On 20 August 2014, I posted an image of the “official” APBA card (see left) and the one that I would be using during my 1985 replay (see right). At the time of the initial post, Jim hadn’t attempted a single pass in my replay yet. Last night on my tabletop, the Bears closed out their regular season with a 15-1-0 record. With that said, I thought it would be interesting to post his stats.
| Pct | Yards | Had | Pct | Pct | Avg. | ||||||
| Passing: | Att | Com | Com | Gained | TD | Long | Int. | TD | Int | Gain | Rating |
| Replay | 314 | 187 | 59.6 | 2381 | 23 | 65 | 12 | 7.3 | 3.8 | 7.6 | 91.8 |
| Actual | 313 | 178 | 56.9 | 2392 | 15 | 70 | 11 | 4.8 | 3.5 | 7.6 | 82.6 |
Jim McMahon’s completion percentage is acceptable (2.7 percentage points higher) and his yardage is spot-on but his touchdown passes exceeded actual by eight. At the conclusion of week 15, the combined NFL statistics showed total passing touchdowns to be 0.7 lower than actual (4.6 to 5.3). Jim’s card overachieved to counter the players who underachieved or as I refer to it as “the ying and yang” of a season replay.
All of my season replays have taught not to be overly concerned with the performance of a single team or individual but only the cumulative results of all teams combined when compared against actual statistics.