I don’t understand this at all in the context of this thread. This is the same Vinny Testaverde who won the Heisman Trophy, was the first overall pick in the NFL draft, and who is in the top ten all-time in passing yards, completions, and touchdowns in NFL history, right? What exactly is there to doubt? He’s had a very good career in the modern area, where offenses and defenses are more complicated, where things happen much faster, and where the position of quarterback is infinitely more demanding. If you transported him back into a time when the position required less, how could he have been worse?
And bump, that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? I mean, what you’re saying about Jack Lambert’s contemporary equivalent is just another way of saying that players in those days were too slow and too light to compete in today’s NFL. Jack Lambert with another 45 pounds of muscle and with 4.5 speed wouldn’t be Jack Lambert. He’d be a much better player, physically and skills-wise, which is what the OP asked. If we’re assuming that we’re allowed to “update” players physically, we’re assuming away the question.
I’ve been arguing this point for years. IMO, the worst NFL team this year would beat the best team 20 years ago. Same goes for basketball. I also think Lennox Lewis would dominate Muhammed Ali. Baseball’s a bit different (assuming you discount for steroids) because the sport is much older, and because speed and power aren’t as valued as in other sports. In baseball, today’s teams are better, but ot THAT much better.
Agreed. Nobody is suggesting that todays players are genetically different than players 20 years ago. Today’s players benefit from nutrition, training and “medical” improvements, that make today’s teams bigger, stronger and faster than prior teams.
Your post made me do a little research, and you might be surprised by a few facts.
You regard Vinny Testaverde as a mediocre quarterback, and most fans probably share your opinion. And yet…
If you compare Vinny’s stats to those of the superstars of yesteryear, you’ll notice something interesting: Vinny’s stats are, in many ways, much better than the old time stars’.
Vinny has a career completion rate of 56.6%
How does that compare to some Hall of Fame quarterbacks?
Bart Starr 57.4%
Roger Staubach 57.0%
Fran Tarkenton 57.0%
Bob Griese 56.2%
Johnny Unitas 54.6%
Terry Bradshaw 51.9%
Get the idea? In SPITE of the fact that Vinny Testaverde faced defenses far tougher than his predecessors did, this “mediocre” quarterback’s completion percentage was about as good as that of yesteryear’s “superstars”!
In the Seventies, a 60% completion rate was considered remarkable. Today, it’s EXPECTED!
To continue the hijack re Vinny Interceptaverde, his most important stats are his interception rate and his yard per attempt rate, the first of which is and always has been way too high, and the second of which has always been too low. Vinny gets into the HOF the same way I do, by buying a ticket. Consider:
Vinny’s lifetime QB rating is a mediocre 75.2. Cite . Sure, he had a 101.6 rating in 1998. That doesn’t balance out his 59.0 rating in 1991 or his 69.0 rating in 2000.
The fact that that bum is still good enough to be employed as a pro quarterback is damning proof that the quality of pro football has not improved as much as the NFL and its propaganda machine would have you believe. I think bump is correct in that given the inherent advantages in pay (yesterday’s players had to work real jobs in the offseason, like selling insurance and unloading beer trucks), training and nutrition (and steriods?) today’s players have over the oldsters, that the oldsters would aquit themselves very well if given the same advantages.
FWIW, as for completion percentage, while having a high one is nice, I believe in rating quarterbacks by adjusted yards per attempt, (Yds-(Int*40))/Att) as per Ignatin and Barra’s book Football By The Numbers 1986
Make that the last two decades or so. Granted, he was saddled with some serious loser-teams in the early part of his career, but it seemed worth pointing out that Vinny’s in his 20th NFL season.
Yeah, I was trying to gloss over his bad days in Tampa. Actually, Testaverde’s first season in Cleveland (1993) was decent … and from then on, he’s been mostly (not perfectly) solid, with a few high INT seasons thrown in.
Well… no more than if we assume that Albert Einstein wouldn’t be a succesful physics professor these days, because he wouldn’t know how to use a computer or any of the knowledge learned since his death.
Einstein would still be one of the greats, only he’d use computer simulations, etc… to do his work.
Jackknifed Juggernaut, Ellis Dee. Time to put up or shut up.
Here’s the link and if you want to actually have something to base the contests on, here it is.
That site is an AMAZING time waster and argument settler. Actually, if someone wants to run a whatif sports league (or even me if there’s interest) I’m down for that.
The first game, with the 85 Bears at home against the 05 Cardinals, the Bears won 41-17.
Bob Griese is considered one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. His son Brian is considered a mediocrity (he’s now on the bench, backing up Rex Freaking Grossman).
Look at the numbers. On the whole, Brian Griese’s stats are BETTER than his Dad’s!
I know it’s counterintuitive. And yet, it’s true. Brian has a better completion percentage. He has a better TD to interception ratio. His yardsa per attempt are similar, though not quite as good.And yet, Brian is widely seen as a bust, as a kid who couldn’t measure up to his old man.
I’m not saying Bob wasn’t great- I merely point out that, in 2006, a quarterback with Bob Griese’s overall numbers would be viewed as subpar. The job is a lot harder than it used to be.
It may be true that what I was responding to is no more true than your new scenario, but that’s because they both miss the point. Albert Einstein, if we pretend he was born at a different time, would know how to run computer simulations, obviously. But if we jumped in a time machine, abducted Einstein, and stuck him in a classroom right this second, he’d have no idea what a computer was. That’s what the OP asked:
Which is the equivalent of asking if we instantaneously transported a 2006 team and a 70s or 80s team to the same field and had them play, who would win? As I said, if you’re going to pretend that players in the 70s were actually players from 2006, you’re getting rid of what appears to be the crux of the issue, which is whether or not players today are physically better than players were then.
And Least, whatifsports, as a mechanism for settling arguments, is about as effective as painting the names of two teams on the backs of a couple of rats and having them fight to the death to settle the issue.
Arguably less effective for this question. WIS uses normalized statistics from a single year to generate the rating that they use in their game simulation. So if you pitted the Hogs of the 80s against this year’s Bears defense, the sim wouldn’t penalize the 'Skins for their undersized O-line.
