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Astounding True Fact

In their opening game of the season, the New York Giants rushed 28 times for 286 yards, an average of over 10 yards a carry! They lost anyway, defeated 26-21 by the Indianapolis Colts.

Let's put that figure in context. Ten and 2/10ths yards a carry is almost double Jim Brown's career mark of 5.2. Running the football dominates the game's time and space to such an extent teams which gain 150 or more yards on the ground win over 80 percent of the time. Giants aside, such squads were 4-1 yesterday. New York ran for almost twice that many yards.

Because teams run more with a lead, simply rushing for more yards than the enemy is usually a token of victory. Excluding New York, clubs that did went 10-3 in Week One (there are two more games tonight).

The Colts ran for 55 yards. The 231 yard differential in the two teams' rushing yardage is more than all of the total yards gained running by all but one of the other teams in the league. The Giants ran for at least twice as many yards as all but two other teams.

By the reckoning of every coach since Walter Camp, the Giants should've won last night by something like a 31-10 score. But they lost. Their football took hysterical bounces.

Yours truly, no longer a full-time newspaper employee, can no longer get the Elias Bureau to return his calls. But I'll bet Steve Hirdt and everyone else in their office today a beer that what happened in the Meadowlands last night never, ever happened before in the history of the National Football League.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:17 AM