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Super Bowl LII. Nine seconds left, New England down by eight. Tom Brady had already thrown for 505 yards, but the Patriots still needed another 51 yards from him to have a chance to extend the game. Brady launches a prayer to Rob Gronkowski, who …

… nearly comes down with it in the end zone. Had the Hail Mary been completed, Brady would have thrown for 556 yards, setting a new single-game passing yardage record. The current record, as trivia experts know, is 554 passing yards, set by Norm Van Brocklin way back in 1951.

Eight years ago, I first wrote about how Van Brocklin held the record for most passing yards in a single game. I’ll be reprinting and updating that post today.

Let’s begin with the obvious: Van Brocklin is a Hall of Famer and all-time great quarterback who, at his very best, produced some of the most efficient and valuable seasons in NFL history. He should be on most top-20 quarterback lists, and his net yards per pass attempt — one of the most basic but important measures of quarterback play — is the best of all time.

On the other hand, he set the record in 1951.  How the heck did that happen?  Below, I have plotted all games where a team has passed for at least 450 gross yards (that is, without deduction for sacks).  As you can see, the dot at (1951, 554) is a pretty large outlier: [continue reading…]

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Was this the best quarterback of his era?

Was this the best quarterback of his era?

There are a lot of great things about Football Perspective, but my favorite is the caliber of the commenters. The Football Perspective community is a great one, and has been going back to its days at the Pro-Foootball-Reference blog. In the recent Greatest QB of All Time, Wisdom of Crowds post, long-time commenters Kibbles and Brad O. got into a fascinating discussion in the comments about Norm Van Brocklin and Otto Graham.

I’ve decided to reproduce, unedited, their words here. Why? Well, for starters, I found the debate fascinating, but you may not have seen the whole thing buried in the comments. The Van Brocklin/Graham question is a great one, and any historian will enjoy reading their thoughts. I also present their words in an aspirational sense: the Football Perspective commenters are great, but these are the type of respectful, meaningful, and thought-out words that I hope breaks out more often.

I kicked things off by expressing a bit of disappointment that Van Brocklin finished only 25th in the Wisdom of Crowds poll.  He had a star-studded career, is the only quarterback to lead two different NFL teams to a title, and had some outstanding efficiency seasons. [continue reading…]

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