I get these weird thoughts about stats and I end up going down rabbit holes on the net. I saw where Derek Carr is the career leader in passing for the Raiders. I decided to take a look at stats. Derek Carr is the leader of all statistical categories for Raider QB’s with the exception of INT’s. He has only 69 compared to the franchise leader, The Snake, Kenny Stabler who has 143. While down this damn rabbit hole I started looking at other stats for the team. Fred Williamson, the actor, is in the top ten for defensive INT’s. The reason I bring this up is because I looked at his bio, and for a DB in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, this guy was HUGE. 6’3” and 225 lbs of cover corner. Think about the average size cover corner in the NFL today. The avg size of an NFL DB is 5’11” and 193 lbs. The avg NFL safety is 6’ 200 lbs. This guy was a monster during the era where the avg size of a QB was 6’2” 200 lbs.
Just think about how the average size for QB’s and DB’s are today. QB’s usually have a couple of inches and about 30 pounds on DB’s today. Back then he was the size of a LB playing DB! He dwarfed QB’s and WR’s along with TE’s.
If you were going to make a prototype for a SS in the NFL today, you could take Fred Williamson from 1959 when he graduated from Northwestern and say, “This is what we want.”
Just thought it was interesting since the evolution of players has created bigger, stronger, and faster players on both sides of the ball, but this guy completely skews the curve. He’d be more at home in today’s NFL then the 1960’s. Of course he wouldn’t be an anomaly, he’d be the standard.