Sports Reference

First off, I'd like to begin by saying that I'm fine. Things are fine in my personal life. I spend appropriate amounts of time with friends and family, love to travel, enjoy meaningful employment and am an engaged citizen.

Now, that said, over the last few years I have been compiling and organizing a database of every individual season by a team that is currently available on ProFootballReference. I have then used this database to calculate Z-Scores for each individual stat for each individual team. Which is fine, Warren Buffett plays the ukulele, Aaron Rodgers makes his own soap and Sylvia Plath liked to bake. Everybody has their hobbies.

Here's the spreadsheet I'll be referencing in this post, which includes the complete ranking of all 2,053 individual team seasons, if you're interested.

What is Z-Score? Who cares. Most of you are probably barely skimming over this or skipping to the findings.

If you do care, head down to the Methodology section at the bottom of this post and you can tell me about all the ways in which this has been an extremely flawed undertaking.

For our purposes all you need to know is that, using Z-Score, I have devised a way to compare across different eras of the sport by comparing the raw numbers of a given stat (adjusted to per game averages to account for the differences in games played per season) to a given team's peers within their own era. So, for example, a team from 1973 rushing for 2000 yards as a team will have a lower score in "total rushing yards" than a team from 2015 rushing for 2000 yards because the average rushing totals from 1971-1975 are higher than 2013-2017, and it will take a higher mark from the 1973 team to overcome that handicap. And vice versa, if we are talking about passing yards or something like that.

A higher Z-score is better (except for in the case of Protection Score, because allowing sacks is not badass). a score of "0" is totally average. A score of "1" is very good. A score of "2" means they were one of the best performers in a given stat over a five year range if not the decade. A score of "3" means they are a historically significant outlier, and anything higher than that is utter ridiculousness.

I'm probably gonna be doing a lot of fun stuff with this database over the next few months, but I figured what more fun way to introduce you all to this index than something that seeks to objectively rank the most badass, smashmouth, hard-nosed, and physically terrifying teams in NFL history? To begin, we have to ask ourselves...

What does "badass" mean?

• Running the ball a lot (rushing attempts)

• Running the ball well (total rushing, "total" meaning a combination of yards, TDs and Y/A)