Disappointing title defenses

[Brian wolf]

One of the things that hurt the Niners in 1985 were fumbles by RB Wendall Tyler. Rice also dropped a lot of passes as a rookie, while Soloman didnt contribute a lot, though Montana played well. Dean didnt do much on defense while Lott was adjusting to playing more at safety ...

[Jay Z]

One of the things that hurt the Niners in 1985 were fumbles by RB Wendall Tyler. Rice also dropped a lot of passes as a rookie, while Soloman didnt contribute a lot, though Montana played well. Dean didnt do much on defense while Lott was adjusting to playing more at safety ...

Tyler actually fumbled more in 1984 than 1985. The team was about the same. But they recovered most of their own fumbles in 1984 and lost most of them in 1985. This is usually considered luck by the statheads. Not sure I believe that's always the case, though. If you really wanted to grade out fumbles, I suppose you can identify which are more likely to be recovered by the other team.

Montana's completion percentage dropped by more than three points. So maybe Rice was an issue. Nehemiah was gone, Rice replaced him. Rice replaced Solomon's numbers, Solomon was getting old, but Clark, Mike Wilson, Earl Cooper all were down from 1984. So it's likely the passing game was less effective overall.

[Gary Najman]

AS a Cowboys fan, 1996 comes to mind. They lost to the Caroilina Pantherts (in their second season in the league) in the Divisional Round.