Mark from Green Bay
Have you ever checked out Approximate Value (AV) on the Pro Football Reference website? And if so, what are your thoughts?
I use the PFR website regularly for basic information, including year-by-year team records; the annual draft lists; and the usual – years played, games played, starts, etc., for individual players.
But no, I had never looked at the AV scores until you asked the question.
When it comes to evaluating players, baseball is a numbers game; football, much less so. From what I can determine, Pro Bowl selections, Associated Press All-Pro honors, NFL All-Decade teams and obviously statistics all factor into those AV scores.
But there are so many variables involved with each of those categories that the numbers don't translate over time.
More than one old-time scout told me that it took at least eight hours of film study to get a good read on a single player. I doubt those who compiled the AV scores spent eight hours – or any time at all – studying film; or asking scouts, the people inside the game who made a career of evaluating players, for their thoughts.
Hall of Fame general manager Jim Finks was famous for his line: "Coaches coach, scouts scout, players play." And having spent nearly 40 years writing about the NFL in different capacities as a sportswriter, I believe truer words were never spoken.
Taking Finks' axiom one step further, I'd add, "Statisticians should stick to keeping stats."
Don't get me wrong. I have no doubt that today's data analysts working for NFL teams play an important role in helping coaches prepare game plans. But they are computing tendencies and percentages – not focused on basic stats and counting such things as Pro Bowl appearances – to determine how and where to attack an opponent.
Let's start by examining some of the criteria Pro Football Reference spelled out to explain how it arrived at its Approximate Value grades. In fairness, I should point out that PFR notes at its website, "AV is not meant to be a be-all end-all metric."
Let's start with Paul Hornung.
What I find most revealing with stat-focused scorekeepers is how they judge Hornung. Vince Lombardi built his offense around him, and Hornung was vital to the Packers winning three of their record five NFL championships in a decade.
As the left halfback, Hornung was the ball-carrier on Lombardi's signature power sweep. The play call was "Red Right 49" and Lombardi's offense, including pass plays, was built off that one play.
Thanks to Bart Starr's play-calling, the execution of the offensive linemen and tight end, and the threat Hornung posed as a passer on Lombardi's twin play, the halfback option, "Red Right 49" was as Lombardi described it an automatic "yard gainer" unless defenses overplayed it and left themselves vulnerable elsewhere.
The Packers also ran it effectively with Tom Moore and Elijah Pitts but not to the degree they did with Hornung.
"We line up our quarterback behind center in the T-formation manner, yet we are less a T than a single-wing team," Lombardi once explained. What made that so to a degree was the threat Hornung posed on the halfback option.
"I don't know if everybody realized it, but every time Paul ran the sweep it was the option," Lombardi said before the 1963 season when Hornung was suspended. Shortly thereafter, Lombardi added, "We only threw the option pass about 15 times last year, but we called it 70 times, and it's the most important play in our offense."
"Red Right 49" and "49 Sweep Pass" set up fullback Jim Taylor's weakside runs, where Lombardi bluntly stated that Taylor benefited from Hornung's blocking more than Hornung ever benefited from Taylor's. The success of the Packers' passing game, according to Lombardi, also was based "on the success of our running game" and those two "49" plays.
"It wasn't a question of how many sweep plays we would run in a typical game, it was rather what was the opposition going to do to try and stop the Packers sweep and how fast we could adjust to take advantage of what they were doing, so we could get back to running 'our sweep,'" Ken Bowman, Lombardi's center during the 1965-67 threepeat, wrote in a four-page letter to me following a two-hour interview mostly about the power sweep.
Bowman's letter also included diagrams and explanations of six of the other plays that Starr could audible to if the defense over-shifted to stop "Red Right 49."
Lombardi called Hornung "the greatest player I've ever coached," contrary to what Forrest Gregg's wife told people in Ohio when Gregg was named coach of the Cleveland Browns. She claimed Lombardi wrote that about her husband in "Run to Daylight," despite Lombardi writing no such thing.
Three of Lombardi's assistant coaches also told former Packers general manager Ron Wolf that Hornung was the best of the 1960s Packers, when they worked for him as scouts.
"We were in draft meetings and as a frame of reference I asked Ray Wietecha (Lombardi's offensive line coach), Dave Hanner (defensive line coach) and Red Cochran (backfield coach) since they had firsthand knowledge of those great Packer teams who was the best player and to a man they said Paul Hornung," Wolf told me again recently. "I also asked all of those great players on those championship teams whom would you draft first and the answer was Paul Hornung."
Hornung's AV score at the Pro Football Reference website is 49. His PFR Hall of Fame monitor score is 68.63, well beneath its 105.61 average for Hall of Fame running backs.
It would be interesting to know why the stat-keepers at PFR think they know more than Lombardi, his assistant coaches and the majority of players from those teams.
True, Hornung's stats don't translate to today's game.
But how many backs in the history of the NFL over their careers have broken a 72-yard run while also scoring 17 TDs of three yards or less within a five-year stretch because of their power and nose for the goal line; throw a 41-yard touchdown pass off a halfback option; catch touchdown passes of 51 and 65 yards in what was arguably the biggest regular-season victory of the Lombardi era against the Baltimore Colts in 1965; and kick a 52-yard field goal in a game where he rushed for 77 yards on 15 carries?
Based on what I could determine, the PFR scorekeepers didn't include Hornung's passing stats in his AV score. The halfback option was a difficult throw to make and not necessarily a high-percentage play, but Hornung averaged 16 yards per completion and a touchdown every five completions.
Also, PFR states that it gave bonus points to Terrell Davis and Gale Sayers to compensate for their brief careers. Davis, for example, played seven years and two were limited to five games or less.
What about Hornung? He played nine seasons but over his last four his playing time was limited due to lingering issues with a neck injury suffered in 1960 and a knee injury sustained in 1962.
Here again, the AV bonus points for a number of players who dealt with or were limited by serious injuries in the 1960s and '70s seem to have been inconsistently applied by PFR.
That's why it's necessary to interview not just scouts but also trainers and team doctors to gather inside information, especially from years ago when careers were ended or limited because diagnostic equipment and surgical procedures weren't what they are today. PFR's AV scores were given to players since 1960 but my sense is the scorekeepers were unaware of players who still played with injuries such as ACL tears, stress fractures in the feet and others that nobody would play with today.
Three other Lombardi Packers who would deserve AV bonus points because their careers were derailed by injury were linebacker Dan Currie, tight end Ron Kramer and Moore. I'm not sure if PFR gave Currie points or not, but a lack of consistency would undermine the credibility of its scores.
Five years into the careers of 1958 draft picks Currie at No. 1 and followed by future Pro Football Hall of Famers Taylor, Ray Nitschke and Jerry Kramer, Currie was considered the best of the bunch.
After their rookie years and before his first season, Lombardi exhaustively studied film of every game during the Packers' 1-10-1 1958 season. When he finished, he declared Currie was one of three untouchables among the players he inherited, along with seasoned veterans Bobby Dillon and Jim Ringo.
Following the 1960 season, Currie and Taylor became the first of those picks to play in the Pro Bowl.
Although PFR credits only Associated Press All-Pro selections in its formula, NFL players talked openly back then about how it was the Newspaper Enterprise Association team that they most wanted to make. Currie was one of two outside backers named to NEA's all-NFL team in 1961 and '62.
The reason the NEA team was considered the most credible inside the NFL was because every player in the league had a vote. The AP team was chosen by sportswriters who for the most part witnessed no other games than those involving their local team.
Keep in mind that prior to ABC airing Monday Night Football in 1970, no more than a handful of games were televised nationally over the course of an entire season, especially in the early '60s.
Take 1961 for example.
The NFL played a 14-game schedule for the first time. Out of the 98 games played, only four – a Saturday night game the second week of the season, the Green Bay-Detroit game on Thanksgiving and two Saturday afternoon games played the last two weeks – were televised in a local time slot other than 1:05, 1:06, 1:35, 1:36 or 2:05. Other than West Coast games because of a two- or three-hour time difference, all others were basically played at the same time.
When the Packers won their first NFL title under Lombardi, Currie was the player on the cover of the Dec. 18, 1961, Sports Illustrated, and the subtitle of then peerless NFL writer Tex Maule's story read: "Their great corner linebackers, Dan Currie and Bill Forester, have made the Packers a hard team to beat. The two practice one of the least-known but most important arts of football."
Currie and Forester were still widely considered to be the strength of the defense, when the Packers repeated as champions in 1962. However, in the ninth game, Currie was blindsided by a cheap-shot and suffered a serious knee injury. That by the way was Nitschke's fifth season and his first as the Packers' year-long starter at middle linebacker.
As for Currie, his postseason operation didn't result in a good repair, and he was never the same player. He was only 29, when Lombardi, knowing he was damaged goods, fleeced the Los Angeles Rams out of receiver Carroll Dale in a straight-player trade.
Pro Bowl selections also factor into the AV formula.
Yet again, so many things about the selection process have changed since the first game was played between two all-star teams from the NFL's two conferences following the 1950 season, that there's really no way of awarding individual scores on a fair and consistent basis.
At the beginning, the squads were selected based on the recommendations of the league's head coaches and the five sports editors of the Los Angeles metropolitan newspapers – LA was the site of the game the first 22 years – with each team being guaranteed two selections, whether the players were deserving or not. In more recent times, as Philadelphia's defensive coordinator Vic Fangio stated, "Everybody and their mother's got a vote."
There also was a vast difference in the overall strength of the two NFL conferences from the first year of the Pro Bowl until the NFL-AFL merger went into effect in 1970. During those years, the NFL Western Conference won 13 of 20 games.
The West's domination back then also was reflected in the results of the NFL Championship Games and season-long scores, particularly from 1957 to 1969.
During those 13 seasons, teams from the West won 11 NFL titles.
Additionally, Western Conference teams had a .639 winning percentage against their opponents from the East. Of the seven teams in the West, including Minnesota, a 1961 expansion franchise, only the Chicago Bears had a losing record against Eastern teams. The Bears went 14-15-1 against Eastern opponents.
(Note: In 1960 the expansion Dallas Cowboys played each of the other 12 teams once but was listed in the standings as a seventh team in the Western Conference. Thus, its 11 losses and one tie were not counted against the East's record. In 1966, the expansion Atlanta Falcons played each of the other 14 teams once and was listed in the Eastern Conference standings. Its three wins and 11 losses were counted against the East. During New Orleans' first three seasons, from 1967-69, it was a member of the Eastern Conference and played a schedule similar to the other Eastern teams.)
Green Bay was 26-5 against the East during that stretch, which included their 3-9 and 1-10-1 seasons pre-Lombardi and 6-7-1 and 8-6 post-Lombardi. The Baltimore Colts were 23-7. The Los Angeles Rams finished with a winning record only three times over those 13 seasons, yet went 20-10-1 against Eastern Conference teams.
Let's flash back to 1950, the first Pro Bowl season. Over the next 20 years until the merger was completed, Washington had three winning seasons; Pittsburgh, four; the Chicago/St. Louis Cardinals, six; and Philadelphia, seven. That's 20 winning seasons out of a possible 80.
The East was essentially a two-team conference – Cleveland and the New York Giants – until Dallas finished with its first winning record in 1966. On the flip side, at that point, the Giants went into the tank. They were 21-34-1 from 1966-69.
Because of the considerable disparity in talent those years, players in the West faced stiffer competition on the field from week to week and then in balloting for Pro Bowl berths.
The linebacker position was a prime example. And it partly – if not largely – explains why Nitschke was selected to only one Pro Bowl.
By 1958, when Nitschke was a rookie, essentially all 12 NFL teams had transitioned from 5-2 to 4-3 fronts. And by the next year, only linebackers – no more middle guards – were selected for the Pro Bowl.
But following the 1959 through '61 seasons, no distinction was made between middle and outside linebackers for four spots on the West roster. Thus, three future Pro Football Hall of Fame middle linebackers – Joe Schmidt, Bill George and Les Richter – took up three of the West's linebacker spots each of those three years.
At the end of the 1962 season, the voting was changed to accommodate both middle and outside linebackers for the four spots. Still, Schmidt was voted the starter at middle linebacker the next two years, although he withdrew from the game due to injury following the 1963 season.
Nitschke made it for the first and only time after the 1964 season. He was the only MLB chosen, along with three OLBs.
Then came the Dick Butkus era. He was voted the starting middle linebacker following every season from 1965 through 1970, the first following the NFL-AFL merger and Nitschke's last as a starter.
Schmidt and Butkus were two of the 12 linebackers on the NFL's 100th anniversary team. Arguably, Schmidt was the league's premier middle linebacker over roughly the first decade of 4-3 defenses, and Butkus was the greatest of all 4-3 MLBs.
Among the East's MLB starters during those years were Jerry Tubbs, Myron Pottios twice and Dale Meinert twice.
One last point about the linebackers.
Over those 13 seasons, from 1957-69, when the NFL West dominated, only 15 outside linebackers made the Pro Bowl and five of them were Packers: Forester, Currie, Lee Roy Caffey, Dave Robinson and Fred Carr.
Being a Pro Football Hall of Fame all-decade selection, according to the PFR website, also added to a player's AV score.
Two outside linebackers were chosen on the 1960s NFL All-Decade team: Robinson and the Bears' Larry Morris. While Morris never made a Pro Bowl; Forester, like Robinson, made three, tied for the most during that 1957-69 timeframe. But because Nitschke also took up one of the five linebacker slots on the all-decade team what were the chances of Forester making it three Packers out of five?
Again, I'm not certain of this, but it also appears as though AFL players from the start of the league in 1960 were given equal treatment by PFR for making its all-league teams and the AFL All-Star Game.
The eight original AFL teams were the equivalent of expansion franchises with rosters filled with NFL rejects and the few prized draft picks the better financed teams were able to sign.
There were four NFL expansion franchises in the 1960s. It took New Orleans until its 21st season to finish with a winning record; Dallas, its seventh; Atlanta, its sixth; and Minnesota, its fourth, although it didn't have a second until its eighth.
So what were the chances even the best AFL teams were on a par with NFL teams until at least their fifth season? Plus, when the AFL played its first all-star game in 1962, four or half of its quarterbacks were selected.
In passing out its AV grades, did PFR give 35-year-old, AFL West QB Frank Tripucka of Denver the same number of points as NFL West QBs John Unitas and Starr?
One other issue that shouldn't be overlooked is race.
Many – if not most – NFL teams had quotas for Black players during the 1950s and '60s. Thus, one has to wonder if there weren't also quotas for the number of Black players on the Pro Bowl rosters.
Take Chicago Bears safety Roosevelt Taylor for example.
Packers safety Willie Wood was a perennial NFL West Pro Bowl choice. He was chosen for the first time after the 1962 season, his second as a starter, and then every season from 1964-70.
Taylor's career paralleled Wood's. Wood played from 1960-71; Taylor for the Bears from 1961-72. Having closely followed the Lombardi Packers back then as a young fan, my recollection is that they considered Taylor to be the second-best safety in the league.
Better than Hall of Famer Larry Wilson of the St. Louis Cardinals; better than longtime Hall of Fame candidate Eddie Meador of the Los Angeles Rams.
Here, for example, was what Norb Hecker, Lombardi's defensive backs coach from 1959-65, once said: "I think Wood and Taylor of the Bears are the best safetymen in the league."
Yet Taylor made only two Pro Bowls, one after the Bears won the NFL title in 1963 and, the other, after the 1968 season. More to the point, Taylor made it for the first time in the one year that Wood didn't make it. And only once during that stretch were two Black safeties selected. In 1968, Wood and Taylor were the two choices on the West team.
Taylor's AV score at Pro Football Reference was 91. Wood's was 122; Wilson, 121; and Meador, 111. As for the website's Hall of Fame monitor score, Taylor's was 43.98 compared to Wilson's 121.13 and Wood's 97.15. Among safeties – excluding those who moved to the position late in their careers – Taylor ranks 41st at the PFR site.
Otis Taylor, Kansas City's wide receiver and the offensive threat the Packers most feared in Super Bowl I, was another.
His AV is 95, but his Hall of Fame monitor score is 50.62, 73rd among wideouts. Here are two givens: Taylor was overshadowed by San Diego's Lance Alworth in the AFL West; and Taylor played for Chiefs teams that arguably had the most offensive talent in the AFL and then AFC for most of his career. That was a factor with him averaging 17.8 yards per catch over 11 seasons but with a less impressive 410 career receptions.
Taylor played opposite split end Chis Burford, who had the sixth most catches in the AFL's 10-year history. The tight end was Fred Arbanas, who was a three-time AP all-AFL choice. And the Chiefs' stable of running backs included Mike Garrett, a former Heisman Trophy winner; Curtis McClinton, a three-time AFL all-star fullback; and Mack Lee Hill, who averaged five yards per carry in his two seasons before his tragic death less than two hours after undergoing post-game knee surgery.
When Sport magazine had nine scouts vote on the all-time AFL team in 1968, Taylor was the wide receiver opposite Alworth. "He does everything Alworth does," said one scout, "but Taylor weighs 220 pounds."
Anyway, to support my take on Black players from that period, consider this story.
In 1952, Dick "Night Train" Lane intercepted 14 passes in 12 games, an NFL record that still stands today. Yet the Los Angeles Mirror reported at the time that Lane didn't receive a single Pro Bowl vote from the coaches.
The bottom line here is that all player ratings are subjective but those without input from people inside the game, especially general managers, personnel directors and scouts, lack credibility, especially when they are based strictly on statistics and other factors that change from era to era, if not year to year.
Cory from Roseville, MN
What football websites do you look at the most?
Pro Football Reference. There's a wealth of factual information to be found there. But just keep in mind it's best to crosscheck even numbers at NFL websites and in its record books with multiple sources.
Into the 1960s for sure – and one could argue even the 1970s and '80s – the league took a haphazard approach to its play-by-plays and statistics.
For example, PFR and other sources have Jim Taylor playing in all 12 games for the Packers in 1959, when, in fact, he missed three after suffering second-degree burns on his right foot and left hand in a kitchen incident on Oct. 6, two days after the Packers' second game. The fact is: He played in nine.
PFR and others have Jerry Kramer playing in eight games in 1961, when he suffered a season-ending ankle injury on the first play of the seventh game and underwent surgery. But when the Packers played in Chicago against the Bears two weeks after the injury, the official scorer for that game incorrectly listed Kramer as a participant.
If one checked the Nov. 9, 1961, Green Bay Press-Gazette, it would discover that four days before the Nov. 12 Packers-Bears game Kramer was still in the hospital recuperating from his surgery. And on page 397 of Volume II of “The Greatest Story in Sports,” there's a picture of Kramer in dress clothes wearing a cast and on crutches at new City Stadium on Nov. 19, 1961, when the Packers played the Rams.
In the 1961 NFL Championship Game, PFR and others list Nitschke as the Packers' starting middle linebacker, when, in fact, Tom Bettis was the starter. Bettis had reclaimed the starting job he had held until late in the 1960 season when Nitschke entered the Army midway through the '61 season. Nitschke wasn't able to practice after that and played on weekend passes. Because Bettis, a former No. 1 draft pick, was still a solid player, a more seasoned one than Nitschke and the smarter of the two, he got most of the starts and split time with Nitschke the second half of the season.
My other point about PFR would be with its draft lists and the positions it gives for the selections. For example, in the 1957 list, Hornung, the No. 1 overall choice, is listed as a halfback. He played quarterback at Notre Dame and he was drafted by the Packers as a QB. When a team lists a projected position for a player different from what he played in college, then that's the position that should be listed. But that wasn't the case when Hornung was drafted.
