Dickie J, too lazy to fact check or just too stupid to do simple division?

I refuse to link to it, but Dickie Justice, age 12, wrote his annual attack piece on Mario Williams.  (Which should not be confused with his annual "Mario is great and was the right choice" piece.  Neither of which should be confused with his annual "I want to have VY's buttbabies" piece.  But I digress.)

ANYWAY, Dick rambles for a while about Mario's lack of production this year (focusing entirely on sacks and tackles) and decides that Mario does not deserve to go to the Pro Bowl.  Whatever.  It's a joke of an article and it wouldn't even have warranted mention here were it not for this blurb at the end:

The Texans try. They release charts each week comparing his career sack total (38.5) with Reggie White (70) and Bruce Smith (44.5) at similar points in their careers.

Even if Williams had similar numbers (which he doesn‘t), the comparison wouldn't be valid because White and Smith played in an era when teams ran more and passed less. They got more sacks out of fewer opportunities. (emphasis added)

It seems Lil' Dickie (a) was too lazy to verify his claim and (b) assumed that readers would take that assertion at face value.  Unfortunately (for him), you have to have a little intellectual credibility before people will just believe any ol' crap you throw out there.  So let's peek at the data, broken up by year (first column), of average pass (second column) and run (third column) plays per team per season, along with the corresponding percentage of plays that were passes (last column).  (All numbers from pro-football-reference.com)

1985

515

487

0.514

1986

517

483

0.517

1987

482

471

0.506

1988

505

485

0.510

1989

512

467

0.523

1990

483

444

0.521

1991

498

438

0.532

1992

479

439

0.522

1993

515

453

0.532

1994

538

448

0.546

1995

557

440

0.559

1996

532

453

0.540

1997

524

455

0.535

1998

516

452

0.533

1999

541

437

0.553

2000

527

441

0.544

2001

522

441

0.542

2002

540

441

0.550

2003

515

453

0.532

2004

511

451

0.531

2005

515

449

0.534

2006

512

452

0.531

2007

533

437

0.549

2008

516

441

0.539

2009

501

412

0.549

2009 numbers are through last weekend.  Totaling up the years each player played, we get:

White, 1985-2000: 0.531

Smith, 1985-2003: 0.532

Williams: 2006-09: 0.542

That's right, kids...teams in the Mario Era have passed about 1% more often than during Smith/White's time.  Re-reading Dick's "point," I suppose he's not technically wrong.  However, if you believe that he was referring to this 1% difference when he wrote the column, you probably also comment at the Chron with regularity in praise of Dick, Pancakes, and Anna-Tard.

My point?  It's bad enough that Justice is such a joke of a sportswriter, that he turns out nearly unreadable shit almost daily, and that he still manages to draw a paycheck for this "effort."  But when he starts taking it to the next level, making up "facts" to support his claims with the hope that no one will double-check him, he moves from annoying to insulting.  And if you assume that The Houston Chronicle as a corporation is a rational decisionmaker, one begins to wonder just who Dick is orally pleasing in order to keep his gig.