Professional Football Researchers Association Forum
PFRA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the history of professional football. Formed in 1979, PFRA members include many of the game's foremost historians and writers.
Mark wrote:A lot of people were high on the Seahawks as they went 12-4 without Curt Warner the year before.
That's right. I remember thinking that that was sound reasoning. But what fueled the 1984 Seahawks (aside from maybe a "circle the wagons" mentality after star RB Curt Warner got injured in Week 1) was their turnover ratio, which I think was best in the league. They weren't able to replicate that in 1985 and, as a consequence, slumped to 8 - 8 (they won their first two in 1985 and lost their next two and that pattern repeated itself all season - ).
rhickok1109 wrote:Tex Maule of SI kept picking the Cowboys to win the Super Bowl. Then he gave up...and they won it.
Tex Maule was known for his repeated wrong predictions. In his SI preview article for Super Bowl III, Maule picked the Colts to beat Joe Namath's Jets 43-0.
An SI letter writer once sarcastically lauded "the famous Tex Maule System, which seems to be founded on two unchanging principles: 1) pick the Dallas Cowboys; 2) when that is not possible, pick the team that beat the Cowboys."
A lot of these examples so far are teams that drastically underperformed their predictions. Any good examples going the other way? I've got to think the 1999 Rams would have been projected to be 5-11 or less.
ChrisBabcock wrote:A lot of these examples so far are teams that drastically underperformed their predictions. Any good examples going the other way? I've got to think the 1999 Rams would have been projected to be 5-11 or less.
Agreed. Also, what about the 2001 Patriots? Mel Kiper said that they would go 0-16.
The Pocket Book Of Pro Football from 1978 predicted the Oakland Raiders would win Super Bowl XIII. This is not too egregious in that the Raiders were still going strong at the time from having made it to the previous years conference championship game and winning the Super Bowl two years previous. As for the 14-2 and eventual Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, whom many consider among the greatest all time single season teams? Third in the AFC Central behind Houston and Cincinnati! Houston winning the division was not such a bad idea (with rookie Earl Campbell coming on board) but Cincinnati fell off a cliff (winning only 4 games). I also cannot too terribly fault the Steelers third place prediction from having exhibited a great deal of vulnerability in 1977.
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