On Brees and Marino, again.

I was reading some football fan's blog post on why NFL teams don't pass more when passing has a higher effectiveness rate that rushing.  They mentioned that in 1978, the NFL enacted some rules changes that increased passing effectiveness.  From 1979-1984, when Marino set the old record, passing yards and attempts increased steadily.  Marino's record in 1984 was over 1000 yards what the record was in 1978.  But it didn't just happen overnight. Dan Fouts threw for 4000, 4700, and 4800 yards, thus pushing the record up.  When Marino broke it, he was only about 200 yards from the previous record, and 500 off the 4 year average (not counting 1982's short season).  Brees was 400 yards off the previous record and 700 off the 4 year average.

That, however, is not the point of the post. Look at the graph below: it shows the year-to-year passing leaders for the combined NFL from 1973 to 2011.  Note the incredible difference in totals BEFORE the rules change in 1978 and after (that dip is the 1982 strike season of only 8 games).  Nearly 2000 yards in three years.  Note, however, that the leaders' totals have remained somewhat constant for the next twenty years.


Marino's record is largely the result of changing passing rules, as is evident in the success passers had since the rules changes in 1978.  The results of those rules changes happened overnight.  The same cannot be said of Drew Brees' stellar effort.  If the rules changes were so important to his record, you'd think that there would be a burst of records set immediately following the rules changes, which didn't just happen this year; this would mimic the events of 1979.  That didn't happen.

So what did?  For one, the lockout eliminated training camp, which cut down time for defensive units to mesh.  This is evident in the fact that about 7 QBs were on pace to shatter, obliterate, and destroy Marino's, and Brady's passing records by week 3.  That evened out as defensive units started their meshing.

In essence, the lockout was an equalizer.  In 1984, its hard to think that defensive units had figured out how to stop pass-happy teams like the Chargers and Dolphins when most of the teams still relied on the run.  The defense was thus at a large disadvantage.  In 2011, sure there were rule changes, but those changes were mitigated by the fact that defensive units have been seeing pass-happy teams for nearly 20 years.  Teams have placed high-priority on top-notch corner backs to counter the threat of the passing attack, and pass-rushing linemen and linebacker/linemen hybrids are more and more common.

Thus, it appears to me that Drew Brees effort is at least equal to Marino's.