Obscure sports trivia

Tom Matte. (Although I'm certain it's after the implementation of the 16-game schedule.)

 

No on Matte, and definitely post 16 game season.

 

Roger Craig? (When you mention a back who's caught a lot of passes, he's the first that comes to my mind).

 

That is a great guess because of his pass receiving but he actually never hit 400 mainly because of Walsh’s spread the ball around offense.

 

I think James Wilder had 400-something rushing attempts for a really shitty Bucs team one year.

Crazy when you think about it.

 

My trivia question is based on some research I am doing on wilder’s 1984. On top of his 407 carries (which broke the record set the year before by Eric Dickerson), he also caught 85 passes. That’s 492 touches in a year. No one is within 35 of that number. He accounted for 60 percent of the team’s rushes/catches; 39 percent of the team’s overall yards and 33 percent of the touchdowns. He had 30 or more touches in 11 games, and 20 or more in 14.

While working on the piece, I started tracking the history of touches per game/season.

 

Very nice! After my guesses, I looked up 2,000 yard seasons and saw Dickerson, but never thought of Wilder.

 

Actually, first guy to break 400 touches in a season was Payton in 1979. In the 14 game schedule, Lydell Mitchell got to 372 one year. He would have cruised past 400 with two more games.

An interesting thing about Wilder’s year, the Bucs started 1-3 and he was only getting 25 touches per game. Over the last 12 games of the year, he averages 31 touches per game and they go 5-7.... 5-5 in games where he got 30 or more touches.

 

This isn't a trivia question as much as a cool observation from looking up the 1980 A's query.

The A's and Twins have played more games in their current locations but more seasons in their original cities. Thank the 162-game schedule for that (and a stop off in K.C. for the A's). That's not the case for the Giants, Dodgers and Braves, who remain behind in both seasons and games: partly because the National League had a 25-year head start.

 

He made some fantasy owners very happy that year.

 

You just made me go through my bookshelf in the basement to check publishing dates, because yes, there was a time before fantasy sports were ubiquitous.

I had read Okrent's "Rotisserie League" baseball guide around the same time frame, but hadn't heard of "fantasy football" until my brother bought me the 1984 edition of Jim Donaldson's Fantasy Football League Manual for Christmas in 1985. We began our league in 1986, so we'd have missed out on Wilder.

 

I was joking, although I figured there were some leagues out there where they calculated everything by hand with the Monday morning paper.