Bronko Nagurski statistics in 1930 and 1931

[mlynch33]

Dick Butkus’s unfortunate passing had me checking out some old Bears media guides and I noticed an item of interest in the 1965 Guide on Page 43: https://archive.org/details/bears-1965- ... 2/mode/2up

The page lists the Bears all-time leaders in passing, rushing and receiving at the time. What I find interesting is that the book seems to include rushing stats for Bronko Nagurski from 1930 and 1931 and rushing stats for Keith Molesworth from 1931. The Keith Molesworth passing statistics appear to be a mess, though, undermining confidence that this data might be of any use. In fact, you could infer how many rushes and yards Molesworth had in 1931 if we assume the Bears have the same data as other sources have for 1932-37. This would give Molesworth 78 rushes for 600 yards in 1931. Those numbers seem pretty hard to believe, but i suppose they are not impossible.

Since this represents two new seasons of data for Nagurski we can’t ascertain season totals, but this would imply that he had 240 rushes for 1253 yards combined in 1930 and 1931. Those numbers seem pretty reasonable. Of course, this list also only credits him with 18 rushing TDs, when he actually had 25 (though 18 of them came in 1932 or later). It would seem odd that they’d constrict the touchdowns since 1932 but ostensibly include some sort of rushing yardage totals from 1930 and 1931.

The other sort of giveaway that they are including pre-32 passing/rushing here is that the receiving list explicitly mentions that Luke Johnso’s receiving totals are only counted since 1932. There is no such note for the passing and rushing.

Anyhow the other thing I found once I started trying to dig into the provenance of this data was this clipping from 1943 when he came out of retirement: https://www.newspapers.com/article/33151771/

It mentions that he had 856 rushes for 3,947 yards to that point in his career. Given that he rushed 16 times in 1943, that would give him 872 career attempts (close to the 873 mentioned in the Bears guide). He ran for 84 yards in 1943, which would make the 3,947 perfectly match the 4,031 in the guide.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame even uses 4,031 as his “combined yards” on his profile, though that is obviously not the sum of his passing/rushing/receiving https://www.profootballhof.com/players/bronko-nagurski/

Here’s a clip from the 1943 Bears media guide as well: https://archive.org/details/bears-1943- ... 3/mode/2up

I have been told the Bears tracked many statistics before 1932, but that they were destroyed in a fire decades ago. Curious if anyone here has any of those statistics? I've seen some for Red Grange and then the ones mentioned above. Would love to know the splits between 1930 and 1931 for Bronko, but I suppose the most likely case is that those season by season numbers are lost forever.

[Bob Gill]

Those are all very good questions. For what it's worth, I've seen those same rushing totals for Nagurski (4,031 yards) before. They appeared in at least one edition of Roger Treat's football encyclopedia (which was probably the best sourch for NFL information before the first edition of David Neft's book in 1974 or whenever it was). I think Treat's book was first published in the 1950s, so those stats for Nagurski must have been in general circulation for a decade or more.

Speaking of Neft: The stats he compiled for Nagurski in 1930-31, taken from game stories (including a few play-by-play accounts) in newspapers from NFL cities, show him with 401 yards in 1931 (when he missed a few games). For 1930, Neft credits him with 254 yards in six "complete" games, which is 42 yards per game. If you use that same average for his other seven games, that would give him around 450 for the full season. So it seems unlikely that he could've piled up 1,200 yards in those two seasons.

[ChrisBabcock]

I've always found the site jt-sw.com interesting for pre 1932 stats. I'm not sure how who runs it has compiled these but they've at least taken a stab at it. Bronko's 1931 total matches Neft but the 1930-31 total is a lot lower than that 1965 media guide.

https://www.jt-sw.com/football/pro/play ... D/01120012

[TanksAndSpartans]

In my opinion, the jt site doesn't contribute anything original - it just copied Neft's work without crediting it (@ChrisBabcock, not directed towards you, just irks me although it could be an innocent mistake - maybe he thinks they're official statistics and not the result of painstaking research). It also has some bad typos. Deviations from Neft's book that I've noticed are stuff like 730 carries in one season instead of 73, things like that. That being said, I've found it useful in a pinch since it's mostly accurate, but I wouldn't use it without validating against one of Neft's books.

[ChrisBabcock]

In my opinion, the jt site doesn't contribute anything original - it just copied Neft's work without crediting it (@ChrisBabcock, not directed towards you, just irks me although it could be an innocent mistake - maybe he thinks they're official statistics and not the result of painstaking research). It also has some bad typos. That being said, I've found it useful in a pinch since it's mostly accurate, but I wouldn't use it without validating against one of Neft's books.

Completely agreed all of the above. I think there's even a disclaimer "these stats are inaccurate at best". At least it's something interesting to see on the interwebs that may give a snapshot (somewhat inaccurate) of what happened back then.

[Reaser]

In my opinion, the jt site doesn't contribute anything original - it just copied Neft's work without crediting it (@ChrisBabcock, not directed towards you, just irks me although it could be an innocent mistake - maybe he thinks they're official statistics and not the result of painstaking research). It also has some bad typos. Deviations from Neft's book that I've noticed are stuff like 730 carries in one season instead of 73, things like that. That being said, I've found it useful in a pinch since it's mostly accurate, but I wouldn't use it without validating against one of Neft's books.

Definitely useful in a pinch, as said.

[mlynch33]

1931 Bears through 11 games played:

[mlynch33]

Through 12 games played

[mlynch33]

Going to assume Molesworth didn't run for 404 yards in the final game, which is what would be needed for him to have 1705 career rushing yards with the Bears. Unless, of course, the 1932 statistics are as incomplete as they're reputed to be.

[mlynch33]

Those numbers through 12 games played all seem to match the Bears rushing numbers in the Neft/Cohen/Korch 1990s Football Encyclopedia