The Sixty-Pack Edition

This was supposed to be the first edition of Running Numbers, where every so often numbers will be analyzed to see which teams, players and coaches are the best and worst at all things football.  This first edition was going to be about the worst teams since 1970, but in light of what happened last night in New Orleans, I have decided to spend some time talking about the "Blowout on the Bayou" or my favorite, the "Sixty-Pack on Bourbon Street".

I had a short discussion last night with a friend who called the Saints "classless" for running up the score against her way shorthanded Colts.  While I understand the feelings that happen when the favorite team is getting beaten badly, I disagree that the Saints did anything out of line.  New Orleans threw the ball ten times less than their season average last night, and seemed pretty content to run the ball on first and second down and let the clock run for most of the second half, including not calling a pass play in the fourth quarter.  If the Colts didn't want them to score anymore, they should have stopped a running play on defense.  I usually don't accuse teams of running up the score very much, because the team that is down rarely quits trying to run their offense.  An example is the Saints' last touchdown last night, which came on a pick-six by Curtis Painter.  If Indianapolis does not want to risk the score getting further out of hand, they shouldn't have been throwing the ball.  Hand it off, kneel on the ball when you get it, and go home.  Thanks for not showing up.  I would never tell a team that is losing that badly to quit.  I would also never tell a team that is winning by fifty points to quit playing.  They didn't throw it deep or do anything to try and slow down the game.  The Colts were so demoralized that they gave up 78 yards on the Saints' last twelve offensive plays.  They were all runs, and the last five were all behind the right guard.  That is as close to mercy from the Bill Parcells/Bill Belichick/Sean Payton coaching tree as you're gonna get.

There have been only twenty-two occurrences of a team scoring 60 points, including the playoffs, since 1940.  Three of those were in the AAFC in the 1940s.  The last time it happened was in the 1999 playoffs, where Jacksonville beat Miami by the same 62-7 score as last night, in Dan Marino's last game.  The last time a team was defeated by 55 or more points during the regular season was actually the 1973 New Orleans Saints who lost (surprise!) 62-7 to the Atlanta Falcons on opening day.  While last night's blowout was partly due to Peyton Manning not playing, that game got out of hand because Archie Manning was playing and throwing six interceptions.

The Cincinnati Bengals beat the Houston Oilers 61-7 in 1989.  I can't find the play by play for this game, so bear with me while I try to explain what happened in this game.  In an example of exactly what the Saints didn't do last night, I believe the score was 45-0 when the Bengals kicked off straight up in the air after a long touchdown pass.  The Oilers weren't ready for it, and one of the Bengals' players recovered the free ball, leading to another touchdown.  That is running up the score.

The Colts can take something from the fact that last night was not the biggest blowout loss in pro football history, it is just tied for fourth.  Pittsburgh beat the Giants 63-7 in 1952, and Cleveland beat Washington 62-3 in 1954, but the blowout of all time continues to be the 1940 NFL Championship Game.  Stats and boxscores were in their football infancy in those days and are often incomplete or hard to find, but this was a championship, so the whole thing is there.  The Chicago Bears beat the Washington Redskins 73-0.  Three Washington QBs (including Slingin' Sammy Baugh) threw eight interceptions, three of which the Bears brought back for scores.  There was no free substitution in this era, so one of the strangest facts about this game to a modern football fan is that there were five different Bears players who successfully kicked extra points in this game.

So the Colts have escaped the distinction of playing the worst game in history, now all they have to do is win a game so they don't end up on that Worst Teams list I've been working on.