Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on October 20, 2015 and has been republished today in honor of Dr. Z, who died yesterday at the age of 86. 

Nobody but the ignorant, uninterested, or lazy can complain about the quality of football coverage today. Even pedants who scoff at NFL Films over-production can find solace on all-22 film and contextualized analytics available online. Yet even in the midst of this boom of first-hand data and sophisticated analysis, Paul Zimmerman stands over all—despite being silent for seven years come November.

In The Super 70s, Tom Danyluk included a 1998 interview with Dr. Z: “I started charting games in 1947 when I was 14. I love football and loved playing football, so I liked the idea of making a chart and having the plays go up and down a gridiron-shaped field. I always liked statistics and messing around with stuff like that.” (p. 41.) In his 1970 book, A Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football, Chapter 24 is titled “Statistics Are for Losers–and Sportswriters.” He mentions that statistics at the time were not accurate. (An observation repeated in the 1984 revised The New Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football, whose chapter on stats was renamed “The Numbers Racket: A Look at Statistics”.) Yet Dr. Z did not merely gripe: in 1972, “Zimmerman discovered the NFL had mistakenly omitted an entire quarter of Fran Tarkenton’s passing stats. The correction stripped Tarkenton of the league passing title and gave it to the Giants’ Norm Snead.” (Danyluk, p. 36.) Yet, unless it was the length of the national anthem or a punter’s hang time, Zimmerman lacked faith in numbers.

On both versions of The Thinking Man’s Guide (the title is terrible, let’s move on), Dr. Z points out that statistics “are not as meaningful as they could be”. In the 1970 edition, he explains: “[I]f you read that Leroy Kelly gained 82 yards on 23 carries for a 3.6 average, you know nothing. Ten other backs in the league might have done the same thing that Sunday. But if you are told that he carried the ball eight times on third-down, short-yardage situations, and got the first down on seven of those eight tries, you’ve learned something about the kind of day Kelly had.” (p. 349.) In 2007, he debunked the quarterback rating through a very simple analysis; the parameters were set on 1972, when defensive backs mugged receivers in the open field and downfield passing was more frequent. The ’07 dink-and-dunkers, however, enjoyed immensely the grade inflation. Dr. Z notes that, in 1973,

A grade of 90 was superb, 100 was spectacular. Right now six passers are over 100. Four more over 90. And take a look at these single game ratings from last weekend:

Chad Pennington: 111.2

Jeff Garcia: 110.7

Ben Roethlisberger: 108.0

Byron Leftwich: 97.2

Sage Rosenfels: 91.4

Donovan McNabb: 91.1

In each case, the passer with those gaudy numbers lost … repeat: lost the game. And yet many people rely on them to judge the quarterbacks. A safety-first mentality has been created. Throw the 8-yard checkdown on third-and-12; it’ll work wonders for the rating chart. Avoid interceptions at all cost, don’t be bold, take care. Remember, your contract is tied to it.

This being Dr. Z, he tells the reader of all his attempts and pleas–to the Elias Sports Bureau, Pete Rozzelle, and other league personnel–to fix the system. You can guess how all those efforts went.

Zimmerman always had access: to the Commissioner, general managers, coaches, and especially players–and the affection was sometimes mutual. As told to Danyluk (p. 46), Z developed a close friendship with Lyle Alzado, about whom he wrote a quickie bio. Just after the Raiders beat the DC Redacteds in the Super Bowl, Z says that, in the locker room, Lyle took him aside to ask him a question: how did he play? Later, to Danyluk, Zimmerman pointed out that, despite Alzado’s conviction, Z never believed that steroids caused the brain cancer that killed him. He also talked often to Gene Upshaw, first as an OL for the Raiders, then as the NFLPA’s leader. Dr. Z, whose father was VP of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was not below taking Upshaw to task on labor issues–which he candidly spoke about in  Upshaw’s obituary:

I always was nervous about how tight he got with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. I told Upshaw I always felt a union should maintain adversarial relations with management, rather than all this buddy-buddy stuff. He laughed at me.

“I don’t think I’ve done too badly for my members this way,” he said.

Taking care of retired and indigent and disabled veterans is a complex issue, volatile, emotional, clouded by accusations on both sides. There’s no question the players’ pension has been a joke for many years. And there’s no question there’s a human aspect that must be addressed, if not legally then out of plain decency.

Even with the access, Dr. Z was hardly a toady–and the cold shoulder never deterred him. Stephen Bromberg, a former colleague of Zimmerman’s back in the 70s NY Post, recounts the day the Jets waived Namath in 1977. Namath held a farewell press conference, in which he referred to Z as “that fat fuck”: “Zim had managed to cover the Jets beat better than anyone during all that time, and nobody had a clue that the team’s superstar wouldn’t even look him in the eye. The readers never knew it. Hell, I never knew it.” Of course, that was nothing compared to, as his SI bio states, the time Zimmerman took a rifle butt to the head at the 1972 Munich Olympics while reporting on the Black September terrorist siege at the athlete’s village. Bromberg chooses to recount Zimmerman’s reporting chops during that time.

The consensus among Dr. Z’s colleagues and people he’s covered is that he was gruff and did not suffer fools. His writing does convey single-mindedness on many topics, but never gratuitously; he always provides a sense of either having sought evidence in support (like the email war he had with Peter Schrager on 80s quarterbacks being better than the present ones), or just having unshakeable convictions. He vehemently opposed Ken Stabler entering the Hall of Fame because he had Alabama cops plant evidence on Raiders beat reporter Bob Padecky. (Here’s Mr. Padecky’s version.) When Stabler died, Raiders fans took to the Internet to say that Snake had slept with Z’s ex-wife–an actual doctor, by the way. I’m sure Dr. Z would have gotten a kick out of that.

But Zimmerman was his own toughest critic. Upon reading the transcript of his Super 70s interview, he remarked:

I seem to come off as a kind of arrogant prick. I don’t think I’d like the person who gave you that interview. “Arrogant, a bit nuts, with an occasional warm spot,” was the way my wife described it. So be it. That’s me, folks. [Danyluk, p. 37.]

Even when he was the only person dogged enough to pursue an idea, even a provocative and ultimately correct notion, he could not help but self-deprecate:

I have a chance to settle an old score, right an old wrong, find peace in my old age and apologize, in sideways fashion, to those whom I wronged so many years ago.

The way to do all this is to pick the Giants to upset New England, and that’s what I’m doing. Giants to upset the New England Patriots, currently favored by 12½, in the great stormfest known as Super Bowl XLII.

In 1968 I was the beat man, covering the Jets for the New York Post. I was around the team every day. I flew down with them to Miami for Super Bowl III and I stayed in their hotel, the Galt Ocean Mile in Fort Lauderdale. The Colts opened as 17-point favorites. By game time, the rush of Baltimore money had pushed the price up to 19½, one of the biggest line moves in Super Bowl history. They were calling the Colts The Greatest Team Ever, or at least the greatest on the defensive side of the ball. Their owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, thunderously echoed that sentiment.

I had a feeling about the Jets, not a strong one, but Joe Namath working against that strong side rotating zone? Gee, he’d never had trouble with it before. Could it be that … ? Do I have the courage to … ? Nah, I’ll pick the Colts to win, but by under the spread. That’ll make everyone happy. So I did and it made no one happy, least of all me when the Jets scored the biggest upset in Supe history. Who was happy? Leonard Shecter of the Post. He picked the Jets. I kicked myself for the coward I was. No longer. Today, I am a man.

I was in Green Bay on Sunday. The Giants clearly were the better team, tougher, more resilient, harder hitting. That bone chilling cold that was supposed to imbue the Packers with strength and sap it from their enemies, kind of like the giant Antaeus from Greek mythology who drew his strength from contact with the ground … that brutal, minus-24 wind chill cold was brushed aside by the Giants.

Zimmerman’s piece on Olympic discus thrower Al Oerter, aside from being heartfelt and moving, also sets out to right a wrong, swiftly established in the first paragraphs:

Al Oerter died last Monday. The New York Times ran a good piece on him in its obituary section. Aside from that, there was minimal coverage, at least in the papers I looked at. Sports sections I saw gave his death a quick mention.

Joe Williams, the columnist for the old New York World-Telegram once wrote, “Fame is as fleeting as a ferryboat shine.” A shoeshine cost a nickel on the Staten Island Ferry. The guy would run a rag over the shoes, that was about it. First time you took a few steps on dry land, there went the shine.

Al Oerter deserved more mention. He was the greatest competitor I ever saw.

Dr. Z did not see himself as a member of a crowd, much less a popular crowd. And yet, even in denouncing what he most despised (bullshit), he was succint and dignified, even when vulnerability leaked:

Excellence in football as a metaphor for excellence in life is not one of my deep beliefs. The NFL player turned minister tells about how he found God at the bottom of a pileup. The business executive brags about the rapid decisions he made behind center that set up the bold strokes of merger and acquisition. Fooey, I say. A person isn’t a success in life because he could put on a great pass rush at one time. He’s a success because he developed a complete set of skills. This isn’t a popular opinion, and the guys who make four and five figures a pop, doing those motivational speeches, certainly wouldn’t wish me well.

That insight, knowledge, erudition, analysis, and moving prose is terribly missed. Paul Zimmerman was left incapacitated after several strokes, the first occurring on November, 2008. In 2013, a nine-minute film on him and his condition was made. Paul Zimmerman’s words populate the film through narration, assembled painstakingly as he cannot read or write, or speak words other than “Yes”, “No”, and “When”. But that is him alright; even melancholy, the old piss and vinegar shows, as does his wit, humor, and disarming candor.

In 2014, the Pro Football Writers of America instituted the “Paul ‘Dr. Z’ Zimmerman Award,” a lifetime achievement award given to assistant coaches. It could not be more aptly named. Zimmerman was a grinder, whose body of work was very influential, even when his contributions are not well known. In 1971 he published his first mock draft. His Thinking Man’s Guide, aside from being a trove of stories told first hand by premier players and coaches of several eras, is both a primer and expert tome on the game of football–and the argument for evaluating teams and players within the same era is the definitive discussion on the matter. Pro football changed, but so did the reporting game–as Z notes in his 1998 Danyluk interview (p. 43):

Look at the most popular publication at Time-Life. Do you know what it is? It’s People magazine. It’s all human-interest stuff now, and unfortunately that’s the way the sportswriting has gone.

But the pendulum swings. Sports Illustrated initially hired me [in 1979] because they didn’t like the way football was being covered. [Former SI editor] Mark Mulvoy said we needed to get more “nuts and bolts” – that was his fucking term, and if I heard it once I heard it a thousand times and it sets my teeth on edge. But “nuts and bolts” was what they wanted. Then after a while I fell out of fashion. Mulvoy told me my style was passé, to face it. Alright, I’m facing it. Maybe five years from now I’ll be back in fashion. Their attention span is short.

The demand now may be for content, but Paul Zimmerman always delivered substance. Face it: that never goes out of fashion.

Dr. Z turns 83 on October 23. I’m sure many have ready a draft of his obituary, and that the words are resplendent and sincere. Do him one better: celebrate him in life.