250 Stats Every Packers Fan Needs to Know

Description

Like you, I am a Green Bay Packers fan. I may not have a man cave adorned with Packers memorabilia, and I may not wear my Packers gear on game day, but I do set my schedule to the time of each and every game the Packers play. I cheer, yell at the TV when they fail to secure an onside kick (sorry, couldn't resist), and have involuntary twitches when an Aaron Rodgers' pass falls short of a receiver. I may not bleed green and gold, but I am a true Packers fan. What may set me apart from you is how I watch the games. Armed with a notebook and laptop or tablet at my side, I am fascinated by the numbers in the game. If the Pack is at the one yard line and chants of K-U-U-U-U-H-H-N-N are vibrating around Lambeau Field, I want to know if John Kuhn has more one-yard touchdowns than anyone else on the Packers team... current or history. If Rodgers connects with Jordy Nelson for another long TD pass, I wonder, "Does anyone have more long TDs than Jordy?" If the Packers take a seven-point lead into the fourth quarter, I wonder, "What percentage of games have they won when they've got a seven-point lead going into the final quarter?" You get the point. In 2014, that's how I watched Packers games. When the game was over, I had a notebook page (or two) with anywhere from 10-20 questions about the game; stats I wondered about. To get the answers, I would research the following day. Whether it was pro-football-reference.com, the Sports Illustrated Almanac, the Official NFL Record and Fact Book, nfl.com, or the Green Bay Packers Media Guide, I would get answers to my statistical "wonderings." I'm a stats fanatic, and this research was a lot of fun, especially when I would "discover" a stat that maybe I had never known before. I posted my findings on my blog at www.statsontapp.com under the heading of "Packers Numbers Notebook." Response from friends, family and blog fans were very positive. That's how this book evolved... I took many of those findings from the 2014 season (and blog) and incorporated them into this book. In addition, there were times when researching one stat would lead me in another direction, even further back in the Packers history. Those findings were also added for this book. I hope you will find these 250 stats fun, entertaining and informative; that was my goal. Anyone can recite a bunch of numbers. That is not what I wanted to do. I wanted to provide you with information that forces you to say, "I didn't know that." Enjoy!

A lifelong resident of Racine, WI, Jerry Tapp graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in 1979 with a B.A. degree in Communication. He remembers his first attempt at writing as a youngster being a short story about a talking baseball. Ironically, that talking baseball story would set the stage for a lifelong love for talking about and writing about... and playing... baseball (and other sports). He spent nearly a decade as an associate editor with a national sports publication, Referee Magazine, and wrote a nationally-syndicated sports statistics column, Stats on Tapp for Universal Press Syndicate. As a freelance sportswriter his work has appeared in Baseball Digest, Inside Sports and the Washington Post. He was also a Scoreboard Statistician for the Milwaukee Brewers for 20 years and wrote the script for two year-end highlight videos and a drug prevention video produced by the major league team. His baseball playing days after high school included two years of junior college baseball at Indian Hills Community College in Centerville, Iowa. He then received a Division I scholarship to the University of New Mexico playing in the prestigious Western Athletic Conference. He finished his collegiate baseball career at Parkside and also enjoyed a successful semi-pro career with the Quad City Angels and the Green Bay Blue Ribbons. His career background includes work in the area of sports and recreation, non-profit management, and marketing and communications, where he held titles such as Sports Director, Development Director and Marketing Communications Specialist. His writing background is diverse: He was editor of His Grace, a monthly newsletter for his local church and spent several years writing a monthly column for local publication, Action Magazine, where his column focused on Christian issues. In the spring of 2011, with urging from friend Jim Magruder, Jerry ventured into the world of social media by launching his blog, Sports Stats on Tapp. He eventually began submitting his sports statistics blog items to such sports blogging sites as BallHyped and Bleacher Report (ranked as the fourth most popular sports website). In 2011 his blog was one of 64 nationwide to be included in BallHyped's Sports Blog of the Year tournament. As of July, 2015, his submissions to BallHyped rank 12th out of the more than 350 blogs on the website. As a contributor to Bleacher Report (beginning in March 2012), Jerry's blogs had over 165,000 reads in about nine months. Today, Jerry writes his blog anywhere from three to five times weekly, posting items on his www.statsontapp.com website. He also writes a weekly stats-centric column for Today's Pigskin and Today's Knuckleball. Jerry has been married to Judi, an elementary art teacher, since 1979. They have two adult children, Eric and Amy. In his spare time Jerry enjoys golf, bike riding, reading and creative writing. You can reach Jerry at tappcommunications@yahoo.com.