The Football Encyclopedia

[Oszuscik]

Just a question for anyone who owns The Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of Professional Football From 1892 to the Present (Neft & Cohen, 1994). Does it include statistics from the pre-stats era of the NFL in the 1920’s? With men such as Verne Lewellen and Lavvie Dilweg being up for possible enshrinement into the Hall of Fame I’d love to be able to review any stats of theirs and others from that era.

Thank you!

[ehaight]

There are stats but they're very incomplete and nothing to hang a HoF argument on.

[TanksAndSpartans]

If you're mostly interested in who the statistical leaders were, you can't do any better than this article: http://www.profootballresearchers.org/a ... 02-453.pdf

[JameisLoseston]

If you're mostly interested in who the statistical leaders were, you can't do any better than this article: http://www.profootballresearchers.org/a ... 02-453.pdf

Terrific article. Charley Rogers is fascinating indeed... not least because this means there has actually been a good NFL player named Charles Rogers! I'd be very interested to know how many incomplete games Friedman had in each of his 5 straight league leading seasons. Also, why didn't Charlie Mathys last? He seemed like a star in the making.

[Bob Gill]

Terrific article. Charley Rogers is fascinating indeed... not least because this means there has actually been a good NFL player named Charles Rogers! I'd be very interested to know how many incomplete games Friedman had in each of his 5 straight league leading seasons.

Friedman's 1927 stats include 11 complete games and only two incomplete. For 1928, it's eight complete and 2 incomplete. Then it's nine complete and 6 incomplete for 1929, and exactly the same split in 1930. In 1931 it's five complete and three incomplete, because he had quit to take a college coaching job but rejoined the team after the first month or so of the season.

[Oszuscik]

If you're mostly interested in who the statistical leaders were, you can't do any better than this article: http://www.profootballresearchers.org/a ... 02-453.pdf

Thanks for the link, that was great to look through!

[lastcat3]

Looking at the link is interesting. Comparing the passing yardage to individual receiving yards was one of the things that caught my eye. Many of the receivers listed had 50% or higher the total amount of yards that the passers did. Back in the very early days did most teams generally only have one legit receiver that they threw the ball to?