Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

zachary stephen wrote:but a recent deep dive on them revealed they're throwing big money at all the top writers hoping it will pay off in profits down the road. But at this point, it's an experiment.

I heard PFRA is doing the same thing.

sheajets wrote:

JohnTurney wrote:All that is likely true, but my point is that this "changing the game" thing has jumped the shark as a phrase. It's been used to much it's not really meaningful anymore.

I can be wrong but I cannot think of how Revis "changed the NFL". I really can't.

I agree with that. Also with the gross overuse of the word "Beast" when describing dominant performances. Or a dominant player. The amount of true beasts, guys that impose their will on the game you can probably count on two hands (Jim Brown, Earl Campbell, Lawrence Taylor, Bo etc)

I cannot think of any player who has really changed the game in the past ten years, other than Kaepernick, but that is more for off the field. It's been a long time since there has been a player of the stature of a Jim Brown or Earl Campbell or Butkus, as far as a guy who was unlike anything you had ever seen before and you knew you would never see anybody remotely like him ever again. These kinds of players come along about once or twice a decade. I think Ray Lewis was probably the last, although I guess you could argue for JJ Watt as the current player who is closest to this type. There haven't been that many of those type players in the history of pro football, maybe a dozen or so, probably not more than 15.

This is the list I came up with, but I'm sure I must have missed a name or two:

Nagurski
Baugh
Jim Brown
Unitas
Butkus
Sayers
Namath
Campbell
Taylor
Rice
Bo Jackson
Deion Sanders
Lewis
Watt

An argument could be made for Grange or Motley, but their careers were short. I'm not saying the above list are the greatest players of all time, but rather the most historically unique great players.

How about a soccer-style kicker? Probably Gogolak.

Rupert Patrick wrote:

sheajets wrote:

JohnTurney wrote:All that is likely true, but my point is that this "changing the game" thing has jumped the shark as a phrase. It's been used to much it's not really meaningful anymore.

I can be wrong but I cannot think of how Revis "changed the NFL". I really can't.

I agree with that. Also with the gross overuse of the word "Beast" when describing dominant performances. Or a dominant player. The amount of true beasts, guys that impose their will on the game you can probably count on two hands (Jim Brown, Earl Campbell, Lawrence Taylor, Bo etc)

I cannot think of any player who has really changed the game in the past ten years, other than Kaepernick, but that is more for off the field. It's been a long time since there has been a player of the stature of a Jim Brown or Earl Campbell or Butkus, as far as a guy who was unlike anything you had ever seen before and you knew you would never see anybody remotely like him ever again. These kinds of players come along about once or twice a decade. I think Ray Lewis was probably the last, although I guess you could argue for JJ Watt as the current player who is closest to this type. There haven't been that many of those type players in the history of pro football, maybe a dozen or so, probably not more than 15.

This is the list I came up with, but I'm sure I must have missed a name or two:

Nagurski
Baugh
Jim Brown
Unitas
Butkus
Sayers
Namath
Campbell
Taylor
Rice
Bo Jackson
Deion Sanders
Lewis
Watt

An argument could be made for Grange or Motley, but their careers were short. I'm not saying the above list are the greatest players of all time, but rather the most historically unique great players.

I really think you have to put Hutson on that list, and perhaps Cecil Isbell too. Isbell and Hutson really developed the modern passing game, working out specific routes for the receiver so that the passer could throw the ball early, to a specific spot where the receiver should be when the ball arrived. They did that mostly during the summers when they had off-season jobs at the same paper mill and they practiced in the parking lot during their lunch hours. It was purely Hutson and Isbell, working together; Curly Lambeau had nothing to do with it.
Before that, a passer either waited until the receiver got wide open or sort of lobbed the ball to the general area where he thought the receiver should be.

rhickok1109 wrote:

Rupert Patrick wrote: I cannot think of any player who has really changed the game in the past ten years, other than Kaepernick, but that is more for off the field. It's been a long time since there has been a player of the stature of a Jim Brown or Earl Campbell or Butkus, as far as a guy who was unlike anything you had ever seen before and you knew you would never see anybody remotely like him ever again. These kinds of players come along about once or twice a decade. I think Ray Lewis was probably the last, although I guess you could argue for JJ Watt as the current player who is closest to this type. There haven't been that many of those type players in the history of pro football, maybe a dozen or so, probably not more than 15.

This is the list I came up with, but I'm sure I must have missed a name or two:

Nagurski
Baugh
Jim Brown
Unitas
Butkus
Sayers
Namath
Campbell
Taylor
Rice
Bo Jackson
Deion Sanders
Lewis
Watt

An argument could be made for Grange or Motley, but their careers were short. I'm not saying the above list are the greatest players of all time, but rather the most historically unique great players.

I really think you have to put Hutson on that list, and perhaps Cecil Isbell too. Isbell and Hutson really developed the modern passing game, working out specific routes for the receiver so that the passer could throw the ball early, to a specific spot where the receiver should be when the ball arrived. They did that mostly during the summers when they had off-season jobs at the same paper mill and they practiced in the parking lot during their lunch hours. It was purely Hutson and Isbell, working together; Curly Lambeau had nothing to do with it.
Before that, a passer either waited until the receiver got wide open or sort of lobbed the ball to the general area where he thought the receiver should be.

Hutson was perhaps a miss; Gogolak changed the game but there have been hundreds of kickers just like him in the last 50 years, many better than him. This is not a list of players who "changed the NFL"; this is a list of the "one of a kind" superstars. In a number of cases, they were often injured a lot and had short careers (Butkus, Sayers, Namath, Campbell, Bo, and presumably JJ Watt) which were related to their unique build or unique style of play. These are the guys for whom we had to invent adjectives to describe them. These guys had their own unique way of playing the game, they were often innovators, but whose styles were never really duplicated. These guys are human highlight reels, but they don't look like all the other highlight reels. There just aren't that many players of this species.

And it isn't just football but other sports. Roberto Clemente was one such player; the way he could throw out runners at third or home, nobody could do that quite like him before or since. Mantle and Mays were these types of guys, as was Ozzie Smith. And in the NBA, Michael Jordan of course, among a number of others.

What about William Perry and Christian Okoye?

Teo wrote:What about William Perry and Christian Okoye?

Perry was famous for the way he was utilized a running back; which I thought was a good idea - why doesn't a team line up their two biggest linemen up at RB at the one-yard line and on two-point plays? I think it would statistically pay off if a team practiced it and tried it. Looking at the record for one William Perry,for a 10-season career, he has no awards to his name despite being (to this day, it pains me to say) the most famous member of the 1985 Bears defense. The ironic part is that he might have been the weakest link in that defense, which is not an insult as he was an average to above average player in the context of a lot of great players who were having great seasons. Perry won no All-Pro during his career. Zip. As for his build, was it a one-of-a-kind? Did he make plays on defense I would never see another player make? He might have been a one of a kind type character, created mostly by the media. In other words, William Perry was Reality TV before there was Reality TV.

Okoye was different in build and way he was like a battering ram, but I don't know if I would consider him truly unique. He was the same weight as Jerome Bettis (250-255) and two inches taller, but I think the two are sorta kinda similar, same 3.9 YPC, simiar career Yards Rushing Above Average per Game or YRAA/G (Bettis -1.4, Okoye -1.0). Bettis was also a little better than Okoye, I think; per 16 games, his attempts-yards rushing were 290-1139 while Okoye was 252-992, and of course the Bus played in more than twice as many games. Also, Okoye had a short career. I left off a number of guys who had shorter careers who had a one-of-a-kind move, like Chuck Foreman, with his spin move. Lynn Swann was quite unlike any receiver I ever saw in the way he could seemingly defy the laws of physics and catch a ball, but I don't think he was quite at the level of the others on my list and his career was short. I said up front the list was one of a kind superstars, and I don't think Perry or Okoye qualify as superstars.

Bryan wrote:

zachary stephen wrote:but a recent deep dive on them revealed they're throwing big money at all the top writers hoping it will pay off in profits down the road. But at this point, it's an experiment.

I heard PFRA is doing the same thing.

We really need a "Like" button on this forum.

Wasn't there a rule change in the latter 70s nicknamed the Mel Blount rule? If so, Blount would have to qualify.

Terry Baldshaw wrote:Wasn't there a rule change in the latter 70s nicknamed the Mel Blount rule? If so, Blount would have to qualify.

So Jim Trimble changed the game??

http://www.profootballresearchers.org/a ... 02-790.pdf