San Francisco 89ers

I started watching football in 1989. In those heady days, George Bush (the first) reigned as president, the U.S.S.R. still existed, Thursday night on NBC was real "must-see TV," thanks to The Cosby Show and Cheers, and I was a huge Debbie Gibson fan. (Shaddap!)

And the San Francisco 49ers were the best football team on the planet, by far. And I've never really gotten over it.

Even though I only started watching football full time in '89, I can vaguely remember the Vikings' playoff games against the 49ers in the late '80s. There was the improbable victory in the '87 playoffs, which was followed by a pair of thrashings in '88 and '89. And then there was this game in 1988, from which you've almost assuredly seen this highlight. Sorry, Mike Vick, but you don't have the best run of all time by a QB against the Vikings. (In fact, you probably don't even have the second-best, but I can't find video of Vinny Testaverde's absurd 48-yard TD run against the team in this game.)

Joe Montana, Roger Craig, Jerry Rice, and even Steve Young are all long gone. Jeff Garcia and Ricky Watters and Terrell Owens all had their moments, but, for the better part of this decade, the 49ers have been a mediocre to bad team. Still, I still can't help but feel something special every time the Vikings play the 49ers. As a tribute, and because I wanted to play around with PFR.com's Play Index, here are some notable Vikings-vs.-49ers all-time stats:

First, unless I've missed something (entirely possible), the Vikings have played the 49ers 39 times in the regular season since 1960, and the teams are, rather unusually, deadlocked at 19-19-1.

The Vikings have only had 2 100-yard rushers against the 49ers. 49er RBs have achieved the feat 9 times, but not since 1992.

The 49ers also lead the 100-yard receiver contest, 14 to 9.

300-yard passers have been very rare in the rivalry, with just 3 for San Fran and 2 for Minny.

You might be a little surprised to see which 49er is tied for the most sacks in a game against the Vikings, instead of the other way around.

Meanwhile, the all-time leader for TDs for the Vikings against the 49ers is someone I've never heard of. On the other side of the coin, I think I have heard of this guy.

And only one guy has ever had just 200 all-purpose yards against the 49ers as a Viking. C'mon Adrian (or even Percy), you can do better than that!

Finally, a little music to get you jacked up for the game! I promise, it's not Rick Astley

Revisiting receivers

I knew something seemed a little amiss with yesterday's post, and it bugged me all afternoon. (I still need a life.) If I was trying to "prove" that the quality of a #2 receiver had no effect on a #1's yardage total, then I should start with the #2s and try to see what seasons their complementary #1s have.

So I made two changes to my initial analysis. First, I removed all instances of a #2 having a better season than a #1 on his same team, leaving me with 83 pairings. That way, I'll only be looking at #2s who were inferior (at least from a yardage standpoint) to their #1s. Second, I reversed the direction of my study by grouping the #2s together and seeing how their corresponding #1s performed.

As I did with #1s yesterday, I split the #2s into three groups, of 28, 27, and 28. The top 28 had the most yardage, the middle 27 the second most and the bottom 28 the least. If yesterday's "Situation A" is correct -- that, if you have a poor #2, the #1 will rack up great stats as the only viable receiver -- we'd expect that the low group should have the highest corresponding yardage for its #1s. If "Situation B" is correct -- that having multiple good receivers means that defenses can't concentrate on shutting down one or the other -- we'd expect the highest yardage to belong to the top group. Here's what we get:

	Avg. #2 Yds.	Avg. #1 Yds.
Top 28	1,185	1,362
Mid 27	873	1,358
Bot 28	584	1,381

These results seem to verify yesterday's results, namely that the quality of the #2 receiver has little to no effect on how many yards the #1 will rack up. With a very good #2, averaging nearly the same 1,200 yards I set as a minimum to qualify as a #1, #1s managed only 19 fewer yards on average than they did with a poor #2. The correlation between the two groups (which was changed only due to my removing the "#2 > #1" pairings and not by my sorting things differently) is 0.047, still small enough to be insignificant.

I read somewhere today that, with Terrell Owens gone, Jason Witten could have a huge season. Don't you believe it. Witten might very well have a great season, but it won't have the slightest thing to do with Terrell Owens, just as Lee Evans' 2009 won't have anything to do with Owens going to the Bills.

And besides, we all know the real reason the Cowboys passing game will improve this year...

Random thoughts for the day

Good luck, Matt. You were a great player for many years, and a quality guy. I know he was getting a bit long in the tooth and had lost a couple steps, but it'll be hard to see him suit up in another uniform. At least he'll still be wearing purple.

* Isn't it great that, among units of measurement in the U.S., we have the inch, the foot, the yard, the mile...and the football field?

Really, how many times have you heard something like, "The base of the Great Pyramid covers an area equal to 27 (I'm making that number up) football fields" or "The car traveled the length of a football field in just 1.7 seconds." That's what baseball gets for having all those wacky dimensions in their parks -- they can't be used as a standard unit of measure!

* I think I want Terrell Owens to go to the Bears, which is rumored to be one of the places he might end up (despite what this article says, I think the chance of him landing in Minnesota are just about nil). If he didn't like having Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb, and Tony Romo throwing to him, what would he think of Kyle Orton?

* Speaking of the Bears, can anyone tell me why Gale Sayers is in the Hall of Fame? I'm still puzzled by this. He was "good-Devin-Hester" on (a rather small number of) kickoff returns for three years, put up OK-but-not-great rushing numbers for five, and finished his career with less than 5,000 yards rushing. I'm still not getting something, obviously.

* No T.O. for the Vikings (I hope), but Torry Holt wouldn't be bad.

* Finally, while it's nice to browse pictures of Alyssa Milano all day, I'm puzzled by her choice of teams for her line of MLB apparel. If you'll notice the list on the left, there are 27 teams listed. The only ones not present are the Blue Jays, Rays -- both of whom rate near the bottom of the league in popularity -- and the Twins, who have been ranked considerably higher all decade.

Just for that, Alyssa, I'm only going to look at pictures of you for one hour today, instead of two. That'll learn ya.

ESPN = One big blog

Following the ESPN mandate of "Don't report bad things about Brett Favre" and their eventual "caving in" on the subject when Favre himself finally came forth, I made a decision. I wiped ESPN and ESPN2 (the only ones I get) from my channel list on my TV. Tony Kornheiser has become insufferable on PTI (and MNF, but I'll get to that in a second) and OpinionCenter -- I mean, CowboysCenter -- I mean, FavreCenterButOnlyWhenWeWantTo -- I mean, SportsCenter -- has only been vaguely watchable for some time. I can get my NFL coverage from the web or other networks on Sunday morning, so, really, what's left to watch? What am I missing?

The answer: not much. And I'm OK with it, after two weeks and counting.

And really, that's the only thing that will work. I'm not hooked up to a Nielsen box or anything, and I don't expect everyone else to shut out ESPN from their lives, but as long as people keep watching to see how Terrell Owens feels about Brad Johnson as his quarterback or what Woody Paige or Skip Bayless (two of the biggest wastes of air time on the whole network -- and if you don't believe me, read this) think about, well, anything, they'll keep shoving it down our throats.

So I don't watch it any more. I don't need half-educated opinions spouted at me from someone who claims to be an "expert." I can get just as good commentary from the web (especially some of the spectacular blogs I frequent). I have allowed myself, though, to watch actual sporting events, such as Monday Night Football and some college games. But all the noise and clutter and "to win in the NFL all you have to do is run the ball and stop the run" -- yeah, I don't need that.

In effect, ESPN has become a blog. It's full of people offering up their opinions on whatever the heck they feel like, only occasionally supported by facts and research, which is about the same level of quality "journalism" you get on the web. Let's face it: There's a lot of crap out there on the Internet. When you give people an essentially unfiltered platform to say whatever they want, they will, and a lot of it won't be very good. Unfortunately, ESPN has essentially given that same platform to many of its "personalities" (as long as they don't talk bad about Brett Favre) and the quality of their programming has likewise suffered for it.

I like to think that, as ESPN continues, people my age or younger, who actually understand the Internet and that the wide percentage of sports journalism is actually do-able by more people than the professionals would like us to believe, will eventually move into positions of power at the network and present more capable, more rational coverage that actually uses facts instead of opinions to push their stories. Heck, I could even live with feel-good, human interest stuff, like on E60. Because, you know, that actually resembles journalism. I can't go to a pro athlete and ask him about the car accident he was in when he was a kid and how it changed his life. When two guys are arguing about whether Kerry Collins will lead the Titans to the Super Bowl, using whatever flimsy arguments they feel like at the time, that's something you or I or any of those "uneducated masses" on the Internet could do.

And why should I watch on TV something I can get just as easily from the Internet or, even better, do up myself? Since I can't play football myself, I'll watch football on the station. And sometimes the actual anaysis (like what Ron Jaworski used to do in breaking down plays -- does he still do that ever?) is really good. But I don't need four weeks of how the Cowboys will be affected by Tony Romo's thumb injury, especially when every analyst -- every damn one I heard -- said Brad Johnson, who was 40 years old and hadn't been good in three years -- would do just fine. Guess what? He's 40 years old and hasn't been good in three years. He wasn't fine. Can't wait to hear all the talk this weekend about how Daunte Culpepper (who hasn't been good in four years) will be just what the Lions need. (He won't.)

And see? I can tell you that without you paying the cable company. Unless you go through them for your Internet, that is.