Aaron Schatz
@aaronschatz
Chief Analytics Officer, FTN. ESPN NFL writer. Former radio DJ. Founder of Football Outsiders, creator of DVOA, All-Pro/MVP voter.
"Football" (?) Card of the Day: 1993 Pro Line Portraits Ann Stark What's better than a punter card? The punter's wife! Pro Line actually did these inserts with player wives for a couple years in the early 90s. The junk wax era was wild, my friends.
Football Card of the Day: 1995 Upper Deck John L. Williams. 1995 cards are fun because of the 1994 75th anniversary throwback uniforms.
Football Card of the Day: 1993 Upper Deck Willie Roaf. Look at that dapper young man on the back! Also, blocking win rates! (courtesy the Lousiana Tech PR department)
Football Card of the Day: 2014 Topps Tyler Warren. In 2014, Topps did an insert set of Punt, Pass, and Kick champions. This kid looks familiar. (Check the hometown.)
Have you purchased the FTN Football Almanac 2026 online? You can now return to ftnfantasy.com/almanac and re-download a version which fixes a number of typos and the incorrect ranks for red zone/late and close defense.
Today's football card of the day is 1995 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Ronnie Lott. What, you don't remember Lott's long career with the Kansas City Chiefs? He got injured in the 1995 preseason and that was the end of his career.
Today's football card of the day is 1994 Sportflics Deion Sanders. This is the most 90s thing that has ever 90s'ed. Lenticular printing Multiple fonts going in different directions Random pastel graphics Deion in his prime Neon Deion phase I can practically hear it singing 2 Legit 2 Quit.
Football card of the day: 1991 Topps Darion Conner. This is what I was talking about yesterday with the crazy tackle numbers from team PR departments. Falcons PR told Topps that Conner had 8 tackles and 7 assists against the Browns in Week 16. The Browns scorers gave him 3 tackles and 1 assist.
This might interest only me. I went back to the 1991 Topps team cards to see which players were listed as team leaders in tackles. Then I compared that to actual tackle totals from adding up mentions in the play-by-play. Gives us a good idea of which team PR depts were cooking the books. FALCONS.
Football card of the day: 1983 Topps Gary Green. Just bought set. First of all that mustache. This is the earliest set I remember having cards from as a kid. I distinctly remember owning the Eric Dickerson rookie from this set. There is no Dickerson rookie until 1984. Memory is a strange thing.
Today's football card(s) of the day: 1988 Topps. Just bought this set. Clean design. Morten Andersen, Brian Hansen, and Mel Gray. The 1987 Saints have the best special teams DVOA ever so of course they get three different special teams cards!
Today's football card is 1989 Topps Robin Cole. With no idea what to put on the cards for most defenders, Topps defaulted to year-by-year interception numbers for most DBs and LBs, which is hilarious because Cole had so few interceptions. Cole is from a Pittsburgh suburb called 84, PA.
Today's football card of the day is 1991 Score Chris Hinton. Chris Hinton was part of the trade for the Broncos to move up to No. 1 to take John Elway in 1983 and then also part of the trade for the Colts to move up to No. 1 to take Jeff George in 1990!
Today's football card of the day is 1990 Score Jeff Donaldson. Picked up this set today. In Week 11 of 1989, Tracey Eaton picked off Steve Beuerlein and lateraled to Donaldson for 14 more yards, so he's listed with no INTs but 14 INT yards.
Today's football card of the day is 2010 Topps Torry Holt. I like the 2010 Topps design because of the use of the team wordmarks. For 2010, Topps did players with new teams but of course Holt never made it to the regular season with the Pats. Pretty good Photoshop job.
My latest football card set purchase is 2006 Topps. Did you know that Arizona’s LeRon McCoy has a little brother who plays running back? I wonder if he is any good.
The best part of classic football cards was the quality editing. Rob Moore had a 69 yarders touchdown in a route of the Patriots.
Today's football card find: 1991 Score Eric Swann rookie card. It's a little blurry in the image I grabbed, but yes, the text actually says that he failed the SAT eight times. They wrote that on the man's football card. Way to support the guy. Score doing the man dirty.
I’ve been enjoying doing the old play by play so much I thought it would be fun to go back and get some classic football cards. From the late 80s and early 90s they are super cheap because they were so mass produced. This is my fave design of the ones I got, 91 Topps with Sanders covering Irvin.
If any Republicans want to have an obscure wide receiver-off I will wipe the floor with them.
The late Craig Morton was very consistent by my numbers, ranking between 9th and 15th in passing DVOA for five straight seasons from 1977 to 1981. As you might expect, the 1977 SB year was his best year, with a 17.2% passing DVOA which ranked 9th.
Kenyon Sadiq set an all-time record in my Travis TE projection system, thanks to his young age and fast 40 time.