Thread: Greatest Team Tourney

1998 Broncos 37 - 1959 Giants 16

The Broncos were staked to a decisive lead early by their special teams. Vaughn Hebron took the opening kickoff 90 yards for a TD, and later in the quarter Darrien Gordon took a punt back 67 yards to the 5 yard line to set up a second Denver TD. This was a case of a pair of great return men up against one of the worst kick coverage teams ever, and it proved decisive. It had zero to do with clever strategy on my part, but I was happy for the gift points regardless.

I had worried some about generating points against this Giants team, and rightly so, as the Broncos were held under 300 yards in offense and Terrell Davis was bottled up pretty much as completely as 98 Davis can be bottled up, to the tune of only 3.5 yards per carry and under 90 yards total. Elway did hit one big pass to McCaffery for a 62 yard score in the second quarter, beating a Giants team jammed on the LOS to stop Davis.

Charley Conerly played pretty well, but was done in by weak pass blocking and a pokey running attack. Essentially, unless Frank Gifford was lined up as a RB I was happy to ignore the other Giants backs, especially given the lead I had gotten thanis to the return game. Bob Schnelker beat Eric Brown for a 37 yard catch, but apart from that he returned to human form.

The 59 Giants were far and away the toughest defense I faced with 98 Denver, and they are truly formidable - but their kick coverage was a time bomb that finally went off, and their offense is too low wattage to come back from the early disasters that they faced in this game. the Giants are an efficient ball control, team that plays error free and is great at protecting a lead. That was not to be the case tonight.

http://dreadnoughttourney.blogspot.c...1_archive.html

Yea, thats what im talking about... woot!

Kind of anticlimactic: A tournament of the greatest teams in NFL history decided by a couple kick returns. I realize the margin was >14, but both coaches probably call a different game without those two early TDs.

I may have to fire up Greatest Teams Tourney II, with Strat-o-matic @ 3 weeks away from releasing their 2013 teams. From previews I have read and some email exchanges I have had with the developer team, 2013 Denver will be lethal on offense, the first team ever with three receivers getting maximum possible ratings (DT, Decker, and Welker) and possibly the best QB card they have ever done. On the down side they say the RB's will be pretty pedestrian, the pass defense will be soft, and the MLB (Woodyard) terrible. Seattle should have a pass defense that looks like something from 1974.

And speaking of which they are also doing 1956 and 1974 this year. The 74 Steelers might rate a spot in the tourney, though the starting QB will probably not be Bradshaw but a nearly forgotten stiff named Joe Gilliam, who actually beat out Bradshaw in pre season that year. The damned 74 Raiders will also be tough. 1956 Chicago looks fascinating; they had a QB named Ed Brown who averaged a ridiculously good 9.9 yards per attempt. By comparison, PMFM hit for 8.3 per attempt last year. The Bears led the league in scoring, rushing, yards gained, and were second in yards passing. They had a 1126 yard rusher when that was very rare (Rick Casares) and WR Harlon Hill who gained 1128 yards - all in a 12 game schedule in a run heavy era - averaging an almost absurd 24 yards per catch...

...and then they got destroyed by the heavily underdog NY Giants for the title, 47 - 7. I think we have seen that plot played out in later years too.

That would be fun to do again although I'd like to see the format changed. Maybe brackets for best Steeler teams, best Patriot teams, best 49er teams, best Colts teams, best Cowboy teams, best Broncos teams and two brackets of "others" (maybe broken down into AFC and NFC) That way, the final rounds will feature some true classic matchups without one franchise dominating. Or, even better, have brackets that are [half-Bears, half-Packers], [half-Broncos, half-Raiders], [half-Steelers, half-Browns/Ravens], [half-Cowboys, half-Giants/Redskins], [half-Patriots, half-Dolphins] and three wild card brackets for remaining teams.

Originally Posted by OrangeHoof

That would be fun to do again although I'd like to see the format changed. Maybe brackets for best Steeler teams, best Patriot teams, best 49er teams, best Colts teams, best Cowboy teams, best Broncos teams and two brackets of "others" (maybe broken down into AFC and NFC) That way, the final rounds will feature some true classic matchups without one franchise dominating. Or, even better, have brackets that are [half-Bears, half-Packers], [half-Broncos, half-Raiders], [half-Steelers, half-Browns/Ravens], [half-Cowboys, half-Giants/Redskins], [half-Patriots, half-Dolphins] and three wild card brackets for remaining teams.

Thasts an interesting idea. I was also thinking about reducing the number of teams to 32 and using a World Cup format

You have 50 Super Bowl winners now so a 32-team field would almost have to be a tournament of SB winners and a few NFL Champions before 1966.

Oh, you mean four-team round robins before single elimination. That would be cool. Of course, almost nobody ties and you can probably use head-to-head to settle most elimination issues.

I enjoyed this, would like to see you do another one Dread.

So if you make a 32-team field, I'd make it so that only SB champions and league titlists would be eligible but, because some seasons are unavailable, I made exceptions for 62 Houston and 67 Oakland because those franchises get screwed by having some of their best seasons not available. Then I "drew" the groups simply by chronological order and came up with this:

Group A: 56 NYG, 68 NYJ, 85, CHI, 00 BAL
Group B: 57 DET, 69 KC, 86 NYG, 02 TAM
Group C: 58 BAL, 70 BAL, 91 WSH, 04 NE
Group D: 62 HOU, 72 MIA, 92 DAL, 06 IND
Group E: 63 SD, 77 DAL, 94 SF, 08 PIT
Group F: 64 BUF, 78 PIT, 96 GB, 09 NO
Group G: 66 GB, 83 LAR, 98 DEN, 12 BAL
Group H: 67 OAK, 84 SF, 99 STL, 13 SEA

Let me explain that I wanted each "dynasty" to have just one representative so even though the Steelers won four times in the 70s, they get one entrant (I tried for the best available team or the signature team of that period). The Brady era Patriots got one team, the Montana-led 49ers got one team, etc. and, of course, I wanted diversity between teams from all eras. Of course, perennial bridesmaids like the 70s Vikings, the 80s Broncos and the 90s Bills seem left out but that's history folks.

The first round of each group is a round robin, all tiebreakers are head-to-head and the round of 16 on down are single elimination. That's you World Cup-style tournament: