The Pythagorean NFL: Points of Departure

I think one of the reasons not too many people comment on my Pythagorean NFL thread is because the points of departure are buried under game stories and confusing standings. (There's also the matter of my chronology being blown to hell soon after the thread started, but that was due to issues not entirely in my control.) So what I'm going to do is lay out some of the major PODs and give people a place to discuss them if they wish without having to read the game stories or sift through the standings. I'm going to start with the Super Bowl era, since that's the timeframe most of us are familiar with. If there's interest, and I can find any from 1920-65 that might have an impact on today's league, I'll post them later.

Here we go with POD #1:

It's 1976. The Oakland Raiders, who of course won the Super Bowl in real life, miss the playoffs altogether with a record of 10-4. This means that the two-time defending world champion Pittsburgh Steelers roll through the AFC like a cement mixer through putty finishing 13-1, winning the AFC championship over the Baltimore Colts, and moving on to their fourth consecutive Super Bowl appearance. (They lost Super Bowl VIII to the Minnesota Vikings.)Their opponents are the upstart San Francisco 49ers, who finish 10-4 and upset both the Vikings and the Los Angeles Rams to get to Pasadena.

The game is a hard-fought defensive struggle, with the Niners pulling their third consecutive major upset 10-7 thanks to quarterback Jim Plunkett's last-second touchdown pass to wide receiver Willie McGee.

Questions:

1) Is that win enough to establish Plunkett as the long-term starter in San Francisco?

2) How does this affect the job security of head coach Monte Clark, who quit in real life after this season because of philosophical differences with general manager Joe Thomas?

3) Assuming that Clark stays in Frisco well into the eighties, where does Bill Walsh end up? Does he finally get the job in Cincinnati at some point? Does he stay in college, either at Stanford or elsewhere? Might he end up with the Raiders job once John Madden retires in 1978?

4) Assuming that Plunkett's still effective over the next two years, what happens to Joe Montana?

5) Without the Super Bowl championship in '76, is John Madden still in as prime of a position to be a network broadcaster? What about the Raiders? What happens to their reputation without a Super Bowl in the seventies? (They also lost in the divisional round in '73 and '75, to make things even worse.)

Discuss any or all of the above.
 
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For the Raiders to miss the playoffs, they would have had to lose four more games. Here are the candidates:

Week 1 against the Steelers: They were down 28-14 with six minutes left. Take away the Harris fumble, and the Steelers win.
Week 3 at Houston: They won 14-13, but Oiler kicker Skip Butler missed two FG's. Have him make one more, and the Oilers win.
Week 6 at Denver: The Raiders won 17-10, but Denver was up 10-3 at halftime. If the Broncos could get one more turnover, maybe they pull it out.
Week 9 at Chicago: Raiders won 28-27, but Bear K Bob Thomas missed a FG at the gun.

Losses in all four games would have put the Raiders at 9-5, a game behind 10-4 Denver.

Here's how the 1976 AFC Playoffs would have looked:

11-3 NE at 13-1 Steelers
10-4 Denver at 11-3 Baltimore

Then, I agree that they beat the Colts in the AFC Title at home, although a loss to SF in the SB isn't realistic unless Franco and Rocky still got hurt as in OTL. To make your story work, we'll just say that those guys got hurt, and the 49ers won.

First off, I will address questions 1 and 2 together. Since the Debartolo's are still going to buy the 49ers (even after their SB win), maybe someone other than Al Davis gives them some advice: Don't hire Joe Thomas. You have a SB winning team, and Thomas's expertise isn't needed. They listen, and Monte Clark stays as HC and GM (in OTL, he quit when Thomas got the job. Monte hated him because of his days in Miami when Thomas was the GM there).

As a result, Plunkett and Monte Clark probably do stay with the 49ers into the 80's, depending on how the team does in the next several years (although, a SB gives you leeway). That means Jim doesn't end up in Oakland. So, there goes two of the Raiders' SB wins (fine with me).

As for Walsh, it's hard to say. He came close to getting the Ram job in 1978, but Carroll Rosenbloom changed his mind at the last second. If he doesn't go to SF in 79, he probably stays in Stanford for at least one more year or two. After that, where he ends up is anyone's guess, but an NFL team would have hired him at some point. Without Walsh in SF, Joe Montana would have lasted until the fourth round of the 1979 draft (at least). After looking at how the draft board went down, here is a guess: The Vikings would have drafted Joe in the fourth round (97th overall). They drafted a QB named Steve Dils there in OTL, but Montana was seen as the better prospect. And, the teams that had people interested either didn't have fourth-round picks (Packers, Bears) or already drafted a QB (Chiefs).

In closing, the 70's Raiders probably go down as one of the best teams ever not to win a ring. I still think that Madden would have been a TV personality, though. He was made for it.
 
In the Pythagorean universe, both the Broncos and the Raiders finished 10-4. It came down to tenths of a point; the Broncos finished with 10.3 expected wins, the Raiders with 10.0. They were also kept out of the wild card spot, since both the Patriots and Bengals finished with 10.5 expected wins.

I used all the Steelers' real-life injuries that were sustained in the real-life playoff game against the Colts. This meant that not only Franco and Rocky were hurt, so were Lynn Swann and kicker Roy Gerela. This meant that punter Bobby Walden had to kick field goals, and he shanked two badly and missed another one wide left. (In real life, Ray Mansfield was the backup kicker, but the idea of The Old Ranger trying to kick field goals in the Super Bowl was too much for this die-hard Steeler fan to take.)

Montana replacing Fran Tarkenton in Minnesota is quite an interesting idea, as is Walsh in Los Angeles with the Rams. Maybe they beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV with a Walsh-Montana combo, even if Joe was only a rookie. Remember how close Ray Malavasi and Vince Ferragamo came to pulling the upset in real life?

The next POD I'm going to post has to do with Clark's career in Detroit, just to let you know. Stay tuned!
 
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