Yeah, that’s why looking at all these season stats like 1,000 yard rushing or receiving, or 4,000 yards passing, you can’t really compare era’s. Not only due to the number of games, but also to the way the rules have been changed so significantly to get more offense, and especially passing offense, into the game. Between the roughing the passer and pass interference rules, today’s game is totally different. When Namath threw for 4,000 yards, he did in in 14 games and DBs could mug receivers. When Jim Brown ran for 1,000 yards, it was in a lot fewer games. You can only really just compare players and stats against contemporaries…I can only imagine what guys like Montana or Fouts or Marino would be doing in today’s game.
That’s why the talk of all these records on broadcasts irritates the fuck out of me. Especially when they’re very volume type of stats.
Right…the volume stats like 4000 passing yards or 1000 rushing or receiving yards per year are not comparable. If I’m not mistaken, Jim Brown would get 1000 yards in a 12 game season…that equates to 83 yards per game, which would translate to 1416 yards in today’s 17 game season 4000 yards in Namath’s 14 games would translate to 4857 yards in today’s 17 games, but even that’s not truly apples to apples because the rules were so different I think it’s fair to compare Mahomes to Burrow or Allen for example…they are playing in the same era with the same rules…but hard to compare them to guys like Marino or Montana or Terry Bradshaw or Roger Staubach…totally different games
Agreed. I think passing yards and receiving yards irritate me the most. Rushing yards is still very respectable IMO since it’s very hard these days for backs to stay healthy and get the volume of carries in a heavy passing league to get the volume stats.
