"The Irresistable Force Meets the Immovable Object"
1959 NFL Season for SOM Football - Original Publication Date: November 13, 2009 (et.seq.)
This is now my third published season for SOM, which puts me behind the late Ron Brammer (five), and way behind Mike Kane's nine season sets. That number, NINE, is out there like Aaron's record, and I feel like Alex Rodriguez must feel - yes, there is enough time and I have the drive and talent to surpass it, but the amount of effort will be tremendous. It would be nicer (and easier) to get my partner back, instead. I miss you, Mike.
It may be my third set, but chronologically there is a USFL set (that does not count) in there, as well. One of the things about these sets is you learn more with each passing cycle, and sometimes you get new tools to make things more specific. With 1958 we also got QB schedules, and while I would love to have a button that says "rotate" for certain situations where QBs share time in games (classic cases would be 1970 New Orleans, where Edd Hargett and Billy Kilmer swapped by the drive, or 1957 Detroit, where Layne and Rote rotated by the quarter) this feature does allow me to map QBs to the defenses they face. I figured this out with V8 and 1958, but I have perfected it with this set. If I ever revisited the 1983 USFL, I would hmave to redo it quite a bit.
Gamers might notice that the starter files may not match up perfectly with the "starters" noted in Pro Football Reference Dot Com, my personal Waterloo from the source discussion elsewhere in this blog. The reason why is - if QB A starts and gets three attempts and then is yanked for his replacement, QB B who throws thirty passes, for the sake of history QB A is the starter but for the sake of the simulation, it has to be QB B. The game apportions attempts by the starter file if it is used, and so I have to find that balance of history and simulation impact that will allow the season to test and to work within its constraints.
This may vex the amateur historian but from a gamer's standpoint Raven Maniac has tuned the '59 CMs to these outputs like a rapier, and the result is a much better match for interceptions and passing than has been demonstrated in my earlier efforts. I've also been able to match offensive and defensive elements to team record better, so it will be harder for a lesser team to overachieve, although give Kevin '59 Philadelphia, or Linus the '59 Redskins or LA in a league and I may have to amend that statement.
1959 from a data structure standpoint gives you three very complicated challenges- the first being the '59 Cardinals' fumbles. Chicago lost 36 fumbles in its season, an unbelievable number, three per game, and this sweeps through the schedule of every team they face, reducing their defensive fumbles, and changes every other team in the set as these results normalize and stabilize. From a design standpoint, this effect is interesting to see, as it creates extremes, and extremes create great cards.
The second great challenge is the season's high interception framework, nearly six percent, and how this plays out among teams. Teams like LA and GB came very close to having no defensive interceptions on their cards at all (I can already see the V10 error post question on that). Baltimore picked off forty, which changes their conference and non conference opponents. Outcomes and schedules intertwine, and so it is not uncommon for a QB on a team with a higher interception percentage to have lower splits than his teammate, who may have faced a decidedly weaker schedule. This has happened in older seasons before, but the effect is very pronounced in 1959.
The third is an unusual team balance issue - two of the best running teams are LA and Washington, but these are also terrible teams. Big things were expected of the Redskins when they put that backfield together. 1959 preview issues thought that with Johnny Olszewski of the Cardinals joining Eddie Sutton, Dick James and Don Bosseler, they could take the East. But losing Gene Brito knocked the incisors out of an already suspect front four, and the Redskins fielded one of the worst run defenses in history. LA adds Ollie Matson, who is superb, but it falls off in all of the consistency measures. They do a lot of things poorly, a great way to win only two of twelve games.
One of the quirks of both the NFL and SOM football is that a winning team can be a much better running team than a losing team and yet this will not necessarily show up in the statistics (fans of, say, the Seventies Vikings, you should take notes.) Taking an SOM example first, let's say you have a winning team that runs the ball to hold a lead, this happens a lot defense right, we'll say 55% where the backs average 3.1 yards per carry. Defense wrong they average 5.0 and these would occur 45% of the time:
Average per carry total = 3.1 * 0.55 plus 5.0 * 0.45 = 3.955 per carry.
Now we take a losing team that averages 2.9 and 4.9 on their cards, but has a 40% right, 60% split wrong, because they are always trailing and teams play the pass to hold their leads against them:
Average per carry total = 2.9 * 0.40 plus 4.9 * 0.6 = 4.10 yards per carry.
The Hundred Yard War took Nineties NFL data and showed the same thing- since winning teams (meaning teams in game situations where they were ahead or tied) ran for a lower average than losing teams (where the game situation was reversed) that winning team could post better split results BOTH WAYS and yet generate worse statistics in composite.
This is one of those occasions where SOM art mirrors real life. It poses a designer's challenge when you have a strong losing squad (the Redskins were overall a bad team and averaged 15 ppg in an offensive year) but they rolled up the second most yards in their conference at a 4.7 per carry crack. You need to model that running game so it has impact, but you cannot change the team balance by doing so.
These three challenges were very gratifying to tackle. They taught me lessons that might be useful if, oh, I don't know, I ever shelved my bow tie and Kingston Trio records, and decided to look at football's President Nixon era, rather than its Vice President Nixon era.
Other 1959 insights-
1) The Giants have three QBs and one of them is George Shaw, who once again gets a good card as a back up, as he did for the '58 Colts. George Shaw was one of the enigmatic “What-If?” QBs of the late 1950s. While the Oregon alum was highly regarded as a thrower, but he was never healthy enough to win a starting position and he had the bad luck to back up Johnny Unitas and Charlie Conerly. He requested the trade to NY hoping to succeed Conerly but was outplayed by him, and after he had a poor 1960 season the Giants pulled the plug on the experiment and sought out Y.A. Tittle.
2) The Browns have no less than six Pro Bowlers on offense – both starting runners, Jim Brown and Bobby Mitchell, tackle Mike McCormack and guard Jim Ray Smith up front, and wideouts Billy Howton and Ray Renfro.
But Milt Plum is not one of them....
3) One of the smallest men in the NFL, Philadelphia's Tommy McDonald was never tougher than in October 1959, when he played the month with a broken jaw. He scored four times against the New York Giants (once on an 81-yard punt return) and three weeks later made two more touchdowns and set up another with a 71-yard reception, as the Eagles, trailing the Chicago Cardinals 24-0, came back to win 28-24.
4) It is always fun to unearth a distant obscure gem - the enduring public vision of 1959 super rookie WR Buddy Dial comes from NFL Films' blooper reels, where after he caught a touchdown pass in a 1962 game, he was startled in the end zone when the Steelers’ cheerleaders fired a cannon seemingly right into his face.
A theatrical man by nature, Dial leaped as if he were truly shot. But it was his opponents who were often wounded. Dial up until recently was in the Steelers’ top ten receiving, shared their record for most receiving TDs in a season, and was sixth in yardage in spite of only playing five years there. Dial retired after playing with Dallas in 1966, in second place in NFL history in yards per catch, a 20.8 average.
5) Ten men in NFL history have twenty rushing with twenty receiving TDs, and five of them were active in 1959. Only Lenny Moore in this collection reached this milestone faster than John David Crow. In his day he was as feared as the only active such player, Brian Westbrook, would be now.
6) Did you appreciate the all around skill of Neon Deion Sanders? Well, meet Abe Woodson, who moved from safety to cornerback and became an All Pro in the very improved 1959 49ers secondary along with one of the most dangerous return men of all time. Woodson is the third best kick returner in NFL history. He led the league in kick returns three times and bolted for 105 yards versus the Rams in November, one yard short of the record at the time. He was also a more than respectable punt returner.
7) The Irrestistable Force in this simulation has to be the 1959 Colts under Johnny Unitas. Unitas fired a record 32 TD passes in 12 games, a number that would not be surpassed in the NFL until the schedule itself expanded. If the '59 Colts lack that bolt of energy that Lenny Moore gave the team from the backfield the previous year, they lack little else, the team is very reminiscent of the professional ensemble that could dominate 1957's defensive schedule at times, except it is better in nearly every way.
The Immovable Object is the Giant defense, one of the best ever, and a part of a long line of great Giant defenses during this era. In the 1959 Championship Game the Giants kept the Colts in check to hoard a 9-7 lead at the end of the third quarter. But the Colts held the Giants on a fourth and short early in the fourth quarter at the Baltimore 28, and the game's momentum shifted abruptly. The Colts scored four consecutive times to dislodge the Giants and win going away.
For this game, the great offense would win, and in the next year, Philadelphia would also write a similar script. But in Green Bay, Vince Lombardi was beginning a different storyline around power running and tough defense, and its impact would be felt for nearly two decades.
Fred
