Benny Friedman NPR, and a word on statistical completeness

[Brian wolf]

Thanks Ralph ... great insight. Do you believe Johnny Blood making the HOF overshadowed Dilweg, Lewellen and Dunn's accomplishments, or did those players just fell through the cracks ?

[Bob Gill]

Johnny Blood called the plays when he was in the game. If Blood wasn't in the game, Dunn (or whoever else was playing quarterback, did the playcalling.
Here are several paragraphs from my Johnny Blood book that explaIn how the Packer offense worked in those days:

Interesting that Blood usually called the plays. And I also liked this part:

"It was similar to the single wing except for the balanced line and the fact that the “wingback” was actually a slotback, lined up between the tackle and the end, rather than outside the end. To give the wingback a path down the field, the end on that side was usually split out somewhat—"flexed,” in Rockne’s terminology."

I saw a team doing this in some film I watched on YouTube recently -- I think it was the Giants in the 1946 championship game. They often had one end spread out wide from the tackle and a back in the gap, and I couldn't figure out why they'd do that. I guess they were lined up Steve Owen's A formation, but he must have picked up this slotback idea from Rockne. Or just from the Packers.

[JameisLoseston]

Just started compiling some league stats for the Red Dunn NPR calculations, and so far noticed one major anomaly: the rate stats for 1924 in particular, Dunn's rookie year, are drastically biased in a way that suggests heavy incompleteness, particularly in the statistic of, well, incompletions. I can only imagine how many picks Curly really threw that year... It appears stat recording got fairly legit in 1925 on the dot, because that's when the stats start to look more or less the same for the rest of the decade. But then I checked 1923 to test the theory, and its stats are indicative of excellent recording, so I really don't know. I'm getting the encyclopedia in a week or so to see for myself, but would anyone like to add a word on this observation in the meantime?

[TanksAndSpartans]

Missing incompletions probably makes sense. Imagine you're watching a game, recording the "important stuff". Say there were incompletions on first and second down, then a punt on third. That may have just been recorded as Packers punted.

[rhickok1109]

Thanks Ralph ... great insight. Do you believe Johnny Blood making the HOF overshadowed Dilweg, Lewellen and Dunn's accomplishments, or did those players just fell through the cracks ?

I don't think Blood's selection specifically had much, if any, effect. But in the first four years, HOF selections were quite heavy on players from the '20s and '30 in general and on former Packers in particular. There were four Packers in the 1963 charter group, including Blood, two more were elected in 1964, and a seventh in 1966 (an eighth, if you count Walt Kiesling, but he spent only 2 years with the Packers).
It could well be that the voters then decided that was enough of the old-time players. Beginning in 1967, there's a quite obvious shift to more recent players.
It also occurs to me that selection process and/or the makeup of the selection committee may have changed. I know that the charter members were chosen in 1963 by a committee of 14 and that Art Daley of the Green Bay Press-Gazette was one of the 14 but I have no idea who the other 13 people were.
I wonder if anyone here has done any research into the HOF selection process?

[RichardBak]

Thanks Ralph ... great insight. Do you believe Johnny Blood making the HOF overshadowed Dilweg, Lewellen and Dunn's accomplishments, or did those players just fell through the cracks ?

I don't think Blood's selection specifically had much, if any, effect. But in the first four years, HOF selections were quite heavy on players from the '20s and '30 in general and on former Packers in particular. There were four Packers in the 1963 charter group, including Blood, two more were elected in 1964, and a seventh in 1966 (an eighth, if you count Walt Kiesling, but he spent only 2 years with the Packers).
It could well be that the voters then decided that was enough of the old-time players. Beginning in 1967, there's a quite obvious shift to more recent players.
It also occurs to me that selection process and/or the makeup of the selection committee may have changed. I know that the charter members were chosen in 1963 by a committee of 14 and that Art Daley of the Green Bay Press-Gazette was one of the 14 but I have no idea who the other 13 people were.
I wonder if anyone here has done any research into the HOF selection process?

I think originally there was one sportswriter from each of the 14 NFL cities.

[JeffreyMiller]

In Buffalo, at one point there were six dailies, so there were multiple reporters covering games

[rhickok1109]

Thanks Ralph ... great insight. Do you believe Johnny Blood making the HOF overshadowed Dilweg, Lewellen and Dunn's accomplishments, or did those players just fell through the cracks ?

I don't think Blood's selection specifically had much, if any, effect. But in the first four years, HOF selections were quite heavy on players from the '20s and '30 in general and on former Packers in particular. There were four Packers in the 1963 charter group, including Blood, two more were elected in 1964, and a seventh in 1966 (an eighth, if you count Walt Kiesling, but he spent only 2 years with the Packers).
It could well be that the voters then decided that was enough of the old-time players. Beginning in 1967, there's a quite obvious shift to more recent players.
It also occurs to me that selection process and/or the makeup of the selection committee may have changed. I know that the charter members were chosen in 1963 by a committee of 14 and that Art Daley of the Green Bay Press-Gazette was one of the 14 but I have no idea who the other 13 people were.
I wonder if anyone here has done any research into the HOF selection process?

I think originally there was one sportswriter from each of the 14 NFL cities.

That makes perfect sense.

[RichardBak]

I did a little digging around. The original National Board of Selectors created in 1962 to vote on the inaugural class of inductees did consist of 14 members, one reportedly "elected" from each NFL city, but it's not clear that they were all sportswriters. Jimmy Conzelman, for example, was the representative for St. Louis, though I suppose it's possible the old coach enjoyed press credentials as a radio/TV color guy or occasional contributor to the local paper and thus qualified as a media member.

I'd imagine other members of the panel included old-time newspapermen who'd been covering pro football in their city for years, guys like George Strickler in Chicago and John Steadman in Baltimore. But I don't know that for a fact. It'd be interesting to post a list of that first group of selectors.

[Bob Gill]

Just started compiling some league stats for the Red Dunn NPR calculations, and so far noticed one major anomaly: the rate stats for 1924 in particular, Dunn's rookie year, are drastically biased in a way that suggests heavy incompleteness, particularly in the statistic of, well, incompletions. I can only imagine how many picks Curly really threw that year... It appears stat recording got fairly legit in 1925 on the dot, because that's when the stats start to look more or less the same for the rest of the decade. But then I checked 1923 to test the theory, and its stats are indicative of excellent recording, so I really don't know. I'm getting the encyclopedia in a week or so to see for myself, but would anyone like to add a word on this observation in the meantime?

Not on anything specific to 1924, but just in general -- and, well, in specific as regards Friedman -- I'd suggest this:

If you want to figure normalized passer ratings for Friedman, I would not include anything from "incomplete" games. In Friedman's case, I think Neft has "complete" stats for 42 of 61 games (that's for 1927-31, the years when the league wasn't counting), so that's more than two-thirds anyway. It's reasonable to assume that his stats for the other 19 games would be similar if we had them. But we don't have them, and 42 games is a reasonable sample size to work with. So I'd just use those stats and disregard the other games. The same goes for Dunn, since such a high percentage of his games with Green Bay are fully documented, or near enough.

For guys who played, let's say, four seasons but have only six games fully accounted for, I think the best thing to do is just ignore them, because the sample size is so small that the numbers probably won't be representative of their whole career.