Opinions On Eveything

At OS one of the pet arguments that comes up is the disparity between the CFL and NFL To some posters the CFL is nothing more but a fancy offensive driven league that is a bastardization of football. That is a fallacy on the face of it since the game as we know it in Canada is much older then the American game. If anything the American brand of football is the bastardization. Now i'm one of the few that defend the CFL. We defenders won't say it's better but it's definitely a different game which emphasizes different things then the NFL does.

Anyways the latest round of talks came up after Damon Allen became the all-time leading passer in pro football history. a poster asked what would Allen's yard translate to in the NFL and so I decided to look at the '05 stats of both leagues and the passing in both to see just how different they are and how much a "canadian yard" would equal to an American one. Interestlingly there is a difference but not to the extent that I thought there would be.

Ok then here are the passing yardage of the top 9 QBs last year in the CFL compared to the top 9 in the NFL. Keep in mind the CFL has an 18 game schedule so the numbers will be a little inflated.

CFL

Anthony Calvillo 5556 yards 34/19 (TD/INT)
Ricky Ray 5510 yards 25/24
Damon Allen 5082 yards 33/15
Kerry Joseph 4466 yards 25/23
Henry Burris 4290 yards 23/12
Kevin Glenn 3571 yards 27/17
Dave Dickenson 3338 yards 21/5
Danny McManus 2544 yards 11/18
Marcus Crandell 2295 yards 12/11


NFL

Tom Brady 4110 yards 26/14
Trent Green 4014 yards 17/10
Brett Favre 3881 yards 20/29
Carson Palmer 3836 yards 32/12
Eli Manning 3762 yards 24/17
Kerry Collins 3759 yards 20/12
Peyton Manning 3747 yards 28/10
Drew Bledsoe 3639 yards 23/17
Drew Brees 3576 yards 24/15

OK well the yardage compares pretty well in terms of how they bunch together. I believe the last two guys in the CFL list didn't play full seasons.

Let's dig a little deeper and look at the attempts by each QB and divide them by the number of games (18 vs 16) and see if there's a tangible difference in terms of reliance on the pass.

ATT. by CFL'ers

661= 36.8 atts per game
715= 39.8 atts per game
549= 30.5 atts per game
537= 29.9 atts per game
435= 24.2 atts per game
403= 22.4 atts per game
342= 19 atts per game
364= 20.3 atts per game
351= 19.5 atts per game


ATT. by NFL'ers

530= 33.1 atts per game
507= 31.7 atts per game
607= 37.9 atts per game
509= 31.8 atts per game
557= 34.8 atts per game
565= 35.3 atts per game
453= 28.3 atts per game
499= 31.1 atts per game
500= 31.2 atts per game


Hmm don't know what to make of the numbers. It seems for all the difference in the style of the CFL and NFL the passing numbers aren't that wildly different despite the two leagues having radically different rules appications and such.

It's interesting tho, to see how Ricky Ray and the Eskimos just tore up the stat sheet with the passing. The only one who comes statistically close to him in terms of passing attempts per game is Brett Favre who played on a crummy Green Bay team and basically HAD to pass to keep his team in games. Kerry Collins also comes within earshot but again he played on a pretty crummy Oakland team, then again Oakland has always been a pass oriented offense through the years so that's not TOO surprising.

BTW I know some of these QBs didn't play full schedules so the attempts per game calculation will be a little skewed but it skews both ways so it isn't THAT bad.