A Player’s Statistics Must Be Measured In the Context of His Era

July 12, 2010   ·   Carl Ragsdale   ·   Jump to comments

When evaluating a football player, statistics are by far the most popular measure. While it has many flaws, the stat sheet does do a decent job of giving us an idea of how successful any one player is. The danger of statistics is that, taken alone, they can be the most misleading measure of a player's success.
An important component of a player's statistics is the time in which he played in and what was typical of that time. Without this component, it becomes impossible to compare players of different eras, with rules so different that it is almost like playing a different game.
One exaggerated example of this mistake would be to compare the statistics of Dan Marino and Sammy Baugh. Both are Hall of Fame quarterbacks and two of the greatest ever. However, a statistical comparison would be ridiculously lopsided in favor of Marino because the era he played in allowed for passing statistics that would have been alien in Baugh's era.
This brings me to the point of my article...

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