Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I haven't mentioned the Saints yet. It's tough for me to invite them into this hypothetical with that 44-10 egg they laid in that Wild Card game. A great 10-2 non-scab regular season they had in that inaugural playoff year of theirs. Despite '87 being another strike year, I was excited over their s...

Their postseason opponents were definitely on the less challenging side of things (Atlanta and Detroit in 1991 show up as fairly average teams statistically, but with better records than their stats, and the Bills team they faced was arguably the weakest of the four Super Bowl Bills teams), they al...

I'm eager to hear how a 14-2 team that routed its three playoff opponents by an average score of 34-14 -- and that had playoff wins the season before and the season after -- can be considered a fluke. Two words- Mark Rypien. The epitome of 15 minutes of fame. Guy got to play an easy schedule and su...

This might be a bit of a hot take, but I think in both 89 and 91 the Bronco defense played better than they did in 1987. 89 was number one by points, and third by yards per play, and 91 was third by points and eighth by yards per play. 1991 may have been the best and deepest. They added rookie OLB ...

We hear all the time about Joe Gibbs winning 3 Super Bowls with 3 different QB's.

I think he gets a bit too much credit for those titles considering 2 of them were in asterisk strike seasons and 1 of them was basically a fluke year

As Bill Parcells said in 1989 - the Broncos of that era were a team that could not deal with power. I think they would have fared better against the Vikings than the Redskins. A very Parcellian quote indeed. He absolutely hit on it. They were a talented, well coached team, a team that can beat anyo...

With the 88 49ers, my what-if is different:

They were two miracle plays (Hail Jerry, Young's crazy run) from 4-7

What if they lose those Giants/Vikings games? Even at 8-8/9-7, they'd have missed out entirely

How differently do the 88 playoffs play out with no SF?

The Bengals in 85,86, 87 and 89 just underachieved despite a powerful offense. Tough players on defense, especially Williams, Krumrie and Fulcher but not enough big plays as a group. Thats why I dont see Esiason as a HOF or HOVG QB ... Talented but not clutch enough, similar to Anderson, who achiev...

In the three plus decades since Cowher and Tomlin have coached PIT, their have only been 2 Steeler teams to lose double digit games. Both did it in opposite ways: '99 came off the heels of THAT coin toss got off to a decent 5-3 start before cratering after an inexplicable Cleveland loss at home (whi...

The 2003 Broncos were a paper tiger. Only 2 of their 10 wins were against teams that finished above .500 (compared to the 2005 team winning 7 times against teams with winning records) The way they got humiliated by Indy was further proof that Miami should have gotten in. Denver only made it because...