Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I'm sorry if this was already a post, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't. Yes, Chase's current thread inspires this. As for kick-returners that year? Of course I think of Tim Brown, but Stanford Jennings comes up with me as well!

For this, here, Steeler-fan (as well as '70s-fan in-general), 1988 had a sadness to it. You knew things were indeed different than a decade prior! Rooney passes on right before the opener. Despite finishing a respectable 8-7 the year prior and almost beating the defending-Champs at RFK in Week #2 (not knowing just yet that Washington was entering a brief slump in the Gibbs Era), the 'Burgh suffers their worst campaign since '69 at 5-11! Making matters worse, Noll along with Landry make that notorious cover of SI - something you couldn't have possibly imagined in your wildest dreams ten years prior - with Shula's name also being mentioned in the article. Although Big D was already in freefall-mode, no one could have predicted this being Landry's last year yet alone finishing at 3-13. Who would have guessed Marty's final year with Browns as well?? And two-time defending-AFC-champ, Denver, faltering as they did??

Though not the case with the Bengals, who laid quite the stinker in '87 at 4-11, enough had to see Levy's Bills (but not expecting an 11-1 start) & Buddy's Eagles coming! I do vaguely remember the general consensus about Burnsie's Vikings being, paraphrasing, "are they a Super Bowl team, or was last year simply just they getting hot as soon as the playoffs started"? Were Saints going to win 12 games again? Or was a letdown evident, especially after that horrific 44-10 exit? I guess the G-men were expected to be back as well as Bears still being relevant in Year One after Sweetness.

My guess is that San Fran were the favorites going in after that regular-season juggernaut showing ("loss to Vikes just a fluke"), but not via a 6-5 start and the Bill Walsh hot-seat-talk throughout to boot! As for the team that would hand them that Week #11 fifth loss of the season? Did anyone see Stallings start his new-home Cards at 7-4?? Sure-enough it wasn't too shocking being that they almost made it in '87 (if they could just beat Dallas in the finale)!

Anyone who was around then remember what they thought going into that campaign or remember what the experts were thinking? Although I did get SI at the time, I don't remember what the general predictions were; and I didn't get me a Hollander handbook (that would be the following summer).

Despite what I wrote second paragraph, I unbiasedly do look back at '88 as a rather great, exciting season (otherwise I don't start this, here, thread)! That Eagles division-title-run was fun and suspenseful, thus properly launching Buddy Ball's brief three-year division-contention rivalry with Tuna & Gibbs! They probably lose at Soldier anyway. But because OF the 'Fog' - the mystery that it leaves, and because of their tendency to comeback that entire season, many - especially Eagle-fans - can't help but to see that campaign as Buddy Ball's only shot; if only because they were upstart, too young-and-cocky to "know" they were underdogs, everyone not being "ready" for them until next year, etc. '88 Eagles...no less exciting/"cardiac" than the '76 Cards or '80 Browns! Perhaps more-so!

As far from the '70s we obviously were by then, one common denominator between that very year's Super Bowl and the one ten Januarys prior (make that, ten-years-and-one-day apart)...yes, both were in Miami but more important each game being a Classic, and its winning team/franchise - and QB - putting their Historic 'STAMP' not just on the decade, but for the Ages! Yes, Dallas and the Raiders could have 'tied' things up with Lombardis respectively won in Jan '80 & Jan '90, but unless you're a fan of those teams or haters of the other two, you'd still consider SBXIII & SBXXIII as team-of-the-decade/Ages-definers.

Actually, another commonality between '78 & '88 that's exactly ten-years-and-one-day apart...(yes, Eagles again)..."Miracle at the Meadowlands II"! Very many, even die-hard Eagle-fans, call 2010 'MMII'. They're wrong! That one would be '3'!

I remember SI picking the Browns and 49ers to make the Super Bowl, which makes sense because of what happened the year before. Cleveland seemed ready to take the next step, but nobody knew that Bernie would miss a lot of the season due to injury.

I also remember picking the Bills as AFC East champs (I did that the year before as well. I thought that they were on the right track after 1986), and thinking that the Redskins, Vikings, and 49ers would win the NFC divisions (I didn't see Washington having the year that they did).

Also, the Giants showed that 1987 was a fluke, even though they came up short of getting back their NFC East crown. And, the Saints, Colts, and Oilers showed that 1987 was no fluke. The Oilers would go back to the playoffs, and the Saints and Colts both had winning seasons (and barely missed the playoffs).

I have a magazine somewhere that did a computer simulation of all the games and printed the scores. They had The Raiders and the Bears in the Super Bowl. The Bears I could see [though I would have favored the 49ers and maybe a couple of other NFC teams more] but the Raiders? I do not recall who won, just that the score was 31-24. I recall they had Washington going 13-3 but losing in the first round to the Bears.

For this, here, Steeler-fan (as well as '70s-fan in-general), 1988 had a sadness to it. You knew things were indeed different than a decade prior! Rooney passes on right before the opener. Despite finishing a respectable 8-7 the year prior and almost beating the defending-Champs at RFK in Week #2 (not knowing just yet that Washington was entering a brief slump in the Gibbs Era), the 'Burgh suffers their worst campaign since '69 at 5-11! Making matters worse, Noll along with Landry make that notorious cover of SI - something you couldn't have possibly imagined in your wildest dreams ten years prior - with Shula's name also being mentioned in the article. Although Big D was already in freefall-mode, no one could have predicted this being Landry's last year yet alone finishing at 3-13. Who would have guessed Marty's final year with Browns as well?? And two-time defending-AFC-champ, Denver, faltering as they did??

It's like the paupers of 1978 (49ers, Bills, Giants) became princes in 1988, and vice versa (although the Steelers, Dolphins, and Cowboys were all back in the playoffs once by 1991, and they were all in the postseason in 92).

As for Denver, it's not too surprising that they went downhill in 1988. Their first round pick (Ted Gregory) was a bust, and their undersized, smoke and mirror defense forced 18 fewer turnovers than the year before.

I remember Gayle Gardner had just left ESPN and was on a pregame show -- I think it was the NBC pregame....anyway, in the first week they went around the table and made predictions of who would go to the Super Bowl....Gardner said the Bengals and everybody thought she was crazy, including me....well, turns out she was right....

I remember comedienne Wanda Sykes doing a piece on the NE Patriots for Inside The NFL, after the 9/11 events. She correctly picked the Patriots to win the SB

Mark wrote:I have a magazine somewhere that did a computer simulation of all the games and printed the scores. They had The Raiders and the Bears in the Super Bowl. The Bears I could see [though I would have favored the 49ers and maybe a couple of other NFC teams more] but the Raiders? I do not recall who won, just that the score was 31-24. I recall they had Washington going 13-3 but losing in the first round to the Bears.

It would be interesting to go back and see what these 'simulation games' from the '80's were like. The earliest computer simulation games that I recall coming out into the open market would have been around '93 or so and not unsurprisingly the AI would be absolutely wretched. Teams would run the ball on 1st and 2nd down and only pass if it was 3rd and long. I'm wondering if the simulations they did back then to get the Raiders and Bears was because of Bo Jackson and Walter Payton on the rosters (Payton only retired in '87).

Simulation games today are pretty true to life but back in the '80's or early '90's I think you might have better luck getting accurate results playing a game of Tecmo Bowl.

I don’t think many would have predícted at the time that it would be Tom Landry’s last season with Dallas.

I found the magazine that I referred to that simulated the 1988 season. The magazine was Rod Martin's Pro Scorebook and they used The Micro Sports Football League, a game I used to have and really liked. In fact I wish they had a new version of that. It was the Raiders that won the Super Bowl and Bo Jackson was the MVP. The Raiders went 14-2 for the regular season and defeated the Broncos in the AFC Championship. The humans on the magazine however only predicted they would go 8-8. They correctly predicted Seattle to win the division. The computer had Washington, Chicago, and San Francisco all going 13-3 but the humans predicted the Giants, Vikings, and 49ers to win their division. The computer correctly had the Bears and 49ers in the championship but it had the Bears winning.

Mark wrote:I found the magazine that I referred to that simulated the 1988 season. The magazine was Rod Martin's Pro Scorebook and they used The Micro Sports Football League, a game I used to have and really liked. In fact I wish they had a new version of that. It was the Raiders that won the Super Bowl and Bo Jackson was the MVP. The Raiders went 14-2 for the regular season and defeated the Broncos in the AFC Championship. The humans on the magazine however only predicted they would go 8-8. They correctly predicted Seattle to win the division. The computer had Washington, Chicago, and San Francisco all going 13-3 but the humans predicted the Giants, Vikings, and 49ers to win their division. The computer correctly had the Bears and 49ers in the championship but it had the Bears winning.

Looks like you can download it if you want.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/nfl- ... otball-2ec

You can generally download games from that era for free these days. If you take a look at the screenshot of the standings on the page it looks like they had the exact same results you mentioned. That is what I remember from simulation games of that era. Basically unless a team had a serious injury to a key position the results would usually be about the same every single season you tried to play. When I would play seasons on my Tecmo Super Bowl game I could pretty much count on either the 49ers or the Giants making the Super Bowl on the NFC side.......and once in a great while the Bears. And on the AFC side it was either the Bills, Oilers, or Dolphins. These days you can play careers and your players age and retire and new players get drafted into the league so it is different every single time you play. They also simulate every single play in the league......something I don't think games of that era did. Stratomatic you can put teams of different years up against eachother so that is a big selling point for that game.