a fifties-type column, something you might have gotten away with as a winning team ten years ago. Not now.
The Steelers slipped a bit this year. Bradshaw was great, but was limited by injuries. The same thing could be said of most of the team's great players- Franco Harris, Rocky Bleier, Joe Greene, and Lynn Swann. John Stallworth had only 9 catches and is not carded, and so new names - Greg Hawthorne, Theo Bell, Gary Dunn, and Jim Smith dot the lineup. The team can still play run defense and run it a bit, and Bradshaw is one of the better deep throwers, but the team lacks the consistency of the 1978-1979 group and it shows in replays. They lack the depth to be more than a 9-7 team, although a talented Steeler coach can still steal an extra win here and there with his starters.
In the preseason, Houston gave up Dan Pastorini, who in my mind was underrated as a passer, for Ken Stabler, who had a few great years but by 1980 was overrated. At this point in their careers Pastorini had lost a bit of his accuracy while Stabler had lost his arm strength, in that sense, the trade was even. But the Oilers also received Dave Casper, who made the Pro Bowl that year. Houston paired him with Mike Barber and ran a very conservative 2 TE offense with Earl Campbell in the backfield. That combination produced Campbell's best year - 373 carries, 1934 yards and four two hundred yard games. His year might have been better but he actually missed a game.
The Houston defense is Good-Good and can stop anyone, so the trick with this team is to use those TEs and Stabler to move the ball enough to set up Campbell for the homeruns. Once you get it in close you start to lose the benefit from the TEs and the offense can have a hard time scoring TDs. Stabler will kill you with his picks on occasion, but the team is versatile and resilient.
I'm a Detroiter, and during this period we did not get many Lions sell outs, so we were lucky to get more than 8 Detroit games a year on TV back in the days before Sunday Ticket. CBS had the NFC back then, and the AFC was on NBC, usually with Don Criqui and Dick Enberg ("Oh, My!") as the announcers. On blackout days we could switch channels and see a few Miami games on NBC, and the Steelers, of course. The team we got the most was the Browns. I loved watching the Browns. See, like Detroit, Cleveland has a tortured history. Cleveland has not won a major sports championship since 1964.
The Browns were brilliant in the Fifties and they had Jim Brown in the Sixties, but their history since then has been almost bleaker than Detroit's - just a handful of winning seasons, mostly in two eras. They were a good team in the Bill Nelson era of the early Seventies, and they were a very good team for an extended period during the Sipe and Kosar periods from 1979-1990 or so. The 1980 season may not have been their best squad in that period, but it was their most entertaining. They were a comeback team, and they were fun to watch.
The 1980 Browns lived and died on the arm of MVP passer Brian Sipe, who has a great card, especially flat and short. He could stand and fire behind a line with three sixes, Tom DeLeone, Doug Dieken, and All- NFL guard Joe Delamielleure. Ozzie Newsome was a solid TE and Dave Logan and Reggie Rucker were workmanlike wideouts. But what made the Cleveland passing game special was the runners.
What Sipe used to do that just killed defenses was hold that ball to the last second and then, as the rush closed in on him, he would just sort of...flick it...to a back waiting just over the line or over in the slot. He used his backs in the passing game as well as anyone, and in this set his runners are what make the team a great passing team. Here's the list of his main receiving runners and their splits:
Mike Pruitt, FB, 63 catches, 471 yards, 0 TDs;
Greg Pruitt, HB, 50 catches, 444 yards, 5 TDs;
Calvin Hill, HB, 27 catches, 383 yards, 6 TDs;
Charles White, HB, 17 catches, 153 yards, 1 TD.
Not bad- that's 94 catches and just under a thousand yards and 12 TDs for the halfbacks alone. This would be normal in our modern pass-happy NFL, but only Minnesota with Rickey Young ran a similar offense in 1980. Walsh was just fine-tuning his variant, the one most teams play with now, in San Francisco back then.
The Cleveland defense makes games interesting, Good-Excellent versus the run, but Very Poor versus the pass. They give up completions on the missed interceptions splits both short and long, something that should keep Cleveland coaches wide awake during games.
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