COFFIN CORNER VOLUME 48 NUMBER 5 IS NOW AVAILABLE IN MEMBERS ONLY. THE ISSUE INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING:
PFRA-ternizing. Details about the host hotel in Dayton, speakers and add-on activities for next year’s PFRA convention, a reminder about this year’s Hall of Very Good vote (the deadline is November 30, 2026), and an announcement on two new PFRA podcast episodes featuring author Michael MacCambridge and former player/sports broadcaster Paul Maguire.
The 1950 NFL Championship Game: Cleveland’s Defensive Game Plan from Weeb Ewbank’s Playbook by Ben Carpenter. As an assistant coach, Ewbank’s handwritten defensive strategy for the 1950 title tilt reveals how the Browns prepared to counter the high-powered Rams offense, despite giving up an 82-yard touchdown on the game's opening play, by securing a dramatic 30–28 victory and announcing the four-time AAFC champs as a force in their first year in the league.
League Leader Effect: Which Team Statistics Correlate Most Closely with Winning? by Jim K. Georges. A 60-season study of NFL stats during the Super Bowl era (1966–2025) finds that differential categories are better predictors of winning and postseason success than any single offensive or defensive category alone. Scoring differential ranks the highest, suggesting that teams that are balanced are more likely to enjoy postseason success than teams that simply lead the league in individual categories on offense or defense.
The Ontario Rugby Football Union, 1883 by Robert Sproule. The late author remembers the inaugural year of the ORFU, which was the first league in North American football, and established schedules, common rules, and a provincial championship—the Challenge Cup playoffs at the end of the year—where Toronto defeated Ottawa 9–7, despite Ottawa’s unsuccessful protest, and helped lay the foundation for the development of Canadian football.
Pirates without Firepower: The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and NFL Expansion by Sean M. Miskimins. The inaugural Bucs team made history for all the wrong reasons, going 0–14, getting shut out five times, and occasionally struggling just to find their way onto the field. But a comparison with fellow expansion team Seattle reveals that the 2–12 Seahawks weren't exactly world-beaters either, despite having standouts like Jim Zorn and future Hall of Famer Steve Largent. Both franchises would eventually find success, proving that even the worst beginnings don't necessarily lead to a lifetime of losing.
Ten Things You Probably Don’t Know About the Tampa Bay Bucs by Shane Bernard. Continuing the pirate theme from the previous story, the Buccaneers’ early history was a wild ride, from an embarrassing 0–26 start to an improbable trip to the 1979 NFC Championship Game. Along the way came legendary defenders, record-breaking running backs, quarterbacks who became Super Bowl heroes (elsewhere), and enough kicking disasters to give the franchise’s first head coach John McKay nightmares. As he famously put it when reflecting on his time in Tampa, “My whole career here was a missed extra point.”