I was watching the Packers/Patriaots game w/ my 4 year old (who is suffering Packers withdrawal 🙂 ) and a lot of things struck me as interesting - size of pads, formation used, Madden/Summeral game call, how close the game was for the majority of the time, etc.... Another that stood out was how few times gameflow was interrupted by penalties. Way more enjoyable, so I tried finding information on penalties throughout NFL history and found the following article by Dean Blandino:

https://theathletic.com/146642/2017/11/04/blandino-i-spent-more-than-20-years-in-the-nfls-officiating-department-heres-the-view-from-the-inside/ 

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...and, I wasn't done 🙂 . I guess this is a case of glorifying the "old days", because according to this the average # of penalties hasn't changed much over the past 40 years.

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I remember watching highlights of teams back in the '90s and thinking, wow they pads used to be huge! Earl Campbell looks like a monster! And now when I look back at highlights OF the '90s I think holy crap those pads are huge! lol

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Earl Campbell was a monster...IMO the best pure running back ever...a beast.

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