Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

After finding a discrepancy with the first game of the Packers' 1929 season, I have found another in their second game. The Linescore Committee page has Johnny "Blood" McNally throwing a 15-yard touchdown pass. However, the Green Bay Press-Gazette twice claims Verne Lewellen threw the pass, and there is no other source that I can find that names Blood (McNally) as the passer.

So, what do I do? I'm working on a project where I'm trying to get these little details right. Do I go by what the sources say, or do I go by what the Linescore Committee says?

Have you gone through all the 1929 games? Based on Neft's statistics, Blood only had one TD pass, so if you have another game where Blood had a TD pass, it should be one of Lewellan's 4.

When I've encountered similar situations in writing books/documentaries/etc, I've stated something like, "The Packers scored on a 15-yard pass. Some sources at the time stated Johnny Blood tossed the score, while others credited Lewellen." Something to that effect. While we're always trying to find definitive answers in our research, the fact is that sometimes the definitive answer is that there are multiple accounts of what exactly happened. So, ultimately, I would simply state that sources have credited both Blood and Lewellen.

The PFRA linescores (and Neft's totals) were cobbled together decades ago when there were very limited resources - newspapers, gamebooks, official game-by-game stats - so they are not going to be 100% accurate.
I

If it was me, I would go with the Green Bay Press-Gazette because it checks two boxes - primary source and home team source (The latter being important because I've found it to be more likely the writer for the other team would mangle names, confuse players, etc)

TanksAndSpartans wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 3:05 pm If it was me, I would go with the Green Bay Press-Gazette because it checks two boxes - primary source and home team source (The latter being important because I've found it to be more likely the writer for the other team would mangle names, confuse players, etc)

Exactly.

Thank you all for your responses! In going through the play-by-play, it turns out that "Blood" completed a 15-yard pass in the game - but at a different time, and not for a touchdown. This makes me wonder if that one was confused with the touchdown pass. Of course, that then opens another can of worms: calculating yardage from the play-by-play comes out to the touchdown pass being from the 27-yard line (and not the 15). Add to that fact that the extra 12 passing yards comes closer (when adding up every completion from the play-by-play) to the total of 100 given in the Press-Gazette's story, and I'm really wondering if it was not just a different passer, but a different yardage. The joys of trying to decipher something 95 years old!