ESPN: Current NFL passing records is equivalent to stats from MLB's steroids era

quote:

---

By early 2005, during the denouement of the steroid era, Donald Fehr, then the executive director of baseball's players' union, had grown tired of the emphasis on performance-enhancing drugs as the reason behind the explosion in the game's offensive statistics, home runs in particular. Certainly, anabolic substances (Fehr's preferred term) were a factor in the rising numbers, but they weren't the only factor. At least as important was an issue in the larger sports culture, he said, and not singular to baseball.

"Everybody wants to see more scoring. It is true in every sport," Fehr told me then. "Name a sport where defense begins to dominate and I guarantee you there will be reforms that rebalance the game. Look at hockey. Look at football, especially. They change the rules every year to encourage more offense."

It is with that parallel -- performance-enhancement rules in pro football playing the role of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball -- that the 2011 NFL regular season ends. And after record-breaking passing performances from Drew Brees and Tom Brady, and as Dan Marino's brilliant 1984 season begins its inexorable fade into the sunset, it ends with a paradigm shift that might ignite a conversation about rebalancing the game toward more defense rather than more offense.

---