A Sound Floor Game
This post's title was supplied by one Larry Joe Bird, whom I overheard on the Celtics' team bus one road trip while reading the box score of the last night's game."It says here," Bird told some unfortunate teammate I forget but who may have been Rick Robey, the most frequent butt of Larry's sarcasm except for Danny Ainge, "you played a sound floor game. That means you didn't do shit."
Just so. As it turns out, this post is about football, not basketball. While researching my previous post on Super Bowl quarterbacks, I came upon a statistic I find mindbending now, even though it didn't seem so strange when I watched it happen.
In Super Bowl VII, the Miami Dolphins beat Washington 14-7. In Super Bowl VIII, they beat the Vikings 24-7. Neither game was close nor interesting at all, which is why those Dolphins have to celebrate themselves so hard today. Even at the time they were underappreciated.
In those two games, Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Griese threw a total of 18 (!!!!) passes, 11 in VII, a mere VII in VIII. To put that into perspective, Peyton Manning, who only put it up 23 times, threw his seventh pass of Super Bowl 50 in the first quarter.
Clearly, Hall of Fame voters of long ago placed a higher value on the art of the handoff than their 21st century peers. And Bob Griese has two rings that ought to have diamonds spelling out "sound floor game."
posted by Michael Gee @ 7:28 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Michael...Wow, I didn't know Griese only threw 11 and 7 times in those two Super Bowls. That's unbelievable, and I watched 'em both! I know teams can only play who's on their schedule, but that undefeated team in 1972 played only two teams above .500 all season, and both of them only 8-6. Nobody in their schedule made the playoffs.
Locally some media people are dismissive of the Pats success in the past 15 years based upon the weak division in which they play. Nobody brings that up when discussing the great 49ers dynasty of the 80s and 90s, but their 5 team division was the worst in football for many of those years. My college roommate always bragged about his Niners and how great they were...and they were, but they started each season playing 2 games each against 4 of the worst teams in football. That translates to an automatic 7 or 8 wins just by rolling out of bed.
So, it's all relative and eras change.
I admit though, I'd love someone (preferably the Pats) to end the Dolphins stupid champagne celebration one of these years...so close, so close in 2007.
Thanks Michael,
Scott
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