Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

It slipped me all this time up until right now that 8-4-0 Green Bay actually played Detroit three times in the 1935 regular season! Thought it was a 2-0 sweep all this time. Just the same, they still did win the overall series, 2-1, and did win eight games opposed to Detroit's seven. Ties weren't seen as half-wins and half-losses at the time, so the 7-3-2 Lions got the nod over the Pack, .700 PCT to .677.

The rules were the rules then, so that's just the way it went; and the Lions certainly didn't disappoint in dominating their title game opponent, 26-7! GB should have simply lost one less game. But being someone who feels that amount of wins should be first-and-foremost, I feel GB should have won the division thus appeared in the NFLCG instead. And they did beat the Giants during the regular season; and by more than a TD.

NYG finished 9-2-1, but won a rather weak division. The Western certainly wasn't weak though! 'Tied' for the basement were both Chicago teams, each at 6-4-2!! And had the Cards (who actually swept the Pack; they beat the Giants too - at New York) won their finale over the Bears, then they get some post-season action! 1935 'Power' Rankings? I place Green Bay at the top!

Thoughts?

PS - the Bears also beat the G-men; and also on the road. But they did play twice, actually, with NYG winning the other game - in Chicago.

By today's standards things were done very strangely back in those days. When I found out that ties weren't actually calculated in the standings until the early 1970s, I was stunned!

The thing that strikes me about 1935 is how much the rushing stats slipped from the year before. In 1935 Doug Russell led the league with 499 yards; with the same total, Russell would've finished EIGHTH in 1934.

At the team level, the Bears led in rushing both years, followed by the Lions each time, but with drastically reduced totals in 1935. The Bears dropped from 2,847 yards to 2,096; the Lions dropped from 2,740 to 1,773 -- and still won the championship. It was weird season.

The individual rushing totals always bothered me too. Almost seems like an error to win a rushing title with 499 yards. Dutch Clark averaged 6.2 ypc in '34 and dropped to 3.6. Did all the teams make a defensive adjustment in response to Feathers' big year in '34?

As far as the standings, maybe it was karma for the Packers ducking the Spartans in '31

TanksAndSpartans wrote:The individual rushing totals always bothered me too. Almost seems like an error to win a rushing title with 499 yards. Dutch Clark averaged 6.2 ypc in '34 and dropped to 3.6. Did all the teams make a defensive adjustment in response to Feathers' big year in '34?

As far as the standings, maybe it was karma for the Packers ducking the Spartans in '31

In regards to 1934-1935 and Feathers specifically, there is some controversy/confusion over his rushing mark. I'm not sure if it's ever been clarified. I remember reading that the Feathers 1004 yards mark was a tad dubious as return yardage may have been added into rushing yardage at the time. If this was true league wide in 1934 but then stopped in 1935, it could explain the drop offs.

Hail Casares wrote:In regards to 1934-1935 and Feathers specifically, there is some controversy/confusion over his rushing mark. I'm not sure if it's ever been clarified. I remember reading that the Feathers 1004 yards mark was a tad dubious as return yardage may have been added into rushing yardage at the time. If this was true league wide in 1934 but then stopped in 1935, it could explain the drop offs.

I don't think there's any truth to that; it's just somebody's unsupported speculation that's occasionally been quoted over the years.

Yeah, there was one member a while back on a bit of a crusade to discredit Feathers' big '34 rushing total. I believe David Neft took a look at it using his newspaper technique and was able to corroborate a lot of the yards. Funny thing about some of the research I've been doing - the few times there are statistics in the 1890s they actually did combine return yards with rushing. I don't think there's evidence supporting they were doing it 40 years later though. I kind of got a sense he didn't think Feathers deserved it because he wasn't famous enough before or after

Good thought on the '35 rushing numbers though - I didn't look closely, but I think it was just a one year dip. Both before and after, you see individual players with better seasons, roughly in line with each other. I didn't check team totals.