Johnny Unitas’s consecutive games with a touchdown pass streak, Tony Dorsett’s 99 yard run, Pittsburgh’s six Super Bowls – these are all significant NFL records. However, there are other stats, streaks, and records that are not just of lesser importance, but meaningless altogether. These are the figures that get often quoted, but when you dig down deep, there is really nothing of substance. This week’s America Loves Countdowns® series looks at the ten most meaningless NFL stats and records. Special thanks to reader Dave S., who came up with many of these and let me shamelessly steal them for the purposes of this list.
Sack Records
Sacks were not officially tracked by the NFL until 1982. Prior to that, teams were required to tally their own sacks and nothing was ever official. That means that some of the greatest pass rushers ever – Deacon Jones, Dick Butkus, Joe Greene, etc. – are all technically ineligible for any major sack record. So while Michael Strahan’s 22.5 sacks in a single season is impressive, it is not really a true record, especially since Cincinnati’s Coy Bacon unofficially recorded 26 sacks during the 1976 season. Same deal with every other post-1982 sack “record”. As Jones once said, “Since when does ‘all-time’ begin in 1982?”
Redskins Pre-Season Scoring Record
In 2002, the sports media was flat-out giddy over the fact that Steve Spurrier was leaving Florida to coach in the NFL for the Washington Redskins. Certainly the “Old Ball Coach” would infuse excitement back into the NFL with his “Fun N’ Gun” offense. In a pathetic effort to hype Spurrier’s arrival, the media noted that the Redskins had set an NFL scoring record – for the pre-season! How can anything possibly be a record in games that do not count?! Against the Steelers that August, the Redskins scored 35 points, but that was only after the Steelers had taken a 24-0 lead and pulled all of their starters from the game! This so-called record hardly stood the test of time. Spurrier failed miserably and was back in the SEC a few short years later.
Buccaneers Cold Weather Streak
From their inception in 1976 until a cold day in Chicago in 2002, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers never won a game where the temperature at kickoff was less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a streak that was widely talked about every time that the Bucs headed into the cold-weather months, but it was overhyped and meaningless for two major reasons. First, Tampa Bay historically never won period, much less when it was cold outside. They once went thru a stretch of 14 consecutive losing seasons. The weather was the least of their issues. Secondly, how many games did they even play under those conditions? They played at least eight games in Florida every year, were in a division with two dome teams, and only risked playing in under-40 conditions if they had a northern road game late in the year. In fact, during the streak, the Bucs indeed played just 21 games in sub-40 temperatures. Can we really consider 21 games over 27 seasons to be any kind of a significant streak? I think not.
Sammy Baugh’s Punting Average Record
Sammy Baugh was one of the best NFL players ever. Almost 60 years after his retirement, Baugh still holds multiple quarterback records (most seasons leading the league in passing and most seasons leading the league in fewest interceptions). He is – and will always be – the only player to lead the league in passing, punting, and interceptions in the same season. But one of Baugh’s records, while impressive on paper, is fairly meaningless. In 1940, Slingin’ Sammy set an NFL record with a 51.4 punting average. Imagine what a team could do in terms of winning the field position battle if they were able to get over 50 yards per punt! The problem, however, is that Baugh’s average is inflated because he often did quick kicks – lining up at QB on 3rd down and then surprising the defense by booting a punt. It was a good strategy that caught teams off guard and would be used by football coaches for years to come (see Harris, Walt), but in reality, the record for the high average is overrated because with no return man, the ball easily bounced several extra yards on most of those punts.
Anything Involving the Coin Toss
Did you know the NFC has won 12 consecutive Super Bowl coin tosses? Hopefully not, because it means absolutely nothing. Regardless of whether or not a team wins the toss, they are still going to have to kickoff once and receive once. It’s just a matter of when. So it doesn’t matter if team X won the toss 600 games in a row, because its impact on their ability to ultimately win the game is minuscule.
Chris Gardocki’s Punt Block Streak
The Steelers signed punter Chris Gardocki in 2004, and right from the start, he proved to be an average punter at best. But Gardocki had one seemingly impressive characteristic: he held the NFL record for most punt attempts without a block, a streak that spanned nearly two decades. This seemed like a good deal. Maybe he didn’t punt very far and maybe he couldn’t pooch punt if his life depended on it, but at least we would never have a disastrous block ruin a game or a season again (and yes, a season had indeed been ruined by a blocked punt in the past – the 1993 season to be specific). But this “streak” turned out to be completely fradulent. In a 2005 game against the Jaguars, Gardocki had a punt blocked, but because the ball went forward and netted nine yards on the play, it wasn’t technically considered a block! That of course begged the following question: how many other “non-block” blocked punts did Gardocki have before that? Was it really a streak, or nothing more than a big fraud? After what happened against Jacksonville, it was clearly the latter.
Monday Night Football Records
Monday Night Football has had its share of memorable moments over the past four decades, and it has certainly become a huge part of the NFL. However, records set on Monday Night Football are meaningless. Are there any “Sunday at 4:00″ records? That’s just as significant as a record set because a game happened to be played on a Monday night. Consider that the NFL is the only sports league who ever keeps track of records based on what time a game takes place. The only point is for ABC/ESPN to prop itself up and promote the mystique of their program. That’s all well and good from their perspective, but it still holds zero relevance.
Passer Rating
In the list of best all-time career passer rating, Tony Romo, Trent Green, and David Garrard all rank in the top 20. Hall of Famers Johnny Unitas, Dan Fouts, and Terry Bradshaw don’t even crack the top 50. John Elway, who ranks #53, posted a dismal 51.9 passer rating when he won Super Bowl XXXII. Passer rating is a nice composite stat to help measure a quarterback’s performance, but it ultimately tells only part of the story and in no way can accurately be used to rate how good a player really is. Do you remember that Elway had a low passer rating in that Super Bowl, or that he dove for that key first down while spinning thru the air? Chances are you recall the latter, and that is one of many examples of performances that this stat just cannot track.
Team Scoring Records
Here is a little-known fact that you can always pull out when people don’t believe the mantra that defense wins Super Bowls: the five highest scoring offenses in NFL history have ALL failed to win a championship. Those five teams – the 2007 Patriots, 1998 Vikings, 1983 Redskins, 2000 Rams, and 1967 Raiders – all went far but ultimately fell short in their quest for a title. Scoring a bunch of points will help you get far, but ultimately winning the big one comes down to not allowing the other team to score points more so than scoring a bunch of them yourself.
Redskins White House Prediction
The stat here started out as the following: In the every presidential election since 1940 (after the Redskins franchise had moved to Washington D.C.), if the Washington Redskins have lost their last home game prior to the election, the incumbent party has lost the White House. When they have won, the incumbent has stayed in power. This created a lot of buzz when the Steelers beat the Redskins on the night before the 2008 election, causing many people to blame or credit the Steelers (depending on your viewpoint) for Barack Obama’s victory. First of all, it’s silly to give a football team any acknowledgement when millions of people are casting votes. Secondly, it’s not even true. The pattern broke in 2004 when the Packers beat the Redskins at Washington on the Sunday before the election. This supposedly meant that the incumbent party (Republicans at the time) would lose the White House, but instead George W. Bush defeated John Kerry and the Republicans stayed in power. So now the stat has been altered (much like Gardocki’s phony punt streak) from “incumbent party” to “party that won the popular vote in the previous election”. Altered in that manner, the stat holds true because the Democrats had won the popular vote in the 2000 election, but any stat or streak could be altered to keep it going. Maybe Joe DiMaggio could have had a 100 game hitting streak on days where it wasn’t cloudy. Or Cal Ripken could have played in 9,000 straight games where the playing surface was grass instead of artificial turf. When you have to alter a streak to keep it going, you render it meaningless.