RAND: An escape from reality

[C-Mac]

RAND: An escape from reality
Dec 27, 2007, 6:07:47 AM by Jonathan Rand - FAQ

Fantasies are everywhere around the holidays. Santa even delivered a playoff spot for the Chiefs.

One of my teenage son’s Christmas gifts was Madden 08 (which was released last summer) and he immediately coached the New England Patriots to a Super Bowl victory. That was hardly a surprise. The real shock was that, in video game land, the Chiefs reached the AFC championship game before falling to the Patriots 35-7.

In real life, Larry Johnson may have missed half the season, but in video land he broke NFL single-season records for carries, 504, and yards, 2,326.

He was joined in the Pro Bowl by wide receiver Eddie Kennison, tight end Tony Gonzalez, defensive end Jared Allen, safety Greg Wesley and kicker Justin Medlock. Herm Edwards was NFL coach of the year for guiding the Chiefs to an 11-5 regular season.

Medlock, actually cut after one game, was the NFL’s best kicker, according to Madden 08. Kennison, who’s never made as many as 70 catches over a solid career, was credited with 90. Who programmed this game? KC Wolf?

Yet, this is no less fantastic than trying to compare the real-life Patriots to other great teams in NFL history. Just the other day, I saw Miami Dolphins head of football operations Bill Parcells on ESPN explaining how Patriots quarterback Tom Brady would likely pick apart the zone defense of the 1978 Pittsburgh Steelers. That’s assuming, of course, that Mean Joe Greene would not kick Brady in a sensitive spot before he could start throwing touchdown passes.

The longer the Patriots stay undefeated, the more frequent these comparisons will become. The most popular comparison, of course, is with the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who finished 17-0 and enjoyed the NFL’s first perfect season.

Should the Patriots finish 19-0, they would have to win this comparison. The 1972 Dolphins played only two teams in the regular season with winning records, the Chiefs and Giants.

And the 1972 Dolphins did not win a post-season game by more than seven points, though their 14-7 victory over the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl was actually pretty lopsided. But whether the Patriots, should they run the table, are better than the 1973 Dolphins is a tougher comparison.

That team went 12-2 during the regular season but really showed its dominance in the playoffs. The 1973 Dolphins beat the Bengals 34-16, then the Raiders 27-10 for the AFC championship. The Super Bowl, a 24-7 victory over the Vikings, was not much of a contest, either. The combined score for those post-season victories was 85-33.

Should the Patriots finish unbeaten, we’ll have to question if a 19-0 record deserves more credit than a 17-0 record, just because the schedule was expanded. Some, no doubt, will argue that the league was stronger in the good old days. Or weaker.

Inevitably, somebody will try to settle the argument technologically. A computer will be fed a mountain of statistics from the greatest teams of the NFL’s great dynasties and some championship team will be designated as the best of all time.

But after seeing what a computer could do with the 2007 Chiefs, I won’t be buying it.

[ottawa_chiefs_fan]

What? This must have taken him 20 minutes to write - I guess it is vacation time after all and nobody wants to do any work....

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by ottawa_chiefs_fan

What? This must have taken him 20 minutes to write - I guess it is vacation time after all and nobody wants to do any work....

Thi sis one of his better columns. They don't call him Johnathan Bland for nothing you know.

[talastan]

Franchise Translation: "Please stop asking to be like the Patriots, my buddy Carl doesn't want to spend the money. Otherwise how would he pay me for my great journalism" - Rand