“The Future Is Now”
1971 Season for SOM FB (V13)
Original Publication Date – 6/10/2012 et. seq.
For Dan Patterson, Byron Henderson, and Robert Henderson (en memento)
OTHER SOM PRO FOOTBALL POSTS:
Design Notes for the 1971 NFL for SOM FB
1971 is a defensive season and a running season. The runners are at least at the level of 1980, a big step up from 1970. But the passers completed fewer passes for fewer yards and threw more interceptions than in 1970. The season is a new type of quantitation, but one we are likely to revisit again in the next few years. Okay, so on the surface it’s a boring season, think 1992-ish. This is the face of Seventies football.
It’s a boring season, yes, but not a set of boring cards. The reason is the model. You’d think because the Super Bowl teams could run (Miami was #1 and Dallas #3 in the NFL in rushing yards) that all winning teams would be running teams. They aren’t. Baltimore is, LA is- but San Francisco, Washington, Kansas City, and Minnesota are really passing teams. The set has a lot of losing but solid running teams (Green Bay, Cincinnati, Denver, and the Jets) mated to poor passing teams, and a few losing but decent passing teams matched with bad runners (Houston, San Diego, St Louis). There are ten or so very good running teams and then a bunch of weaker running teams, worse than average even on some teams that are winners. Because of this, many teams had to be crafted carefully to account for these imbalances. In SOM speak, ‘we have some extreme cards in this set.’
It is a mid-size season, comparatively speaking, at 788 sides, just under 7 months, and 700 hours. 26 team seasons are just not bad to work on compared to 1980 or 1976, the 28 team seasons. The teams took a little individual attention to get right, but really, this one went smoothly. This was my seventh such effort, and probably the easiest to work on.
A big help there was Tommy Nobis owning the roster planning. I finally figured out that blindly applying the “last team” guideline to every roster was not going to work in every case. He’s a stock league commissioner, and he understands roster limits and the rules that depend on them for game flow a lot better than I do. He really put me on the right path early.
Our annual interactions would normally be limited to his pointing out where I had failed in a season’s personnel design during its final testing, which is the worst time for me to look at these issues. At that point in the process I’m trying to punch the potato through the pipe. I get, well, difficult. I admit I had frustrated Nobis a few times over the years. I’d learned from 1970 that leagues work very well statistically when the rosters are planned in advance - the fix was to engage him early, and so we (well, he) made a few changes:
-Eric Crabtree was originally carded as a New England WR because he did finish his season there, but Cincinnati was shorted a WR in the original set and the Patriots were not. Tom used Alfred Sykes to cover for Crabtree in New England and “un-traded” him back to the Bengals for his final NFL season.
-Tom put Dickie Post with Denver, where he ended up, placed Tony Baker back with New Orleans, changes that mended both rosters. But beyond that it was the little things he remembered- Ray Poage was actually a TE/WR for Atlanta, John Isenbarger’s contribution with the 49ers, Mike Carter as a late addition from the taxi squad with the Packers.
-Tom redid a lot of runner positions and squared a way a lot of inconsistencies, little details to be sure, but the kind of items that really give a season its color around the edges. I owe him a deep debt of thanks.
Once again, as in 1970, the final roster limits on the original cards also affected the ratings cards, and in nearly every case a team needed an extra lineman and an extra defensive back. For instance St Louis had (on the field) both Ron Yankowski and Krueger starting at left end, and (in SOM) both are zeros. While Yankowski probably played the most at LE, I put Krueger in as the nominal starter because he did have the most sacks. In reality Krueger played the most time, but he subbed in at both tackle and end in a defensive line that moved guys around a bit. This is normal.
Sometimes I think the only real research value I create in modern seasons is with the new kicking cards, where I have the knack for finding mistakes even in the official data every year. I redo every Special Teams card because I trust nothing I see from prior data. Green Bay’s 1971 online (and original card) kicking data for some reason excludes Lou Michaels, but he was 8 for 14 and actually made several long kicks before being sidelined. Their new kicking card is thus much better than the old white card version. The Eagles, however do not appreciate the addition of Happy Feller’s six-for-twenty season to what would have been a great individual card for Tom Dempsey, the only man to make three fifty yard kicks in 1971. Feller did add a fourth long boot.
The original Cowboys did not have a TD on their kickoff return card because under the carding rules of the time Ike Thomas (and his 7 returns, 2 for TDs) didn’t have enough attempts to qualify as the #2 back. But I group all of the tertiary return men, so Thomas is in there and so are the TDs. He brightens their kickoff return card with touchdowns in the 2 and 4 spots.
The Vikings, courtesy of their freaky pass defense yardages and so-so defensive points, get their 'Defender x or +15' results moved to the five spots instead of the seven spots. This is by design, and before anybody gets up in arms about it, this feature was on the original white cards, too. This was the only team ever done this way by SOM in the 'White Card' era.
The 2,3,6 kickoff coverage for the Redskins looks like it should be a punt return defense. But this is not a mistake – they posted 1971’s best numbers by far against the season’s toughest return slate. (I do love it when this happens, good for a fight, too, every year). In a season of good kick returning Washington led the next best team, Miami, by two and a half yards in spite of facing Dallas (27.5), Philadelphia (25.6) and St Louis (24.7) twice each. People forget that George Allen was not just a coach, he was a heckuva manager, too, and that he invented the NFL special teams coach position while with the Rams in 1969. The man holding the stopwatch ? - Dick Vermeil. I’ll have more on Allen later.
The Dolphins have the league’s best runners, with Csonka impossible to stop without keying and Mercury Morris explosive around end. The real key is Kiick, who has a card that can do it all. This is probably his best season. Kiick can play both running positions, and he is the man on the spot for dump passes. The real question will always be, just as it was for Shula, “who should be playing when?”
Dallas is loaded with All Pros or former All Pros, I’m not sure an NFL roster has ever had more proven talent than the 1971 Cowboys. They have stars everywhere – Staubach, Niland, Wright, Manders, Neely, Hayes, Alworth, Thomas, Hill and Ditka on offense; Lilly, Pugh, Andrie, Howley, Jordan, Adderly, Renfro and Green on defense. They led the league in offense and passing yards with Staubach only playing 10 games. They force tremendous turnovers both versus the pass and the run. It’s a loaded team, a Brammer team. Reserve QB Morton is still solid, but he’s not Staubach, and the team has a poor kicker and middling pass protection, so they should drop a couple of games over a full season. Put Staubach and his running and arm in there, and the team immediately brightens, as it should. Roger the Dodger did not lose a start in 1971.
The Lions have half of what it takes to be a great team – the offense. Greg Landry made the Pro Bowl with his passing and running, the last Lion QB to do so. He had help from TE Charlie Sanders and RB Altie Taylor. Missing Alex Karras up front, the team did not do as well on defense. The secret here is to work Landry’s running in as much as you can.
Buffalo – well, unfortunately still no great O.J. card coming from me, not yet. I wonder what good things might have happened for Dennis Shaw, the 1970 AFC Rookie of the Year had coach John Rauch not used The Juice as a decoy and special teams player; Simpson got ‘Reggie Bush-ed’. Without a consistent running threat Shaw was sacked 112 times in 3 years. At 6’3” and 215 he was the size NFL teams coveted and he could throw at the NFL level. He clipped Dallas for 4 passing TDs in the first game of the 1971 season. Scouts of the time counted him as the equal to Terry Bradshaw:
http://www.mmbolding.com/BSR/pq72Shaw.htm
He had the same problem as Bradshaw at the time and Tebow of our time, an inability to read defenses or anticipate receivers, not good traits when you are also running for your life. His 1971 line was hideous; he threw 26 interceptions. He lost a big target once the Bills traded Marlin Briscoe in 1972, and the weight of all the losing (he was 8-27-2 as a starter) caught up to him once the Bills drafted Joe Ferguson in 1973. But I wonder if he might have done better under a better system.
Fran Tarkenton threw for nearly 2600 yards for a losing New York Giants team, the only team I have ever carded with seven runners. Tarkenton and backfield mate Randy Johnson actually topped 3,000 yards passing, but the runners were ineffective. Ron Johnson, the Giant’s horse from 1970, has a good side but in this season he only had 32 carries. None of the other backfield candidates could match Johnson, and without his punishing ball control the team collapsed. The defense was terrible. 1971 was the end of Tarkenton’s stay in New York; after fighting during the season with Giant coach Alex Webster, he went back to Minnesota to try for a Super Bowl title there in 1972.
Another great thrower who carries his 1971 team (and has better future luck) was Dan Pastorini. Pastorini started 5-25 with the Oilers, but by the mid Seventies he had some runners to help him. The 1971 Oilers are flat out the weakest running team I have ever carded – 1,106 yards and 3.1 per carry in a season where a typical team would get over 1,800 yards. The team gets about 150 ineffective throws from rookie Lynn Dickey and the aging Charley Johnson. Because of this, Pastorini, who has to be nearly personally responsible for the team’s four wins and 251 points, gets a pretty nice card for his stats.
Kansas City faced the worst running defenses in the AFC in 1971, and this affects their running game quite a bit. However, Len Dawson does get a great card and the defense is stellar, other than forcing next to no fumbles. This team is famous for opposing the Dolphins in a match of competing dynasties in the longest NFL game of all time. Unfortunately Kansas City’s star was burning less brightly, just as the Dolphins were rising. The last game played at Municipal Stadium, this was also the last hurrah for players like Dawson, Bobby Bell, Emmitt Thomas, Willie Lanier, Jim Marsalis, and Jim Tyrer as well as coach Hank Stram.
While Stram would hang on for three more years, the team was declining into an era where they would become irrelevant; the Chiefs made the playoffs only once in the next eighteen years and did not win the West again for twenty two. Jan Stenerud’s miss from 31 yards at the end of regulation (and the later block in the first OT period) stand out in bas-relief from the rest of his Hall of Fame career, while we would see more from the winning Dolphins in the next few years. The Chiefs would wait until the Marty Schottenheimer era to prove a consistent winner.
Speaking of Martyball - who is the best coach not to win a Super Bowl? Well, we have to exclude men like George Halas or Paul Brown, because they won championships in the pre-Bowl era. Brown won six championships, so he cannot really be in the discussion. The logical modern era coach – over Jeff Fisher (147-126), or Andy Reid (126-81), or Marv Levy (143-112), or Bud Grant (168-108-5) – would be Schottenheimer (200-126-1), the only man from the post 1966 era to have 200 wins but no Super Bowls.
Schottenheimer’s specialty was taking talented teams and molding them into winners, but my choice would be more of a turnaround specialist – George Allen. Allen never had a losing season and was 116-47-5, third best of all time. He did this while taking over teams that were perennial losers. The Rams had not been winners in the seven years before he took them over; the Redskins troubles went all the way back to 1946; from 1955 to1968 the team did not even have a winning season.
Professional football teams are usually not much different from each other physically. The difference between winning and losing is attitude. Football coaches are enshrined in American popular culture because they redefine this approach every day. Fans laugh about Coach Speak, particularly in interviews, but we also quote it. Football coaches are the true philosophers of America, and George Allen was a man of his time. His motto was ‘The Future is Now’, and he worked very hard to make this happen.
Tactically, Allen belongs in both the Sid Gillman and George Halas coaching trees, having been an assistant with Gillman in LA and with Halas in Chicago. His main duty in Chicago was to devise a defense that could stop Gillman’s offensive system, and he became their defensive specialist, winning a championship in 1963. Allen did not invent the zone defense or the nickel, but he did perfect these defensive schemes, and they became the staples of Seventies pro football.
Allen’s success was driven by three things. He was a master motivator. He spent sixteen hour days watching over his guys and never took time off. His players loved him even though he was very hard on them. When the Rams fired him the first time in 1968 (‘Allen was given unlimited authority and he exceeded it”, quipped Rams owner Dan Reeves) his team rebelled and walked out, and forced management to give him a new 2 year deal. Allen was also paranoid, often charging that people were spying on his practices or watching the team. But his paranoia also drove the kind of detail oriented game planning that his players appreciated. He put them in positions where they could compete. If he did not have someone for a spot he would spend or trade to get someone experienced who could compete immediately.
Drafting for the future is at best an illusory concept to players hoping to hold a job in the present. They would rather offer their best efforts to someone committed, as they had to be, to success right away, and Allen could do that. He was a great judge of football talent. In Allen’s view, ‘Every man was born with the ability to do something well’, and he sought those men to fill these roles. Allen pulled off no less than 19 trades before the 1971 opener, getting players like Billy Kilmer, Roy Jefferson, Ron McDole, Richie Petitbon, and--from his Rams--veterans Jack Pardee, Myron Pottios, and Diron Talbert. His favorite trade was made in 1973, when he sent five players to the Oilers for safety Ken Houston, who would make seven more Pro Bowls with the Redskins.
To his detractors sending draft choices out to field an older but experienced team was mortgaging the franchise, but to Allen, winning now was the measure of any good coach. Allen’s 1971 team – his favorite by most accounts – responded with a 9-4-1 record and a Wild Card berth in the playoffs. Their finest hour in his mind was their victory over the Rams on December 13th that ended LA’s chances for the post season. If he coached now, George Allen would not be allowed the latitude to do what he did in 1971. But that season, and the season that came after it in Washington, showed his true talents as a coach and motivator. Allen made men feel that what they really wanted was right in front of them for the taking, and they took it.
Enjoy the Season.
Fred Bobberts
Clearwater, Florida
6/10/2012
(I just found this and I am looking for others - Fred B, December 2021)
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