By Kerry J. Byrne

Another high-flying NFL season is about to start, and that's great news for quarterbacks and for fans of the high-tech air assault that defines modern pro football.

After all, it's never been easier to pass the ball in the NFL. Just look at the long list of passing records that have fallen in recent years:

• Peyton Manning set the record for passer rating in 2004 (121.1).

• Drew Brees set the record for completions in 2007 (440).

• Tom Brady set a new standard for touchdown passes in 2007 (50).

• Brees rewrote the record for completion percentage in 2009 (70.62).

• Brett Favre set virtually every career passing mark in recent years, including new standards for completions, attempts, yards and touchdowns that he'll pad here in 2010.

• And perhaps most importantly, the 2008 and 2009 seasons were the best passing years in NFL history, with record leaguewide passer ratings of 81.5 and 81.2, respectively.

With all the gaudy passing stats of the past decade, you'd think that scoring is at an alltime high, too.

But you'd be wrong. Way wrong.

The truth is the revolution in the modern passing game has not produced a revolution on the scoreboard. The truth is offenses scored at a greater clip back when the helmets were leather and the handoff was the preferred offensive weapon.

The Cold, Hard Football Facts recently conducted a study of annual scoring rates throughout the entire history of pro football and the results were shocking. In fact, the findings cause us to call into question the obsession that contemporary coaches, coordinators, quarterbacks (and even fans) have with the passing game.

The findings tell us that maybe it's time for a smart, cutting-edge offensive theorists to dial back the passing attack and show a little more love for the ground game.

After all, the single greatest season of offense in NFL history is not 1984, when Dan Marino thrilled the football world with his 48 TD passes and led the Dolphins to 513 points. It was not 2004, when Manning wowed us with his record 121.1 passer rating and 49 TD tosses while leading the Colts to 522 points. And it was not 2007, when Brees completed more passes than any other player in history while Brady connected on 50 TD tosses and led the 16-0 Patriots to 589 points.

Nope, the most explosive offensive season in NFL history was way back in 1948, when Philadelphia's Tommy Thompson led the NFL with 25 touchdown tosses and NFL teams averaged a record 23.2 points per game. Three of the league's 10 clubs averaged more than 30 PPG in 1948. To put that scoring clip into perspective, consider that just one of 32 teams, the Super Bowl champion Saints, topped 30 PPG in 2009.

Here's a look at the 15 highest-scoring seasons in NFL history. The explosive 1948 campaign is followed closely by a smattering of seasons from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Modern seasons are few and far between:

The Spirit of '48

We were stunned to find that 1948 was the high-water mark of offense in NFL history. We assumed teams struggled to put points on the board back in the leather-helmet days.

Certainly, most of us would assume that teams in 1948 ran far too often and passed far too little to score at any kind of great clip. At least that's the assumption, and it's partly true: NFL teams did run the ball far more often than they passed it in 1948, averaging 38 rush attempts and just 26 pass attempts per game. Compare those numbers with the 28 rush attempts and 33 pass attempts per game we witnessed in 2009.

But in the run-first season of 1948, teams scored at a clip never seen before or since, and the Cardinals, Eagles and Bears all topped 30.0 PPG.

Jimmy Conzelman's Chicago Cardinals were the best of the bunch. They led the NFL in scoring that year (32.9 PPG) and they produced what was probably the greatest four-week stretch of offense in pro football history.

From Oct. 17 to Nov. 7, the 1948 Cardinals beat the Giants 63-35; the Boston Yanks 49-27; the L.A. Rams 27-22; and the Lions 56-20. That's a four-week average of 48.8 PPG for those of you keeping score at home.

Yes, interceptions were far more common in 1948, so maybe that made life easier for offenses. The Cardinals, for example, picked off 23 passes in 12 games. But they scored just two defensive touchdowns all year, while adding four on special teams. Mostly, the Cardinals fielded an explosive offense that ripped off touchdowns at an incredible clip, nearly four per game and 47 total for the season. They kicked a mere eight field goals and, unlike offenses today, didn't (or couldn't) settle for the cheap, soccer-style field goals that pad scoring totals today.

The Eagles were No. 2 in scoring offense in that landmark 1948 campaign, with 31.3 PPG. Perhaps it's only fitting, in the greatest year of offense in pro football history, that the league's top two attacks met in the NFL title tilt.

But history has a way of messing with our minds, and the Eagles blanked the Cardinals 7-0 in a Philadelphia blizzard in that 1948 NFL championship battle, thanks to Hall of Famer's Steve Van Buren's five-yard TD plunge in the fourth quarter.