Blue and Red – How Did That Come About? The colors for our cherished Redskins (and all the sports team as well).

Simple: Way back when (in the early part of the twentieth century) the University of Pennsylvania used to hold their summer practices in the Langhorne area (we’d guess that was to escape the heat of the city). Well, rumor has it they may have lined up on the athletic field of the old Langhorne-Middletown High School. So when it came time to generate a little school spirit (you know, get a mascot, and pick some school colors) do you have any idea what came to mind? How about the Penn Quakers and their blue and red color scheme!

Well, that’s what we’ve been told. And until we hear otherwise, we’re sticking with that story.

Highest Scoring Game: In 1997 the Skins came out on top in a 69 to 36 slugfest with the Abington Ghosts. The two teams combined for a monumental total of 105 points. That averages out to 2.19 points every minute of the game (or just about a touchdown and an extra point every three minutes for the entire 48 minutes they played).
Well, that's one way to time an egg!

Biggest Margin of Victory: In 1961 the Skins stopped the Bristol Warriors 59-0. Later that season they took Woodrow Wilson to the same wood shed coming out on top of a 57-0 “no-contest”.

Longest Season: The 2004 Skins played 15 games, the most of any season. That included 10 regular season games and 5 playoff games (including the State Championship game in Hershey).

Longest Season II: The 2001 Redskins finished an unblemished 15-0 (including a win over Woodland Hills for the State Championship) yet they only played 14 games. The 2nd scheduled game that year was entered in the ledger as a forfeit victory against Bensalem (which was unavailable for administrative reasons).

Shortest Season: Not including 1928 (see Humble Beginnings for more on that) in 1943 the Skins lined up only four times while bringing home a dismal 0-3-1 report card. And to add insult to injury, they only scored 13 points. Talk about a war shortage!

Highest Winning Percentage I: From 1960 through 1965 (the 6 years John Petercuskie was the calling the shots) the Redskins’ record was a phenomenal 59-1-5. Remove the ties from the computation and their winning percentage was an unearthly 98.33%! Even with the ties included, it still registers a ground shaking 91% (keep in mind that's a six year period we're talking about). It was during those years Petercuskie's teams engineered a 51 game run which was untainted by a loss (see "Longest Unbeaten Streak" for more).

Highest Winning Percentage II: The 1958 through 1965 seasons saw Neshaminy prevail 77 times while coming up short on only 3 occasions (there were 5 ties as well). Dropping out the ties results in a winning record of 96.25% while including those ties still results in a winning percentage of 90.5% - over a span of 8 years.

Highest Winning Percentage III: It just keeps coming, folks, as you might take note that from 1952 through 1965 the Skins were 128-11-7. The winning percentage over that 14 year period (with ties “out”) is 92.08%. Include the ties and it is 87.67%. That is over a 14 year period!

Highest Winning Percentage IV: This is it – we promise! Now take a deep breath. Ready? From 1952 through 1972 (21 seasons) our beloved Redskins generated a 176-35-10 record. Drop out the ties and do the math: That's a winning percentage of 83.41% over a span of 21 years (that’s four U.S. Presidents and half the cold war) include the ties and it's still an impressive 79.63% (or 4 out of 5 games during 221 contests). We think we’ve made the point.

Best Defensive Year: Get on board the “Time Machine” and let’s go back – way back (seventy-five years ago to be exact). It was 1930 – just the third year for the Skins (and actually only their second full season) when Charlie Beck and his squad of 14 players lined up eight times that year finishing a very respectable 6 and 2 (the two losses were administered by Morrisville 12-0 and Perkasie-Sellersville 13-0). Although the Skins gave up 25 points in those two losses, they allowed only 6 more in their 6 wins. That’s 31 total points in 8 games for an average of 3.75 “against” per game – the best per game average in the seventy-seven years your Redskins have been lining up on the gridiron.

Best Defensive Year - Part II: Now since a lot of folks feel that “modern” football really got rolling in the fifties, and not to take anything away from the “best ever” defense of 1930, if we take a trip down memory lane and visit the Fabulous Fifties and Harry Franks’ undefeated 9-0-1 1956 team, you can bet your boots their rock solid “D” was a large part of that record. Yielding a paltry 45 points in those ten games results in an average allowed of just 4.5 per game (a field goal and one-half by our reckoning). And that’s the second best “points allowed” average in Skins history. Tough to crack that nut, we'd say!

Best Defensive Year(s) - Part III: Not far behind the ’56 kids were John Petercuskie’s 1960 Savages who put up an “iron curtain” of their own giving up just 51 points in 11 games (that’s 4.63 per game folks). Course now it gets interesting: The year before – 1959 – they had yielded only 52 dings during 11 contests (try 4.72 per game). Finally (as if that’s not enough), how about this: The year before that - 1958 - Neshaminy gave up a miserly 50 points in ten games (that’s an even 5.0 per tilt). We’ve already run the numbers for you – that’s only 4.78 points per game (32 games in all) over a three year period!

Best Defensive Year(s) - Honorable Mention: Once we get started we just can’t seem to stop.

And if you think those 1958 to 1960 defensive “Savages” were tough to score on, it’s the 1946 squad which actually comes in at number three on the all-time list. That’s because the Mike De Risi coached Redskins (who brought home the first ever championship) allowed but 46 points in ten contests (let’s see, ten goes into forty-six … 4.6 times!). Ahem, they averaged a “points against” of 4.6 per game – not bad at all.

And just in case you think it’s all about those low scoring offenses of yesteryear, we do point out that Jack Swartz’ 1970 club (which posted a fine 9-1-1 record) was tagged for just 67 points in their 11 game season for an average of 6.09 “against” per game. And as recently as 1988, the John Chaump coached club (which finished its regular season undefeated before suffering its only loss of the season to Cedar Cliff in the first ever PA state playoff football system) was a juggernaut on defense as well. In their 12 game season they allowed only 81 points which works out to under a touchdown a game (6.75 to be exact).

Whew – that’s enough about the defenses for a while – don’t you think?

Most Prolific Year Scoring Part I: Oh that 1960 team – they were quite a club.  Tough on defense and number one on the charts when you consider that they played 11 games and scored 436 points which worked out to a heart stopping, pulse pounding (and still best ever as we just said) average of 39.63 points scored every game that year.  In fact, for 45 years that record has stood tall with its closest call at being “topped” being the 2005 squad’s 448 point output over its 12 games which produced an average of 37.33 points a game (just about a field goal shy of the 60 guys and their record).  Anyhow you slice it, that’s some serious scoring going on there we’d say.

Most Prolific Year scoring Part II: Okay, okay – so the 1960 team and the 2005 team “averaged” a bunch – who scored the most in a season is what you really want to know now, isn’t it? Well, how about the 2004 team which went all the way to Hershey and put up 466 points during its 15 game season. Not bad, not bad at all! And in case you can’t find your calculator we’ve got it handled: That’s 31.06 points per game. Pretty sweet and a large part of the reason the ought-four ‘Skins finished 13-2.

Most Prolific Scoring Year Part III: Alright then – we’ve expanded this bit a scoring history a bit and thought you might like to see a list of the top 10 highest scoring teams (that means most points scored over a season) in Redskins history. Here they are:

Most Points in a season:

01) - 2004 - (466 pts, 15 g, 31.06 aver.)
02) - 2007 - (449 pts, 13 g, 34.54 aver.)
03) - 2005 - (448 pts, 12 g, 37.33 aver.)
04) - 1960 - (436 pts, 11 g, 39.63 aver.)
05) - 1961 - (417 pts, 12 g, 34.75 aver.)
06) - 1962 - (397 pts, 11 g, 36.09 aver.)
07) - 2001 - (387 pts, 15 g, 25.80 aver.)
08) - 1959 - (376 pts, 11 g, 34.18 aver.)
09) - 1971 - (371 pts, 11 g, 33.73 aver.)
10) - 1954 - (349 pts, 10 g, 34.90 aver.)

Most Prolific Scoring Year Part IV: We say this over and over and over (and do it over and over and over); however, this is it – no more on this topic.  So here goes:  The top ten teams for Best Average Per Game over a whole season are as follows:

01) - 1960 - 39.63 points per game
02) - 2005 - 37.33 points per game
03) - 1962 - 36.09 points per game
04) - 1954 - 34.90 points per game
05) - 1961 - 34.75 points per game
06) - 2007 - 34.54 points per game
07) - 1959 - 34.18 points per game
08) - 1971 - 33.73 points per game
09) - 2004 - 31.06 points per game
10) - 2000 - 30.90 points per game

Now we can’t help ourselves with this last bit of math.  Those ten teams played 114 games and scored a total of 3,880 points.  Guess what that works out to be per game.  How about 34.03!  That’s right, 5 touchdowns a game over a ten year period of 11 game seasons.  Now that’s scary – and quite enough about scoring for now.

Too Much Time Scoring Statistics – Part I: Bob Willits made us do this one.

As if one year at a time wasn’t enough to get you edgy, Bob decided to check for the best average per game (that’s points the ‘Skins scored per game) over two year back-to-back seasons. So we came up with the top 5 two-year per game averages. Here they are folks:

1) - 1960 and 1961 (23 games) = 37.09 average per game
2) - 1959 and 1960 (22 games) = 36.91 average per game
3) - 1961 and 1962 (23 games) = 35.39 average per game
4) - 2004 and 2005 (27 games) = 33.85 average per game
5) - 1971 and 1972 (22 games) = 31.91 average per game

Why you’re reflecting on the above (and the very, very evident fact that we are spending way too much time on this site) you might notice that 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1962 saw some serious scoring going on at the old Neshaminy reservation. In fact, if you add up those four season totals (it’s 1,626 points all together) and divide the total by the number of games they played (45) it looks like this: 1,626 divided by 45 equals 36.13. Oh, I get it – you guys are saying that over a four year period (1959 through 1962) the ‘Skins averaged 36.19 points a game. Kind of helps you understand that 41-2-2 record.

And chew on this for a while, the only two losses the ‘Skins suffered during that run were to Easton (which was running the tables left and right in those days as the “other” best team in the state) with both of those scores being 13-7 for the Dogs (in 1959 and 1961). In 1960 the annual tussle with the Rovers ended in a 13-13 tie while in 1962 the ‘Skins took them down, 13-7.

One last thing: Those two losses to Easton were the only two losses the Redskins of Neshaminy had to endure from 1959 through 1965. That’s 76 games in all over 7 years marred by just 2 “L” column entries resulting in an overall record of 69-2-5 (we may have touched on this before and if so – we’re sorry).

Too Much Time Scoring Statistics – Part II: This just had to be done (believe me – we had no choice).

Remember the back-to-back best scoring average over a two year period thing? We thought we’d tweak it a little and line those years up by most points scored – so here they are (no yawning as this is very important to us):

1) 2004 and 2005 – 914 points
2) 1960 and 1961 – 853 points
3) 1961 and 1962 – 814 points
4) 1959 and 1960 – 812 points
5) 1971 and 1972 – 702 points

Certain people have suggested that we take our calculator and put it away for a while. A comment was also overheard suggesting that some fresh air and another hobby (building model airplanes, for instance) might be a good idea.

Most Shutout's in a Season:

(6) - Just two clubs can lay claim to that prize (the 1961 and 1938 squads). As an interesting aside (and good for cocktail party banter), although the 1938 team had 6 shutouts one of those was not a win (instead going in the books as a 0-0 tie).

(5) - Five seasons saw the ultimate in defense 5 times: 1965, 1960, 1959, 1958 and 1930.

(4) - Six teams share that honor with those being the 2004, 1987, 1970, 1964, 1956 and 1946 editions.