1994 NFL season in retrospect

[CSKreager]

94 is such a fascinating year that's to me is either glass half full or glass half empty depending on your perspective

Glass half full- it was the 75th anniversary, the first year of the NFL on FOX era, the introduction of the 2PC, and plenty of memorable games (Bledsoe/Marino, Montana vs Young, Elway/Montana MNF, Barry Sanders vs Emmitt Smith, Jason Garrett on Thanksgiving, the Fake Spike). The emergence of guys like Faulk/Bledsoe, the revival of the Patriots, a competitive NFC Central

Glass half empty says that 1994 was essentially a DAL/SF coronation from day 1 to the point where it felt like these were the only teams that mattered regardless of the others, culminating in this nauseating SI article:

https://vault.si.com/vault/1995/01/16/d ... c-showdown

"Why did we have to mess around so long with all this extraneous stuff?

Of course, there had to be a Regular Season and Surprising Teams and Resurgent Teams and Disappointing Teams and Experts Calculating Which Team Has A Chance To Sneak In As A Wild-Card Playoff Longshot, and the myriad Pregame Shows and Postgame Wrap-ups and Hope Springing Eternal In Rust-Belt Cities Where Football Is So Much Like Life, and Franchises Looking To The Future and Where Will Georgia Take Her Boys and Blah Blah Blah.

But it was all Nonsense. Had been all season. Only two Real Teams existed: the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers. All others were mobiles hanging in The Classroom Where Football Is Taught.

The 49ers and the Cowboys played each other once this year, on Nov. 13 in San Francisco, and it was a Big Game. None of this Maybe The Little Team From Green Bay Or The Clever Team From Chicago Can Pull Off An Upset. No, these were Men Duking It Out.

thank god the swill has finally run off into the gutters where it belongs. The 49ers and the Cowboys are so far above all other NFL teams that it's a pity we can't turn their NFC championship matchup this Sunday into Super Bowl XXIX. Then that anticlimactic thing occurring in Miami on Jan. 29 could be some kind of postseason weenie roast.

Yes, there is an AFC, and a champion will also be declared over there this Sunday. But, really. The San Diego Chargers? The Pittsburgh Steelers? O.K., the Steelers are a rugged team, but they are not Terry Bradshaw-Mean Joe Greene rugged. And anyway, an AFC team hasn't won the Super Bowl since January 1984. As this reviewer's favorite critics, Beavis and Butthead, would put it, the AFC sucks."

Basically they acted like all the great games and fireworks were basically just a waste of our time and apparently nothing other than boring DAL/SF blowouts was 'real'. So apparently the week 1 Bledsoe/Marino all-timer was 'Nonsense' because it didn't involve THOSE teams. Like apparently Montana vs Elway didn't matter one bit because we weren't graced by the presense of THOSE teams. It was as if they thought the NFL solely revolved around those two teams which made me wonder why bother playing the season if these teams were allegedly so far above all teams because they basically violated the salary cap and somehow had what amounted to seemingly every NFC Pro Bowler?

Oh and an irony about 'the AFC sucks' is that the NFC outside of DAL/SF had essentially none of the depth that it once had (only one other team won 10 games and it took until the final MNF of the year) while the much maligned AFC had 5 10+ win teams

In fact, the NFC only went 27-25 in interconference matchups and if you take out the Cowboys/49ers, everybody else in the NFC went 21-23 vs the AFC

This wasn't like when 10-6 teams like the 91 49ers or 88 Saints missed the NFC playoffs. Heck if the Vikings won one less game the NFC would have had FOUR 9-7 playoff teams! People get on the AFC of 1989, but the NFC of 1994 was truly riding the coattails of those two teams (heck at least the 89 AFC playoff games were mostly competitive)

My point stands that 1994 is a hard season to quantify depending on your perspective. What say you?

[Brian wolf]

The Steelers were contenders and the Chiefs screwed up letting Albert Lewis leave for the Raiders. Of course Miami still had Marino--while letting their playoff game against SD slip away--and the Vikings started 7-2 before slipping. Moon as usual, couldnt get out of an initial playoff game. Could the Dolphins or Vikings had made more noise if they had beaten the Chargers and Bears in postseason? The Vikings even beat the 49ers.

Steve Bono for KC went 0-2 as starter but with a better defense in 1995, went 13-3 ... Could Montana had done better instead of retiring?

[7DnBrnc53]

The Chiefs screwed up letting Albert Lewis leave for the Raiders.
Steve Bono for KC went 0-2 as starter but with a better defense in 1995, went 13-3 ... Could Montana had done better instead of retiring?

I don't think the Chefs were real contenders in 1993, anyway. They played in a division that was weaker than I realized since SD underachieved (the 93 Chargers were better on paper than the 94 version, and were picked to go to the SB by The Sporting News). The 93 Raiders weren't that great despite the QB upgrade, and I now realize that the Broncos were in the first year of a four-year rebuild that would lead to back-to-back Super Bowls (they wouldn't be real contenders again until 1996).

The 94 Chiefs weren't any better. They lost Lewis, and Carl Peterson failed to upgrade the skill positions once again in FA and the draft. One big mistake was drafting Greg Hill in Round 1 over Charlie Garner or Isaac Bruce.

As for 95, Montana probably would have done about the same. That team was way more lucky than good, anyway, and Peterson still failed to upgrade the skill positions on offense (which would be a common theme until 1997).

[74_75_78_79_]

94 is such a fascinating year that's to me is either glass half full or glass half empty depending on your perspective

Glass half full- it was the 75th anniversary, the first year of the NFL on FOX era, the introduction of the 2PC, and plenty of memorable games (Bledsoe/Marino, Montana vs Young, Elway/Montana MNF, Barry Sanders vs Emmitt Smith, Jason Garrett on Thanksgiving, the Fake Spike). The emergence of guys like Faulk/Bledsoe, the revival of the Patriots, a competitive NFC Central

Glass half empty says that 1994 was essentially a DAL/SF coronation from day 1 to the point where it felt like these were the only teams that mattered regardless of the others, culminating in this nauseating SI article:

https://vault.si.com/vault/1995/01/16/d ... c-showdown

"Why did we have to mess around so long with all this extraneous stuff?

Of course, there had to be a Regular Season and Surprising Teams and Resurgent Teams and Disappointing Teams and Experts Calculating Which Team Has A Chance To Sneak In As A Wild-Card Playoff Longshot, and the myriad Pregame Shows and Postgame Wrap-ups and Hope Springing Eternal In Rust-Belt Cities Where Football Is So Much Like Life, and Franchises Looking To The Future and Where Will Georgia Take Her Boys and Blah Blah Blah.

But it was all Nonsense. Had been all season. Only two Real Teams existed: the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers. All others were mobiles hanging in The Classroom Where Football Is Taught.

The 49ers and the Cowboys played each other once this year, on Nov. 13 in San Francisco, and it was a Big Game. None of this Maybe The Little Team From Green Bay Or The Clever Team From Chicago Can Pull Off An Upset. No, these were Men Duking It Out.

thank god the swill has finally run off into the gutters where it belongs. The 49ers and the Cowboys are so far above all other NFL teams that it's a pity we can't turn their NFC championship matchup this Sunday into Super Bowl XXIX. Then that anticlimactic thing occurring in Miami on Jan. 29 could be some kind of postseason weenie roast.

Yes, there is an AFC, and a champion will also be declared over there this Sunday. But, really. The San Diego Chargers? The Pittsburgh Steelers? O.K., the Steelers are a rugged team, but they are not Terry Bradshaw-Mean Joe Greene rugged. And anyway, an AFC team hasn't won the Super Bowl since January 1984. As this reviewer's favorite critics, Beavis and Butthead, would put it, the AFC sucks."

Basically they acted like all the great games and fireworks were basically just a waste of our time and apparently nothing other than boring DAL/SF blowouts was 'real'. So apparently the week 1 Bledsoe/Marino all-timer was 'Nonsense' because it didn't involve THOSE teams. Like apparently Montana vs Elway didn't matter one bit because we weren't graced by the presense of THOSE teams. It was as if they thought the NFL solely revolved around those two teams which made me wonder why bother playing the season if these teams were allegedly so far above all teams because they basically violated the salary cap and somehow had what amounted to seemingly every NFC Pro Bowler?

Oh and an irony about 'the AFC sucks' is that the NFC outside of DAL/SF had essentially none of the depth that it once had (only one other team won 10 games and it took until the final MNF of the year) while the much maligned AFC had 5 10+ win teams

In fact, the NFC only went 27-25 in interconference matchups and if you take out the Cowboys/49ers, everybody else in the NFC went 21-23 vs the AFC

This wasn't like when 10-6 teams like the 91 49ers or 88 Saints missed the NFC playoffs. Heck if the Vikings won one less game the NFC would have had FOUR 9-7 playoff teams! People get on the AFC of 1989, but the NFC of 1994 was truly riding the coattails of those two teams (heck at least the 89 AFC playoff games were mostly competitive)

My point stands that 1994 is a hard season to quantify depending on your perspective. What say you?

Little did we all know, the Dal/SF thing would only last for not even a year after this article with Green Bay putting an end to it in next year's divisional round.

The '96 game between both Dallas & San Fran at Candlestick, despite only being a year removed from the 'aura', I remember feeling wasn't the same as I was watching it with friends in real-time (we were talking about last night's Holyfield beating Tyson; their first fight, not that forever-notorious rematch). No, this Dal/SF one just didn't seem the same. This despite both going in with winning records and the game going into OT.
Seems to be forgotten.

'94 was the best Cowher Steeler team IMO with '95 just a tad below. But whether getting upset in the CCG as the case with the former, or averting an upset as with the latter, Cowher was not going to get his Ring with those two NFC Beasts still ruling things as they did.

I've opined this before that I think the only two '90s seasons when, end of season, you can say that Dallas & San Fran were the top-two teams in the league was in '92 & '94. Big D was, of course, #1 in 1993. But you can argue that Houston, Buffalo, and even KC were better than San Fran.

viewtopic.php?p=21790&sid=9f3e5a2a1d49f ... 8043195d6c

[ShinobiMusashi]

Without having internet back then and being a kid that didn't watch news, it was a pretty big shocker to tune into Oilers week 1 and get the news that Warren Moon no longer plays for the Oilers. Then they just got destroyed by the Colts my introduction to Marshall Faulk, rookie playing his first NFL game just looked like a future HOF'er in that debut. Knew he was going to be a big star right there just was surprised it took until 1999 for it to really happen.

I developed a thing for the Cleveland Browns that season. I always really liked Mark Rypien after the Super Bowl MVP performance, he came in and started a few games as a backup that year for Cleveland, also really liked Eric Metcalf a lot, was rooting for that team in the 1994 playoffs.

Not long ago I did a deep dive into the history of Bill Belichick vs Dom Capers/Vic Fangio, I got hung up on how the 2003 Texans gave that Pats team so much trouble in that game that year(they took them like 14 minutes into overtime and almost won several times). A not even 2 year old expansion team with Tony Banks at QB taking on the Super Bowl Champs that year I was curious if there was anything to that coaching matchup. Capers was part of that 94 Steelers coaching staff that took down Belichick's Browns all 3 games that year, including the playoff elimination in the divisional round. I can't remember my total numbers I compiled but noticed that Belichick had either a close to .500 or possibly losing record against those 2 coaches.