Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

The Bryant Young post (Turney) inspires this thread...

With exception, of course, of the Browns & Lions in the '50s, each and every calendar decade since the NFL's advent has a team that has won more titles than any other team during that decade. It's almost as if it coincidentally happened by design because if we do go by 'half'-decade (year ending with a '5' through year ending with '4'), its not quite nice-and-neat.

Let's take a look...

1933-thru-'44 (yes, lumping in those first two NFLCG years): Bears with 4, but they and Pack at 3-apiece if excluding '33
1945-thru-'54: Browns with 3, Lions - sadly - at 2
1955-thru-'64: Colts, Packers, Browns tied at 2!
1965-thru-'74: Packers, but solely on strength of that opening three-peat
1975-thru-'84: Steelers, but at 'just' 3
1985-thru-'94: Sorry, Dallas. You, G-men and Wash 'tied' at 2; San Fran on top at 3!
1995-thru-'04: Pats still a 3-timer TotD
2005-thru-'14...(get ready)...STEELERS & GIANTS tied at TWO!!
2015-thru-'24: Pats, so far, in lead with 2

Yes, not so smooth; not so nice and tucked in!

And then, of course, there's the whole best players of a given decade! A much, much longer conversation! For absolute starters, (which I believe has been discussed here already), Walter Payton being boxed out of best RB of the '70s, or '80s, thanks to Campbell and Dickerson respectively.


Thoughts?

For '75 to '84 the Raiders would be at 3

Well, that's one way of killing time on a winter day. As we all know, one can gerrymander decades and eras and periods in any number of ways---very useful when trying to make the case for "Team of the [fill in the blank]." Writers, historians, et al, do it all the time. A very useful thing, the calendar.

Sorry, ... Campbell and Dickerson were never better than Payton.

Like Bryan, Andy and John were talking about in the Bryant Young post, the HOF puts way too much emphasis on FLAWED All Decade teams. The Mid Decade Teams shown on Pro Football Journal make more sense and should be adopted or at least considered by the HOF committees.

Mark wrote:For '75 to '84 the Raiders would be at 3

Ouch! My mistake! No, I didn't biased-ly forget this for Steelers reasons (okay, maybe subconsciously but not deliberate). Well this really adds to the 'not-so-nice-and-neat' factor! Steel Curtain, in this case, don't get a TotD all by themselves now! Not just that, but would Raiders get the 'tiebreaker' for going 6-0 vs Steelers from '76 thru that '83 divisonal?

And while on 'tie-breakers', do '05-thru-'14 Steelers get TotD 'nod' over G-men for the extra (2010) SB berth? Do Packers & Browns each get nods over Colts for '55-thru-'64 because of their own extra NFCCG-appearances ('60 & '57 respectively)?

Brian wolf wrote:Sorry, ... Campbell and Dickerson were never better than Payton.

Like Bryan, Andy and John were talking about in the Bryant Young post, the HOF puts way too much emphasis on FLAWED All Decade teams. The Mid Decade Teams shown on Pro Football Journal make more sense and should be adopted or at least considered by the HOF committees.

An even bigger mistake (especially after giving his career stats another look)! And this coming from someone who would pick Walter over either of them in a draft. A HOF-caliber main-purpose RB along with being able to do so much more. What was I thinking? Having an 'off'-day, I guess, lol. First off, I lumped Campbell's 1980 into the '70s equation but even there it wouldn't place him over Sweetness. Steeler-fandom aside, body-of-work-wise, '75-thru-'79 Payton is better than Franco despite #32's three-year head-start. Dickerson's got quite the artillery though, strictly-'80s-wise, but so does Sweetness strictly-'80s-wise as well! Both are your starting RBs on the All-Decade Team. Either way, Payton is also All-Decade '70s. And, if look at '75-thru-'84, an even-greater decade case! An undisputed all-by-himself at the very top! I thought such a he 'being boxed-out' of either decade was actually mentioned here but I guess not.

RichardBak wrote:Well, that's one way of killing time on a winter day. As we all know, one can gerrymander decades and eras and periods in any number of ways---very useful when trying to make the case for "Team of the [fill in the blank]." Writers, historians, et al, do it all the time. A very useful thing, the calendar.

Yes, definitely a winter time (season's almost over) time-killer of a subject, lol. But a fun-enough one.