I don't know man that's an interesting take, you have a point for sure, when watching Brown's highlights you see a bunch of complete j-brones getting run over, dudes that just wouldn't belong on a pro football field. But he played against some pretty tough defenses though playing from 1957 to 1965, he played the Giants twice a year that was one hell of a squad in the late 50's. He ran over a pretty tough Colts defense in the 64 NFL Championship. I was curious and checked to see that he actually never played the 62 Packers or 63 Bears, two of the best defensive units from that era.
I actually have put some thought into what era would have been the absolute toughest to play offense and I came to the conclusion that you could actually narrow it down to a single year, 1993. I've become obsessed with this season to the point where I'm actually thinking about writing a book about it. It was a complete anomaly because in the 80's you had this explosion of innovative offense, the west coast offense, the run n' shoot fad, all the rules changes in 1978 and the effect it had on this explosion of 1,000 yard receivers every year and Dickerson and Marino rewriting record books. But then you get to 1993 and it was like the league took a time machine back to 1973, defense completely ******* dominated the league that year across the board. It was one of the lowest scoring seasons in the modern era, over half the league allowed less than 300 points(and it was the fewest amount of teams to score over 350 on offense in the 16 game era).
When you factor in how physically brutal the rules allowed for the NFL to be that season, the talent on the field on defense around the league, you could make a case that the players who were great in 1993 were truly the best of the best in NFL history. They had the deck stacked against quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs that season like no other season in NFL history so the ones who managed to put up any kind of numbers that year truly were great.
For me on quality of competition I'd have to go further back before Jim Brown and put that on the original Cleveland Browns team and some of those players that were inducted into the NFL Hall Of Fame even though they only played 4-5 years in the NFL, when they are factoring in the Browns' AAFC run from 1946 to 1949 when Browns were like the Harlem Globetrotters of that league that didn't even have a college draft, they truly were running over j-brones in the AAFC. In that league you had the Browns and then you had a bunch of guys that couldn't make an NFL team back then.
Great post, man. Very interesting to read.
The Steel Curtain defense of the '70's would have been a tough one to face. Earl Campbell would have carried this city on his back to a championship if not for those defenses. Just the names on that team are awe-inspiring.
The 2000 Ravens and 1985 Bears have to be considered, as well.
Then there's the '60's when guys like Deacon Jones could have casts made with steel plates inside them. The rules allowed defenders to head slap offensive players, and he said he used that technique often. He said he wanted to give his opponents concussions! lol Crazy times.