Response to Brian Burke's Washington Post article

By Mike Sommers

NB: I have also posted this on a site that I own and occasionally like to post to here.

I recently read Brian Burke’s article describing how coaches should avoid the mentality of trying to set up 3rd and short or 2nd and short and instead try to convert the first down.

It is not that I don’t agree with the article, but I wanted to consider several exceptions to that rule, and in the process came up with some interesting conclusions.

I can illustrate several instances where it’s best to NOT convert on first down. On 3rd however I can only think of 1, and it isn’t provable so much as it is intuitive, but I do have a statistical reference, unfortunately we just don’t have enough information to account for changes AS the play develops.

Brees, Unitas and DiMaggio: 47-Game Streaks Fifty Years Apart, and that 56-Gamer, in Perspective.

by Jim Glass

Drew Brees is collecting well-deserved congratulations on breaking what many have long considered to be the greatest record in pro-football: the streak of 47 consecutive games with a touchdown pass thrown, set by John Unitas during the 1956 through 1960 seasons. In my youth that was often compared to Joe DiMaggio's famous "unbreakable record" 56-game hitting streak in baseball. Last week it was again.

Yet Brees tied-and-broke that record with no fewer than seven TD passes in his last two games, while looking as if he's going to "keep on going and going and going" like that trademarked battery-packed bunny.

So just how "unbreakable" should these records be considered to be?  With all the changes in the game that have occurred during the last 60 years, has Brees' streak really matched Unitas' as being "comparably unlikely," an equal achievement against the odds?  And how do these streaks actually compare to DiMaggio's.   Here's a quick take:

Running the Numbers

How unlikely were the Brees and Unitas 47-game streaks?   To adjust for the different styles of play of different times, a reasonable measure is the probability of the average team of each era (not quarterbacked by Brees or Unitas) scoring at least one touchdown by passing for that many consecutive games.