All Time Fantasy Seasons
If fantasy football had been around as long as the NFL these seasons would have gone down as some of the greatest fantasy seasons ever.
By Guest Blogger, Ron Bishow
Fantasy Football has actually been around since 1962, but it really didn’t become as wildly popular as it is now till the late 90s when the Internet really took off. Can you imagine playing fantasy without the Internet? You would need a calculator and a lot of graphs. Thank god for Yahoo right?
So since the majority of people didn’t really start playing fantasy till the end of the last decade many of the greatest seasons of all-time have never really been taken into fantasy consideration. Yes, there were great seasons before Tom Brady and LT. So just imagine where you could have put your fantasy trophy if you had these players in these special seasons.
Dan Marino 1984
Considering the season Tom Brady had let’s start with the quarterback positions. In 1984, just his second season mind you, Marino set NFL marks for yards (5,084) and touchdown passes (48). He was the first QB ever to pass for 5,000 yards in a season, and Manning and Brady just got to those numbers in the past few years. Remember you are also talking about a league that wasn’t as pass happy and didn’t have the enforcement of the illegal contact rule that came in after 2004, which penalizes defenders who touched receivers more than five yards away from the line of scrimmage.
Jerry Rice 1987
Everybody saw Randy Moss break Rice’s single season touchdown record in the final game of the season against the Giants with 23 scoring catches. What some people seem to forget is that Rice scored his 22 touchdowns in just 12 games because of the players’ strike. Think about that? It doubled the 11 touchdowns scored by Philadelphia wide receiver Mike Quick who had the second most, and Rice won the MVP of the league.
Rice of course made his mark in the fantasy era with years like 1995 when he caught 122 passes for a league record 1,848 yards and 15 TDs. Yes, seven less then in 1987.
Eric Dickerson 1984
What a year 1984 would have been for fantasy right? The same year of Marino comes one of the great seasons for a running back ever. Dickerson rushed for 2,105 yards, which is still the single season record, and he did it in 15 not 16 games. He also did it by setting a record by passing the 100-yard mark 12 times that season. That is remarkable consistency, which is what every fantasy player wants, not just a couple of huge games. He averaged 5.6 yards-per-carry and scored 14 touchdowns in, like Marino’s, just his second season in the league. His career didn’t totally live up to what that season showed, but he was one of the greatest pure runners ever.
Piggy backing on Dickerson above, O.J gained 2,003 yards in 1973 in just 14 games, which is till one of the more amazing feats in NFL history. That included back-to-back 200-yard games to end the season.
Reggie White 1987
Not every league plays with individual defensive players, but Jerry Rice wasn’t the only person to put up huge numbers in a strike-shortened season. White posted 21 sacks in just 12 games, which is just ridiculous. Michael Strahan broke White’s record in a full 16 game season with just 22 ½ sacks in four more games. If White had a full season he might have gotten to 30 sacks. That may never be done, which is a shame because it could have been.
This is just another case for labor harmony isn’t it?
Ron Bishow has been reporting on the sports world for the past seven years for AOL, Tribune interactive and CO-ED Magazine among others. He is such a fantasy sports fanatic he plays fantasy NASCAR. He is currently a contributing writer and video producer at newyork.metromix.com.
Tags: all-time-fantasy-seasons, dan-marino, eric-dickerson, Fantasy Football Tips, fantasy-football, fantasy-football-advice, reggie-white, ron-bishowRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Fantasy Football Advice, NFL Player Analysis
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