Talk:1987 San Diego Chargers season

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:1987 San Diego Chargers season/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 16:02, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:02, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Images are appropriately tagged. Earwig shows no issues.

• FN 50 is '"Worst Collapses". NFL Top 10. September 21, 2012.' with no link. This is not enough for a reader to track down the source.
  • I found it on the NFL Films YouTube account and added a link.

    Good enough; struck. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:13, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

• What makes profootballarchives.com a reliable source?
  • I view this as a similar statistical database to profootballreference.com, which we often use for NFL articles. PFR only covers the NFL, so I needed to use PFA for the playing history of the replacement players.

    I agree pro-football-reference is reliable, but I'm not aware of any evidence that profootballarchive has the same reputation. Pro-football-reference.com has been treated as a reliable source by other reliable source and is run by a professional company which has editorial control over the data. Pro Football Archive looks more like a one-man operation, which doesn't necessarily mean it's not reliable -- for example Chris Turner's snooker site is treated as a reliable source for snooker, though it was entirely a one man amateur website. We just need evidence that it's reliable. Does it get cited by professional sports organizations like ESPN? Is there any evidence that it's run by a corporation that exerts editorial control? Is there evidence that it has a good reputation within the field? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:13, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

  I can't find any uses on the major sports websites. Mentions in the Pro Football Researchers Association forums are about the best I've found.[1] That's quite a respected organization in terms of accuracy. Harper J. Cole (talk) 13:38, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

  I'll ask about it at WT:NFL and will ping you to that discussion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:43, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

  Struck per that discussion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:30, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

More later. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:40, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

• "Joiner finished as the career leader in receptions (750) and receiving yards (12,146)." Suggest making it "NFL career leader" in case a reader might think these were Chargers records.
  • Adjusted now.
• We say Abbott won a placekicker training camp battle, but Benirschke attempted no field goals so presumably was cut regardless of the outcome of the battle. But if that's the case we should say Abbott's victory "meant" Benirschke lost his job; he lost it before the battle, didn't he?
  • While Benirschke attempted no field goals in preseason games, he will have had opportunities to stake a claim for the position on the practice field. The citation mentions a "kick-off" between the candidates that was won by Benirschke. I've adjusted the wording slightly, to clarify that the placekicker battle took place in both training camp and the preseason.

Now down to the game summaries. I'm copyediting as I go; please revert if I screw anything up. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:47, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

More:

• Not an issue for GA, but FYI, WP:EL discourages external links in the body of an article, so if you were to take this to WP:FAC you might have to find another way to link to the game box scores.
  • Thanks, I'll look at that if I ever try to take these articles up to FA standard.
• "Anderson scored four later": four plays later?
  • Yes - corrected now.

That's everything for the prose; it's cleanly written and I had trouble finding anything to comment on. I'll do some spotchecks next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:35, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Spotchecks:

• FN 328 cites "San Diego's seasons ended with a shutout in a Denver blizzard." Verified.
• FN 280 cites "Anderson had a 25-yard run and a 17-yard catch on the opening possession of the second half, but he then fumbled a pitch on 1st and goal from the 10, and St. Louis recovered. The Cardinals were forced to punt, but Fouts was soon intercepted in his own territory to begin the comeback. St. Louis scored 24 points on four consecutive possession, with Lomax throwing three touchdowns. San Diego answered with a punt each time, the final one of which was run back to the Charger 32 with 1:15 to play. Catches by Jay Novacek and Earl Ferrell moved the ball to the 5 yard line, from where Lomax threw three incompletions, bring up 4th and goal with 20 seconds to play. Due to an error by Smith, Ferrell was open to the right, but he dropped Lomax's pass at the goal line and the Chargers held on to win. Despite the victory, the home crowd booed the team off the field." Some of these details seem to not be in the source, unless I'm just not seeing them. I don't see Anderson's 25 yard run or 17-yard catch, and the source seems to say the fumble was on the 9, not the 10. Am I looking at the wrong source?
  • For that, I was looking at citation 281, which is behind a pay wall. It's the official gamebook put together by the home team at every NFL game, and has full play-by-play details, so can sometimes fill in details the match reports leave out.

    OK -- How about adding that as a citation? Perhaps just below the external link to the box score, add something like "Game details drawn in part from the official gamebook" and cite that to 281? And presumably we'd need to do that for each game? The reader has to have some way to verify the information in the article, and that seems the simplest approach. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:28, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

How about one note at the start of the section, to avoid repetition? I've added one below the Game Summaries title. Harper J. Cole (talk) 22:33, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

That works. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

• FN 14 cites "Banks had previously held out while in Cleveland; after playing a single season in San Diego, he did so once more, and never played for the Chargers again after 1987." I don't see the evidence that he held out in Cleveland.
  • Yes, I think that's an error - I've added a citation from UPI mentioning his holdout and subsequent trade.

    I don't see the new citation in the article? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:28, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

  It should be showing up now. Harper J. Cole (talk) 22:32, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

  I see it, but I still don't see anything that says he held out while in Cleveland. Did I miss it? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

  Ah, that was in the previous citation (13). I've restructured the sentence so that the citations follow the relevant content. Harper J. Cole (talk) 23:14, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

• FN 50 cites "On a 2012 episode of NFL Top 10, theirs was named the #5 worst single season collapse in NFL history." Verified.
• FNs 51 & 62 cite "New kicker Abbott made 13 of his first 17 field goals, but missed his last five attempts and finished 25th in the league with a 59.1% conversion rate." Verified.
• FN 76 cites "On September 28, Neuheisel met with both Charger officials and striking players to try and get both sides of the story". Verified.
• FN 82 cites "The regular Chargers turned up at Jack Murphy Stadium on October 16 ready to work; they were told by Ortmayer that they could use the club's facilities, but would not be paid or permitted to play that week, whereupon they left the building." Verified.

I was going to spotcheck something from the replacement players collapsed table, but it's not expanding for me when I click "show". Is it working for you? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:04, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

It does work okay for me; should we have someone else check, maybe? I could have it expanded as a default, but felt that collapsing it would be better as it's unusually large. Harper J. Cole (talk) 19:02, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

It works for me in Edge, but not in Chrome. I can complete the review using Edge so no problem; up to you if you want to ask others if it works for them. Yes, starting it out collapsed seems very reasonable. I checked a couple of the citations from it (72 & 107) and they were verified, so it's just the two issues above left -- 14 and 280. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:28, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Passing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:26, 25 September 2022 (UTC)