Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Or were they a 'one-year-wonder' anyway? Simply a case of OCs generally figuring them out for the following season and not a "rules change" in favor of offenses? Yes, Claude was no longer with them after Week #4 of '78 (he almost retired altogether, and without ever experiencing a playoff berth - or Super Bowl - at all), but its not as if defenses in-general suddenly went sour all at once! Not just Steelers/Dallas/Rams still being stout but plenty of very great defenses for quite some time afterwards!

Would the 'Gritz' have had itself an immediate 'sequel' the following year had 'dead-ball' continued?

They lost both of their safeties from 1977 when Ray Easterling got hurt and Ray Brown was traded. Brown was traded to the Saints for Ernie Jackson. Brown started for the Saints, Jackson did not start for the Falcons. Not so good.

Mostly they were a deadball year fluke. 1977 NFC was so bad offensively. D was at their best early, opposing QBs are a toasted Namath, Jerry Golsteyn, Scott Bull. Did a good job on Payton. Defense later was not as good, Rams did well against them in the rematch.

Even in 1977 they were not as dominant with respect to peers as 1969-71 Vikings. 1977 Rams only gave up 146 points. I would give credit if they had been better than average in any adjoining year, but they weren't.

Also got help from Scott Hunter and John Jones. No turnovers on offense, punting advantage. It was a good defense, but that record is a statistical fluke.

In their eight games against teams with losing records, they gave up 50 points--with the outlier being the 21-20 loss to the Saints. The only two NFC teams to score more than 300 points for that season were the Cowboys and Rams--which should have been the conference championship game.

One of their losses came against the Bills, a 3-0 loss to a team that scored 160 points that year. Another was a one-point loss to the Saints, where they scored the game-winner with 1:05 left.