Oblong Spheroid

Regarding Cam Cameron

2012-02-02T13:30:00.005-05:00

Fans around the country might not be aware, but Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron is a controversial figure. The Ravens still, 4 years into the Harbaugh era and 4 full seasons after drafting a "franchise quarterback", still win their games with defense and controlling the football. Ravens discussion boards are wallpapered with calls for him to be fired each close nailbiter of a win. The furor when they lose is almost unbelievable.

The below is a reply to an email from Chris on this subject.

Chris wrote:

Flacco had a down year this year. ...
I feel like the Ravens passing game should be way more productive than it is.
... and I can't figure out where the blame belongs.

For the record, I basically agree that Cam needs to be replaced. To me it's not a matter of "fault" or him clearly sucking. It's a more pragmatic, amicable split: it's been 4 years, and it mostly hasn't worked, so a change has to be made. I can make a case for continuity; but I do have to make the case for it, and you also have to keep the confidence of the locker room. I wouldn't be mad, like most fans on the Ravens board, if the Ravens kept Cam. Especially after this weekend's game. But I recognize a change is probably necessary.

But what happens if we observe that the Ravens passing game should be more productive than it has been, and go thru the exercise of assuming that none of the problems were Cam's fault? This is a logic game like something you might use if you were trying to debug a computer system. Assume that one piece is working perfectly, even if you have reason to suspect it's not, so that you can capture other contributing errors in the other interacting pieces. We can use this game to make a list of the other issues affecting the offense, and see how convincing it is.

First, a description of the issue. Joe Flacco's yardage and TD numbers went down this season, on 53 *more* attempts than last year. His productivity rates declined: completion pct, yards-per, and TD pct. Yet the coaching staff maintained that Joe was having his best season as a pro, and it wasn't close. (Reported in interviews, I think mostly by gameday announcers.) Jaworski said he studied Flacco's plays vs the Texans in the divisional round, and found only 3 plays where he would give Joe a negative grade. Cameron, perhaps a harsher grader, said he found only 6. Both guys are professional graders of QBs, and both say Flacco played very well – on a day when he completed less than 52% of his passes for less than 7 yards-per, took 5 sacks and fumbled once. Just as the Ravens coaches are saying Joe played better this year, even thought he stats don't reflect it.

What are these guys seeing? Is it possible to play *better*, and have your completion pct and yards-per and TD pct all drop?

Well, sure.

First, we can see some residue of improvement in the stats. I've mentioned this all year, but it's worth repeating. Joe cut his sack pct by almost a third in 2011, setting a new personal best in that category. He was also on pace for a new career low in INT pct, which he has been steadily cutting every year since he got into the league, until he threw 2 picks against the Chargers in game 14. He still finished the season with the second-best INT pct of his career, right between his number for 2009 and 2010.
I assume that much of the other improvement the coaches are talking about have to do with things that fans can't really measure, like getting into the right play and making the right read and so forth. Let's just assume that Joe was better in these areas than he's ever been before -- I think it's probably a safe assumption, but we can't check it either way.

Ok, so if Joe was playing the quarterback position better than he ever had before, and if we operate under our test assumption that Cam was not the problem, then what have we seen that could have caused the overall productivity to drop?

Youth of the receiving corps.

This was undoubtedly an issue. The Ravens unloaded Joe's favorite targets, two extremely sure-handed receivers, and replaced them with inexperienced players. Derek Mason and Todd Heap could really catch the ball. Torrey Smith and Ed Dickson are faster, but they did not catch as well. Mason was also probably one of the best route-runners in the game, and Torrey Smith isn't. At the very least this impacted Joe's completion pct. I wonder if this ramified also. Did the Ravens have to stick with simpler formations and route combinations, to keep the offense manageable for Smith & Dickson? I don't know.

No offseason to work with the young receiving corps.

We said all season that the offenses that would handle the lockout well would be those on teams where the QB and receivers had already worked well together. It sounds like a fairly stupid thing to say: the QBs who would be good this year were the ones who were already good. This might not be a "strong finding", since it's what we'd normally expect to see. But the top 8 in passer rating were basically "the usual suspects" plus Stafford (Rodgers, Brees, Brady, Romo, Schaub, Eli, Matt Ryan). And Stafford had Calvin Johnson to throw to. Alex Smith snuck into the next spot on this list, but he did it on few attempts and avoiding INTs; then it's Big Ben and Rivers. That's EVERYBODY in the league with a rating over 88. There weren't anymore. The two rookies who had magnificent rookie seasons did not crack the top 14 or post a rating over 85. Ryan Fitzpatrick had high volume numbers, but a rating below 80.

The passing offenses who weren't already established as efficient prior to this season, did not crack the top third in efficiency this year. That's a non-finding, but it can be read to support the idea that teams needed the offseason to get their passing offense in sync if it wasn't already. The three most notable counter-examples might be Cam Newton, Andy Dalton and Fitzpatrick. I'm not sure they invalidate the idea, because first of all it's not like they did any better than "average". "Average" constituted a stunning improvement for those squads, but it's not the same thing as greatness. And secondly, there might be extenuating circumstances in all three cases. Newton might be the Ultimate Weapon, Dalton is unusually skilled & composed for a rookie and has a tremendous receiving corps, Fitzpatrick wasn't that good taking the season as a whole.

Anyway: Ravens tried to integrate a young receiving corps in a year with no offseason. It didn't come together. Ultimately that doesn't seem shocking.

Lee Evans injury.

Huge. The Ravens turned this into a positive, by giving increased opportunity to Torrey Smith, and Smith really delivered. But Evans is a veteran receiver who presumably would have run better routes than Smith and had better hands, at least early in the season. The loss of Evans probably did away with much of the Ravens planned use of 3-WR sets. Additionally, if there was any effect of "keeping the offense" simple for Smith, that's a consequence of the injury to Evans.

Evans came back and was terrible. So terrible, it's hard for me to believe that's really his actual level of performance. Remember he looked like a revelation in preseason; and even in game 1 vs the Steelers when he didn't register a catch, all the post-game reportage said he played a key role by drawing coverage etc. I choose to believe that late in the season Evans was dealing with after-effects of the injury all season. I might even find a way to forgive his TD drop, in time.

Remember, when all the writers harp on the Ravens failing to use 3-WR sets, their #2 WR was out for most of the year with injury (and was horrible when he was back). Who were the Ravens supposed to trot out there? David Reed fumbled away the coach's confidence. LaQuan Williams got some snaps, looked like he could become a player but didn't really produce as a rookie. For almost the whole season, there weren't 3 solid WRs for the Ravens to use.

Anquan Boldin's knee.

Boldin had surgery late in the year, to clean out the torn cartilage in his knee. He said it had been bothering him all season. He was observably less explosive than in previous years, except for the game vs the Cardinals. Did this cartilage issue slow him all season? It's easy to believe the answer is yes. He made plays when he came back from the surgery.

Ben Grubbs injury.

The left side of the O-line was terrible when Grubbs was out, and it led directly to at least one loss (vs Jax, I think). He missed six games. That's a large chunk of the season. I haven't matched it up perfectly, but there was a stretch of games when Joe was getting pressured terribly and the running game wasn't working either. Does anything derail an offense worse than problems on the line? (other than a QB injury)

Personnel package issues, with a fullback on the field.

This is what I wrote to you about this last week, that the Ravens reliance on a FB adversely impacted the passing game. Bill Walsh always used 2 backs in the backfield, and to great effect. So it's not like a FB has to cripple the passing offense. But Walsh's guys could all catch and run. Vontae Leach caught about 55% of the passes thrown to him (stats from Football Outsiders), which is terrible for a back, and gained a measley 4.6 yards per reception (2.6 yards per pass attempt). He was not a positive in the passing game. And his presence on the field kept another good receiver, like Pitta (or theoretically Evans) off the field. But he had to stay in the game: he was one of the Ravens best players, and a key to the running game. We as fans insisted the Ravens run the damn ball; Leach was a key to that.

You linked the Greg Cosell comment about "isolation routes, no bunch sets or rub routes." I wonder how much of that is a factor of the personnel package. Can you even run bunch sets with a FB on the field? Say you want to do trips right. So who are the three receivers in the bunch? Boldin, Smith, and – Dickson? That seems ok; but then do you line up Leach at TE, with Rice the lone setback? Does Leach have the size to block inline like that? Do you leave Dickson at TE, put Rice in the trips formation, and leave Leach in the backfield to block? Won't defenses key on the bunch including Rice, and ignore the run?

FO wrote this about the Ravens offense:

"In this era of multiple receivers and shotgun spreads, the Ravens actually run a fairly conventional, old-fashioned offense. Our charting lists the Ravens using two wide receivers on 56 percent of plays, the highest rate in the league. They run more often than they pass on first down. They like their play-action passes..."

I'd be curious to know what Rice's rushing numbers were with Leach in and out of the formation. If the Ravens could only run effectively with Leach on the field, and he's a liability in the passing game and should come out when they want to throw; well that would seem to be a big tip-off to the defense.

* * *

Let me take a timeout to reference the AFCC.

The New England game was the clearest example I've ever seen in my life of what coaches are talking about when they say an offensive game plan is "designed to win the game" rather than "designed to score points".

That requires some explaining. I usually find it an oxymoron, to try to draw that distinction. I think we all agree that the best thing an offense can usually do to help a team win is "score points". The more the better. But we also know that there is a persistent school of thought that when you're playing against high-octane offenses, you want to "control the ball" and "control tempo" and "not get into a shootout", etc. It's a conservative brand of coaching that survives because it is fundamentally sound and works at all levels. It's "the right way to play" at the lower levels, and we've all seen teams win in the NFL with it. Even win Super Bowls; coaches as diverse as Bill Parcells and Brian Billick and Bill Cowher have won Super Bowls that way. The spokepeople who have to defend those offenses (including the coordinators who speak to reporters) all say that they weren't trying to look pretty or win style points. The offense was "designed to win the game".

The Ravens very clearly went into New England with a team-wide game plan to "keep the game close and win in the 4th quarter". The Ravens players & coaches obviously had a healthy respect for Tom Brady Bill Belichick, et al. So defense, spec teams, and offense were all geared to playing THAT game. On offense that meant a game-plan that did NOT stress a lot of throwing to attack the Pats weakness in pass defense. That would tend to increase the number of possessions in the game and contribute to a shootout. Instead the gameplan stressed balance and sustained drives.

Do you intentionally limit the number of points you yourself score? It seems crazy in football, but it's definitely true in basketball. In basketball, you score the most points by running the fast break, and maybe also pressing full court. But that picks up the tempo of the entire game. The other team scores more points too; the whole game is faster. The phenomenon should not be directly transferable to football, because every offensive possession has an isolated beginning. There's no fluid continuation of play. But football coaches always act as if there is a transfer; as if picking up the tempo on your own offense will have the effect of picking up the tempo for the other team's offense. I don't understand how that works. But it is an observable fact that coaches behave as if it's true: as if going "uptempo" in the passing game will have the effect of increasing the other team's tempo as well, and will tend toward "getting into a shootout".

So the Ravens went into the New England game with a clear plan to "keep the game close", and that includes prescribing a certain style on offense, which could/would have the effect of scoring fewer points than they might otherwise score. And the team executed that plan. And dammit if the plan didn't work! At least on offense. Flacco made one mistake, the D bailed him out, and Flacco in a one-score game threw the game-winning TD pass in the final 30 secs. Which didn't actually win the game, but that seems beside the point when looking at it from a planning & strategic perspective.

If you believe that there CAN BE such a thing as an offensive game plan that is "designed to win the game" rather than "designed to score points" – I'm not sure I believe it, but I have a lot more respect for that view after the AFCC than I did before – then Cam Cameron looks like an extremely capable tactician. You can start to see how the Ravens brain trust inside the building might value Cam and his gameplanning very highly, more highly than fans do.

End timeout.

* * *

That's a strong list.

Let's say this is all true:

your #1 receiver is slowed by chronic injury
your #2 receiver misses half the season with a knee injury, and is terrible when he gets back, basically worthless the whole year
your #s 3-4-5 receivers are all rookies and inconsistent (or fumblers and locked in the doghouse)
your top 2 TEs are 2nd-year players getting their first big playing time, and inconsistent
your FB is a terrible receiver
your O-line has major holes in pass-blocking for six games (and is not really that great the rest of the time)

If you're the coordinator in charge of generating a productive passing game out of that, what the hell do you do?!?

It seems to me that this list is quite sufficient to hold back the passing game. We don't need the assumption that Cam Cameron sucks. Do you see? If that list is largely true, then your coordinator could be Sean Payton or any other annointed genius you'd like to name, and we'd still see less-than-awesome numbers coming out of the passing game.

There may even be an additional allowance made, depending on how you stand on the notion of "game-planning to win" rather than "to score".

In real life, what Cam Cameron did with that situation is, he rode his RB to the league lead in yards-from-scrimmage, he developed his talented rookie #3 receiver into a quality deep threat, he got decent "possession receiver" numbers (a thousand-yard pace) from his dinged-up #1 receiver, and he leaned on his young & inconsistent TEs for 930 combined yards and 8 combined TDs. The Ravens improved to 12th in scoring, from 16th last year.

That's a strong result, in light of the issues listed.

It's also worth noting that the Ravens played 7 games vs teams who finished in the top 10 in defensive DVOA. Only 2 games (reg season) were against teams in the bottom 10. That's another boost to the idea that the Ravens offensive coordinator did a pretty decent job in 2011.

Flacco has actually produced in several half-ending 2-min drive situations, the last couple years. He's won the game in Pittsburgh on those drives each of the last 2 seasons. I put the AFCC as another plus in Flacco's column, even though the result wasn't there. When you talk about performance in the passing game, that situation is disproportionately important. Flacco seems to deliver when called upon. That's another boost to the idea that the Ravens OC is gameplanning well, possibly "to win games" rather than "to score points", but with good situational effectiveness.

* * *

As I said before, I see the argument for pushing Cam out the door. He's had 4 years, there's been an investment in the offense, and there still seems to be very little explosiveness or efficiency. Sometimes you have to make a change. Plus they do seem rather plodding when you watch them play. There are an awful lot of 3-and-outs.

But there is a case to be made for keeping Cam, and it's not insane. I would not be spitting with rage if Cam were retained, at all. It seems a reasonable option.

By the way, one argument is frequently made, I think by accident or out of laziness. People write, "Cam's offense has sucked for 4 years," or variations like that. Let's not forget that Cam looked AWESOME in 2008. He was an important part of the train we rode to the AFCC.

I might feel more strongly that dumping Cam was an utterly necessary move, if (a) we weren't so noticeably weak on the left side of the O-line, or if the tackles as a pair played better; (b) if the TEs could block better; and (c) if there weren't so goddam many drops by the receivers, on PERFECTLY thrown passes! It is no exaggeration to say that the team would be in the Super Bowl if not for a receiver failing to make the play on a perfectly thrown pass that hit him right in the chest. I'd be very interested in the drop rate of Flacco's receivers vs those of other QBs this year. I don't know what Drew Brees or Philip Rivers has to deal with; it feels to me that if Flacco got "normal" catch rates on his most accurate passes, the Ravens would have gone about 14-2 and hosted the AFCC. And Cam Cameron would look a whole lot smarter, to Ravens fans.

* * *

Random note: Dilfer and the guy who writes those "Five Things We Learned" columns for the Sun (Kevin Van Valkenburg) both brought up Aikman as an interesting comp for Flacco. Aikman also played for winning teams that emphasized the running game, and he NEVER threw more than 23 TDs (in his 4th season, in fact). And he's in the Hall of Fame.

My respect for Aikman grew as his career went on. He became a helluva passer; deadly in the 2-min.

* * *

Last note, here's another excerpt from FO's AFCC preview.

"...there are some interesting first half/second half trends when it comes to the Ravens receivers. In the second half of the season, Flacco threw to his tight ends less often but had more success when he did. Ed Dickson and Dennis Pitta went from 10.6 targets per game in Weeks 1-9 to 7.5 targets per game in Weeks 10-17. However, together their catch rate improved from 60 percent to 72 percent, and their DVOA improved from -1.9% to 29.1%. The other split to note is that since midseason, the Ravens have ended up using Ray Rice more as a safety valve for dumpoffs than on planned passing routes. His catch rate has gone from 68 percent before Week 10 to 79 percent since Week 10, but his receiving DVOA has dropped from 51.0% to 6.2% and yards per reception have dropped frmo 10.9 to 7.6."

That whole piece is worth a read.

* * *

I like the Caldwell hire.

Brain bank examines athletes' hard hits

2012-01-28T20:30:00.001-05:00

Another good article in our tradition of educating about concussions.

Diagnosing a Ravens offensive series

2012-01-16T23:53:00.001-05:00

I just finished charting the second half of the Texans at Ravens playoff game, and I want to go through the series in which the Ravens scored their final FG.

As a season ticket holder, I attended the game in person. I have been very critical of Cam Cameron, as have most other fans I sit with. Cameron has taken a lot of criticism for this game, in particular the final two plays of this series. But after charting it, I’m not so sure he deserves the heat he’s taken. Were some of the play calls questionable? Could be. But after a long look, it’s now clearer why some of those calls were made, and I don’t think Cameron deserves the heat he’s taken over them.

The Set-Up
At this point in the game the Ravens offense was ineffective. The running game was getting between zero and five yards almost every carry. Joe Flacco was under a lot of pressure. To this point in the second half alone, there were a half dozen QB pressures or sacks by the Texans, and I charted eight blown blocks on Ravens drop-backs.

The Ravens take the ball over at their own 29 with 7:21 in the fourth quarter and a 17-13 lead. TJ Yates had just thrown his second interception.

1st and 10 @ Ravens 29 – I will abbreviate these plays as follows: 1-10 @ R29

The Series
1-10 @ R29 – Rice off left tackle is stuffed for a two yard gain.
2-8 @ R31 – From a run formation, JJ Watt comes off Oher’s attempted block to pressure Flacco, who steps up in the pocket and finds Pitta wide open in the middle of the field for a first down.

1-10 @ R44 – This is an important play, so I’m separating it. The Ravens are in an I-formation with Torrey Smith to the right, covered by Jonathan Joseph. The Texans are in a standard 3-4 formation. With the clock running, the Texans run blitz, throwing seven guys into the OL. The Ravens block with seven, which leaves single coverage with a deep safety. Before the pocket collapses, Flacco hits Smith on a quick slant for nine yards. The Texans sold out, Flacco read it and did a great job delivering the ball.

2-1 @ T47 – Hand off to Leach gets the one yard needed to pick up the first down.
1-10 @ T46 – Another run formation, another 1st down run, another stuff by the Texans, who are consistently beating their Ravens counterparts on the line.

2-9 @ T45 – The second important play. Here, the Ravens line up with three receivers, a classic pass formation. But the Texans don’t respond with the typical nickel defense; they’re still lined up in a 3-4 and clearly expecting run as they run blitz yet again. This time it’s six rushers (a seventh comes eventually, but not before the ball is out) on six blockers. Flacco again reads the rush and gets a very fast quick slant out to the right side, this time to Boldin.

The Ravens are now close to if not in field goal range. With the clock ticking, it will be just over 3:00 in the game by the next offensive snap. The Texans are clearly selling out on the run at this point, not even bothering to match up with the Ravens personnel on the prior play. And probably most importantly, the corners are giving the receivers the inside slant route, which Flacco has hit twice, both times before an overloaded rush can even apply pressure.

1-10 @ T31 – Rice rushes into the middle, this time for a gain of five yards. Houston takes its first time out at 3:04, clearly signaling they are going to make a stand here.

This is where the heat Cameron takes begins. Fans in the stands grumble that Cameron “better not get too tricky.” I agree with them. Everyone wants to see two runs. Bleed the Texans final two time outs, work to pick up five yards; if you do it, the game is virtually sealed, and if you don’t, you kick the FG and let Yates try to drive into the end zone which he’s only done once before.

But what I think we as fans miss is this probably isn’t the best way to play it. The first down actually holds great importance because it bleeds the clock. Assume each play takes just five seconds. With two time outs left, that puts the clock at 2:54 after the Texans take their last time out. If the Ravens don’t pick up the first, they kick on fourth down, kick off, and the Texans are getting the ball with 70-80 yards to drive, and likely between 2:30 and 2:45 to play.

But if the Ravens pick up the first down, even on this play, it changes the time significantly. There’s a time out on the first down at 2:59. A running play on first down, then another time out at 2:54, and the Texans are out of time outs. Two plays later after third down, the clock is at the two minute warning. And not just that…because of how close the clock is to 2:40, you actually can afford to run a passing play on either second or third down (as long as you run the other down), and still get the clock to the two minute warning. These open options make offense much easier to play and improve the odds of another first down, which ends the game. And if they don’t get the first again, they kick the FG, kick off and force Yates to drive 70-80 yards with between 1:40 and 1:55 to play.

2-5 @ T26 – The Ravens line up in a run formation, seemingly playing into the Texans yet again. The Texans blitz with six pass rushers, Ravens blocking with seven. The play is yet another quick slant to the right, the same that had worked twice previously. This time, however, Kareem Jackson did a great job getting up and jamming Boldin on the line. This knocked Boldin off the route, and the pass fell incomplete.

3-5 @ T26 – The Ravens line up with two receivers and two TEs. But just before the snap, Rice goes into motion wide to the right, leaving an empty back-field. Rice trips on his route, and the pass falls incomplete. This play likely works and comes close to, if not picks up, the first down if Rice doesn’t fall.

I want to cover the third down play first a moment. The situation is that the Ravens need to pick up a first down, or else the clock will be stopped with around 2:55 to play no matter what, and the Texans will still have at least one time out plus the two minute warning. This gives the Texans the ball plus 2:45ish to score a TD. While Cameron takes a lot of heat for this call not being a run, at this spot in the game, it actually makes little sense to me to not open up the play book and try whatever possible to get the first down. Perhaps he (or Flacco, if Flacco called/audibled to it) can take heat for the particular passing play being a fourth quick slant in seven plays. But running here actually makes less sense to me than passing, given the Texans’ dominance at the line of scrimmage.

The natural fan reaction becomes “It never should have gotten there! If you run on second down, you can run on third to pick up the first down or bleed the time outs!”

Thinking this through more, there are actually a lot of problems with this. First, with how great the Texans controlled the line, there’s no guarantee you can run on third down to have a high likelihood of picking up the first down. If Rice gets stuffed and it’s 3rd and four or more, a run is a very low percentage play, and you’re forced to pass anyway. Second, bleeding the time outs with almost three minutes to play actually carries very little value. They need more than a field goal, so they won’t need a time out to get the unit onto the field. And three minutes with the two minute warning is an eternity to drive the field.

Meanwhile, you have to look at how the game was going at the time. At this point, Rice had rushed the ball 19 times. He was averaging just under 2.7 YPC and had only three runs of more than five yards with his biggest a rush of eight. And the Texans were selling out on the run. Meanwhile, Flacco had just thrown two successful quick slants against a ferocious rush.

Suddenly it becomes understandable why those plays were called. The quick slant on second down seems in fact to be a pretty high percentage play. And there’s really little incentive to bleed time outs with so much time left.

With less than two minutes to play, I think it becomes a much different story. But in that situation, I actually think the play calling was solid if not very good. And considering it took me a day of thinking about it and an hour and a half to chart it to come to that conclusion, it shows why I sit on my couch writing amateur articles for no pay, while the experts make the big bucks to come to these conclusions inside of the 120 seconds they have before the play-call has to go in.

It's Time for Sweeping Changes

2011-12-13T22:16:00.000-05:00

It’s time to use your imagination.

Let’s first rewind to Thanksgiving. You’re sitting, watching the Packers at Lions game; it’s first and ten at the Lions 40 with just over 12 minutes left in the third. Rodgers drops back to pass on a drive that could put them up by two scores. But instead of completing a pass to Greg Jennings for 19 yards, Suh beats his offensive lineman and crushes Rodgers. Rodgers holds his head, is taken to the sideline, shows signs of a concussion, and sits the rest of the game.

Three weeks later, Rodgers still doesn’t have any insight into when he can return. The season strolls on. The Packers lose two or three games down the stretch. They make a playoff appearance, but cannot overcome his loss. Rodgers, inexplicably, cannot make it back from his concussion, and no one knows why he can’t shake his symptoms, or when he’ll be able to return.

Fast forward a year from now. Rodgers didn’t play in mini-camps or the pre-season. He was only cleared for contact in August. But we’re in the first week of October before he sees his first action. Out he comes to rousing cheers! One of the best young quarterbacks in the league is back! He has a coming out party his first game, completing 80% of his passes, throwing for 450 yards and five touchdowns.

Three weeks, 1,200 yards and 11 TD passes later, Rodgers limps off the field toward the end of the game after taking a big shot. The Packers are already up by four scores in the fourth quarter, so they sit him just in case. And then on Monday, it’s revealed he has more concussion-like symptoms. He’s no longer cleared to play, out indefinitely.

After having sat his first three seasons, Rodgers isn’t exactly a spring chicken. But it’s safe to say that people still think of him as a fairly young QB. Compare him to Brady, Manning and Brees – all in their 30s – and he still seems to be from that “next” generation. Roethlisberger is only a year older than he is, but has nearly 60% more attempts than Rodgers because he was the primary starter his first three years, and suffers several bone-jarring hits himself. When fans think of Rodgers, I believe they tend to think of him as having a shelf-life five to seven years, maybe more, beyond what these other four guys have.

But think about this scenario. He’s been a Superbowl MVP. He’s got the active and all time highest career QB rating. He’s streaking toward an auto-entry into the Hall of Fame and making people question whether we could be seeing the guy destined to be called the Greatest of All Time.

And just one year from now, Rodgers’ career suddenly looks to be in jeopardy from concussions.

How would this change the game? What would it do to fans’ mind-sets? We witness the oncoming of one of the greatest players we may ever get to see play; and without warning, his career is swept out from under him. The game would survive, of course. But how would that impact the way you think about the game? How would it impact your emotions, losing such a great player?

How big a story would it be?

The ramifications of it would likely be huge. We’ve seen single players alter the course of the game before. David the Deacon Jones got the head-slap outlawed in 1977 after perfecting the technique and becoming one of the greatest pass rushers of all time. Tom Brady took a season-ending shot to his knee, causing the implementation of a rule where defenders on the ground cannot hit a quarterback below the waist. It only makes sense to think that the threatening of one of the greatest player in America’s most popular sport would be cause for big changes. And it makes just as much sense to think that the story would be the headline story in the sports world, not just for a day or two, but for weeks. It’s a story that would rock the sports world, and likely result in a major change of direction.

This is the story of Sidney Crosby, and the potential tragedy the NHL now faces. The only difference is, Crosby is a far younger star than Rodgers is, and he’s more meaningful to his sport than Rodgers is to his.

Like him or hate him, Sidney Crosby’s greatness cannot be denied. Though he’s five-and-a-half years into his career, he’s only 24 years old. But in those six seasons, he’s won the league’s scoring title, been the league’s MVP, won the Stanley Cup and scored the game winning goal in the Olympic gold medal game. At this time last year, Crosby was the league’s scoring leader again and on a pace for an easy MVP award on a major Stanley Cup challenger.

In the Winter Classic on Jan 1, ’11, Dave Steckel and Victor Hedman hit Crosby in the head. He suffered concussion-like symptoms, and found himself out of the game for nearly a year. He returned to action Nov 21st, scoring four points and immediately sparking discussion of whether he could worm his way into contention for the scoring title by the end of the season. Less than a month later, he’s back on the bench, out indefinitely with more concussion-like symptoms.

It’s a truly tragic story for hockey fans. We face the prospect of losing what appears to be one of the greatest players of all time in his sport. Crosby seemed to be capable of challenging The Great One himself. Now, instead of wondering how many MVPs and Stanley Cups he’ll win in his career, we’re left to question whether he should retire now. And we’re left to wonder whether the game should undergo massive, sweeping changes, in the hopes that we can ensure that if Crosby can overcome this, we don’t lose him forever, and that if we do, we ensure we minimize the risk of the same thing happening to the next great player to come along, or any of the current greats we have playing the game.

This story should be bigger than it is.

It’s here where I need to note that it’s a shame that hockey isn’t even half as big or as popular in this country as football is. The story of Aaron Rodgers would dominate sports headlines for a long time. The story of Sidney Crosby is a bi-line, falling behind the ESPN recap of the 2-11 Rams losing to the 6-7 Seahawks as well as two other non-NFL related stories that night.

The true shame of this reality is that if the story were as big as it should be – if it were of the magnitude of an Aaron Rodgers-like injury – the attention it would bring to the problem of violence in these sports would likely bring about important, necessary changes. I’m hopeful that the NHL will finally begin to take a serious look at how violent the sport is, and how risky it is for all their players, including their potential all-time greats, and that it will lead to significant changes for the better. But I’m even more hopeful that we can reach that point in both of these sports prior to losing anyone beyond those that have already been lost.

Angles on Niners - Ravens

2011-11-23T18:30:00.002-05:00

Would be nice to have Ray Lewis back.

I think the Niners might be the most physical, bullying team in the league. I think Jim Harbagh knew exactly what he wanted to emphasize. The Steelers or Ravens are usually "that guy", but I think this year it is San Francisco. The Niners are playing better than Pittsburgh or Baltimore is, certainly better than Baltimore. Weighted DVOA says so, and so do your eyes. I'm sure the Niners are younger at some key positions – Patrick Willis has been faster than Ray Lewis for some years now – and Aldon Smith, Ahmad Brooks & Justin Smith can really rush the passer. Whereas, in addition to Ray-ray's toe issue, Haloti Ngata has been wrestling with a thigh injury for a couple weeks now.

Also, the Ravens kick coverage units have been terrible this season. They have given up big play after big play. Ted Ginn is super dangerous.

So, you know, I'm worried about this game. The Ravens have been unraveling a bit on defense over the last couplefew weeks, and it's a powerful team coming in. Plus I looked at the Steelers remaining schedule, and I think they go 5-1 the rest of the way, the loss coming in San Francisco. That means the Ravens will have to win 5 more games to win the division, and they still travel to San Diego and to Cincinnati this season. They need to win this game.

A few points that might benefit the Ravens:

• They are at home. The Ravens have been very difficult to beat at home over the last dozen years – I think they have one of the league's 3 best records over that span. They have thumped good opponents this season in Baltimore (Pittsburgh, NYJ, Houston). What are the Niners impressive road wins? @ Cincinnati week 3, @ Philadelphia week 4, @ Detroit week 6. (The win over the Giants was in San Francisco.) Those are good teams, but Cincy & Philly were still working out some kinks early in the season.

• No matter how well he's managing the games for them right now, the Niners QB is still Alex Smith. I have a hard time believing he will beat the Ravens defense. Frank Gore is a beast, but one-dimensional teams do not typically do well against the Ravens.

• The Ravens are used to playing in "that game". I'm assuming a certain style of hard-hitting slugfest. Have these Niners ever played in "that game"? The Ravens play it twice a year vs the Steelers, often three times a year. Plus their games against Cincy often go that route as well. Whatever quality of nerve and poise it takes to shake off a bad sack or a bad turnover, and stay in "that game" all the way until the final minute, the Ravens have demonstrated they have it. Flacco might be a lock to commit 1.5 dumb turnovers per game, but he has come right back with solid performances in the remainders of those tight games, and given the Ravens chances to win.

• As wildly inconsistent as it has been, the Ravens offense still has more weapons with Flacco, Ray Rice, Boldin & Torrey Smith & Lee Evans, Dickson & Pitta, than the Niners offense has. The Niners have dangerous offensive players in Gore, Crabtree and Vernon Davis, esp Davis, but the Ravens have more.

So, I dunno. I feel that there's a risk of the Niners defense and spec teams overwhelming the Ravens, scoring points off turnovers and returns. Big number for the Niners, in that case. If that doesn't happen, and the game settles in to a knock-down drag-out battle, then I see the Ravens offense eking out a TD here and a few FGs there. I don't see the Niners offense getting much of anything. Ravens 16-6, in that case.

I think some in the Baltimore media will see this game as a referendum on how much the Ravens want to sacrifice for John Harbaugh. By "some in the media" I mean Preston. He has consistently written that Harbaugh does not connect well with the team, they find him corny etc etc. I have usually found Preston unconvincing on this issue. Not "wrong" necessarily. There are 50+ guys on a football team – the number is probably well over 60 when you factor in the practice squad and guys who are out with injury but still around the facility rehabbing and participating in meetings. Sixty guys do not agree on anything. Probably any head coach "connects well" with some of the guys, is ignored by others, etc. The Ravens as an organization pay more attention to issues of personality than most teams do (they go out of their way to assess how coachable a player is, draft team captains, etc), but there is zero chance that no one on the roster rolls his eyes when he hears about "Mighty Men" etc. So, I think on any squad it would be pretty easy to find ~5 guys who are sarcastic about the head coach and his motivational tactics. Even starters. So I don't think Preston is necessarily wrong, but that he is misinterpreting or blowing out of proportion.

But that's easy for me to say. He's actually met the players and been in the locker room. What if he's right? In that light it will be interesting to see how hard the Ravens play, what kind of determination they show late in the game, and how they celebrate with Harbaugh toward the end if they win. Suggs has already said that he can't wait for the post-game handshake between the coaches. I'd be really touched if a lot of guys are hugging Harbaugh and dunking him with Gatorade etc.

Does Jim Harbaugh remind you at all of Cowher?

Lionized

2011-10-16T09:35:00.004-04:00

I have a persistent morning amnesia. When I wake it takes me a minute or more to recall significant events from the prior day, a physiological equivalent of booting up.

Usually this is a positive experience, however today it was soaking up the memory of the Tigers losing last night. A game I barely paid attention to after a 9 run barrage by the Rangers in the third inning. An outcome I had no immediate emotional investment in and a bitter disappointment that really only set in this morning.

I've read some fan posts in a couple of places about how proud we should be of this team and how happy they would have been before the season if the Tigers had gotten this far. I guess in theory this makes sense but opportunities lost are opportunities lost. This team was every bit good enough to compete for the world championship, especially after chopping down the Yankees and seeing the Phillies fall in the National League. But they are much too hurt, too slow, really not good enough defensively. They couldn't make the key hits that would have gotten them past Texas and so the season is over.

Of course, this isn't about that but more about my current state of mind.

Jim encouraged me to write about the Lions a couple of weeks ago when they were 3-0 and I promised to write about them when they reached 4-0. Well, now they are 5-0 and going into their toughest game to date. I hate the idea of writing this after they lose their first game, and this has been brewing in my head for weeks.

Lionized. It's a term coined by Lions fans cleverer than me, with it's genesis in Rod Marinelli's ridiculous press conferences. "We will keep digging, we have to keep our shovels sharp". We heard some flavor of this theme week after week when there was no better explanation for a team with the worst roster and the worst record marching to an historically bad season. Perhaps my favorite quote to come out of the 2008 mess came from Rob Parker who asked Marinelli 'do you ever wish your daughter had married a better defensive coordinator?' A nod to Marinelli's love of nepotism, both in his coaching staff and in his team which evolved into a collection of ex-Buccaneers who were no longer good enough to even play in Tampa, a team that had problems of its own.

Marinelli's pressers were eerily similar to what we had heard before, from Mariucci, Mornhinweg, and Ross before him. Speculation would start almost as soon as a coach was hired, 'how long until he's Lionized?' How long until we start hearing these stultified and repetitive cliches? Usually it would take about a season and a half. Ultimately it would result in bizarre decision making. Choosing to kick in overtime. Hiring a 300 pound quarterback and starting him with two days practice. Abandoning the team's nascent franchise quarterback after only 2 weeks on the job in favor of a third stringer acquired from the Browns (Mariucci/Harrington). The list goes on.

This brings us to Jim Schwartz. I loved the hire. This isn't saying a ton, because I also loved the hire of Marinelli for different reasons, but I did love that the Lions hired Schwartz. His pedigree was flawless with extensive experience working with both Bill Belichek and Jeff Fischer, along with their waves of coaches who now represent about a significant fraction of head coaches and coordinators in the league. I loved that he had a head for analysis beyond orthodoxy. And at the same time I hated that he would probably fail. That the roster was so lacking in talent that it was probably impossible for him to succeed within any time frame that would allow him to keep his job, that like his predecessors he would become lost and confused long before the tunnel's end showed any light.

Sure enough, his career in Detroit did start as predicted. 2-14 his first year with the #1 overall quarterback equally ineffective and hurt. His second season starting 2-10 with the franchise quarterback appearing to play much better but at the same time even more brittle than his rookie season.

The one thing that never happened though, was the Lionization of Schwartz. Who knows, maybe he was only a week or two away from starting to appear vexed and lost and confused like we had seen so many times before. Certainly there was cause. There was the 'complete the process' game against the Bears which rhymed with so many experiences that Lion fans have had in the past. There was the overtime loss to the Jets where Stafford was lost for the year and where the team was unable to preserve a 7 point lead in the last minute. I doubt though that Schwartz was ever that vulnerable, that close to succumbing, because it is clear that the team never lost faith, that there were never any cracks in the veneer that would have foreshadowed the wall caving in.

And then they won.

It was a weird win. 7-3 against the eventual champion Packers. A game where things that typically happened to the Lions happened to the other team instead. The star quarterback got knocked out, the star wide receiver inexplicably dropped the game winning touchdown. The Packers missed on scoring chance after scoring chance even while leading 3-0 for 3-and-a-half quarters. A game that nearly ruined the Packers' season.

And then they won again, in a game that Tampa Bay needed and lost. A win that would nearly have secured a playoff spot for the Buccaneers who ultimately stayed home for the playoffs. A game where the Lions gave up a 4th quarter lead but came back to tie in the closing moments only to win in overtime. This win broke their NFL record 26 game road losing streak

And they won again and again, the last without Calvin Johnson. What in the name of the Wide Wide World of Sports was going on around here?

And today here we are. 5-0 with an NFL best 9 game winning streak. A team that has won this year with consecutive 20 point comebacks, the most in NFL history. A team that demolished an inferior opponent 48-3. A team that battled cramps and fatigue to beat the Buccaneers on the road for the second time in 5 games. A team that got held in check by a good Bears defense even while the crowd forced false start after false start during a national coming out party on Monday night.

I am intensely proud of this team and the city. I am intensely proud that the fans never lost faith.

and yeah, I don't want it to end

Detroit is probably the most misunderstood city in the country. Any national coverage highlights the decay, the open fields where neighborhoods once stood depicted like scars with the downtown as a backdrop. Coverage invariably discusses the auto industry, the unemployment, the crime rate.

We know. WE KNOW!

What you almost never hear is how loyal Detroiters are to Detroit. How people who move here, often reluctantly, grow to love this city. As dysfunctional as the city had to be for decades, as much infighting between the city and the suburbs which often resembles pitched battles, we always have a unified front against usurping press that tries to reshape our story, to only highlight the bad.

And for so many years the Lions were simply representative of the city. A bizarrely inept franchise representing a depressingly inept city.

If that's the story though, we are also seeing that story change. Young people with no memories of the racial tension that marked the late '60s and early '70s are rebuilding the city from the inside out. Grass root businesses are springing up, lofts are getting renovated and occupied. New construction is continuous for the first time in decades. While this is the hidden inward story, the Lions are an outward face. A resurgent franchise that appears poised to join and surpass the league giants.

So here I am. Deeply disappointed in a Tiger season that didn't go long enough. A season that maybe ended in the worst possible way. Even so, hope remains. While the seasons change and we march toward winter, it is a figurative spring for the Lions.

And maybe they can continue to change the language. Maybe Lionized will take on a whole new meaning.

Al Davis

2011-10-08T12:37:00.002-04:00

So wow. Al Davis dead.

There was a time when I would have felt qualified to eulogize this man. He was both great and terrible, both Peter and Ivan. There was a time when the hallowed grounds of the NFL quaked beneath his footfalls. We can argue about his impact but we certainly cannot deny it.

There are a lot of internet entities that understand him better and will have more lucid things to say about Davis than I would.

But for my part I will simply retire his name. Not that we won't talk about him and not that we won't potentially talk about other prominent footballers named Al Davis. Really, it's just an honorary retirement, a tiny shout out to this man we both admired and ridiculed.

Troy Polamalu and the Steelers 2011

2011-10-05T21:56:00.007-04:00

I wrote this article after the Ravens win over the Steelers, but never posted it. Still think it's pretty relevant, so I'm dropping it in here now.

After week one’s performance in which the Ravens controlled the Steelers on both sides of the ball, a few things jumped out at me. First and foremost, it’s unlikely any team will thrash the Steelers this season as badly as the Ravens did. I have to believe a large part of why the Ravens were able to do what they did was due to an emotional outburst, taking out four years of frustration in one three hour stretch.

Second, the Steelers offensive line is very bad. After charting the second half of that game, I counted nine blown blocks and three unblocked rushers applying pressure or making plays in the backfield out of 37 total plays. That’s a near 30% failure rate, when the league average in 2010 was under ten percent. While this may be a statistical aberration, the Steelers OL is a weakness. To make matters worse, Willie Colon was placed on IR this week due to a torn triceps. While it’s unlikely that this line will play that poorly all year, it is likely the performance of the line will hold back their offense from being as great as it can be with their strong players at the skill positions.

But third and probably most importantly, Troy Polamalu looked old and slow. This was evident watching the entire game, but no play demonstrates it quite as clearly as Ed Dickson’s 3rd quarter TD catch. To be fair, the throw and catch were both great, placed where no DB would have a play on it. But notice how badly Polamalu gets burned on this play. It’s not about Dickson getting behind him. It’s that after Dickson was already behind him, Dickson – a tight end, not a receiver – pulled away from him.

Last year, I wrote a blog article arguing that Polamalu should be the league MVP. The premise was that over the previous two seasons (we were only 14 games into the ’10 season when this was written) the Steelers defense has been far more effective with him playing than without. Refreshing the numbers by adding in the five games played at the end of the season doesn’t change much.

(Apologies for the format, I still don't know how to do tables on this thing...)

                  With Polamalu     Without Polamalu
Avg Pts Allowed        15.9               21.5             (35% increase)
Avg Yds Allowed        280                301              (8% increase)
Avg Def DVOA           -21.8%             -0.2%
Avg 1st downs          16.8               17.0             (1.5% increase)
Avg Turnovers          2.2                1.0              (54% decrease)
W/L Record             17-5               6-7
Win %                  .772               .462

This data includes all 2009 and 2010 games
* This figure does not include the Superbowl, for which I didn’t have defensive DVOA (which would almost certainly cause the -21.8% to go down, but should not impact it enough to come close to the -0.2%)

And so I believe it’s fair to at least raise the question, “What happens to the Steelers defense if Polamalu is no longer able to play at the level he once did?” It is of course not fair to assume that the Steelers defense will be as bad in 2011 as they were in week one, even if Polamalu turns out to be a shell of his former self, or misses significant time due to injury. People don’t call week one “National Overreaction Week” for nothing.

But Polamalu has suffered several injuries over the last few years. Eight seasons of launching your 220 pound body into opposing offensive players like a missile will tend to wear down many people. Polamalu has missed games due to injury in four of the last five seasons. So while it wouldn’t surprise anyone to find that this game was nothing but a fluke and he performs at the high level we all expect for the rest of the year, it would probably be just as unsurprising to find that he truly has lost a step.

So what happens if you take a sure-fire Hall of Fame player out of a defense and replace him with an average over-the-hill player?

In the Football Outsiders Almanac, the age of the Steelers defense was specifically discussed. “Eleven of the 12 oldest defenses since 2000 had defensive DVOA below zero percent. There’s virtually no correlation between average age and defensive DVOA.” They point out that any slight trend seen tends to favor older defenses. Increasing age does not automatically result in decreasing productivity.

However, they too pointed out that the Steelers defense was far different without Polamalu than with him. And while his leadership, intelligence and play recognition will always mean he will be capable of making plays, a loss of his overall talent could be difficult for the defense to overcome.

The numbers above don’t lie. The Steelers defense is certainly not as bad as it looked this past Sunday, when the Ravens averaged 6.3 yards per play and scored 35 points with a 29.4% Steelers VOA on defense (ranked 27th in the league). But if the defense is missing the Polamalu the league is used to seeing wreak havoc, and the Steelers are fielding an average defense as a result, then the Steelers are likely closer to fighting for a Wildcard berth than they are the Super Bowl contenders that many believed them to be just before they stepped onto M&T Bank stadium’s turf last Sunday afternoon.

Head Trauma And ALS

2011-09-25T10:12:00.007-04:00

One of our ongoing themes here at OS is a running commentary on football and head trauma. I remain proud that in our tiny corner of the internet we were doing this before it got cool.

Steve Gleason recently revealed he has ALS. He's a folk hero in New Orleans (I had no idea about this before this morning) and will be the honorary captain for today's game. It is difficult to reconcile our great passion for football with the terrible costs that the game incurs.

Six months before Gleason's diagnosis a team of researchers from Boston University reported a link between an ALS-type disease and the repetitive head trauma suffered by some athletes.

Some peers say the study's sample size -- two former football players and a former boxer -- is insufficient to draw accurate conclusions, but evidence shows ALS strikes athletes in far greater numbers than the general population.

A 2005 paper found that Italian professional soccer players had developed the disease at rates about six times higher than normal.

The disease strikes about two in 100,000 people, which means only two or three NFL players since 1970 should have been afflicted. BU researchers identified 14 former NFL players since 1960 as having been diagnosed with ALS, a total about eight times more than what would be expected among U.S. men of similar ages. Perrin said his research shows Gleason would be the 27th former NFL player identified with the disease.

Most experts believe brain trauma is not solely responsible for diseases like ALS or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE. Those afflicted probably have genetic factors leading to susceptibility, with concussions serving as a catalyst.

"You have people in both camps," Gleason said. "But it's getting harder and harder to say that there are no repercussions from head trauma in the NFL or in football. You can't say that anymore."

Who's Built To Win?

2011-09-18T10:10:00.002-04:00

I keep trying to write this post and I keep changing the title and then changing the content and then deleting the whole thing altogether.

Built to win. One of the cliches that we see, particularly in football I think. Ridiculous to think of the alternatives. Built to lose. Built to tie.

I sort of have an argument that I trot out every spring and summer that every team is improving every year. Mostly it's a rhetorical argument. Fans get so myopic about the progression of their own team that they forget about the progression of others. So yeah, teams are always getting better, but they are also always getting worse. The teams who can outrun attrition ultimately improve. The teams who can't don't.

Not sure what this has to do with anything. Originally this post was going to be about Pittsburgh failing to outrun attrition, but after looking at them a bit more I decided that they hadn't, or at least I was not sure that they had. Yeah, James Harrison and Troy Polamalu are past peak. James Farrior and Casey Hampton are simply old. On the other hand though, LaMarr Woodley is the next man up in the Steeler pantheon and it seems likely that others are poised to join him. They have Lawrence Timmons who some in Steelerland are already calling a star, although to me it's premature. They have Ziggy Hood and Cameron Heyward and Jason Worilds, each at varying levels of development and each players who appear to be highly regarded in Pittsburgh. So are the Steelers outrunning attrition? Is there really any way for us to know?

A couple of years ago I thought I had stumbled on a pretty simple formula to identify a champion. Give me a team with a great quarterback and a star at each level of defensive depth; defensive line, linebacker and defensive back, and this is a team who will compete for Super Bowls. I still think this is a pretty good model, but unfortunately reality intruded and teams started winning Super Bowls without all of these great defensive players. Or maybe they didn't. Sometimes it is hard to tell.

Two years ago New Orleans won with Darren Sharper being named All Pro and Jonathan Vilma and Roman Harper Pro Bowlers. While this sort of validates the model, my gut says that Vilma's and Harper's tickets to Hawaii were gifts, that the real strength of that defense was Gregg Williams and a defensive line that was deep and talented. Really, that team had good players everywhere. Jabari Greer was probably the best of the back seven, but he was hurt for a good chunk of the season. Sometimes teams just come together. Things work. Championships are won.

Football Outsiders informs us that it is easier to build a consistent offense than a consistent defense, which is why you've seen so many recent champions win from an offensive philosophy. If you can build an offense that can score on anyone then maybe once in a while your defense will hold opponents down enough for your team to win. Indianapolis won one championship doing this, and they made another Super Bowl with an even weaker defense.

Going back five years, Indianapolis had the 2nd ranked offense and 23rd defense, the Giants the 14th offense and 17 defense in their fluky run. In 2009, the Saints had the number 1 offense and 20th ranked defense, bolstered by opportunism that forced turnovers in all but two games (both losses) including 5 in the NFC championship game. If you've been counting though, you'll notice I skipped 2008, the last time that Pittsburgh won. That year they had one of the most dominant defenses of all time, finishing 1st in scoring, total yards, passing yards, and second in the NFL in rushing yards against. This against an offense that finished a more pedestrian 20th overall.

So built to win? Again, I'm not sure what that means any more. I thought I knew once, but now teams are learning that they can overcome defensive deficiencies with greater offense. The NFL appears to be getting in to an arms race. Looking at the current contenders, all appear to be making receiving options a priority. The Falcons had one of the best running backs and one of the best wide receivers in football. No matter. They traded half their draft to go up for Julio Jones.

I was clicking back through some of the quarterbacks of the '90s earlier and was startled to realize how common it was for these guys to have completion percentages in the low 50%s. Not just run-of-the-mill guys but Pro Bowlers. Steve Young was an aberration, not just because he was the only guy hitting 65%, but because he was one of the very few who would even hit 60%. Now since the NFL liberalized the passing game even further with their reinterpretation of pass defense in 2007, one wonders if there is really any room left for a running game at all.

The Lions openly admit that they aren't prioritizing development of a running attack. For their purposes 3 yards per carry is as good as 4. Sure, the more, the better but the main goal is to tie defenders to the line, at least a little. The Lions are going to take their yards in chunks, not by running through the tackles 16 times on a 9 minute drive. You can just look at how they've built the team in three years, how they've surrounded Stafford with guys who can catch. It's easy to forget that only Calvin Johnson was on the team when Stafford showed up. They drafted Pettigrew that year, signed Burleson a year later. Traded for Scheffler, drafted Best and then Titus Young this year. That's a loud statement on how the offense is going to run, and now that Stafford is healthy, it appears that the strategy is reaping huge dividends.

The Lions of course aren't the only ones. The Ravens have transitioned to a pass heavy attack. So are the Jets. The Patriots have always been one. The Eagles were among the first to adopt the strategy with Andy Reid's handoff-phobia.

The most exciting game today was Buffalo's 38-35 win over Oakland with both teams scoring down the stretch as the Bills came back. It was exciting for the flow of the game, but equally improbable considering the participants. Buffalo? Oakland? Ryan Fitzpatrick and Jason Campbell? Really? Last week Chad Henne passed for 400 yards. Cam Newton has passed for 400 plus in 100% of his NFL starts - and lost twice.

What we often see in football is the development of a trend by innovators, and then me-too adoption. At this point, it appears to have gone to an extreme.

So what's the next innovation? Probably some kind of Parcellsian strategy to haul the NFL back to a game of running and defense and field position.

The team who figures out how to do this?

That team will be built to win.

Revisiting the Rule of 26-27-60

2011-09-17T20:30:00.004-04:00

Back before the ’10 season, SI writer John P. Lopez published a piece examining whether there was a magic bullet that could allow teams to predict NFL success at the quarterback position.

Could a simple formula have warned us of Russell's lack of NFL readiness? And Ryan Leaf's and David Carr's and other failed, high-pick quarterbacks?

Call it the Rule of 26-27-60.

Here is the gist of it: If an NFL prospect scores at least a 26 on the Wonderlic test, starts at least 27 games in his college career and completes at least 60 percent of his passes, there's a good chance he will succeed at the NFL level.

The article gets mentioned on occasion around the sports community, and every time it does, I get irritated by it. The problem is that Lopez falls into the trap of cherry-picking his quarterbacks, and not particularly doing the greatest job at it. As such, I’d like to take a much deeper look at this.

So my intention is to look at the following: I’ll be examining all quarterbacks with more than two years as the primary starter in the NFL. This will eliminate guys like Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow, who we can’t really say whether they’ll be good or not. I do intend to include guys like Matt Stafford, because even though he’s started only 14 games in the NFL, I do think we’ve seen enough of him to say with confidence that if he can stay healthy, he’s going to be a very good NFL QB.

I’m also going to include all first round QB draft picks between years 2002 and 2009 if they’re not primary starters, as this mostly labels them busts. Given the predictor of success, we’ll want to know the QBs that fizzle out as well. Starting with 2002 is a bit arbitrary, but ’01 only had Vick who’s included in current starters and ’00 had Pennington who is difficult to categorize anyway, so it’s not terrible not to include him.

I’m also rounding the study out with two other QBs that deserve mention here, Peyton Manning and Brett Favre. Both are long-time starters that just finished or are injured and would normally still be starting. This gives us a population of 40 different quarterbacks, and should be a good gauge of whether the Rule really does work or not.

I’m also going to try to simplify the definition of QB success by listing four different categories. They’ll go as follows:
The elite – These are the true cream of the crop of the NFL, the best of the best. Seven fit here.
The solid – These are guys I would define as good players that you are happy to leave in as your team’s QB for five-plus years. They may not be the best QBs out there, but they’re good enough to give your team a chance. I have 13 in this category.
The young guns – These are guys playing in their third or fourth year and are on a trajectory to fall somewhere in either the elite or the solid groups in the next few years. There are six of them.
The bad – These will range between flat busts and QBs that are starters for their teams, but are unlikely to hold that job long because they’re not good enough to rely on being winners in the long term. There are 14 in this category.

There may be some discussion as to whether certain guys could fall into the “bad” vs. the “solid” category. And I’m fine with that, but in general, I don’t see a lot of argument there. We may also argue between elite and solid a bit to, but I think that’s an even less important distinction, as the Rule isn’t really called out to distinguish between the good and the great; I’m just looking at it for general instruction.

And so the meat of the discussion, how does the Rule really perform?

Elite, fits Rule
Brees, Manning, Rivers
Elite, doesn’t fit Rule
Brady, Favre, Rodgers, Roethlisberger
Solid, fits Rule
Eli Manning, Kolb, Schaub, Fitzpatrick, Romo
Solid, doesn’t fit Rule
Palmer, McNabb, Cutler, Kerry Collins, Cassel, Hasselbeck, Vick
Young gun, fits Rule
Matt Ryan
Young gun, doesn’t fit Rule
Henne, Flacco, Freeman, Sanchez, Stafford
Bad, fits Rule (as in, does not have 26 and 27 and 60)
Alex Smith, Quinn, Leftwich, Carr, Losman, Russell, Campbell, Harrington, Boller, Ramsey, Tarvaris Jackson, Vince Young
Bad, doesn’t fit Rule (as in, does have 26-27-60)
Leinart, Grossman, Orton

One thing worth noting here, I count Aaron Rodgers in the “doesn’t fit Rule” category, because I don’t count his starts at community college as true college starts. If you do count those, then he fits the Rule. However, starting at community college seems to me to be a terrible measure, as I don’t know that the NFL has ever seen a community-college-only QB ever come into the NFL and succeed. I’m not sure one has ever entered the NFL, and either way it doesn’t impact the overall numbers much.

And so, what percent of each group has the Rule correctly predicted?
Elite – 3/7 = 43%
Solid – 5/12 = 42%
Young Gun – 1/6 = 17%
Bad – 12/15 = 80%
Overall – 21/40 = 53%

Let’s look at it a different way. What percentage did achieve 26-27-60 and succeed and what percentage did not achieve 26-27-60 and turned out bad?

Did achieve 26-27-60 and succeeded – 9/12 = 75%
Did not achieve 26-27-60 and were bad – 12/28 = 43%

It looks like the Rule is actually pretty solid at predicting that a quarterback will succeed on some level if they fit the criteria. However, the Rule appears to be a terrible predictor of failure if the prospect doesn’t fit all the criteria. It also appears to be poor at distinguishing exactly how good a QB is going to be, as only 33% of those that achieved 26-27-60 turned out to be in the elite or young gun category, while 32% that didn’t achieve 26-27-60 fell into elite or young gun.

Overall the Rule doesn’t do a much better job at predicting overall success or failure of the population pool than simply flipping a coin. I hated this Rule from the first time I read about it, because Lopez cherry-picked his quarterbacks to fit his study and never really looked at how good of an indicator it was across the whole population. Seeing the numbers in greater detail doesn’t change my opinion.

Defensive play of the week

2011-09-15T13:00:00.005-04:00

I love this play. I'll eventually want you to focus on Ravens OLB Jarrett Johnson, but first here's the entire play. Ed Reed's first interception of the game:

highlight on NFL.com

This is kind of the generic Ravens defensive highlight. Haloti Ngata flushes Big Ben from the pocket, and Ed Reed ball hawks the ill-advised throw. Ho-hum. You've seen a play just like this 20 times on SportsCenter, the last three years.

What makes it especially interesting for me is the read that Jarrett Johnson makes. He's #95, and at the snap he is lined up at left end, just outside of Ngata. He starts out sort of in the midde of your screen, at the bottom of the group of Ravens at the line of scrimmage.

A YouTube uploader (not me) provides another view, emphasizing JJ's action on the play:

This is amazing to me. Ngata and JJ get what seems like a free run at the QB, who is flushed from the pocket. If anything, JJ is even closer to Ben than Ngata is, has a better angle. I would think that in the heat of the moment, the sight of the QB that close to you, almost in your grasp, would be inflammatory. Like red to a bull, or something.

Yet here's Jarrett Johnson. He is clearly making a read. In the middle of one of the most heated moments you can imagine, obviously something clicks in his brain and he says "Wait, I recognize this play." And he peels of from his pursuit of the QB, he turns away from the QB, and he goes and looks for the WR he knows must be coming across the formation.

And absolutely DESTROYS him.

That the receiver was Hines Ward is just icing on the cake. Ward is the most hated Steeler in Baltimore, a player whom the fans regard as dirty, a cheap shot artist. This hit got some threads devoted to it on Ravens discussion boards. You can get a sense of Ravens fans giddiness over the play from this other YouTube vid.

But that's not the point, to me. The play is set up to be a screen pass. Ben is trying to lure the pass rushers up field, so he can flip the ball to a guy coming around behind them. JJ recognizes it in mid-rush, and he turns around and blows it up. This is some kind of triumph of intelligence over instinct. It's reading your keys, trusting what you've seen in film study, trusting in your understanding of the opponent. The QB is right there! He's almost in your grasp. But JJ is a savvy veteran. To me there's some hard-won experience reflected in JJ's read. He's been involved in a ton of Ravens-Steeers games. He knows that with Big Ben, "almost in your grasp" can be fools gold. Instead he turns and makes the play he knows he can make. Let a younger guy, a special physical specimen like Haloti Ngata, go and chase after Ben: JJ is going to neutralize the play's intended target.

I am super-impressed by this.

Did JJ cause Reed's interception? I don't know, that might be a stretch. Reed makes breathtaking reads of his own. CBS showed one replay last week from the end zone cameras, of Reed's second INT. Ed starts on the right side of the field, and he's watching Big Ben all the way, as Ben reads his progressions from left to right. Reed drifts further and further to the center of the field, like he's participating in Ben's decision-making process. When Ben decides to throw the ball, Reed has arrived in the perfect spot to jump it. It's uncanny. He has some special ability. I'm reluctant to give another player credit for Reed's plays.

But JJ did take away Ben's primary receiver on that play. (In fact he obliterated him.) That leaves Ben on the run from Haloti Ngata, looking for a place to go with the ball, quickly. Let's say that JJ created the situation that Reed was able to exploit.

I've thought for a while that Jarrett Johnson is some sort of unsung hero on the Ravens defense. This play is one of the reasons why.

R.I.P. Chesmu

2011-09-11T22:07:00.000-04:00

Chesmu died today. Born Nov 5th, 2007, Chesmu the monkey was an avid Steeler fan that took up residence on the back of the Baltimore Ravens.

Chesmu died a fast and violent death Sept 11, 2011. As his broken body lay twisting on the ground, Ravens coach John Harbaugh showed Chesmu the ultimate sign of disrespect by dropping a deuce on his face despite already being up by three scores.

Chesmu will be remembered fondly by the city of Pittsburgh. His cousin, Corbin, a natural rival Ravens fan, climbed onto the Steelers back as Chesmu was laid to rest.

I just read

2011-09-10T00:11:00.002-04:00

Mike Tanier's article on the Redskins in the Football Outsiders Almanac. Holy god, has there ever been a more perfectly written analysis of this organization?!? To call it "scathing" is accurate, but inadequate. It is brilliant, top to bottom.

I suppose in one sense it might prove ironic that Tanier has written that piece this year. At one point he says that after last year, analysts no longer need to worry that the Redskins might stumble into a good team for one season. I'm not sure he's right on that point. I watched the Skins play the Ravens in preseason, and came away with the impression that they might be pretty good this season. Pretty good like to the tune of 8 or 9 wins.

It doesn't matter. All of Tanier's larger points are spot-on. It's a terrific read.

Coaching Carousel

2011-09-08T12:00:00.016-04:00

I would like to write about the blatant flouting of the Rooney Rule this past couple seasons. Roger Goodell consistently makes steps that seem buffoonish, from his posturing on the conduct policy to his enforcement of NCAA penalties. This is another area. Goodell does not seem to take enforcement of the Rooney Rule seriously, so it has lost its teeth. Candidates are getting blatant token interviews -- Danny Snyder had one of his asst coaches fake an interview -- it is on its way to becoming a sham. It's terrible.

I had planned to write some of that stuff. But this is a tough offseason to make an argument along those lines, when we have more minority head coaches in place than at this time last year. Leslie Frazier and Hue Jackson are black, Ron Rivera is Latino. Another minority coach, Perry Fewell, did not get hired this year, but has been identified as a potential future star candidate.

I don't know if this means the Rooney Rule is alive and well. One of those guys was an interim appointments who performed too well to dismiss. Al Davis has always gone his own way on this issue, anyway. And Ron Rivera has been a high-profile HC candidate since Paul Tagliabue was commish. It seems inevitable that Perry Fewell emerge as a HC candidate, given the great work he's done the past few years. Is the process working, or did the league luck out this year?

Anyway, here's the list. A quarter of the league's coaches are new this year.

Team	New Coach	Formerly
Carolina	Ron Rivera	DC Chargers, Bears; Eagles LB coach
Cleveland	Pat Shurmur	Rams OC; Eagles QB coach
Dallas	Jason Garrett	Cowboys OC; Dolphins QB coach; longtime NFL QB
Denver	John Fox	Panthers HC; DC w Giants, Raiders; DB coach
Vikings	Leslie Frazier	DC Vikings, Bengals; DB coach Indy, Philly; 9 yr college HC
Raiders	Hue Jackson	OC Raiders, Falcons; O asst Ravens, Bengals, Redskins
49ers	Jim Harbaugh	HC Stanford, San Dieg St; longime NFL QB
Titans	Mike Munchak	Longtime Titans OL coach

Our task with these guys is to divide them into three groups, based on whether they will Succeed, Fail, or Muddle Along Respectably.

Succeed

John Fox, Broncos

Fox coached 9 years in Carolina, to the tune of 5 non-losing seasons, 3 division titles and one Super Bowl appearance. (They came very close to winning that 2003-4 Super Bowl, too.) This after taking over a 1-15 team. Prior to last year's catastrophe, Fox's *worst* record in Charlotte was 7-9. Then the wheels fell off last year. Still, this is a good coach. His strengths are defense and running the football: physicality, back-to-basics stuff. Guess where Denver has been lacking in recent years? This is a great fit of an organization that needs some old-school butt-kicking, and a coach who is well-prepared to do it.

It's fair to wonder who is going to be picking the players. Brian Xanders is still the GM there. He's the genius who brought you the Tim Tebow trade. That's going to remain a black mark -- Sergio Kindle & Ed Dickson & Dennis Pitta are potential starters for the Ravens, while Tebow will never be worth anything. But the Broncos had a very traditional draft this year, where they loaded up on exactly the type of players John Fox knows how to use: basic football guys like Von Miller, Rahim Moore, Orlando Franklin and Nate Irving. 4 of their top 5 picks (and 6 overall) were defenders. Couple more drafts like that and this squad will look just like Fox's good Carolina teams: hard-nosed, physical, tough to beat. Probably not championship winners, but good football teams.

Leslie Frazier, Vikings

Are black head coaches disproportionately successful, compared to white head coaches? Lovie Smith has taken Da Bears to the Super Bowl; Mike Tomlin has won it, and then gone back. Ton Dungy's career record is ridiculous, especially when you consider the delta between how bad the teams were before he got there, and how successful after. Art Shell had a winning record his first go-around. Even plucky Raheem Morris, whom I picked against when he was hired a couple years ago, went 10-6 last year, with an exciting young QB who has a bright future.

If you're going to assert that black coaches are better, you'd better have some explanation about why. For a long time, I thought that there were more un-hired potentially great black head coaches than white, simply because the field of white head coaches was so picked-over. Rich frickin Kotite got multiple chances at a head job in the 90s, while Sherman Lewis's phone never rang and Art Shell never got a 2nd look even though he had a 54-38 record thru 1994. It was an ugly era. If you were looking for a great head coach, I thought black coaches were almost an untapped pool. A lot of great candidates. Since then we've had the Rooney Rule, so it's tougher to make that argument, although I am still biased in that direction. The other factor for me is an article Paul Zimmerman wrote several years ago about the importance of black leadership on successful football teams. It makes a lot of sense.

Frazier is supposedly more Dungy than Tomlin; and there's nothing wrong with that. There's great talent on that roster. Donovan McNabb can stabilize the QB situation for a year or so; and maybe they'll bring someone in. Frazier was a head coach for 9 years at Trinity International University in Illinois, starting at age 29. He founded the program and built it from thin air to a 2-time conference champion. That says something about his grasp of all aspects of a program. I just think Frazier will prove to be a breath of fresh air, and revitalize a sleeping giant.

It's a tough division, of course. The SB champions reside there, and I've already predicted "succeed" for the current Lions administration. Something's gotta give, you'd think. But today I'm picking Frazier to be successful.

Jim Harbaugh, 49ers

I can't pick against Jim Harbaugh. The Harbaugh family seems to really, really know what they're doing when it comes to football teams. Father Jack coached a zillion years in college and won a D2 national championship. Jim played a part in that achievement, as an unpaid coach and recruiter. Big brother John has proven the Harbaugh schmaltz is not just a rah-rah college thing, with a .667 reg season record and 4-3 in the postseason. If anything, Jim might be even *more* ready to talk to pro players than his brother, having toiled thru a 14-yr pro playing career.

All that is background. Jim H has been stunningly successful as a college coach. 29-6 thru three seasons at U of San Diego with 2 league championships. Then 4 seasons at Stanford, building them up to a 12-1 record, an Orange Bowl win and a #4 ranking. At Stanford!

College coaches don't always, or even normally, make a successful transition to the pro's. But Harbaugh knows the NFL intimately well. If he trips it will be for the normal reason of not having the right talent; not because he wasn't ready for the game.

The lockout hurts him, as it hurts all these 1st-year coaches. But I am very intrigued to see what this team does over the next few years. Harbaugh's record makes him look like an honest-to-goodness miracle worker. And I liked how he embraced the proud history of the franchise. He was asked if the team was going to run the West Coast Offense. "We will install the West Coast offense in San Francisco, the birthplace of the West Coast offense," Harbaugh said without hesitation. "And I'm excited about that." He went on with: "I think the West Coast offense is a very broad system," Harbaugh said. "It has the ability to encompass the talents of a lot different kinds of athletes."

Sac Bee
Harbaugh arrived at Stanford in 2007 and met often with Walsh before his death later that year. He said he had a small picture of Walsh taped to his computer screen and called him a "legendary coach and a great man."
"There's really no sentence that you could put Bill Walsh and Jim Harbaugh in," Harbaugh said when asked about their parallel career paths. "I have a long way to go and a lot of work ahead of me before any comparison can be made."

Doesn't necessarily mean that the team's commitment to Frank Gore will be lessened. It's useful to remember that Walsh's late Niners teams, and some of Seifert's, were excellent at running the ball. Also useful to remember that one other fairly pure West Coast Offense coach is Mike Shanahan. So, WCO does not necessarily mean that you don't run the football.

Bleacher Report
As for Stanford's alleged run bias: they may have statistically appeared heavily wedded to the run, but that is not entirely uncommon for a true West Coast Offense. In 10 seasons under Walsh, the 49ers never failed to attempt fewer than 415 rushes nor to gain less than 1,743 yards on the ground (except in the strike-shortened 1982 season). Remember, in a West Coast Offense the pass sets up the run, making the run the change of pace and often the thing that results in big plays. Also, as a team builds a lead, the run still becomes more and more prominent in eating up remaining clock.

I suppose it would be relevant to consider who will be picking the players (Trent Baalke), who the coordinators will be (Greg Roman and Vic Fangio), and whether it's really appropriate to believe in a magic coach when the guy is not named Parcells or Schottenheimer. I don't care about any of that. I am swept up in the Harbaugh mystique. Go Niners!
Forbes
Bleacher Report

Fail

Ron Rivera, Panthers

I suppose Rivera knows his football, but that team is a mess and Cam Newton will prove to be an anchor.

Pat Shurmer, Brownies

Longtime student at Andy Reid's coaching school in Philly, and Holmgren seems to be building something stable in Cleveland. Holmgren seems to have recognized the necessity to be above all physical in this division. Chris on this blog believes Colt McCoy will prove to be the second coming of Drew Brees -- I've encountered more than a few people with that opinion. Cleveland has great personnel on the O-line.

Whatever, my brain cannot hold a scenario where Cleveland has a good football team. Marty and Belichick have been gone for many years. These guys have to pass both Baltimore and Pittsburgh to win division titles, and Holmgren has not shown personnel to be his area of expertise, in previous stops. This might be a heart over head pick.

Hue Jackson , Raiders

Sigh, Raiders. Sorry Hue.

Mike Munchak, Titans

Former Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher was an unbelievable football coach. He was there for 17 seasons, won 142 games, and established a tradition of physical, tough, smart fooball. He shepherded that franchise thru rebuilding movements and built great teams. Now he's gone and his longime OL coach has taken the reins. I'm sure Munchak is a fine fooball coach -- the Tennessee O-lines have usually been terrific -- but can his force of personality and fooball acumen do as much to buoy up the Titans as Fisher's did? It's tough to believe.

Muddle

Jason Garrett, Cowboys

I originally had Garrett in the "succeed" list. And I have not changed my mind about how well he'll do. His team responded to him last year: he went 5-3 with a bad team absent its starting QB. The QB returns. Jerry will spend money to win; and god help me for saying this, but Jerry seems to have an eye for skill position talent. These guys could be a perennial 10-win team. If Garrett has even a little of Sean Payton's flair, then they could be very good.

But this is Dallas. What's "successful" in Detroit or Charlotte or San Francisco, does not necessarily spell success here. Even a good team could consistently finish 2nd or 3rd in this division, to the Eagles and Giants. It's easy to picture Jerry becoming impatient with 10 wins and out of the playoffs after the first round. Maybe Jerry gives extra slack to his handpicked fair-haired boy, but for how long? Jerry doesn't usually suffer 2nd place gladly.

I should also mention that Garrett does not have the same depth of coaching experience that this year's other NFL-QB-turned-HC has. Jim Harbaugh worked as a college asst in D2 for his dad, in an unpaid position during his playing career! And then turned around two different college programs as the head guy. Garrett did nothing but coach QBs for the Phins a couple years, then inherit a pre-built high-scoring offence to coordinate in Dallas. This is a guy who interviews well. Does he have the chops to manage this large a group of men, thru tribulations? We'll see.

Tune in next year, when we evaluate the new coaches in Cincinnati, Miami and San Diego!

Player safety vs our viewing pleasure

2011-08-22T13:02:00.005-04:00

It's interesting, the debate on the new kickoff rule. Everyone hates it. Matt Bowen of the Natl Football Post writes a piece on "Why the NFL’s new kickoff rule hurts the game". The Bears voted against it, then tried to veto the rule single-handedly on the field in their first preseason game. The league told them to cut it out. In that linked piece, Doug Farrar of Yahoo Sports and Football Outsiders writes that:

"The rule seems like an overreaction built to take fun and excitement out of the game."

I agree that the new rule removes some fun and excitement from the game. I think the most exciting play in football is the kick return for a touchdown. The speed, the cutbacks as the guys weaves thru the entire defense. It's beautiful.

Have we stopped to consider how hypocritical we're all being?

We've been told that kick returns produce a disproportionate share of injuries, compared to other plays. Cutting down on kick returns is a player safety issue. Former NFL VP of officiating and current FOX Sports analyst Mike Pereira puts this succinctly, in an ESPN interview written up in another piece by Farrar:

Pereira was then asked if the rule could be changed back, which is where things got a bit squirrely. "I don't think so, and here's the issue — when you pass something for player safety reasons only, and you then go back on that, you're almost sending a message to the players that you don't care about player safety."

Yes. So what's more important, player safety, or our viewing pleasure?

What's A Criminal Who Runs A 4.3 40 Worth?

2011-08-21T21:04:00.003-04:00

Well, we're going to find out tomorrow after the NFL's supplemental draft.

I think it's a fair question because there's a funny dichotomy that goes on with fans; they will go from 'no way do I want that bum on my team' to ' what a smart pickup for my team' on the fly. I guarantee we will see message-board born agains by this time tomorrow.

So Pryor. Not exactly a criminal but it made for a good post header. He's facing a 5 game suspension regardless, and it is unclear for what. If the NFL is all of a sudden going to start carrying over college suspension to the pros then I am all in favor, but I doubt this is that.

At Pryor's ad hoc Pro Day he ran 40 yard dashes in the 4.3s to 4.4s. He's 6'5" tall, 230 pounds. He can 'easily' throw a football 65 yards. Sounds like Calvin Johnson with the 'throw a football' part as a bonus. There's sort of a universal agreement that he can't be an NFL QB, or at least not without a lot of metal work and detailing. This year would be a wash for him so anyone who drafts him as a quarterback is looking at investing a roster spot for at least two years before any kind of a payoff can be reached. There's some question about whether or not he can ever learn the position.

But the measurables, the athleticism he's put on tape. He interviewed with 17 teams this week. He probably impressed at least a couple of them with requisite humility. Someone is going to be willing to gamble on Pryor. 3rd rounder? 5th rounder? Surely if Plaxico Burress is worth $3M then Pryor is worth a contract, right?

Right?

Ravens and Air Coryell

2011-08-21T14:24:00.005-04:00

Just after the Pittsburgh loss, we had an intense discussion about what ailed the Ravens offense. The discussion continued offline, but the general idea was that I thought that the Air Coryell was completely wrong with their players, and was failing.

After quite a bit of research, I wrote an article about it, which was published on Football Outsiders here. Short story: I don't believe Cameron's system was primarily the problem last year.

I'd asked Aaron Schatz for some data to help with this, which he graciously provided with the caveat that I give them the article first and decide if they wanted to run it. They did, hence the direction to their site (as opposed to publishing here). I may or may not follow-up on it. I have the content, just not certain about the time.

Collusion and Coercion

2011-08-18T17:00:00.004-04:00

Doug Farrar writes about the NFL "influencing" Michael Vick to sign with the Pheagles in 2009, when he had offers from Cincinnati and Buffalo. It's an interesting situation. Did the NFL approve Vick to sign with Philly, but not with the Bengals or Bills? That raises important questions about competition and the reserve clause etc, as Farrar points out.

I don't really have anything to say about it, I just wanted to draw attention to Farrar's piece.

Roger Goodell's NFL seems to keep blundering into areas where it shouldn't. Like the odd decision to suspend Terrelle Pryor for 5 games. Cindy Boren of the WaPo writes about it here. She's right. Why on earth is the NFL suspending Pryor for something that has no bearing on his conduct as an NFL player? Failing to cooperate with an NCAA investigation can't be a violation of NFL rules. And hiring an agent certainly is not. So what the hell?

Boren goes on:

...why not retroactively suspend or fine Reggie Bush for dragging USC into NCAA purgatory? How about the players responsible for the ongoing disaster at North Carolina? Or Bengals rookie WR A.J. Green selling a game-worn jersey? And what about the laundry list of alleged player participants in the scandal at “The U”?
And while we’re at it, why should Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll be permitted to leave a wake of NCAA violations behind at USC and be granted a clean slate in the NFL?
...the NFL is opening a giant can of worms with its decision.

The suspension is arbitrary and just weird. I hope Pryor files a grievance with the union, after he is in the NFL. The suspension should get overturned.

Concussing Our Kids

2011-08-17T22:04:00.002-04:00

Fabulous piece in the Dallas Observer, about brain injuries in youth sports:

Concussing Our Kids, One Hit At a Time
Natasha Helmick goes up for a header during a soccer match and gets speared in the left temple by an opponent. The 14-year-old, a talented center midfielder playing in the choice Lake Highlands Girls Classic League, crumples to the ground.

The discussion of brain injuries has mainly focused on pro sports so far, and some on college football. But despite the high-profile nature of those victims, they are almost beside the point. The real battleground is youth sports.

I tell you right now, we are not very far from tackle football being illegalized (?) in some states, for athletes under 18. Maybe 10 years. Some state is going to go first, and some states will follow, the District among them. Football as we know it is built on a foundation of high school and Pop Warner leagues. Without that supply of athletes, there is no one to play NCAA Division I, whether it's legal for 18-yr-olds or not. And what happens to the NFL, without a deep pool of college players?

The NFL is smart, I'm sure there's someone in the league offices who is looking to get out in front of this thing. Fund some studies, sponsor some safety legislation, etc. They might be able to frame the discussion and turn the tide. But make no mistake, that is what is on the table when we start talking about head trauma and youth sports: the end of football.

Speaking Of The Redskins

2011-08-07T11:30:00.003-04:00

For a couple of years now I've marveled at the patchwork offensive lines that the Redskins seem to trot out every year. Despite a relative lack of talent and despite playing in a tough division and despite having no direction and no continuity the team tends to perform fairly well - and by fairly well, I mean they don't roll out 3 win or 4 win seasons like ever, they are always in that 5-9 win range.

There's kind of an adage about having offensive line continuity being integral to team success, and that continuity is more important than pure talent. I kind of am thinking now that this really isn't true, that it's one of those footbally things that footbally people say but that the evidence belies the adage. Is it better to have a great line with great continuity? I'm sure it is. I just think that the degree that it really matters is probably blown out of proportion.

So this is a topic I want to start to chip away at as time permits.

So the Redskins. I'm not a fan of the team but I am definitely a fan of following the team. It's like a soap opera for men where everyone is a bad guy. It's a train wreck where you get to giggle while counting the bodies.

So looking at the Redskin line which is kind of the point, I ran a query of PFR for season starts over 7 from 2007 - 2010. The query returned 15 players who had at least 8 starts in any one of those four season. To me, this seems like an awful lot. To pick a team that seems a bit more stable I ran the same query with the Jets which returned 8 results.

So what this query tells us is that on average, the Redskin offensive linemen are averaging less than one-and-a-half seasons before being replaced. Perhaps worse (although perhaps not), Casey Rabach actually started all four of those years and is now gone. On the other hand, the Redskins do seem to be building a little continuity, as their tackles will probably be starting for the next few years and Kory Lichtensteiger will probably get every chance to be the center for the next half decade.

But even with this turmoil, the Redskins really weren't that bad. They won 9,8,4,and 6 games. So no, not great but not terrible either. Add in disruptions from Albert Haynesworth, the quarterback and running backs last year and we might think that this teams should be among the worst in the league - and yet they aren't.

So how important is offensive line continuity? Hard to say. This conversation probably doesn't advance the question very much, but maybe it will begin the discussion.

We Don't Need No Steenken Quarterback

2011-08-06T14:11:00.002-04:00

The Redskins continue to bemuse their fans while amusing league followers with their antics. I was one of many who thought they might be overturning their leaf when Daniel Snyder dumped Vinny Cerrato and turned to Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan to save the franchise.

While I suppose there might actually be a method to their madness, from 30,000 feet it really just looks like madness.

I have to confess, a few years ago I was convinced that quarterbacking in the NFL was overrated. Well, maybe it is, but I was still way off base. We were fresh off Super Bowl wins from the Ravens with Trent Dilfer and the Buccaneers with Brad Johnson and I became convinced that throwing high draft pick after high draft pick at the quarterback lottery was no good path to success when reasonable game manager types were all over the place and that a Super Bowl team could be constructed with great players at other positions.

I still remained convinced of this to a degree, but really only the degree that some teams are terrible at drafting and developing quarterbacks. There are Super Bowl caliber quarterbacks on the open market every year or two; Drew Brees and Kurt Warner are recent examples. Mike Vick may be the latest one. I think teams can do well by signing or trading for quarterbacks such as with Vick, the Texans did with Schaub a few years ago and possible Arizona with Kolb.

But this isn't so much about that.

The point is, I was wrong. You do need great quarterbacking to hope to contend for a Super Bowl. About 90% of all Super Bowl winning teams were quarterbacked either by a Pro Bowler or a future Hall of Famer. The exceptions had names like Joe Theismann and Jim Plunkett, no slouches either. And one team had a dude named Trent Dilfer.

So the Redskins. I have no idea what they are trying to put together there. I really don't think Allen or Shanahan know what they are trying to put together. I agreed with their addition of McNabb and I remain a closet fan of Donovan's, but for whatever reason it didn't work. But instead of trying to build on it, they seem hell-bent on scrapping the whole thing. A few months ago I thought it was kind of a joke that they intended to go into the season with Rex Grossman and John Beck. I was sure that they would pick up a solid veteran or at least draft someone to develop.

Nope and nope.

I don't discount the possibility that Beck and Grossman will be much better than they've been in the past. Funny things happen to quarterbacks who hang around the league long enough, they tend to improve. Heck, it even happened with Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson. Even so, there is really no chance that either of these guys are going to lead the Redskins to the promised land, particularly since this team has no version of Ray Lewis or Derrick Brooks.

Furthermore, the exact problems that doomed McNabb from the beginning haven't been addressed. They have no playmakers on offense. Their offensive line appears to be even more of disaster than last year's. They devoted the draft and free agency to shoring up the defense which is understandable to a degree, but even if they succeed in that they are facing going into the third year of their rebuild with no real progress on offense.

It is hard to imagine that this Redskin team is improving. At best, they seem to be treading water as a 6-10 team while swapping out players and systems. Snyder has a lot of ego invested in Allen and Shanahan and will probably give them a bit of rope, but it is easy to predict that Snyder will start to get twitchy with another losing year.

What it's like to be the best basketball player

2011-08-03T08:10:00.001-04:00

Check out the video embedded in this post from Brian McCormick's magnificent blog.

Football's great, but – well who would you say is the most beloved NFL player? Peyton Manning? In Baltimore it's Ray Lewis, but probably not in Atlanta. Let's go with Ray, just for illustration purposes.

Can you imagine Ray-ray playing his game in an intimate non-professional setting, with hundreds of fans ringing the sideline? Playing for fun, with amateurs? Can you imagine him getting mobbed by his fans after making a series of great plays? There's no way, right? Football does not lend itself to that sort of thing, at all. I'm sure Ray gets mobbed in Baltimore, like if he shows up for a charity event or a speaking engagement or something. But that's not the same thing. In the vid, Kevin Durant's fans are involved with his play in the game.

Football's great. But basketball has a very different relationship with its fans. It's so central, so present, so immediate.

You can imagine getting on the court with Kevin Durant, to play some pickup ball. And he would utterly dominate you, it wouldn't even be funny. But you could dribble it and pass it around and try to take a couple shots, and maybe have some fun. Afterward slap hands and ruefully acknowledge how awesome he is.

You couldn't play football with Ray Lewis. He would obliterate you.

Mike Preston is a moron

2011-08-02T08:00:00.003-04:00

Still! He's just warming up, not yet in preseason form, but we get this:

Offense struggles early
Ravens have plenty of time to improve, but you'd figure there would be more cohesiveness in a unit that...

That what, Mike? That did not work together for a single OTA the entire offseason? A unit that is working together for the very first time? Playing without the starting center? You'd seriously figure there would be more cohesiveness?

Gah.

Swing Your Sword

2011-08-01T13:57:00.005-04:00

Chris Brown of Smart Football with a must read on Mike Leach and his book Swing Your Sword

linky

excerpt:

This is not an uncommon theme in football: great players often do as much to make the game evolve (from both protagonist as well as antagonist positions) as coaches. And the great leap forward for Texas Tech and Leach in 2002-2003 was largely sparked by a happenstance combination of this read-on-the-run four verticals plus Wes Welker plus Mike Leach — it was the perfect marriage of the greatest backyard play in football (get open) with one of the greatest backyard players of all-time in Welker with maybe the greatest backyard coach to ever roam an actual, honest-to-god Division I sideline.

Oh, and “six”? It also happened to be the route Leach called for that game-winner of Harrell-to-Crabtree against Texas. In that game, Texas Tech went 9 for 11 for 173 yards on “six.” Leach says his only regret was he didn’t call it another ten times.

Nnamdi!

2011-07-31T10:14:00.006-04:00

Everything I read had Asomugha going to the Jets. I'm very surprised to find him ending up in Philly. I even wrote up a little something for the blog in anticipation of Asomugha signing with the Jets. So as not to waste it, here it is:

Remember the 1983 Raiders? At the trade deadline they acquired CB Mike Haynes from New England. They already had a great corner in Lester Hayes; but Mike Haynes was a Hall of Famer, and instantly became their #1 corner.

With 2 shutdown corners, the Raiders let them take the opponents WRs man-to-man, and played 9-on-9 with the rest of their D. And they killed everyone. Only Neil Lomax' Cardinals did any real scoring against them after the Haynes acquisition (the only game they lost). They marched thru the playoffs and killed the Skins in the Super Bowl.

I'm sure Rex Ryan remembers that. He's gotta be salivating at the notion of having two Pro Bowlers at the corners. That would open up his entire playbook of crazy blitzes and overloads.

That would make the Jets very formidable.

Well, I guess it would've. Now Asomugha will make the Eagles very formidable.

My first reaction to this news was, Andy Reid is a genius. The Eagles are friggin loaded. And they've stocked up while fortifying the future, as well. They got a future 2nd-rd pick in the Kevin Kolb trade; possibly their most significant move for the future is getting Vince Young to sit on the bench behind Vick for a couple years. Young may or may not pan out; but it's an ideal situation for him, and he's got great upside. Like Michael Vick upside.

My second reaction was: wow, can you imagine the culture shock for Nnamdi Asomugha? He is going to *love* his new life. He goes from possibly the most dysfunctional situation in pro sports, to one of the best-run NFL organizations of the last decade.

I don't think he has any idea what a relief it will be for him, to have everything all be about football. It's too bad that Asomugha, a once in a generation talent at corner, will not get to play for Jim Johnson, the Eagles longtime defensive coordinator who passed away a couple years ago. That would have been awesome. But even so, I imagine there will be a point sometime this season, or maybe the following offseason, where something will be handled in a quiet, professional in-house manner by the Eagles organization, and Asomugha will realize he is happier than he's ever been during his NFL career.

The interesting parts of the new deal

2011-07-25T13:00:00.000-04:00

Peter King's MMQB talks about the new deal. Below are the two parts that I think are most interesting, and my thoughts on them...

Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio reported Sunday that the league could unilaterally cut the preseason schedule from four games to two in '13 or any subsequent year of the agreement. The players would have the option to either play 16 regular-season games and two preseason games, or increase the regular season to 18 games per team. The upshot: Players would lose money if they stayed at 16 plus two.

King and Florio both agree this is an owner-player stare down, and it certainly sounds like it. I don't think there's any chance the owners don't cut the two preseason games in '13, unless somehow finanically the money the players lose is less than the money the owners get from those games. Since I doubt that's the case, it's a matter of whether the money on the table is enough to get the players to agree to 18 games.

The players hate the idea of 18 games, so I'm actually a bit surprised this is in there. If there's one thing that could derail this deal from happening, I would think this is it. But maybe the players think the money they lose here isn't enough to make them care about the 18 games, or that they're getting enough else that they'd be okay going to 18 games. The latter would shock me, the former wouldn't.

If they DON'T go to 18, this seems like a big win for fans, specifically season ticket holders. I'm thrilled not having to pay for an extra game that means nothing to me.

Men who play in a game in any season of this deal will be eligible to stay in the NFL medical plan for life. Currently, retired players have five years of post-career health care.

Don't be surprised if Brett Favre comes back, specifically for this. And in kind, don't be surprised if a lot of guys that were going to retire, and a lot of guys that have retired in the past few years but still may have SOME gas left in the tank, come back very specifically for this.

Say you're Kurt Warner. Or even better, a guy like Deuce McAllister or Derrick Brooks, playing a position which beats your body to submission for years on end. Why on earth would you NOT want to jump back onto a roster somewhere for vet minimum as a backup to ensure you get benefits from this deal? I think I'd be more surprised NOT seeing come-back attempts from a bunch of retired guys than I would be to see guys coming back, potentially in droves.

And, we're back

2011-07-25T12:32:00.000-04:00

Who won?

Terrell Pryor Can Even Screw Up His Draft Eligibility

2011-07-24T16:07:00.002-04:00

I have to admit, the guy makes for great theater.

Alex Marvez of Fox Sports reports

[The supplemental draft] is for players whose circumstances have changed in an unforeseen way after the regular (college) draft. It is not a mechanism for simply bypassing the regular (draft) ... examples of “unforeseen” changes [are] players who were kicked off their college teams, declared academically ineligible or graduated and then decided to leave school. Pryor doesn’t qualify on any of those fronts.

Not that Pryor really has much of a chance to be an impact NFLer anyway, and not that he could have necessarily foreseen this, but still.

LOL!

How to negotiate

2011-07-16T20:13:00.005-04:00

How to Properly Negotiate When the Other Side Perceives You to be Weak
A memo by DeMaurice Smith

Step One - Set yourself up so that your weakness is covered
Step Two - Tell no one about it
Step Three - Wait until close to deadlines, allowing the other side to perceive you as weak
Step Four - Drop the bomb
Step Five - Win

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

cc: NBA players

He's Not Fat, He's "Fleshy"

2011-07-11T17:42:00.002-04:00

The Redskins, desperately in need of depth with 6 picks in the last two rounds of the '11 draft. Mike Jones of the Post projects their professional chances.

A small preview:

G Maurice Hurt (Seventh round)
Why he could struggle: Hurt looked rather fleshy at the player-led minicamps, and needs to get stronger.

How Good was Matt Stover?

2011-06-29T00:47:00.003-04:00

About a week ago, the official Baltimore Ravens site released their full list of the Top 50 Ravens of all time. The article listed Matt Stover at #4 overall, which among some Ravens fans seems to be a controversial ranking.

I wound up in a somewhat heated discussion with another fan about how good Stover was in comparison to other kickers. This, to me, is a more interesting question than where Stover ranks on the all time Ravens list. An argument over the value of a great kicker compared to a great starting position player could be endless.

So I set out to rate Stover in relation to his peers, in response to hearing him called “overrated” and “not much better than an average kicker.” These two statements caused me to react sharply, as I believe Stover is one of the best kickers ever to play the game.

And so I set out to look at Stover from a pure statistical perspective to get an idea of how good he really was in comparison with the rest of the NFL kickers. I grabbed 30 years of kicker data from Pro Football Reference to evaluate this question. I looked at four major categories, and will cover each below.

Field Goal Percent

Take the total # of FG made divided by total # of attempts and you get “FG%”. Stover sits at 83.66%, good enough for eighth on the all time list. Interestingly, if you look at the top 25 kickers on this list, all but three of them are active. The three that aren’t, all played as recently as 2007. Clearly there’s some sort of recency bias that should be accounted for. How good is Stover in comparison with the kickers he’s playing with?

I looked at the full set of NFL kicking data for both the whole of Stover’s career, and the years ’01-’09. The latter is a bit of an arbitrary data set, but it was brought up in discussion so I looked at it just the same. The data are as follows:

Last decade
All kickers: 6,872/8,527 = 80.6%
Stover: 234/270 = 86.7%
Full Stover career
All kickers: 19,943/25,993 = 76.7%
Stover: 471/563 = 83.7%

Over his career, Stover is seven points better than the league, and six points better over the final nine years of his career. Fairly impressive numbers, but how do they stack up to other players above him?

I didn’t spend the significant time to evaluate everyone against their peers for only their careers. However, using the league-wide data for Stover’s final nine years, we get a decent proxy. For instance, the top guy on the all time FG% list is Nate Kaeding, an 86.5% kicker from ’04-’10 (kickers in ’10 made over 82%). Stover’s ’01-’09 is better. Shayne Graham, #3 on the list, is 86.0% from ’01-’10. In fact, if you run down the list of kickers in front of Stover on the list, all but #2 – “idiot kicker” Mike Vanderjagt – started their career in ’01 or after. And Vanderjagt started his in ’98. Given Stover’s 86.7% accuracy in this time, there’s an easy argument to be made that Vanderjagt is the only one that stacks up to him.

One of the criticisms Stover faces is his short leg, and how he had accuracy issues from 40+ in the final years of his career. I’ll address this later.

Field Goals Made

Stover sits at #4 on this list, unlikely to be passed by many if any over the next few years. At some point as offenses continue to move the ball more efficiently and attempts go up, with the increased accuracy we see in the game, he will be passed. But compared to his peers, he stacks up quite strongly.

To compare him with his peers, I looked at kickers who kicked more than 15 attempts in a season. An arbitrary number, but about one kick per game should be good enough to indicate who were the primary starters over the course of a season. These kickers averaged 22.0 FG made per season, compared to Stover’s 25.7 FG made for all but his final season (where he didn’t record 15 att). Stover averaged nearly 17% more FG made than the “average” NFL starting kicker.

Purely for perspective, I looked at the top 25 QBs in passing attempts in 2010. This gives us QBs with > 350 att on the season. Take their avg comp, att, yds, TDs and INTs. The stats for this “average passer” look like these:
306/492 (62.1% comp) ... 3,546 yds ... 23 TDs ... 13 INT
I then inflated the critical numbers - completions, yards and TDs - by the 16.8% that Stover's been above avg in FG made for his career. The stats now look like these:
357/492 (72.5% comp) ... 4,141 yds ... 27 TDs ... 13 INT

Aaron Rodgers is the closest comparison. For 18 of his 19 years, was Stover the Aaron Rodgers of kickers? It’s debatable, but a case can be made.

Longevity

An argument has been made that it’s difficult to evaluate the value of Stover’s 19 season tenure, since kickers and punters tend to last longer than other position players. This article states the following:
“Punters, kickers and long snappers are more likely to have the longest careers in the NFL. … Four of five players with the greatest longevity (>18 yr) were punters or kickers (the other, a rare quarterback).”

While not surprising kickers have the longest careers due to lack of impact on players at their positions, what we don’t see is a lot of difference in the average tenure of the kicker vs. the average tenure of all NFL players. This article, using NFLPA data, shows the average career length of a kicker is 4.9 years vs. 3.3 years for all NFL players.

Stover isn’t the most seasoned to played the position. There are three kickers who have 20+ years – Morten Anderson, Gary Anderson and John Carney. John Kasay is poised to pass him this year, and Jason Hanson to tie him. But only Adam Vinatieri remains as a recent threat to Stover’s 19 seasons. Others may pass him at some point, but it’s far too early to say they will.

And Stover’s performance held up very well over 18 of his 19 years. The 19th year was also not bad. Playing spot-duty for a Colts team with a hurt Vinatieri that punched the ball in the end zone most of the time, he made almost nine of his eleven kicks.

Outside the Forty

Two of Stover’s biggest criticisms have been that he doesn’t have the leg to kick from 40+ yards and that he faded badly in this category toward the end of his career. However, the numbers refute the argument that he doesn’t have a good leg outside the 40, and the dip toward the end of his career was driven by the final two years in Baltimore.

Across Stover’s career, using the same 15 att criteria, all NFL kickers - from 40+ yards out - were on average making 6.97 FG in their 10.92 att per season (63.8%). Stover averaged 7.72 FG per 11.67 att (66.2%). He’s clearly better than the league average in all measures here.

I then plotted Stover’s FG attempts and FG% from 40+ through his years (lopping off his Indi tenure, where he didn’t have 15 att), and added a trend-line for both. One should expect the trend lines to dip, or at least have no slope if he truly was getting worse. Instead, the trend lines slope up, showing that not only were the Ravens trusting him to kick from 40+, he was also validating that trust for all but the final two years of his time in Baltimore. For 16 years, Stover was both trusted to kick from 40+, and was getting the job done at that distance.

Conclusion

Overall, I don’t think there’s much of an argument to be made that Stover is either “overrated,” or “not much better than an average kicker.” The numbers all argue he is significantly better than average, and clearly deserves to be recognized as one of the all-time best at his position. Whether he belongs at #4 on the all time Ravens list could be an interesting debate. But where he belongs in relation to his FG kicking peers does not appear to be a controversial topic.

How to mess up a good analysis

2011-06-25T20:20:00.003-04:00

I guess I don't really know how good this analysis of QB rating differential in relation to winning, because I didn't read it. And I didn't read it because the author commits one of the worst sins of a good analysis...he doesn't bother explaining what it is he's analyzing right off the bat. He spends far too many paragraphs talking about how critical it is, without ever explaining it.

QB rating differential, in case you don't know, is your team's QB rating on offense minus the QB rating allowed by the defense. This is something that should never be explained after the second paragraph, nevermind the seventh.

Terrell Pryor Makes Dumb Decision

2011-06-19T09:54:00.003-04:00

Stop The Presses!

Yeah, this topic is slightly dated but it's been on my mind and this is my first chance to discuss it. Terrell Pryor has rejected the idea of playing football in the Canadian Football League. Makes no sense, or at least it makes no sense to anyone who has a lick of sense. So that being the case, it makes perfect sense for Terrell Pryor.

Why Drew Rosenhaus agreed to hitch his fortunes to this nag I have no idea. I doubt that Rosenhaus Sports Representation is going to invest much in the way of resources in Pryor who seems doomed to fail utterly. I guess picking Rosenhaus could be chalked up to another Pryor mistake, as Pryor seems unlikely to listen to any kind of sound professional advice (such as 'why don't you go to the CFL for a couple of years' type of advice) that Rosenhaus might be able to provide. Pryor could have gone with a smaller, more desperate agent. On the other hand if Pryor is looking for a single payday then maybe Drew 'Willis McGahee is a first round pick with one working knee' Rosenhaus is a good choice. In terms of professional development this kind of seems like a(nother) disaster in the making.

So the CFL. It seems to me that league is perfect for Pryor to showcase his athleticism while developing the quarterbacking skills that eluded him at Ohio State. Right now he appears to be a great athlete masquerading at quarterback. His arm strength is pedestrian and decision making poor. In college teams learned that he could be handicapped by simply containing him and forcing him to make actual football plays rather than allowing him to escape the pocket and use his dual threats to beat opponents. He will get killed in the NFL with the latter philosophy and that will have to get trained out of him before he stands a prayer of succeeding at that level.

But anyhow, he seems to want to be a quarterback but does not seem to want to learn how. And since he has refused the developmental route he seems destined to be a guy who gets a couple of years at the back end of an NFL roster and then 5 years from now simply wondering who to blame.

I Hate [Blank]

2011-06-13T20:06:00.002-04:00

Joe Posnanski with what I think is a great observation in his NBA finale post mortem

But in despising the Heat, I came to admire them, too. That’s how it can go with Sports Hate (what I have come to call Clemenate). I truly believe that in a weird way I admired John Elway more than any of his biggest fans, because I watched him gut my teams again and again and again.

Man, aint that the truth?

I kind of twonder how I feel like this in the context of my own fandom. I hate the Cowboys for all the usual reasons, but I reserve an additional layer of hate for them for becoming the team in the 1990s that the Lions didn't. I hate that people thought Emmitt was better than Barry.

I don't know that I ever hated Brett Favre, but I hated that he never lost a home game to the Lions. Not once. Something like 18 straight in Lambeau and another in Minnesota. I hate that. I hate that he beat the Lions in the playoffs a couple of times. Ultimately I guess I enjoyed watching him become irrelevant, watching him play one season too many, watching the cape come off.

Come to think of it, I did hate the Vikings. Not the now Vikings but the then Vikings. The John Randall/Henry Thomas Vikings that ruined seasons in Detroit. I was jealous of the Bears in the '80s but the timing wasn't right for any special kind of hatred, the Lions weren't good then anyway.

I hate the Yankees, again for all the usual reasons, for the same reason that the regular hate the entitled privileged, for the obliviousness to the idea that their position isn't deserved. I did root for them in 2004 but only because of that other special kind of hatred: schadenfreude. If there was one constant it was that Red Sox fans were more miserable - both collectively and individually - than me. So I rooted for the Yankees and hated them for choking. And I hated the Red Sox too, just cuz. And now I hate them both for being rich kids who purchase championships.

Schadenfruede. Now that is a special emotion. Questions of Lebron aside, I think it is felt more potently by football fans than anyone else. Perhaps more exquisitely by Lion fans who could really only root for the misery of others, a sharing and leveling of our own taste of frustration and futility. So the Ravens? I don't hate the Ravens, but I do enjoy that small burst annually when they lose their playoff game, usually to the Steelers. The Steelers? I also don't carry any special emotion for them other than the appreciation I feel when they torment Raven fans.

If I can't win then you can't win. Pyrrhic victories are better than none. Sure, someone has to win but better someone that perpetuates the shared misery of others than someone I don't particularly care about.

My team is out of it anyway.

The Future Power of the AFC North

2011-05-16T19:53:00.005-04:00

I was listening to the Rich Eisen podcast on a weekend drive from Philly to Richmond Sunday, and one nugget jumped out at me. Right now it's very popular to talk about how some teams are having player-led camps, and talk about how dedicated these players must be! Yeah, very exciting, great.

But one jumped out at me. Apparently Colt McCoy is running what has been dubbed "Camp Colt." It would seem that McCoy has thrown down as the would-be organizer of this camp, demanding most of his offense join him. It would seem that he's running a very regimented workout, including lifting and social activities on top of the football work they're putting in. To top this off, Eisen said that Colt has even ordered a media black-out by the players for this camp, not allowing the media into the practices and asking players not to talk about what they've worked on with media members.

I searched far and wide for a post with my thoughts on McCoy, but I couldn't find one. Patrick can probably recall our discussions about him though. I said it at the time he was picked...this is a kid - as a Ravens fan - that I fear. I specifically remember having a conversation (I believe with Patrick) where I said very soon after the Browns drafted him that they were one of a very few teams I really didn't want to see take him.

McCoy actually compares somewhat closely with Drew Brees coming out of college. Generally a weaker than you'd like arm, but exceptionally smart and highly accurate. He's the type of QB I think you want to take a risk on...the guy that has everything except the physical tools.

In other words, he's last year's Christian Ponder, except the Browns didn't have to use #12 on him, they used #85 instead. This is the difference between why McCoy was a terrific pick for the Browns, and Ponder was a bad pick for the Vikings.

Still, word of Camp Colt just further emphasizes why I'm scared of the kid. He started eight games for them, went 2-6 in those games as a 3rd round rookie, and yet still he demands the respect of his teammates and seems to have become the team leader.

Granted, we know very little about what's going on. We can't say for sure the players are treating him as the given leader of this team. But if it is true, count it as another notch on my belt keeping track of why I think this guy is going to be a great QB down the line, and why I'm very concerned about the Browns over the next five to ten years.

You Want To Be An NFL Star? Go To Wake Forest

2011-05-08T09:26:00.014-04:00

UpUpDownDown at Black Heart, Gold Pants did a pretty impressive study of college programs' abilities to develop NFL draft picks. Other than USC and Ohio State at the top of the list, there were some interesting results, and results that I think are explainable.
After USC and OSU, the next 8 schools weren't typically national powers; Iowa, Cincinnati, and Va Tech the best of them. The model appears valid, I won't regurgitate it here, cuz that really isn't my point anyway. Their overall conclusions were that the Big Ten was the best player development conference, that if you want to proceed to the NFL then picking a Big Ten school, particularly OSU, Iowa or Wisconsin is your best bet.

UUDD points out that talent selection (scouting) plays a role here. While each player was rated based on the amateur scouting services star ratings, every program will evaluate high school players a bit differently. Just like with the NFL draft, not all five star recruits are equal. More importantly, not all two star and three star recruits are equal either, and this is where I think you'd see a disproportionate impact in the overall development score. A single two star recruit ultimately getting drafted is equivalent to 8 five star recruits. It is easy to see how this could generate noise.

Furthermore, it would be useful to have further scoring based on draft round. Simply getting a high school recruit drafted is an accomplishment, regardless of star rating. Reality though, is that a 7th round draft pick doesn't have great career prospects anyway when compared with 3rd, 2nd and 1st rounders.

Nice work by UUDD.

There is an additional caveat that prevents any of this from being actionable by a clever two star recruit. In the Comments section, HoyaGoon points out

Its a result of the nature of the recruiting services and their evaluation models. Since Rivals/Scout are funded through subscription services, they tend to focus a disproportionate amount of their staff and efforts in the regions/areas where more of their subscriptions come from. And, in general, that tends to be SEC country and areas like Texas/Oklahoma and Ohio (as well as others). Players in those areas are more likely to be evluated correctly, as more attention is paid to them. Players from other regions don’t get that same scrutiny and tend to have the greater chance of being under-evaluated.

In other words, disparities in the star systems may be so great that these conclusions are entirely invalid. UUDD points out that Iowa State and Iowa have similar recruit grades while Iowa has vastly superior development scores. This could simply be a matter of no one spending much time grading recruits in Iowa and the Dakotas and so the distinction in recruiting quality differences isn't detected by the star system.

Belichick And The Conundrum Of The Draft

2011-05-05T21:39:00.005-04:00

So Chris and Jim and I have been going back and forth via email a little bit about how good Bill Belichick is on draft day. I tend to believe that he is a genius who is more concerned with being the smartest guy in the room; that even while he is great at draft day trades his actual drafts are pretty mediocre.

I only use the introductory paragraph to provide context for the following which was my most recent email reply:

Jim

A week ago I would have agreed with you completely, or at least more than I do now.

But then I read this:

Link

in part I point this out because I discovered the website accidentally while pursuing draft coverage and it is now my new favety fave website of all time. But more specifically I point this out because R.C. does what I like to do when I have my head on straight, which is to consider the alternatives.

We all love the idea of trading down, getting more picks, scalping the dude who wants to trade up for Brady Quinn or whatever. The reality though, and R.C. made this clear to me, if even by accident, is that really isn’t how it works. If you are good at drafting, you are good at drafting. If you aren’t, you aren’t.

I understand that I am extrapolating this from his article, but it is really crystal clear to me. In fact it is especially crystal clear to me since I watched Millen “win” draft after draft then only to find out that he was drafting players who other teams didn’t want.

Atlanta didn’t “win” the trade with Cleveland from any kind of a value perspective, but from a strictly outsider objective viewpoint, the trade might have been the smartest thing they could have done, if only by accident. Atlanta, it seems, actually kind of sucks at drafting players. So to sacrifice an entire draft to get a sure thing superstar absolutely makes sense. This is of course, limited by the possibility that Jones won’t be a superstar but it is well balanced by the probability that the Falcons would have fucked up those picks anyway.

So what does this have to do with New England? Well, everything. New England also sucks at picking players after the first round. This is weird because a) they are great at picking first rounders and b) they always trade out of the first round. At some point you would think that someone would notice that, gosh Bill, you did really well with that Mayo pick and that Wilfork pick and that Mankins pick and that Seymour pick and other than that Brady pick decade ago, not really much else.

well, okay. The Samuel pick was pretty awesome too.

But the overarching point is that there is a sort of weird contradictory thing going on in Foxboro. The Patriots are awesome at using their first round picks, and they are awesome at getting rid of their first round picks. While both of these qualities are valuable, considering that they really kind of suck at picking in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds, maybe the former skill is really more valuable.

Some initial R1 ramblings

2011-04-29T17:59:00.003-04:00

Yeah yeah, R2 will be started by the time this is posted. I was on an hour's sleep after taking the red-eye home, so I couldn't post last night, and worked today. With that out of the way, some initial thoughts on teams that didn't make no-brainers, or that I generally liked or hated...

1 - Cam Newton to the Panthers: The ultimate overreach. Here's the thing with me. Jaws apparently said that Newton ran around 30 pass plays which were of NFL caliber. That's an awfully low number for a guy that came off as not capable of recognizing NFL routes and players in the Gruden special. He's motivated, talented and hard working, so he probably won't be a massive, epic, Jamarcus type bust. But I do think he'll bust hard.

6 - Julio Jones / Falcons / Browns: Okay, I heard a great sound-byte today, that regardless of how stupid this move seems for the Falcons, Dimitroff has been performing great, and should be cut some slack till we have reason to doubt him. I don't doubt Jones' talent. I do doubt the merits of giving up FIVE picks to get him. The Browns made out great with this trade.

7 - Aldon Smith to the Niners: I have a Niners fan friend who hated this pick, but I like it. I think he's a great fit for the system, and like that they didn't reach for a QB. They've got a lot of holes, and this guy fills a big one, and I love his ability to get to the QB.

8 - Jake Locker to the Titans: IMO a stupid pick. He's the opposite of Vince Young...great attitude and work ethic, highly questionable talent.

10 - Blaine Gabbert / Jags / Redskins: I really like the Skins trading down to get more picks. They have a lot of holes to fill and need bodies. I'm not a huge Gabbert fan, but I fully admit that not only is it impossible for a non-professional to predict QB success (professionals can only do this with around 50/50 accuracy, what chance do we have?), but I also haven't watched him enough to form a strong opinion.

12 - Christian Ponder to the Vikes: I have made fun of this pick cause, let's face it, it's funny. But here's a guy who pretty much has questionable physical tools and strong everything else. I think if you gamble on a QB, that's the way to do it. But I'm not thrilled with doing it at #12, when you could probably have done it at #15, or #19, or #25 even...

13 - Nick Fairley to the Lions: Oh man is that going to be a fun DL to watch next year! I love what they're doing, rebuilding this team. I think whether Matt Stafford becomes solid and can stay healthy will be the determining factor for whether the Lions are a solid team or an elite team three years from now.

27 - Jimmy Smith to the Ravens: Ignore the fiasco, Chicago has said they screwed up. This is a huge risk huge reward play. Smith is arguably the most talented corner in the draft. Patrick said if he were a model citizen, he'd have been a top ten, maybe top five pick, and I agree with that. The joke I've been using is that five years from now, he'll either be headed to his prison cell, or to his fourth Pro Bowl. But his problems were pretty much two or more years ago, so I'm not terribly concerned with him.

28 - Mark Ingram to the Saints: Okay, I flat hate this pick. The rarely-understood-by-analysts idea is that it's all about the delta, the upgrade from one position to another. The cost of this pick was a 2012 first and 2011 second round pick. They just used two top picks to take a guy who is a moderate upgrade over the Ivory/Bush/Thomas combo. Even if they lose two of those guys, he's probably not a MASSIVE upgrade, which is what you need to get when you use two top picks on a guy.

31 - Cam Heyward to the Steelers: So happy Camiri didn't make it to them. The Steelers are one of the best teams in the NFL, and I think one of the reasons is because they don't hesitate to take the top guy on their board, regardless of their needs. Their front seven is stacked to the gills, and they still take a guy on the front seven. I don't question the pick at all, they've undoubtedly earned the benefit of the doubt.

An Actual Post: Quick Hit On The First Round

2011-04-29T17:47:00.003-04:00

Because, you know. Why not?

Biggest Winners

Cleveland Browns. Got a huge haul from the Falcons and then pulled in one of the players from the deepest position in the draft. I don't know a lot about Taylor but he's a guy who would have gone in the teens a lot of years.

Houston, Detroit, St. Louis. With the weird run on quarterbacks in the top twelve, three of the most talented prospects dropped to these teams in the early teens. Rick Smith, Martin Mayhew, and Billy Devaney are thanking their respective spirits and deities right now.

Cam Newton. Just think, 8 months ago he hadn't taken an NCAA snap in two years and had attempted a total of 12 passes at that point. Now, depending on collective bargaining, he's worth somewhere between $50 - $80 million. And we still have no idea what kind of player he will ultimately be.

Biggest Losers

Atlanta Falcons. This may seem lame, but this really is a zero sum game to me. If Cleveland won, then Atlanta lost. They made a Ricky Williams-type deal for a player they don't really need. I love Julio Jones. I think he has as much potential as any receiver since Calvin Johnson. Thing is though, the Falcons already have Roddy White and Tony Gonzalez and Michael Turner. It is hard to see what Jones will provide that is so much greater than what Michael Jenkins already provides. Sure, great prospect and he might be a great player for 15 years. But to give up that much you need to get that key guy at that key position. Jones doesn't really represent either.

I lurked through a Falcon board and the fans don't seem too happy, even the ones putting a brave face on this. They are consoling themselves with the dreams of compensatory picks next year.

Minnesota. Hard to say where they really had Ponder. Gosselin had him going #10OA to Washington. Still, I have to believe that they died piece-by-piece as Locker and then Gabbert slipped off the board. And then died a little more when they couldn't trade out of the pick. I have no idea what kind of NFL quarterback Ponder will be, but from a pure draft-value perspective this is a disaster for Minnesota.

Ryan Mallett. I coined the phrase 'pulled a Clausen' last night, shamelessly stolen from Kingpin. I coined it specifically for Mallett. To pull a Clausen is to leave school as a junior quarterback with a shitty attitude and puffed up expectation of ones worth. This dude is probably going to be the 7th QB off the board and maybe not til the third day. Way to go Ryan!

Biggest Gambles

Carolina. Cam Newton has star power coming out of his ears. Whether or not he can actually be a good quarterback, or great quarterback, or elite quarterback? Who knows. The Panthers are in disarray. The team is coming apart at the seams already. Steve Smith is old, their running back tandem has lost effectiveness, Julius Peppers is gone. It is hard to see that the infrastructure is there to support him. There is going to be a lot of pressure to get him on the field early and his learning curve is enormous.

Baltimore. Kind of hard to argue that a team drafting #26 is really gambling with a guy like Jimmy Smith, but Smith is a pretty bad dude. And by "bad" I mean bad, not good bad. He did enough drugs to get himself caught. He knocked up women and walked away. He stiffed his first agent out of $30 grand and then fired him when he couldn't get more. Last night I was listening to the pundits with their typical tired story, telling me how Ray Lewis would get/keep Smith straight. I really kind of wonder if Lewis still has that cache. Smith could really pay off. He could continue to be a bad dude and still pay off. Or he could be ruinously disruptive enough to wreck a Raven season or two.

Is NBC betting on fans jumping to a new sport?

2011-04-20T19:30:00.002-04:00

Can I raise a practical question, at this point? (No, not Stonehenge related...) Is NBC betting against the NFL?

NBC recently signed a big TV deal with the NHL. Reportedly much larger than their older deal, this looks to be worth $200MM per year vs. the $120MM they paid for the rights this year.

This gets into the post I put up the other day, noting that interest may be waning a bit. The question has to be, is NBC actually taking an $80MM bet that interest in the NFL waning could push sports fans over to watching more NHL?

I don't know the economics behind this, nor do I know how ratings have been for the NHL this year. I feel like it may have been growing over the last couple years. The Pitt/Detroit and Chicago/Philly Finals were very good for the sport thanks to those teams being high profile, the Crosby/Ovechkin rivalry has been very good and the Winter Classic has also been very good for their awareness. Hockey does seem to be gaining some traction.

But worthy of a 67% pay raise? I haven't seen anything that makes that look like it's worthy of numbers like those. Which leads me to question if this is more of a speculation play. It could make sense. If fans lose interest in the NFL, they'll move to other sports to fill the void. The NBA is about to face the same thing. Are NFL fans going to migrate toward the calm, cool, sophisticated golf/tennis crowd; or are they more likely to hop over to the violent, crushing, smashing hockey hooligans?

The question answers itself. Whether it is or not, it's interesting to think about.

The Deafening Sounds of Silence

2011-04-18T19:57:00.006-04:00

Shhh... Listen closely. Do you hear that? That's the sound of every major sports site not covering the NFL (at least, not on the front page), just a week and a half before the biggest off-season day of the year.

Okay, I'll grant a bit of time bias here. I'm managing to post this on the Monday after the first round of the NBA playoffs...a weekend which saw - in a league driven by chalk and often joked about for shady reffing to help ensure favorable match-ups in future rounds - game one upsets of a 1 and 2 seed on their home courts. My timing could have been better.

But let's come to grips with a few things here. First, how often over the last month or so have we seen a page-one cover of an NFL story NOT involving the lock-out? I honestly can't remember any. Second, float around the sites I linked. The top story is all basketball, but the second/third stories are including baseball and college football on some of those sites. College football! And not "How will losing XYZ player in the draft next week impact ABC team next season?" ... More like "How will XYZ recruits impact ABC team?"

The problem is, the NFL seems to be getting far less coverage than it has before. During a year when the NFL moved the opening round of the draft to prime time to increase the viewing audience, they're killing interest in it due to the ridiculous fight between the two sides. Sports talk shows are barely discussing the draft. Mock drafts aren't being featured on every site, they're being buried in the NFL links. The NFL is on the back burner for the first time in a long time.

It's safe to assume the interest from the average NFL fan is likely wavering here, as well. I'm not an "average NFL fan" in my opinion. My family owns some exceptional PSLs for the Ravens, and I drive 3.5 hours one way four or so times a year (leaving my wife and two young daughters for the day) to go to games. On the Sundays I spend at the house, I'm non-responsive in front of NFL Sunday Ticket anyway. I write, a lot, about it, and I'm in four to five FFL leagues annually. During the month prior to the draft I'm often reading endless mock drafts and sometimes preparing my own mock draft. (Side note, thank GOD my prediction on the Ravens pick didn't come true, though Oher hasn't exactly torn up the league himself.) Instead, I think I've read one of Don Banks' mocks, and that's pretty much it. I have the draft next week marked on my calendar, hoping that will make sure it reminds me that it's happening. If a guy like me is having trouble getting amped up for the draft, how is the "average NFL fan" - the one that catches a dozen or so of his team's games each year on TV, maybe buys a jersey every few years, might take his kid to a game every so often - going to feel?

I have no actual evidence to offer here. No stats showing how many front page stories were featured last year vs. this year. No polls showing fan interest is on the decline. The only thing I have is an email I received from the NFL, looking for fans to attend Day 2 and Day 3 of the NFL draft live, which is the first I've heard of their having problems selling the event out. Everything else is all anecdotal.

But the NFL, both teams AND players, should be taking note here. They seem to be acting as though no damage will be done until games are missed. They seem to believe that fans will simply come back after the new deal is struck, and the $9 billion machine will go back to printing money like it was last year.

But I don't buy it. I think damage is being done here. Damage that may not be able to be repaired, at least for a few years. The owners and players need to start discussing the possibility that they're not going to be splitting up a $9 billion pie, they might be splitting up a $6 billion or $7 billion pie. And that may still sound like a pretty big number, but sit back and think about whether or not you'd be willing to take a 20% - 30% pay cut simply because you were in an argument with your boss.

At this time of year, the silence the NFL is hearing across the media world about its sport's most hyped off-season event should be a giant red-flag. I just fear it's falling on deaf ears.

Good Riddance

2011-04-14T16:27:00.003-04:00

The NFL Network is admitting their mistake in hiring Joe Theismann last year. And Matt Millen the year before.

I don't know why this is funny...

2011-04-11T22:08:00.000-04:00

PITTSBURGH (AP)

Ben Roethlisberger will marry a 26-year-old physician's assistant whom he said he met during training camp in 2005 and has been friends with ever since, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a story in Thursday's editions.

Okay...yes I do.

Fans jump in the fray

2011-03-26T21:31:00.003-04:00

Amidst the madness of the NFL vs. players fight, one fan is climbing into the ring as well.

A Cleveland Browns fan sued the National Football League and its teams over the player lockout, claiming it violated his contract to buy tickets through his personal seat license. ...

The lawsuit asked for damages of more than $25,000 from the Browns on both breach of contract and bad faith counts and more than $25,000 from the league and its teams for alleged contract interference.

I doubt this goes anywhere. But if it does - and it certainly could if games are missed - it's quite an interesting angle on things.

More on the "draft strike"

2011-03-18T22:46:00.000-04:00

Patrick wrote about this a bit below. But something in this Peter King article has struck me about this as being beyond the ridiculous stupidity of the whole situation (which is, let's admit, ridiculously stupid).

Let's start here:

One agent with several prospective first-round picks thinks it will, telling me this morning: "What is the first round of the draft for the NFL? It's a TV show, a show that makes the league a lot of money. They're going to be asking young men to shake the hand of a commissioner [Roger Goodell] who is trying to lock them out. They're going to be asking young men to help the league put on this big TV production. And I can tell you this: There're a few quarterbacks who could get picked high in this draft and the NFL will invite to New York. All those quarterbacks would do by attending the draft for the NFL is giving DeMarcus Ware more incentive to knock their blocks off the first time they line up across the line of scrimmage from him.''

I'm sorry, really? DeMarcus Ware is going to not really play that hard against the guys that support the NFLPA, but if Gabbert goes to the draft itself, he's gonna actually try to get to him? Cause there's only one argument to be made here that I buy...that players want to injure the other players that don't support them. And that sort of behavior should never be condoned. I don't buy it'll happen, and I don't buy someone showing to the draft rather than the player's draft will cause players to go harder in game.

Let's jump back a minute though, to this note:

The decertified union is looking into getting veterans from every team to show up in New York, so that when the college players are drafted, they'll all have a future teammate, not the commissioner, greet them.

Now, why on earth, if you're a player - assuming you believe that no one will be out to injure you on the field as a result of your decision - would you prefer to piss off the guys that are going to pay you your check?

I grasp the concept of worker solidarity. But this seems like it'd be a stupid move for the prospects, to spit in the league and owner's face and go meet with fellow players at the draft itself. In my job, if I'm given a choice to piss off the company that pays my salary, and piss off a few of my coworkers, that's not really a tough choice for me. Maybe I'm in the minority there? But I want a paycheck. I want my paycheck to be as big as it can be. I don't want my employer thinking I'm not worthy of getting paid because I've got attitude issues.

Where's the up-side in this?

New safety rules being considered

2011-03-17T20:12:00.001-04:00

Ah, even with owners and players taking pot-shots at each other out of spite (I'm doing my best to avoid writing a whole post on the idiocy that is Adrian Peterson), we still cannot get away from the issue of player safety.

You have to roll to the second page of this article, but there are some pretty interesting pieces of information in it about proposals for rule changes that should make many of the more dangerous plays less likely to cause injuries.

Next week at their annual meeting, owners will consider a rules proposal to make one of football’s most dangerous plays, kickoffs, safer. Among the changes: moving the kickoff line to the 35-yard line from the 30, which would probably increase the number of touchbacks and decrease the number of returns. After a touchback, the ball would be placed at the 25 instead of the 20, where it currently goes to start a drive.

The rule change would also eliminate all wedges used in blocking and would not allow any member of the kickoff team except the kicker to line up more than 5 yards from the kickoff line. Currently, players line up as far as 15 yards behind the line to get a running start. The out of bounds penalty would be 25 yards from the kickoff line, the 40-yard line of the receiving team), instead of 30 yards from the line as it is now.

I can hear the grumbling from fans already, but the reality is that this really would remove a lot of dangerous plays from the game. Yes, we would lose several electric Devin Hester returns. And it would mean teams like the Chargers likely wouldn't miss out on the playoffs because the horror that is their special teams unit wouldn't likely off-set the incredible offense and defense they have.

But I'm sorry, if that keeps more players healthier, I'm for it. It's one of several steps needed to be taken in order to improve this game and the safety of the players involved, but it's a pretty big one (especially since it's a complete reversal of the rule to move the ball back in order to increase the likelihood of a return, instituted a few years ago). And regardless of fan grumbling about it now, two years from now, no one will likely remember it and say "Remember when we used to have all these kickoff returns before the NFL ruined itself?"

Top Prospects Boycotting NFL Draft

2011-03-16T08:04:00.003-04:00

Question: If the NFL holds a draft and a handful of athletes dressed up like Huggy Bear don't come does anyone really care?

Answer: No. It will make the coverage a lot more interesting except for people who like to watch posse wannabees stroke their instant millionaire buddies.

"We plan to invite the 15-20 top prospects and their families to New York as we normally do for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. And, as always, it is the decision of the players and their families as to whether they attend," league spokesman Greg Aiello said in response to the report.

Although it no longer represents players, the NFLPA still exists "as a professional trade association with the mission of supporting the interests and rights of current and former professional football players," it said after decertifying.

Hard to understand where the interests of NFL players are served by passing on an all-expense paid vacation and enormous personal marketing opportunity. Seems like this is a negotiating ploy from a union that no longer exists.

Decertification

2011-03-11T17:36:00.005-05:00

Watching Pash on TV right now, which is interesting...

- Claimed that the Union went into this with the intention to decertify and was never serious about negotiations (personal opinion: if that were true, they wouldn't have agreed to the two deadline extensions, right?).
- Claimed they offered the Union to meet in the middle of compensation the first year, grow it $20MM each year and then hit the Union's proposed number by 2014.
- Claimed they offered more than one year of injury guaranteed on player contract.
- Claimed they offered to move off their wage scale, doing a hard rookie cap.
- Claimed they offered cash team minimum at the Union's structure and number.
- Claimed they told the Union that for two years they'd stay at 16 games and would not change to 18 games without their consent.
- Claimed they offered to reduce off-season program by 5 weeks, reducing practice time in pre-season and contact drills in regular season.
- Claimed they offered to increase benefits for current and retired players. Pre-'93 retired players would have benefit increases of close to 60%.

He said much of this was paid for by the hard rookie cap which wouldn't have impacted the second round. More money out of the rookies in the first round pays for what they want for the rest of it.

"The absence of an agreement is a shared failure."

Crazy proposal idea

2011-03-04T16:50:00.000-05:00

I make no bones about being a Steve Czaban fanboi. I really enjoy his morning show, not only to scratch my sports itch but also for the humor. But one of the better parts of the show is that Czabe isn't scared of throwing out some pretty wild ideas, some of which I like and some I hate.

So it came to pass that last night he posted a 3-part proposal for a new NFL CBA that I thought was interesting enough to dig into deeper. I'm actually going to list these backward, because the first proposal he made is the most interesting, and most controversial.
- Basic revenue split remains the same.
- Rosters increase by 6 per team. Playoffs are 7 teams each conference, only the top seed gets a bye.
- Regular season goes to 18 games. Two bye weeks. All players - with exemptions for P/K and possibly QB - can play a maximum of 16 regular season games.

Clearly that last sentence is controversial. I'd like to dig into the pros and cons of it a bit more.

First, note that within the argument, nowhere does it say that you have to sit a healthy guy two games if he sits two earlier games because he's hurt/suspended/whatever. Yeah, Czabe worded it that way on his twitter feed. But he clarified on the radio that's not the intent. If a guy sits the first six weeks from injury, he's not going to be forced to sit.

Obviously the argument out of the gate would be, "You're watering down the product making guys sit two weeks!" Well, that's partially true. Here's the thing. If every team is forced to sit their guys, maybe the overall level of play goes down some. But it's still an even playing field for all teams.

Some season ticket holders might argue that they don't want to pay to see a watered down game. That may be a valid argument, but as such a fan, would you really be that much more pissed off than being forced to pay for one game that's completely meaningless? My season ticket prices won't really go up any (or, at least, they shouldn't). And now I get nine meaningful games instead of eight. That's a big difference in value to me...more than enough to cover the fact that the product MIGHT be watered down just a little bit.

Let's explore that "might" for a moment...

One side of the argument suggests that it's more likely players may be injured in this scenario. Stick an 18 game QB back behind a backup OL for two games, and he's more likely to get himself hurt. Meh, maybe I can see that.

But there's another argument that says the players should actually be healthier...less likely to be injured under this new scenario. Today, players play 16 games with one week of rest. In this scenario, players play 16 games with FOUR weeks of rest. That could be a pretty big difference, allowing players to nurse minor injuries, keep them more fresh down the stretch and help prevent those minor injuries from turning into major ones.

As such, there's at least an argument to be made that something like this could ENHANCE the level of play on the field. So many teams by the end of the year are walking M*A*S*H units. The Packers are a good example, with 15 players winding up on IR (though easily arguable that forced two games of rest would not have made a huge difference for them) by the end of the year. If even only 5% - 10% of the players are able to play the entire season due to the extra rest, the level of play on field down the stretch - the most exciting time of the year - is even better than it has been in the past.

I'm not saying this WOULD happen. It's simply a possibility. And teams have to deal with guys sitting anyway, for a variety of reasons. Realistically, I think it all would net out about even in the end. And if it's net even, or even if very slightly negative, the positive additional two regular season games certainly outweighs that down-side.

All in all I like the idea. It's too radical to ever actually be implemented. But I think it's a pretty good idea, even if just on paper.

Extension

2011-03-03T22:41:00.002-05:00

Ahh... Goodellmagedon has been postponed a day!

Actually, it's interesting to me that it's only a day they postponed it. I would think if they were extremely far apart, they'd have extended it longer. My hope is that this is a sign they're actually closing in on something, and we have a shot at a new deal being in place by the end of the weekend.

"They're taking their ball and going home"

2011-02-28T14:30:00.005-05:00

While I do my shopping on the weekends, I enjoy listening to various financial podcasts. One of the ones I enjoy is Freakanomics. This week's was titled "Millionaires vs. Billionaires." When I downloaded it, I thought maybe it'd be a discussion about the difference in attitude/work ethics/something that enables someone to be a billionaire instead of just a millionaire, or maybe something like that. So it surprised me a bit when the Monday Night Football music opened the show, and they said "Are you ready...for some labor negotiations?"

It was really interesting to listen to folks with an eye toward the financial side of thing speak for about a half hour on the subject. The really good part of this? Well, two things made this one stand out to me. First, these aren't a couple nerds just spewing on about the CBA from a financial sense; these are football fans lending insight into a side of the business of which they are experts.

Second, they don't just talk about it, they go out and speak with the major players in the battle. They spoke with DeMaurice Smith, Drew Brees, Brandon Jackson and others about it. The line they used was, "This week, team owners and the players union are behind closed doors with a federal mediator, and none of them are talking to the press. Fortunately, we spoke to everyone last week."

The podcast was an interesting look at things. I won't go into the details of it, there's too much for this to remain a short post, and I've linked where you can get it above. I'll just suggest you to go out and download it and give it a listen. I think there's a lot of interesting, and probably unknown, information out there for everyone.

Waves and Waves of Quarterbacks

2011-02-26T09:18:00.005-05:00

It's human nature to find patterns in just about everything and it's human nature to assume that any pattern that repeats itself is a trend.

This of course is entirely wrong.

But still, it's fun to point to This Thing and exclaim that it's just like That Thing and then to cast your gaze to the future to try to pinpoint the Next Thing.

So with that introduction, I am now declaring another Thing: Quarterbacks enter the league in waves. Oh, it's true. About every 7-10 years we see another wave of quarterbacks and since it's happened at least five times now it is therefore a certifiable Trend.

Consider; from 1970 - '73 the NFL saw Bradshaw, Phipps, Plunkett, Manning, Pastorini, Dickey, Ken Anderson, Theisman, Sipe, Bert Jones, Jaworski, Ferguson and Fouts enter the league (1972 was a lean year with only Brian Sipe and he would sit behind Phipps for a half decade). This was 13 starting quarterbacks in a league that had 26 teams. It followed a long dry period that stretched back to '61. The immediately preceding years, '66-'69 saw only Griese, Stabler and Landry as successful multiyear starters.

The next wave was brief but powerful. From 1983-85 quarterbacks Kelly, Elway, O'Brien, Marino, Hebert, Esiason, Hostetler, Schroeder, Young, and Cunningham became pros. Using some wishy-washy language because I want to include Kelly, Hebert and Young who started in the USFL.

There were choppier waters for a number of years after '85. There was a small spike on schedule from '93-'95 with Bledsoe, Brunnell, Trent Green, Dilfer, Frerotte, McNair, Kerry Collins and Kordell Stewart but this seems to lack both the magnitude and star power of previous one. I would like to argue that this is - in part - because the previous wave was still doing so well. Elway still had championships ahead of him, Young was the best quarterback in the league. Moon and Aikman were also in the mix. There wasn't as much of a void to fill as there had been previously.

I count the next wave from 1998-2001 with Peyton Manning, Brian Greise, Hasselbeck, McNabb, Culpepper, Aaron Brooks, Pennington, Bulger, Brady, Vick, and Brees. A wave that has more pure star power than depth.

Before fast forwarding, have to account for Kurt Warner and Jeff Garcia in here somewhere. They both could be included in the min-'90s wave since they both left college in 1994. They also could be included in the late '90s wave since they both joined the NFL during that time. Either way, their inclusion significantly enhances the power of either wave. Counting those guys, the 1990s was a little aberrant with two smaller chops rather than the big waves of the 1970s and 1980s.

Finally, looking at 2011. This was kind of the impetus for this post. It looks like the recent wave has petered out. Obviously we won't know this for a few years, but the quality of quarterback prospect this year doesn't seem to be close to prior ones. Andrew Luck remains on the horizon and he is the consensus All Everything right now, but like Matt Leinart, Brian Brohm and Jake Locker before him we will see how wise his return to Stanford will be.

So I am prematurely counting the current wave from 2008 - 2010. If so, we can begin to measure it too.

First, does it meet the criteria for a wave? It appears to. The prior three years had poor quarterback classes. There are some names still, but realistically the best quarterback from the '07 draft was Kolb. From the '06 draft Cutler. From the '05 draft Rodgers and Orton with no depth behind them. Meanwhile Alex Smith, Vince Young, Matt Leinart, Jamarcus Russell and Brady Quinn each flamed out to varying degrees. I'm not sure who I'd say is 'next best' after Kolb. Probably either Jason Campbell or Ryan Fitzpatrick (yikes!).

The second component of the criteria is whether a large enough group of quality quarterbacks and additional depth entered the league. Again, the answer appears to be yes. From 2008 we have Ryan, Flacco, Henne, Dixon, Josh Johnson, Flynn, Hanie, Stafford, Sanchez, Freeman, Bradford, Tebow and McCoy. All of those guys appear to be able to play. Additionally there are guys like McGee, Claussen, Pike, Rusty Smith, Skelton and Max Hall who might still be able to craft careers.

Again, it's hard to know how this will shake out. Clearly there are a lot more questions about this entire group than there are about the 1970 guys or the 1983 guys. Even so though, Matt Ryan and Josh Freeman have already reached stardom. Joe Flacco, Mark Sanchez and Sam Bradford are awfully close. If Matt Stafford can shake his injuries he has as much raw talent as any of those guys and was very productive in 2010 when he was on the field.

The last wave is rapidly aging, or even aged. Regardless of the 2011 or 2012 draft, the next group of starters and stars will almost certainly be heavily populated by the 2008 wave, with a couple of others like Roethlisberger, Rivers and Schaub thrown in.

I call the next wave: 2019

Oh Albert!

2011-02-15T21:19:00.003-05:00

Haynesworth is yet again making headlines, this time for allegedly sexually assaulting a waitress over the weekend. But this story just comes off as ridiculous.

The Washington Post states, “According to the police report, a waitress at the W Hotel stated that her hands were full as she cleared a table Haynesworth was sitting at around 1:30 a.m. Sunday.”

The report said Haynesworth, identified as Subject 1, tried to give the waitress his credit card and asked to place it in her blouse. The waitress nodded and Haynesworth placed the card in her blouse and began caressing her breast.

I'm sorry, what?

Now, I'm fully supportive of the idea that a woman wearing provocative clothing and flirting over drinks is really just asking to be raped. However, a woman that says essentially, "Yes, please put the money in my top," and then claims that she was touched inappropriately has to be looked at with a suspicious eye. I'm no Haynesworth fan (OBTW I was right ), but I've got to think it's nothing less than 50/50 that this woman is completely full of it.

Still, you can't help but wonder if this guy is worth any of the trouble. Even if he is totally innocent here, if the guy really asked if he could put the credit card in her blouse, is that someone you want? After all the trouble he's caused this year?

Both Ghastly And Dire

2011-02-07T19:36:00.007-05:00

Rolling Stone, the arbiter of All Things Cool, dug deep into their collective pocket thesaurus to describe the Super Bowl halftime show. The result, while expected, not pretty. Ghastly, dire, nightmarish trip off the pages. They do stop for a moment to deliver an actual review:

Alas, the one and only Fergie proved she’s not Axl, because their version of GNR’s “Sweet Child O’Mine” was a nightmare, all bitchslap rapping and cocaine tongue getting nothing done. Even Usher looked embarrassed.

Why Couldn't You Guys Have Just Gotten Stuck Up There?

The Super Bowl wasn't a total loss, entertainment-wise, at least not from my perspective. Jerry Jones in his vainglorius attempt to set a Super Bowl attendance record forgot to consult the fire marshal before setting up a few hundred temporary seats (at $900 a pop). Oops. Out you go with the other tv watchers.

Even better, even with Jerry's fake attendance boosting attempts he failed to set the record. Hell, he didn't even have the best attended event at Jerry Bowl.

Between the Peas, the abomination called Christina Aguilera's anthem, ice shooting off the stadium and crushing bystanders on top of the Cowboys' annual in-season meltdown, the game was a huge success. I doubt that Jones' ego has shrunk enough to fit into the shrine he built, but maybe it can fit into Texas now.

Who has the upper hand?

2011-02-05T19:29:00.016-05:00

With the impending lock-out, a lot of what we're hearing in the media seems to be that the owners will eventually break the players. But recently I have heard tidbits here and there that indicate the owners may not have as much leverage as they want us to believe. Three examples:

First, the league has been telling us for months how fans want 18 regular season games. Yet a new poll, not conducted by the NFL, is indicating otherwise.

Of everyone surveyed, 27 percent strongly favor or somewhat favor adding two regular-season games and dropping two preseason games. When the group is narrowed to those identifying themselves as NFL fans, support for the change rises to a total of 45 percent — yet only 18 percent who strongly favor it.

Suddenly, it's not just the players and even the occasional executive pushing back on the 18 game schedule; the fans themselves are saying they either don't care, or outright don't want it.

Second, owners speculate the players will cave once they begin to lose game checks. But the NFLPA warned the players that they should begin saving before the season ended. And from recent media reports, it sounds as though the players have taken the advice to heart. Players aren't as rich as the billionaire owners who can afford for games not to be played. But if there's no threat that players will be hurt financially, how much pressure does it put back on the owners with millions in lost revenue likely?

Third, the NFLPA is fighting back against clubs acting like it's business as usual this off-season, claiming teams cannot use the franchise tag. If teams can't use franchise tags until a new labor agreement is reached (and I agree with the players' side of the argument...how can a team use a tag if we don't know if tags will exist in the new CBA?), they're at risk of losing their best players in free agency with no compensation once a new deal is signed.

I used to believe the owners held all the cards. Now I'm not so sure. To me, it appears the players have a pretty powerful position themselves. And two greedy groups at each other's throats in positions of power can stall a new deal signing for a long time.

That means the real loser in this fight is most likely to be us, the fans.

5 Year Record

2011-02-04T10:38:00.014-05:00

I I like to get this posted before the Super Bowl. Sorry to slide it in just under the wire – I totally forgot!

In the table below, ties are broken by postseason wins, where applicable, under the theory that one postseason win is worth more than one reg season win. It's a slightly greater accomplishment. Thus Indy is ranked ahead of the Pats. Ties remaining after that are broken by the most recent playoff record, under the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-in-the-playoffs theory. Thus the Packers are ahead of the Giants. It used to be that ties remaining after that were ignored, because Excel 1997-2003 would only sort on three categories at once; but I'm on Excel 2007 now, so I added a sort on most recent reg season wins, under the reg season what-have-you-done-for-me-lately theory. However, that didn't help this year, so we have no way to tell the difference between the Texans and the Panthers, or the Dolphins and the Redskins. Eh, who cares.

For comparison, last year's list is here.

Team	Reg season						Post season						Grand Total
Team	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Sum	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Sum	Grand Total
Indianapolis Colts	12	13	12	14	10	61	4			2		6	67
New England Patriots	12	16	11	10	14	63	2	2				4	67
San Diego Chargers	14	11	8	13	9	55		2	1			3	58
Pittsburgh Steelers	8	10	12	9	12	51			3		2	5	56
Baltimore Ravens	13	5	11	9	12	50			2	1	1	4	54
New Orleans Saints	10	7	8	13	11	49	1			3		4	53
Green Bay Packers	8	13	6	11	10	48		1			3	4	52
New York Giants	8	10	12	8	10	48		4				4	52
Philadelphia Eagles	10	8	9.5	11	10	48.5	1		2			3	51.5
Chicago Bears	13	7	9	7	11	47	2				1	3	50
Dallas Cowboys	9	13	9	11	6	48				1		1	49
New York Jets	10	4	9	9	11	43				2	2	4	47
Tennessee Titans	8	10	13	8	6	45						0	45
Atlanta Falcons	7	4	11	9	13	44						0	44
Minnesota Vikings	6	8	10	12	6	42				1		1	43
Arizona Cardinals	5	8	9	10	5	37			3	1		4	41
Jacksonville Jaguars	8	11	5	7	8	39		1				1	40
Seattle Seahawks	9	10	4	5	7	35	1	1			1	3	38
Houston Texans	6	8	8	9	6	37						0	37
Carolina Panthers	8	7	12	8	2	37						0	37
Denver Broncos	9	7	8	8	4	36						0	36
Tampa Bay Buccnrs	4	9	9	3	10	35						0	35
Cincinnati Bengals	8	7	4.5	10	4	33.5						0	33.5
San Francisco 49ers	7	5	7	8	6	33						0	33
Miami Dolphins	6	1	11	7	7	32						0	32
Washington Redskins	5	9	8	4	6	32						0	32
Buffalo Bills	7	7	7	6	4	31						0	31
Kansas City Chiefs	9	4	2	4	10	29						0	29
Cleveland Browns	4	10	4	5	5	28						0	28
Oakland Raiders	2	4	5	5	8	24						0	24
St. Louis Rams	8	3	2	1	7	21						0	21
Detroit Lions	3	7	0	2	6	18						0	18

My rule of thumb is, any team with a grand total of 45 or over is doing something right. That's an average winning record, nine wins per year, in a league where winning at all (let alone winning consistently) is extremely difficult. These are the best organizations in the sport.

Note technically a total of 40.5 or better represents a “winning” record, barely. That would average out to 4 yrs of 8-8 and one year of 8-7-1. I personally think that is nothing to write home about: but it beats losing. These teams in the 41-44 win category are in a second tier. The Falcons are very likely to be in the next tier up next season.

Indy and New England have been on top of this list for several years now. I guess that's what happens when you get the two best QBs in the game, along with decent to good defenses. But notice it's been 3 full seasons now since the Pats have won a playoff game. I anticipate Pittsburgh moving into a top 3 spot next season. The Packers and Giants will also have 8-win seasons coming off the books. San Diego should swoon, as their last 14-win season under Marty will come off the books. Can you believe it's been 5 years since they let Marty go? Next year's entry will be all Norv.

Among other anticipated risers, the Falcons should move up a bit next year, as their 7-win season 2006 season will come off the books. And I see Detroit moving their win total up into the 20s, as their 3-win 2006 will drop off. Will that be enough to move the Lions out of the bottom spot? I don't know. That zero will weigh them down for a couple more years, and I see Oakland & St Louis as improving. The bottom could drop out for Cleveland or Buffalo, maybe. Heck, maybe even Kansas City.

Baltimore will need to have another excellent season next year, as good as this one, to avoid falling on this list. Could happen. How would you like to be a Ravens fan? This table shows just what it looks like to fans in Baltimore: one friggin game behind the Steelers. Of course it doesn't suck to be #5 on this list: that's awesome. But you're still looking up at Pittsburgh. Worse if they win this weekend.

Go Packers?

The Sloppy Roethlisberger

2011-02-01T18:03:00.001-05:00

Must ... eat ...

Steelers Skeletons

2011-01-28T15:16:00.016-05:00

I'm not one to really dump on my enemies when they're down. Okay, now that you've gotten the laugh out of your system, I'll present this article for your viewing pleasure. Your three sentence summary of the article?

The Pittsburgh Steelers are the greatest franchise in sports.

But you know what I've learned while covering this team, extensively, during the past 15 years?

They also might be one of the dirtiest.

Ahh... Music to my ears! I thought, "Now here's an article I can really get into and enjoy with all my heart." And then I actually read it. Okay, so I am one to dump on my enemies when they're down. And while I'd love to pile on support for this piece, I can't. It's deeply flawed.

The author, David Fleming, commits two of the biggest sins of analyzing a problem. Let's look at each individually.

The first and biggest problem involves what Fleming is trying to prove. In this case, he's trying to prove that the Steelers are "one of the dirtiest" organizations in football. This suggests that the Steelers have done more bad "stuff" (whatever that stuff is) than any other organization, or at least a majority of them.

While he does a mediocre job pointing out the bad stuff the Steelers have done (more on that in a minute), he's missing a key point. He doesn't tell you how bad all the other teams are. Okay, he mentions that 13 Steelers have been arrested since Superbowl XL, vs. only 5 from the Packers.

But that's a joke. First, what's with the ambiguous time-frame? Well, a quick look at the database the article linked shows a near four year gap between arrest #13 and #14. The database actually shows arrests since 2000. The Steelers have 16. Out of 531. Let's see... 32 teams in the NFL... Carry the five... The Steelers are actually below average in arrests since 2000. Second, why is this the only supporting evidence given at how bad the Steelers are at something vs. other teams? And why is only one other team used as the barometer?

The real issue here isn't that Fleming doesn't show the Steelers have skeletons in their closet. It's that he simply doesn't show the Steelers have more than anyone else. Ben Roethlisberger allegedly assaulted a woman in a public restroom and another in a Vegas hotel? I'll see your alleged double rape and raise you a Ray Lewis alleged double murder. Santonio Holmes tests positive for something, suspected to be pot? I'll reraise you a Jamal Lewis cocaine deal. Jeff Reed got drunk and disorderly? I'm all in with a Donte Stallworth dui manslaughter. And while the three Steeler examples were just the last three years vs. the Ravens over a decade, the article was really talking about the past 41 years.

The Ravens aren't the only other team with skeletons in their closet. I won't list them all, it's not my job to prove it. But only because I'm not trying to prove that the Steelers do or do not have more issues than any other team. I'm simply trying to show that Fleming did a terrible job proving that the Steelers do.

The second problem is that Fleming doesn't even do a great job pointing out all those skeletons. As an analyst, if there's one thing that irritates me to no end, it's lying with statistics. And while this isn't statistics he's exactly using to completely falsify his point, it's the same logic.

At the heart of Fish's 2009 investigation was the revelation in 2007 that Dr. Richard Rydze, a longtime member of the Steelers' medical staff, had been questioned by federal authorities after supposedly using a personal credit card to purchase six-figures worth of human growth hormone. According to published reports, Rydze said he purchased the HGH for his elderly patients. His ties to the team were cut four months after his name was identified in news reports. There was no proof that Rydze ever provided the drug to players.

This incident was followed by off-the-field problems involving, among others, Santonio Holmes, Jeff Reed and Roethlisberger. Holmes was traded to the Jets before the season and Reed was cut in November. Among the many admirable qualities of the Steelers, and especially the Rooney family, is the club's habit of cutting loose troublemakers in a league normally governed by a sliding scale of morality.

The implication couldn't be more clear. The reader is left to draw the following line:
Rydze purchased tons of HGH --> Rydze worked with the Steelers --> Steelers players got in trouble --> Rydze probably provided HGH to the Steelers despite it never being proven

But how can you draw such a conclusion? How can he even make such an implication? Holmes tested positive for a banned substance, but it was never shown to be HGH, and given his history it was in fact far more likely to be marijuana. Reed had issues with alcohol, not performance enhancers. Roethlisberger was accused of assault, not doping. The classic lying with statistics example many professors use goes like this:

In summer, ice cream consumption rises.
In summer, rate of rape rises.
Ice cream causes people to rape.

Fleming doesn't outright state those issues are proof of Rydze providing HGH to the Steelers. But the implication is there, and he should be called out for it.

So are the Steelers a dirty team? Maybe, it really depends on what you believe makes a team dirty. Given all the trouble they've had on and off the field, sure, you could argue they are. But are they any dirtier than most other NFL teams? Fleming certainly hasn't proven it, and I don't see any reason to believe they are.

Improve the Team

2011-01-26T19:00:00.003-05:00

Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti wraps up the team's season-ending news conference:

It's that easy!

Vid taken from the Ravens web site. The whole press conference is viewable there, about 45 mins long or so but broken into pieces:

Season Review Part 1
Season Review Part 2
Season Review Part 3

I highly recommend watching it, even for non- Ravens fans. Many of the questions are about the collective bargaining / potential work stoppage situation, and Bisciotti addresses them.

A Simple Solution To Oversigning

2011-01-26T10:01:00.003-05:00

If you aren't already familiar with the issue of oversigning in college football I highly recommend you visit oversigning.com for a thorough review.

Go ahead and take a few seconds to go to the site now, I'll wait.

Okay. Quickly reviewing, oversigning is the practice among college football programs, most predominantly in the SEC West, of offering more scholarships to incoming freshmen than the football program can offer. Typically this isn't 1 or 2 scholarships too many. Alabama, the king of oversigning, regularly signs 6-12 more scholarship freshmen than they can fit into their 85 scholarship limit. They then use a lot of creative methods, up to and including pulling a scholarship after a student has signed a Letter of Intent.

This last point is important, because Andy Staples offers a solution to oversigning that I hadn't seen before.

• Take away the Letter of Intent. Membership in the National Letter-of-Intent program is a privilege, not a right. If a school doesn't deliver on the scholarship it promised in an NLI, don't allow that school to take part in the NLI program the following year. The NLI binds a signee to a school for an academic year. If a player hasn't signed one, he can still be recruited by anyone. In other words, without the NLI, even players who have signed scholarship agreements are fair game for other schools until the second they set foot in a college classroom.

This is really brilliant. The National LOI is a contract between a student and a school. It is a promise from the student that he will attend. In most cases, the LOI follows a scholarship offer from a school, so there is an implicit promise that if the student signs the letter, that he will get a scholarship. Schools that pull scholarships for non-academic reasons should simply lose the privilege of the LOI exclusivity. This solution will allow the Alabamas and Arkansases of the world to offer all the students they want, and when they don't come through, they lose their exclusivity for a year. If a football player gets tired of sitting on the bench he can go to another school, receive a scholarship and play right away. If an incoming freshman decides after August practice begins that he'd rather go elsewhere then he'd be free to go.

I really love this idea. It won't happen, but it would be a just solution. And you'd see oversigning be killed instantly.

Defending Jay Cutler

2011-01-24T07:42:00.004-05:00

I won't begin to pretend to understand what happened with Jay Cutler on Sunday. I don't know that we will ever know who made the call to sit him. I won't repeat here what I heard because it probably is about the same thing that everyone else heard. Peoples' opinions of Cutler are going to be driven more by a manufactured perception of what an NFL player should be rather than any sense of reality. If Cutler was a linebacker or lineman or corner then no one would question the validity of the injury. It probably wouldn't have been an issue if it had happened in Week 3 or Week 7 either. It baffles me to think that an injury that is "real" when it happens to someone else or is "real" when it happens in a less important game suddenly becomes a fake one when it comes to a game of this magnitude.

It baffles me that people reason that Cutler has devoted his entire life to football only to quit in the biggest game of his life.

Jim Trotter of SI also weighs in on the question.

Cutler says he knew something wasn't right when he took a hit on the outside of his left knee near the end of the first half. Doctors examined him at halftime and a decision was made to test it to start the third quarter, when the Bears would receive the opening kickoff.

He needed only one pass attempt to know the problem was serious. Cutler says the joint lacked stability and, at that point, the medical team made the decision to pull him, according to coach Lovie Smith.

"It's no player decision," Smith said. "For us, Jay hurt his knee. He couldn't go. ... The trainers, doctors and all -- they're the ones who really made that decision. "

The problem was, in this age of the Internet and instant commentary, Cutler was crucified on the Twitter and blogs. Maybe things would have been different if an announcement were made in the press box that the medical team had ruled him out because of the injury. However the only statement was that Cutler's return was questionable. In this case, most interpreted questionable to mean that he COULD play.

I doubt the headlines will ever change, and even though the Bears have already told us that the decision was taken from Cutler, I doubt that the opinions of so many that were cemented as fact last night will ever change. Cutler is a different kind of a guy. Cut from a different cloth, shaped from a different mold, [something] from another cliche. No doubt that his history with the Broncos play into the perception that people have of him now, but until last night no one ever questioned his competitiveness, and really I see no reason to start questioning it now.

Edit: Luis DeLoureiro reminds us that Cutler passed for 3500 yards and 20TD during his second season while playing with undiagnosed diabetes.

The Enemy of My Enemy...

2011-01-23T09:59:00.002-05:00

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!!!

FWIW, I hear a lot of Baltimore fans talking about how lucky the Steelers are because of how easy a path they have to get to the Superbowl. What a laugher. The Bears are clearly the luckies team ever. They get ridiculously lucky in a handful of games to pull out wins, pick up the 2 seed for a bye, then get Seattle in their first game. Now all they need to do is get by a 6 seed - admittedly a very good one - to make it to the SB, where they may wind up facing another 6 seed.

But as I was saying...
J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!!!

Carousel stopped?

2011-01-17T08:00:00.001-05:00

Is it possible the Coaching Carousel spun to a stop, even before the divisional round of the playoffs? Only the Oakland job remains open; and I don't anticipate any late surprise openings.

This is very unusual. Most seasons, there's a star coordinator whose team is still playing, and teams are waiting for a chance to interview / hire that guy.

Guess we'll have to get up the new coach success / fail predictions. No reason to wait for the Oakland hire to be announced; we know what category that job will fit into …

Anquan Boldin and a Failing Offense

2011-01-16T18:30:00.002-05:00

I’m trying to figure out how the Ravens offense has failed so badly. Not just in the Steeler game, but let’s face it, they’ve been mediocre at best all year. They’re 16th in points scored and 22nd in yards.

I think a big part of it we know was the offensive line. But I’m having trouble getting past the play-calling. I’m watching the Patriots, and the Packers yesterday, and even the Falcons who sucked but serve as a good example. I see something in their offenses that I don’t see in ours, and I’ve been trying to put my finger on exactly what it is, and I think I’ve got it although I’m not sure that I can express it that well.

I think the best one word for it: variety. Give me a sentence: The Ravens don’t seem to have as expansive a playbook as other NFL offenses.

There are a couple specifics I’d point out. The first is the use of a guy they went out of their way to get to solve their receiver problems. They brought in Boldin to bring a lot to this offense. And in the first half of the year, they used him a lot. Then, his productivity fell off a cliff. I took a look at this a bit closer. Below is a graph of the # of targets and receptions Boldin received by game, with a trend-line for targets.

I cannot explain this. You can see the declining trend. It gets horrendously worse if you remove week 5 where he only gets 3 targets and then weeks 12 and 13 where he gets 9 each. But even with them in, it’s basically a decline of an average of 0.42 targets per game. It’s not his catch rate, the 1st half of the season it was 56%, it was 58% in the second half. He had 71 targets in the first half of the year, only 43 in the second half. Worse than that…in the first 9 games, only once did he get less than 7 targets. The last seven games, five of them he had 5 or less.

So, in conjunction with this, I’m trying to think about not just why Boldin wasn’t getting targets, but how he is most effective. One of the plays I think saw the most success with Boldin in AZ was the quick slant. Get him crossing over the middle, get the ball out in front of him and let him run with it. Last year, in a dispute year, he ranked only 39th in YAC (according to Football Outsiders), though the previous two years he was 5th and 10th. I’ve charted 15 of the Ravens 32 halves over the regular season for FO. In that time, the Ravens ran a total of three quick slants. Two of them went to Boldin, both of those were catches for a total of 30 yards and resulting in more YAC (21) than the yards picked up on the throw itself (9). According to the FO sheets – I have full data from all weeks (just not charted) where they track which direction of the field the passes went – only 26% of all passes to Boldin went in the middle.

I feel like the playbook is severely limited. We don’t see those quick slants. We don’t see crossing routes. We don’t see a lot of the things so many successful offenses use. It really feels like it’s all outs, tosses down-field, screens, etc.

Now, I don’t know if Cam and the coaches just feel like Flacco’s too limited to throw these passes and/or run these plays. But they’re not there. Something fundamental about this offense is broken. And I’m concerned that it may not improve any time soon, at least under this coaching staff.

Reflecting on a terrible football game

2011-01-16T01:06:00.004-05:00

My dad and his cousin traded emails for a little while after the Ravens game, including me in the mix. I went to a neighbors to watch the Pack slaughter Atl in the second-worst game of the day and drink a good bit to drown my sorrows, so I missed much of it. Upon returning home, I replied. Below is the email - edited only to remove the swearing - because, as it turns out, it's pretty reflective of my general thoughts about the game.

Back when Patrick, Jim and I started this blog, Patrick and I disagreed about whether the Ravens/Titans '08/'09 season playoff game was a great game. Patrick eventually agreed that it was. He chatted with me tonight and said almost exactly what I say below to my family in the email...people will call this a great game. But it wasn't. It was a giant, sloppy mess, riddled with errors, played by two teams that hate each other, but neither acting like they wanted to win. With that said, onto the email.

Begin email:
The second half of this game was some of the worst football I’ve ever seen the Ravens play. This goes back to before the ’00 team when the Ravens flat out sucked. Both the offense and the defense failed on such epic level’s it’s beyond disgraceful. Cam’s play-calling wasn’t great, but for Ravens fans to blame it on him – and there are plenty right now – is laughable. One can easily argue stepping on the Steelers’ throats is the better move. However...
- You are winning by 14 points with one of the best defenses in the NFL, and
- You have all the momentum and the crowd dead silent.
The theme for the second half has got to be error free football. It literally CANNOT be anything but “go out there and try to kill these guys early in the second half, but DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES make any mistakes that gives them life. So let’s review what they instead do...

1) Ray Rice decides to carry the ball like a loaf of bread. Clark wasn’t even trying to strip him or punch it out, his hand just happened to hit it on the tackle and out it comes.
2) Flacco, under little pressure, decides to air it out to Heap in double coverage and puts it 5 yards too far for an easy INT.
3) Birk snaps the ball early and then doesn’t even realize it (how he doesn’t know Flacco doesn’t have it is beyond me) for another short-field turnover.
4) Flacco gets chased from the pocket. No one is open. He’s 9 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Throw it away, no grounding, no problem. With no real pressure on him, he instead simply runs out of bounds for a 9 yard loss. Um, WHAT???
5) Marcus Smith holds a special teams defender, nullifying a TD when the defender wouldn’t have even come close to Webb had he never touched him.
6) Flacco throws a pass to the only spot on the field that could get to Boldin without the two defenders covering him being able to make a play on the ball. Yes it was a low pass. It also hit Boldin in the chest. In the end zone. On 3rd down. FG next play.
7) On 3rd and 19 with 2:07 to play, the clock stopped, ball at the Steeler 38 yard line, the Ravens drop 8 into coverage and STILL allow the Steelers #4 receiver to get behind everyone, not only converting the 1st down, but setting up 1st and goal from the 5 which they eventually convert to a TD. I wrote this play up on the Ravens board and cut-pasted it below if you want to read more about how gigantic a failure this play was. Realize this was a thread blaming Mattison for this play failing, and my essentially saying, “Um, no, Mattison is in no way at fault.”
8) Cody gets a defensive holding penalty on a big stop on first and goal.
9) Flacco yet again fails to get rid of the ball before the pocket collapses on 3rd and 10 at mid-field with 1:10 to play and takes a sack, forcing the Ravens to take their final TO and suffer 4th and 18.
10) Flacco finds a wide open TJ Houshmazilly 21 yards down-field at the sideline with over 60 seconds to play. He hits him in the hands for a sure catch-and-fall-out-of-bounds leaving 60 seconds to go 35 yards to tie the game. BUT WAIT! NO! Hoashmazoad <> Championship and drops the ball. Game over.

Counting kicks, punts, etc up until Pitt is kneeling for the win, there were 80 total plays with some sort of football action associated with them in the second half. Those ten plays above are not tiny, semi-meaningless errors. They are GIGANTIC F******* FAILURES. 10 plays out of 80 where the Ravens completely, totally failed, in a half where all they had to do to win was play error free. It is hard to imagine an NFL divisional round playoff team capable of an error rate so high.

Assuming they watched, NE has to absolutely be licking their chops. The first half was almost as bad, on both sides. Even the two huge Ravens-turning plays were terrible plays on one or both team’s parts. Suggs got a nice fumble on his sack, but then 21 out of 22 players fail to realize no one has blown a whistle, so everyone stands there and stares at the ball till Redding comes from about 7 yards out, picks it up and reads a chapter of War & Peace before taking a leisurely stroll into the end zone. The other play, the Mendenhall fumble deep in their territory, was caused by Mendenhall rolling up on Kemo’s elbow…his own man knocked it loose.

Pundits and talking heads will spew garbage about what a hard-nosed, well fought battle this game was, and how great a game it was. But the truth is, it wasn’t. It was a terrible game where neither team played like they wanted to advance. Odds are pretty good New England will rout the Jets tomorrow, and then destroy the Steelers next weekend.

---------------------------------------- Posted to the Ravens message board ----------------------------------------
Such a gigantic f****** FAIL by the players on so many levels it's not funny. This isn't a busted defensive scheme, and it's stupid to suggest that we should have rushed more than 3 players on a 3rd and 19 when a receiver gets by people. Sorry [poster], I respect you a lot as a fan, but you - and anyone else trying to blame Mattison - are dead f****** wrong.

1) Nakamura gets called for illegal contact. They get a 1st down anyway.

2) Before the ball is thrown, Nakamura contacts his man 17 yards down the field and releases him to the deep safety. Now, you need to fully grasp the magnitude of this stupidity. First, if you're releasing a receiver, it's cause there's someone else short that you're worried about covering. I've got the TV on, paused at the moment he releases his receiver right now. Nakamura is 1/3 of the way from the hash to the sideline, at the Ravens 44. Draw a box from the middle of the hash marks to the Ravens 44 to the sideline to the Steeler 30...there is NO receiver there. How Nakamura doesn't turn his hips and run with the receiver is beyond stupid. Second, even if you are covering underneath, it's 3rd and 19...you don't release to cover an underneath route at the 1st down line on third and super-long. TURN YOUR GODDAMNED HIPS AND RUN WITH HIM YOU F****** IDIOT!

3) Nakamura releasing his receiver freezes Landry to the inside. The reason Landry's late on the outside coverage is cause he has to pick up Nakamura's man. Landry may be - IMO - the worst starting safety in the league, but he's not at fault on this play.

4) Webb completely fails on this play. Brown lines up on the Steeler 37. Webb is on the freakin' 50...seven yards in front of the 1st down marker. Webb doesn't seem to recognize it's a go route till Brown's in full stride on the Ravens 48, Webb on the 42 and Ben starting his throwing motion. This is beyond ridiculous. Watching it in full speed, Brown is in a dead sprint at the Steeler 42 yard line. That's 10 yards of dead sprint he's running before Webb decides he's gonna turn and try to run with him. Naturally, by the time Webb's hit his stride, Brown's behind him. Massive f****** fail by Webb. The only explanation is that he thought he had safety help over the top. Which he should have, had Nakamura not released his man to Landry.

So essentially I put 60% of the blame on Nakamura and 40% on Webb for completely blowing that play. Notice how 0% of the 100% total blame goes to Mattison. There's NO excuse for the players not executing on that play. None.

AARGH!

2011-01-15T23:35:00.004-05:00

After the Steelers beat the Ravens in Baltimore on Dec 5th, I wrote this in an email to Chris & Patrick:

If you can't beat the Steelers last night, then you just can't beat them. You're at home, you knock out their punter and their RT, break the QB's nose early, get the better of the refereeing decisions, penetrate their O-line constantly, have the lead and the ball with 3 mins left – and lose.
...
it seems to me that the Steelers have the edge in poise, composure, focus, playmaking in key situations – "clutchness", whatever that is. You don't see the Steelers jumping offside on 3rd-&-1 in a chaotic hurry-up situation. You don't see them fail to wrap up the tackle on a 3rd-&-goal pass well short of the end zone. You don't see Roethlisberger short-arming a pass on 4th-&-2, so it bounces before it gets to the receiver. Etc.

Obviously I think the same thing now, except re-quintupled. You take a 21-7 lead into halftime, on the strength of exactly the kind of horrible plays the Steelers have typically made in games against the Ravens. You have to know a storm is coming in the 3rd quarter, right? Of course you do.

So how on earth does Ray Rice choose this moment to carry the ball like an iPod in the commercials, and fumble after a fumble-free season, his first fumble in 406 touches? How does 6-time Pro Bowl center Matt Birk snap the ball into his left thigh rather than the QB's hand, for another turnover? How does 3-time Pro Bowl WR Anquan Boldin, Baltimore's big offseason acquisition to jump-start the passing game, how does he let a go-ahead TD pass bounce off his chest in the end zone, in the 4th quarter? How does TJ Houshmazilly drop a 4th down pass that hits him in the hands? How do you have the opponent deep in a hole, facing 3rd-and-19 in their own end, just before the 2-min warning, where all you need to do is force the punt to wind up with pretty good field position, 2 mins and all 3 timeouts, a great chance to drive for a winning FG – with a Pro Bowl kicker warming up on your sideline! – and give up a 58 yard bomb to their #5 WR, down to your 4 yard line? Their number 5 wide receiver! Dude had 16 catches on the season, on his career, going into the game. The Ravens defenders let him run right past them. Undisturbed, unmolested. He didn't even lay a move on them, he just ran in a straight line downfield.

Dierdorf was was doing the game for CBS, and postgame he used words like “implosion” and “self-destruct”. Those are the right words. Aren't they?

The thing is, champions have an extra gear they can kick into when they absolutely, positively have to. We may not believe, as statisticians, in something as unquantifiable as “clutchness”. But as fans, we see something that looks like it must be “clutchness”. The hard thing that, as a Ravens fan, I have not wanted to admit is, the Steelers have it. When they absolutely, positively had to make something happen in the 4th quarter on Dec 5th, Troy Polumalo did. And when they again had to make something happen in the 3rd quarter today, they did again. And you knew it was coming, and the Ravens had to know it was coming (my wife knew it was coming), and they did it anyway. Playmaking. It takes stone cold brass ones to throw the bomb to your #5 WR on 3rd and 19 with 2 mins to play in a tie playoff game. The Steelers did it, their QB did not hesitate for an instant, he let if fly, and they made the play.

The Steelers have it. And the Ravens don't.

Oh, maybe some of the Ravens do. Ray Lewis has proven his abilities to deliver in big moments over the course of 15 years; if he doesn't have as much left in the tank now, that doesn't make him less than clutch. Ed Reed, same notation. Terrell Suggs was a beast today, a monster, a titan. He was dominating, with 3 sacks and I don't know how many hits and hurries. But as a team, the Ravens don't seem to have it. They are a little jittery in key moments, flinch a little, commit small errors.

Is this is a permanent state? Is it too late for this group of Ravens to ever develop "clutchness", if indeed that thing exists? Might Flacco still be promising? He seems a little robotic at times, and he takes terrible sacks. But he did hit Boldin in the chest in the end zone on a crucial 3rd-and-goal in the 4th quarter. Flacco only made one costly mistake in the game, the INT on the deep pass to Heap. If Boldin holds onto that ball in the end zone, everything is different. Even the season ending incomplete on 4th down, that ball hit the receiver in the hands past the 1st down marker.

These are the things Ravens fans will be wondering about, as we watch the Steelers in the conference championship game and wait for next year.

Before the Ravens-Steelers game

2011-01-15T13:38:00.002-05:00

I just want to mention somewhere, that I think the Steelers are better than the Ravens. Not enormously, not by some wide margin. Just a little bit better: a little more powerful & violent on defense (Harrison & Woodley), a little more dynamic on offense (Rapistberger & Mike Wallace). Just a bit more likely to get a key sack & fumble, or a key catch & run. The Ravens are just a bit more likely to jump offside on 4th & 1, or throw it short on 3rd & 3.

But I also think the Ravens can beat them. Yes, in Heinz Field. These two teams are awfully close. By now you've heard all the stats: 5 of their last 7 games have been decided by a FG, the 6th was a 4-pt game, and the other was the 2008 AFC Championship game: a 2-pt game in the last 4 mins of the 4th quarter, before Pittsburgh returned a pick 6. Pittsburgh is better, but the margin is very thin, and the Ravens can beat them.

I dunno if this is a heart or head pick: but I have 19-16, Ravens.

Glad to see it

2011-01-14T13:49:00.004-05:00

Don't know what's going to happen, the Ravens season could very well end tomorrow. If it does, I think the Ravens fan base is at least happy about one thing.

Obviously the Ravens fan base has a ton to be happy about, overall. Three consec seasons in the playoffs, three seasons with at least one postseason win. The fan bases of 20 to 25 other teams would gladly trade places. It is silly not to be grateful for what we have in this team. Compare to what fans in Carolina had to endure this season, or fans in Detroit this decade.

Yet it is a fact that there have been frustrations for Ravens fans this season. I think the thing is, thru the season there was never any sense that the Ravens had played a complete game. They had eked out some wins in games that really shouldn't have been that close. They struggled to put teams away. 12 wins is a lot, but for most of those games it seemed they did not play up to their abilities. Some of it was luck: for a long stretch of the season they did not get good turnover luck. Some of it was conservatism on offense, in a year where the fans expected a more wide-open attack after the signing of Anquan Boldin. But whatever the cause, the Ravens looked like a team that was not hitting on all cylinders.

That is what was so great about this past week, the Ravens 30-7 win over the Chiefs. The defense dominated, with sacks and turnovers. The offense capitalized, scoring opportunistically off of the turnovers. The kicking game was very solid, pinning the Chiefs deep. Flacco completed 73.5% of his passes, with 2 TDs. Rice, McGahee et al rushed for over 140 yds. Heap was over 100 yds receiving. Boldin had a TD catch. Just a complete performance.

I almost feel like we can be happy now, because we've finally seen one great, complete performance out of the Ravens. We don't have to wonder what could have been: we've seen them play the way we thought they were capable of playing.

And now of course we have Steelers week, which is another thing Ravens fans can be thankful for: to be part of what most national observers agree is the best current rivalry in the NFL. The playoff match between these teams two years ago, was the single most brutal football game I've ever seen. Like every other fan of these two teams, I look forward to tomorrow's game with a mixture of excitement and fear.

Prediction? Pain.

Changing the Tuck rule

2011-01-11T12:11:00.002-05:00

There was a Tuck Rule incident in the Ravens-Chief game wildcard weekend. You can see the play in this long highlights package on NFL.com, at about 5:10 into the video.

Mike Pereira was the NFL's Vice President of Officiating between 2004 and 2009. Fox Sports made one of the all-time great network announcing hires when they tabbed him to provide commentary on officiating and rules interpretations. He writes that the Tuck Rule was correctly applied in this case. But the interesting part is what he goes on to say:

I think it's time to change this rule. A pass should only be ruled incomplete if the ball comes loose in the actual act of passing the ball. If it comes loose in the tucking motion, then it should be a fumble. I would support a rule change, although it took me a long time to get to this point.

I guess it's been a long journey for all of us, with the Tuck Rule. I wish he had written more about how & why his thinking evolved on this rule: what he used to think, what changed for him. That would be interesting.

For me, the Tuck Rule illustrates a bad tendency of the NFL, to try to take all judgment out of the hands of officials and legislate every conceivable situation. The impulse is misguided, because (a) it is impossible to list every situation, (b) you move the game even further from the fans by adding arcane rules that are un-intuitive and difficult to understand, and (c) you wind up dis-empowering the officials on the field. It's not possible to remove the element of judgment from sports officiating, and when you try you produce refs who are unused to exercising good judgment.

Make the rules more intuitive, give the refs the authority to exercise their judgment to keep play moving along, and fire the refs who are bad at it.

Collinsworth

2011-01-09T12:53:00.003-05:00

I love listening to Cris Collinsworth announce football games. He's IMO the best color analyst in the game, and is the best I remember dating back to Madden's heyday. Jawarski comes close I guess, but Collinsworth is just exceptional at it. He's very knowledgeable and I feel like:
a) I learn something from him every time I listen, and
b) he points out intricacies of the game that no one else spots.

Example: Last night late in the game, he made a comment about how the Colts were playing man on the outside with a weak corner (I think it was Lacey) against Braylon Edwards with no help over the top, and that it would be a good idea to go that way if they could. Next play, Sanchez throws an 18 yard completion to Edwards against single coverage to put them in easy FG range. This is a fairly simplistic example, but I love the insight he brings to the game.

Carl's Prediction

2011-01-08T08:42:00.001-05:00

Coaches of Bad Teams Should Take More Risks to Increase Win Rate

2011-01-07T22:10:00.007-05:00

This season there’s quite a bit of turnover in the coaching ranks, which is nothing new for the NFL. And as usual, many of the positions left vacated are from teams lacking talent and performing quite poorly. Four of the biggest coaching vacancies – Carolina, Denver, Cleveland and San Fransisco – come from teams with a combined 17 wins this year and one total playoff appearance in the past five years. Another – Oakland – is coming off an 8 win season and seems to have some talent, but is one of the worst managed teams in the NFL and a perennial bottom-feeder.

Some of these positions will be filled by coaches with thin or questionable resumes, and are likely to start their new jobs a hair away from the hot seat. My belief is that these coaches have a way to over perform expectations. But to do so requires accepting more risk than almost any ever seem willing to take.

Earlier today, Patrick forwarded Jim and I a terrific article which gives a blue-print for what the underdog should do to win a game. For those too lazy to click through, the idea is this:
- An underdog has an expectation that is worse than the favorite.
- The underdog should work to maximize variance to give themselves a better shot at winning. Increasing variance, even if it slightly hurts your average expectation, increases your top-end expectations and therefore improves your chance of winning.
- Subsequently, the favorite should do everything they can to reduce variance, as the more likely both teams are to perform at their mean expectation; the more likely the favorite is to win.

The article expresses this with examples based in basketball, but the same principles apply to football. Let’s say Team X is a 3 point favorite over Team Y. Team X is expected to score 20 points, Y to score 17. Team X has the best chance of winning the game by forcing the game to play exactly to expectations so that they win by three points. Team Y maximizes its odds of winning by taking risks and trying high variance plays to increase its maximum score-band. This way, they have a better chance of winning the game. The draw-back is that they also are more likely to lose by significantly more than 3 points.

This article helped bring into focus a post that’s been bouncing in my head for some time. The basic premise is simple: A coach of a team likely to lose should take chances on plays with poor expectations, but that can give their team a big edge when they work. That’s not to say they should always take chances. But it’s to say that they should be taking these chances far more often than any coach has ever been known to do. If I were to accept a position as the Carolina Panthers’ head coach for ’11, here’s what I’d do to maximize my chances of winning.

Blitz the quarterback almost all the time, and coach my DBs to jump routes.
Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of data about how often this works in the NFL. But defensively, this will make two outcomes far more regular than what is currently seen. First, my team will force more negative plays for the offense. They will sack the quarterback more often than expected. They will intercept the ball more often. Etc. This turns the tide in my favor, ending drives earlier with fewer scoring and even potentially my team scoring on those plays.

Second, my team will allow more big plays for the offense. If my DB jumps a route, misses and has no safety help over the top, that’s going to be a big gain if not a touchdown. While this is obviously a negative outcome, there are some mitigating factors to them. One, if my team is truly a bad team, my opponent has a pretty decent chance of scoring anyway. Two, my defense is getting off the field quickly, and isn’t likely to be worn down in the fourth quarter.

Kick onside a lot.
“A lot” here I would define as somewhere around 20% of the time. This year, teams scored on average 4.1 times per game. Add in the kick at the beginning of either the first or second half and you come out to around 5 kick-offs per team per game (obviously worse teams will have fewer kickoffs). I think one on-sides kick per game when the opponent isn’t expecting it would be a good number.

For the five teams I listed above, average starting field position allowed was somewhere between the 29 and 34 yard line (Carolina’s was at the 33.2 line). This includes punts, but is a pretty decent proxy for general field position. A failed onside kick would result in my opponent starting somewhere around my own 40-45 yard line. I’m giving them a free 25-30 yards when I fail.

However, when I succeed, I’m also giving myself an extra possession. NFL teams this year averaged somewhere around 2 points per drive. My having a worse offense would hurt this number of course. However, that’s mitigated by the fact that, with the average starting position somewhere between the 25 and 30, my getting the ball starting somewhere past my 40 yard line will increase that value. I also deprive my opponent of the 2 points his drive was valued at. This onside kick could be a net 4 point swing in expectation, a huge advantage in the NFL.

And onside kicks aren’t exactly a very low probability of success. No, I didn’t ask Sean Payton for his opinion there. Instead I went to the data, looking at the 2010 success of the onside kick. I eliminated all fourth quarter onside kicks though, believing that most of those would be expected onside kicks (apologies to Tom Coughlin). There were only 14 onside kicks not in the 4th quarter this season. Kicking teams recovered six of those, a 43% success rate.

So here you have a question of how often you’re willing to give up 25 yards of possession in order to potentially receive a full extra possession yourself. Obviously the more you kick onside, the more it’s expected and the more you’ll fail. But, while I don’t see data for it, I have a hard time imagining 25 yards of field position is worth close to the 4 point swing I would create by getting the extra possession. Even if it’s worth as much as 2 points, I could afford to succeed only 33% of the time and have an equal expectation.

An additional benefit gained is that teams would be forced to react. They would likely be using more of a hands team to guard against onside kicks, which leads to their starting with worse field position when I kick it deep. And if they don’t put out their hands units, my success rate likely moves far closer to the 43%.

Consider never kicking a FG unless it’s 4th and 10+ between my opponent’s 10 and 30 yard line. When kicking, run fakes regularly (25% or more).
I tried finding good data on success of fakes but couldn’t find much. My all plays spreadsheet had only three plays with a fake punt or FG clearly marked. Two of those were successful. But I remember the Ravens ran a fake punt against the Dolphins, which wasn’t on my sheet as a marked fake, so who knows how many I’m missing. Fakes, when unexpected, tend to be fairly successful. Obviously the more they’re expected, the less they’ll work.

When outside my 30, I’d choose to punt and work on having an excellent punting game that can pin my opponents inside their 10 yard line, or to simply go for it on 4th down (see below for more). This replaces a FG attempt of 47+ yards, which across the NFL were less than 58% to be made. When inside the 10, I’d go for the TD as even if I fail, I’m pinning my opponent deep in his territory, making it harder for him to score. 4th and 3-10 yards is somewhere in the range of 25% to convert. This is giving up about a point of expected value, but fits the theme of higher variance even with lower expected value, and is mitigated by your opponent starting inside their ten yard line where if I kicked the FG, the subsequent kick-off puts them around the 30. Twenty yards of field position helps claw back that point of value.

Go for it on 4th and 3 or less every time I’m not in my opponent’s FG range.
Again looking at all 2010 data, the success rate of 3rd down or 4th down and 3 or less to go was 44%. I also looked at the bottom five offenses (AZ, Car, Chi, Sea, StL) in DVOA and found their success rate was 39%. This fits with the idea of taking negative expected value plays which result in significantly positive advantages when they work. When I’m outside my FG range, I extend my drive and increase my chances to score more points in the game. When I’m in my FG range, I improve my chances of scoring a TD for seven points. And the deeper I go into my opponent’s territory, the less likely they are able to drive the field and score if my fourth down attempt fails.

Go for two point conversions every time.
Looking at data on 3rd or 4th and 2 or less from 2010, offenses had a 48% success rate (42% for the bottom five DVOA teams). This again goes with the idea of taking plays with negative expected value, but improves chances of winning significantly if and when they work. Those bottom five DVOA offenses averaged two TDs and a FG per game. First, since I’m not kicking FGs much anymore, I’m more likely to score three TDs instead of two and a FG. Second, if I convert more than one of my two point conversions, I’m requiring my opponent to either score four times, or also convert more than one two point conversion with me to match my three scores.

The total combination of these five things reduces my overall expected point total per week. But it also increases my max expected point total per week, and should increase the number of games I should win against superior opponents. If Carolina would have an expected 5-11 record next season – not unreasonable given the lack of talent – it’s more likely that two things happen:
1) I experience more blow-outs in games I lose, and
2) I win more than five games.
Would I be willing to accept a few 42-7 losses in order to lead my team to an 8-8 or 9-7 record?

This actually comes to the one huge draw-back, and likely reason we don’t see this happen pretty much ever. It’s not assured that I will over perform my expected win total by three or four games by employing these strategies. And coaches with poor winning records who suffer a higher than expected number of 42-7 type blow-outs do not last long in this league. As a coach, I’m more likely to survive longer by simply playing vanilla, expected football and going 5-11 my first year, than I am to play high risk football and steal a few wins to bring my team to the middle of the pack.

It’s easy to armchair quarterback these decisions when I’m never realistically going to get a shot to run an NFL team for a year. But to be one of those 32 lucky individuals getting that shot, I can understand why they would want to maximize their chances of being invited back the following year, even if it means costing themselves a higher win rate. Still, it’s fun to ponder the ideal, and to think about the shot I’d love to take.

*Note: All data for this article were from Football Outsiders.

Matt Millen: I Stunk

2011-01-05T12:10:00.000-05:00

No shit.

Link

Detroit Lions: Things I Got Right, Things I Got Wrong

2011-01-03T20:28:00.005-05:00

I’m not a big fan of ‘I told you so’ posts and this isn’t intended to be one. With that said, I did add something at the end which probably is that type of statement.

Things I Got Right

Suh To me, picking Suh was the easiest, most obvious thing the Lions have done in a decade. When you can pick the best player in the draft and when that player fills a position of need then there is really no question about it.

Stafford I’ll put this out there, but it’s a bit weak. He surpassed my expectations for him this year in his limited time. I would have been happy to simply see progress, to see him start to recognize the game, to start to take what’s given. Instead he bought all the way in, stopped trying to force the ball on every drive, took what defenses gave and became a solid NFL quarterback with considerable remaining upside. However, when I was worried about whether Stafford could succeed in Detroit, one of my main concerns was that he would get killed. So far, he has. Some of it is a testament to his stubbornness, to trying to make plays, but this is still something he has to learn; that he can’t always be the guy, that in the NFL discretion usually beats valor. Maybe with the two shoulders this year, he will come back subdued and complete his evolution to NFL star.

Backus/Raiola I defend these guys and defend them. I don’t think most fans here appreciate how much worse many teams have it. Sure, it would be great to have a Jake Long or Ryan Clady, but last I checked their teams aren’t doing well and their quarterbacks got knocked out too. Neither of these guys are great and both of them will have to be replaced eventually, but they are also both players a team can win with.

Shaun Hill I’ve been a fan for years and he did nothing to let me down. Other than transition time, there is really no drop off with him under center. It’s a different type of offense, but definitely no less effective. He threw too many picks. I thought the one yesterday was terrible, considering how the game was going. Otherwise though he is smart, he finds open receivers, he will make plays with his legs when he has to. The team averaged 1.7 more ppg with him in the game than out. He doesn’t fumble much or take too many sacks. He’s just a heady player who I really like.

Things I Got Wrong

Suh Even though I was right about the pick, I was absolutely wrong about the impact that he’d have. He could have had 50% of his statistical production and I would have been delighted. I fully expected that he would have to grow into his role. Instead he is already the rare type of player who makes the entire team better. Not just his unit, not just the defense, the entire team. He gets the defense off the field, he prevents offenses from going 5-wide, he gives the offense field position. The Lions haven’t had a player this dynamic at this stage of his career for 20 years. The next decade is going to be amazing.

Corey Williams While I believe that some of Williams’ play can be attributed to the guy standing next to him, not all of it can. Williams was a force, both with Suh in and out of the lineup. I thought he might be solid, and a gap solution. Instead he appears to be a multi-year starter still capable of playing with the best in the conference at his position. With Hill behind them, the center of the Lions’ defense looks very bright for the next half decade.

The Defensive Backfield Funny. For many years I have believed that scheme trumps talent, and when it comes to other teams I’ve still believed it, but I lost faith when it came to the Lions. Despite my belief in the coaching staff, I fell into my old beliefs about the Lion curse (or whatever). Well, I am glad to say that again, scheme trumps talent. I still don’t think the Lion corners are very good, and I definitely don’t think the guys who were playing at the end of the year are very good, but it didn’t matter. With the havoc being created up front the demands on cornerbacks and other pass defenders were reduced to a point where they were able to manage receivers fairly well. Other than the 4th quarter onslaught by the Patriots, no team’s quarterback put a thumping on Detroit.

Where They Got Their Wins I was both wrong in the number and the way they would win games. I believed that the Lions would have to win their games in the first half of the season, that once injuries started eating into their depth that they would really have no chance. I was obviously wrong. As surprising as anything is how resilient this team was with depth players at key spots. I predicted 3-4 wins, simply because I couldn’t see them doing much better than 1-7 in the 2nd half.

Bryant Johnson Not a lot to say here. I really thought he would do well with the pressure off.

Drew Stanton Okay, he doesn’t completely suck donkey cock.

2010: The Year In Picture

2011-01-01T22:04:00.002-05:00

You Couldn't Wait a Week?

2010-12-28T20:23:00.002-05:00

I don't get what the Niners gain from firing Singletary now. Next week would have worked just as well. What's the point of having the extra turmoil and the interim coach and all that?

It's not like they're auditioning their potential new guy. They've already announced they will be hiring a new GM, and that guy will choose the coach. So this interim coach is a lame duck. What are they accomplishing?

I'm not saying they shouldn't have fired Singletary. But why now? Was his presence so detrimental to the players/organization that they needed him out of the building, instantly? I find that hard to believe.

New Iron Man

2010-12-27T22:01:00.003-05:00

Ravens linebacker Jarret Johnson set a team record this past Sunday, with his 112th consecutive game, passing Peter Boulware. (Boulware is the team's career leader in sacks, though Terrell Suggs is just 2 sacks away from taking that record.) 112 games is seven seasons of 16 games; less if the record counts playoff games, as I assume it does.

Seven years is a long time to stay active in football, at a position like linebacker. You might think Ray Lewis sets the standard for durability among Ravens linebackers (and of course you'd have a point), but Ray-ray missed 2 games in 2007, and 2 the year before. Jarret Johnson just kept trucking along.

JJ is an interesting player. Obviously he's an important cog in the Ravens defense. He became a full-time player in 2005, having absorbed Rex Ryan's multiple system in his third year. He belongs to a class of players whom I think of as "just sub Pro Bowl players". If he were just a smidge faster, he would have a lot more than the 17 1/2 career sacks he has; but he does get QB hurries. If he had just slightly better hands, he would have more than the 3 career interceptions he has; but he does have 18 passes defensed. His physical gifts are not elite, at least not elite for the NFL. But he is smart, tough, reliable, sound. He is a great football player.

JJ was drafted out of Alabama, and he is the only 2-time captain in Alabama football history. Alabama is Ozzie Newsome's alma mater. To me this highlights two things about Ozzie: (1) he is very aware of Alabama players, and SEC players in general; and (2) he scouts for leadership as a trait just like 40-times and bench press reps. That would go part way toward explaining why Ozzie would spend a 4th-rd pick on an undersized defensive tackle, move him to linebacker, and be willing to wait a few years for him to develop into a player.

A tip of the cap to the Ravens new Iron Man.

The Cover None?

2010-12-27T09:21:00.005-05:00

Andy Furman with the observation that the Cover 2 is ineffective against top flight quarterbacks:

Pete called it fool's gold. You get success vs weaker teams with these schemes, but when you play against the GOOD QBs, it does not work. Aaron Rodgers picked on the off coverage so often (slants, etc..) that he racked up 225 yds in one half. Thomas and Webster were playing on Pluto while Jennings, Jones and Rodgers were playing pitch and catch. By the time the second half came and we began to see a little more press coverage, it was too little too late.

I'm not sure about the veracity of this. The 2002 Buccaneers certainly had success running this scheme almost exclusively, but that defense also averaged 3 turnovers per game and featured 5 Pro Bowlers. It seems like a more reasonable argument that under a team with more pedestrian talent, this pedestrian 'limit-the-damage' scheme cannot succeed against offenses that efficient at executing plays.

It would be worth exploring how the T-2 performs (relatively) against great offenses versus poor offenses.

Stop Jeff Triplette

2010-12-27T01:59:00.004-05:00

Before he maims again.

Can you believe this? One would think that blinding Orlando Brown would be enough for one lifetime. But there's Triplette, throwing his beanbag at a players face again.

How is this guy still officiating NFL games? Never mind that he doesn't know what constitutes a catch. That's bad, but maiming players is worse. Get that joker off the field.

When The Story Is The Punchline

2010-12-24T17:00:00.004-05:00

Terrelle Pryor sold his leadership award.

Really.

I think it is hard to be particularly surprised by this. His character has been in question since his recruitment. Just the fact that he allowed himself to be recruited by Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia should have set off alarms. He would have fit nicely into the tradition set by Pacman Jones, Chris Henry and Charles Pugh.

But he didn't become a Mountaineer. Instead he followed the other tradition, you know, the one started by Maurice Clarett and continued by ongoing, not-quite-provable shady practices at Ohio State.

I think everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop for the Buckeyes, but at this point it is worth wondering if it ever will. It is an abomination that the Buckeye suspensions do not begin until next season, but the cynical needs of the Sugar Bowl and the Cam Newtonification of the NCAA made it impossible for them to impose any immediate penalties. Seriously, if $100k in payola is not enough to get the NCAA to budge then it is surprising that $2500 to Pryor even got them to blink.

Pryor's next moves should be pretty interesting. He is hardly polished as a passer. Dave Razzano thinks Pryor is undraftable sort of like *cough* Clarett before him.

This seems to be Pryor's season of discontent. Merely a week after expressing undisguised jealousy at Cam Newton's accolades which culminated in the Heisman, Pryor has been caught doing his best Cecil Newton impression; turning what are supposed to be the most rewarding years of his life into a cash grab. And like the relevance of his performance compared to Cam's his cash grab is equally unimpressive. At least Cecil Newton knew the value of a few precious memories. Terrelle Pryor sold his for a handful of bling and a tainted resume.

Playing for #1

2010-12-23T23:12:00.003-05:00

Panthers @ Steelers was never exactly a Thursday night showdown. It was always likely to be a slaughter. Really the only hope the Panthers had was that they could mount some sort of semblance of a better-than-bottom-two offense with Polamalu out.

But is there any question, after deciding to kick a FG when down 27-0 with 9 minutes to play, as to what the Panthers are really playing for? They sure look like they're not playing for anything but the #1 overall pick.

This organization is pretty much the definition of FAIL. The owner fights to spend as little as possible. He's fortunate to not have to fire John Fox, his contract will just run out and he'll go hire someone on the cheap. The problem with that of course is that the first overall pick will probably cost them a fortune, if no draft caps are put in place.

Either way, that was a pretty loser decision to kick that FG.

Where Are The Peoples, Eli?

2010-12-22T08:53:00.007-05:00

If Eli calls a press conference and no one shows does he really make a whine?

Back To The Blog

2010-12-21T09:51:00.019-05:00

Somehow football proceeded without me the last few weeks. I didn't even get a phone call from the commissioner's office wondering where I was. I certainly wasn't consulted by Jim Delaney on Legends and Leaders.

First order of business. While I find other peoples' fantasy teams boring. Hell, I find my own fantasy teams boring. It seems at least topical to mention that I made it to the league championship in one of my two leagues despite leaving Ray Rice on the bench (doh!) and Heath Miller in the lineup (doh! doh!). Even worse, I picked up Brent Celek as a hedge against Miller's broken head, and then forgot completely.

What a great year for football punditry. There hasn't been a single story line that has captivated the league, but rather story trumping story trumping story. Am I the only one who barely remembers Ben Roethlisberger's suspension and the cascade of stop-gap quarterbacks the Steelers used to plug the dike (pun intended, but probably only funny to me).

We've already had three coaches fired and at least a couple more on the way out. As much as Mike Singletary proclaims his undying love for Alex Smith, does anyone really question what a terrible decision it was for him to hitch his wagon to Smith's tiny hand? Is Jeff Fischer going to survive another winter in Tennessee? I don't know that the record matters as much as his chick fight with Vince Young. Putting yourself in a position to start Rusty Smith can't be good for the 'ol resume. Even so, Bud Adams would be stupid to fire Fischer, but he's done much stupider things.

It can't be much of a suprise that Bradford and McCoy became regular starters in '10. Nor can it be too shocking that Clausen and Tebow have gotten starts. But Rusty Smith? John Skelton? Max Freakin Hall? And considering that Brett Favre is a serious threat to explode into dust on every dropback, it is only a matter of time before we see Joe Webb

Moving along to all things Brett Favre's penis. While we celebrate Favre sending pictures of his

to

I think that scandal might have been trumped up to err .. overtrump this scandal.

Matt Taibbi sums up the whole 'why are reporters in the locker room in the first place question much better than I ever could.

It’s not like sportswriters need details such as, “Stevensen, his flaccid but impressive seven-and-five-eighths-inch dong slowly unwrinkling in the locker-room heat, expressed concern that the Lions’s offense had failed to execute down the stretch for the third week in a row. ‘Somebody has to step up and make a play,’ he said, as the eyes of the assembled press repeatedly glanced downward involuntarily.…”

Okay, picture time is over. With a rare free window in my life I have to get to important issues like gift purchases and drinking and ... well, that's about it but that's plenty to fill my schedule.

The Most Valuable Player

2010-12-21T05:10:00.004-05:00

I hate this award. The award is arguably the most mis-named award in sports. Not just in football necessarily, but it is particularly so in sports. To accurately state what this award is would be to call it the "Best Player of the Year" award, often given to the guy playing the most explosive position on the field. Only twice in the award's history has it been awarded to a non quarterback or non running back (not counting the strike-shortened '82 season). The two are completely different from each other. The problem is, the best player of the year is not necessarily the player that is the most valuable to his team.

A perfect example would be Tom Brady from '07 to '08. Tom Brady was almost unquestionably the best player of the '07 season. But was he the most valuable player to his team? In '08, he was injured early in the first game of the season. In comes pick #230, a guy that hadn't started a meaningful game at QB since high school. All he did was lead the team to an 11-5 record with the 5th ranked offense in the league.

Brady looks to be on his way toward earning his second NFL MVP, challenged probably only by Mike Vick. But neither are the player most critical to their team's success. No, the Most Valuable Player to his team is Troy Polamalu.

Polamalu is universally regarded as one of the best players in the game, regardless of position. He's been to five Pro Bowls, missing only his rookie season and last year when he missed 12 games. His knack for making game-changing plays, such as his strip-sack of Joe Flacco that was the pivotal play of a pivotal game, frustrates non-Steeler fans everywhere.

But it's time to look beyond just the plays he makes on the field. It's time to take a brief look over the last two years at the state of the Steeler defense with, and without Polamalu. Over the last two years, the Steelers have played 30 games. 18 have been with Polamalu, 12 without. Here are the very basic numbers in those games, shown as the average per-game with, then without him:

1st downs allowed
17.1 / 17.8 (4% decline with him)

Total yards allowed
287 / 317 (9% decline with him)

Total points allowed
14.8 / 23.1 (36% decline with him)

Turnovers force
2.4 / 0.9 (163% increase with him)

Won-Loss record
14-4 / 5-7

Allow the deltas of those final three numbers to really sink in for a moment. Those are simply staggering differentials! And one cannot really argue that most of his missed games were last year and the team was different. If you look at the limited sample of games with him last year and the game without him this year, his numbers hold up remarkably well.

The bottom line is, the Steelers are and have been for a long time a team built around great defense. They've lived and died based on how great their defense is. And their defense is a completely different unit with vs. without him on the field. Two days ago, the Steelers looked poised to lock up a bye week in the playoffs. But at this point, despite playing two fairly lightweight opponents in the final weeks, it's not unreasonable to think they lose one of those games, watch the Ravens win out and end up a Wild Card team. And if it happens, it's likely due to the injury to Polamalu

In my mind, no man is more critical to his team than Troy Polamalu. He may not be the best player on the field this year. But he's very close to it, and he far better fits the title of the award.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

2010-12-20T12:20:00.005-05:00

Today will mark the first outdoor NFL game in the state of Minnesota in nearly 3 decades. This will truly be a game to test the mettle of everyone--not just the players and coaches, but also the fans. Not only will it be outdoors, but Mother Nature is catching up on 30 years of football weather for them--it is snowing right now in the Twin Cities, and 4-6 inches of fresh snow is expected by game time, and continuting throughout the night with more. Temperatures should be in the teens, with wind chills below 0. What more could you want on an alcohol-free night in Minnesota?

I think the team has done a remarkable job of trying to make lemonade popsicles out of lemons, but the odds have been stacked against them from the start on this one. Those popsicles may end up tasting more like the "lemon slushees" that every northern kid tried to feed their younger brothers after the dog did his thing in the snow.

Weather: Out of anyone's control. The story last week had been whether they could clear the 17+ inches from the stadium before tonight. Now there will be fresh snowfall and cold windy weather. So much for all that clearing.

Tickets: The U of M stadium (TCF Bank Field - aka "The Bank") holds about 50,000, which is about 15,000 fewer than the Metrodome held when actually inflated. That means 15,000 fans won't get in--though as it turns out, maybe the weather is actually a positive in this regard.

Seating: General admission. This is probably an even bigger factor than the ticket availability. Imagine tossing down a couple hundred bucks a ticket to get seats at the 50 yard line at the Dome. Then imagine deciding to get into the spirit of the game and bundling up like a yeti in a snowmobile suit. Now imagine getting to the stadium, only to find that you're actually sitting 3 rows from the back of the upper deck in a corner section of the stadium. I imagine you'll be stompin' mad. But don't decide to drown your sorrows with a drink, because...

Alcohol: ...there will be no alcohol at the game. In a long standing debate between fans and the university and the Minnesota State Legislature, alcohol is not sold at The Bank. This is a stadium rule, not a tenant rule, so no booze will be on campus for tonight's "Miller Lite / Captain Morgan Special Presentation of the Budweiser-Corona-Sam Adams Kickoff Show starring the Summit Brew Minnesota Vikings and Leinenkugel Chicago Bears, brought to you by Heineken!" Not that we'll notice the lack of alcohol in a dry sport such as the NFL anyway, of course.

Fans: We're a hardy sort up here. But we're a bit out of practice. The last time the Vikings played the Bears outdoors in Minnesota, their coach was a player for the Bears. Prince hadn't even sung yet in 1982 about the year 1999 which is now 11 years ago in 2010. Kevin McHale was a great basketball player, not a terrible basketball GM. Walter Mondale was a recent VP and an up-and-comer, not an embarassing sacrificial lamb. Suffice it to say, it has been a while. So, even though I do think outdoor football would be embraced in Minnesota going forward, tonight is going to be a heck of a first run to shake the rust off.

Traffic: If there's one thing we Minnesotans like, its our traffic jams. Mass transit availability continues to lag every other major metropolitan area in the country, and the University light rail line is still a favorite political hot potato. The U of M is conveniently situated on the intersection of the two largest interstates in the area, right next to I-35W north (and its now world-famous bridge) and I-94. Traffic in this area is pretty much terrible no matter when you go through it, unless you're a night trucker lucky enough to pass through at 3am on a banking holiday. On Gopher game day, when fans come through on Saturday morning when downtown is empty of weekday workers and communiting students are not coming to classes, traffic is bad enough. Tonight? Kickoff is in about 8 hours, and I think I'd already be late if I actually had a ticket. Oh, and remember, there's some snow going on too, which always makes travel more fun.

The Field: Oh yeah, there's actually a game going on amidst all of this. Remember that The Bank is a college field. Yes, it is outdoors, but the Big Ten/Eleven/Twelve doesn't play after mid-November or so. As a result, there are no heaters embedded in the field surface, as is standard for an NFL field. They've been trying to clear the field, but there have been well publicized issues with that, with the best view of it coming from punter Chris Kluwe's Twitter feed:

Serious time - All respect to the people that cleared the field and got it ready, you did an amazing job. That being said, it's unplayable. The field is as hard as concrete an hour and a half after they took the tarp off, and anyone that hits their head is getting a concussion. I find it interesting that the NFL can claim an emphasis on player safety, and then tell us the field is fine. It's beyond hypocritical. I can only hope, however unlikely, that no one gets catastrophically injured at the trainwreck that's about to take place tomorrow night.

Besides being one of the best punters in the game (with all due apologies to my co-blogger Jim and his man-crush on Mike Scifres), Kluwe is one of the sharpest--and most quotable--players in the game. The quote above is a pretty damning indictment of the NFL given their focus this year on hits, but is all the more powerful because of how dead-on it is. Anyway, the snow today will only make it more slippery, but hopefully provide a slight bit of cushion for the players when they get whomped.

All in all, this really ought to be one of the most interesting games of the year. It is gonna be an ugly, sloppy mess and we're clearly not going to see anything resembling the 1998 Vikings offense. My prediction is that regulation will end with a 0-0 tie, and end 2-0 when one of the teams will get sick of playing in overtime and give up a safety to they can all go home--and finally get a much deserved beer.

What Ails the Ravens

2010-12-15T23:38:00.005-05:00

In the last eight games, the Ravens have blown fourth quarter leads five times, and without a clock-killing drive against the Bucs, could have been in position to do it a sixth. All four of their losses were after holding leads in the fourth quarter, and four of their wins featured leads given up in the fourth quarter, only to later be regained.

Let that soak in for a second...the Ravens have surrendered a lead in eight of their thirteen games this season. I’m struggling to remember the Ravens surrendering eight fourth quarter leads over the previous decade.

Given that, it’s actually fairly easy to make an argument that the Ravens could be the only undefeated team in the NFL right now. It’s also just as easy to argue that the Ravens could be 5-8 and out of contention. I don’t see another team with such a razor thin margin between how good they could be, and how bad. So I’ve decided to try to cut deeply into what specifically it is that is wrong with the Ravens, and whether or not they can do anything about it.

Coaching
So much has been made of the coaching in Baltimore. Fans seem to fall in one of two camps. Either Harbaugh and crew are terrible and need to all (or some of them) be fired, or they’re doing a fine job coaching the team to one of the best records in the NFL The truth probably falls somewhere in between.

The coaching staff is clearly doing something right. The Ravens are 29-16 since Harbaugh and co took over, have won three playoff games – all on the road – and have yet to finish a season ranked in the bottom half of the league in points scored or out of the top five in points allowed (and are on pace to continue that this season). The offense is more productive than it’s ever been over a three year stretch, and the defense is still playing very good football.

But there are things about what these coaches do that are maddening. Three examples specifically, to show why people are so frustrated with the coaching.
1) Earlier I posted a little about the Ravens tendencies on third and short. They pass twice as often as they run, and play out of shotgun half the time and spread teams out even more. For a team with a strong run game and mediocre pass game, this is a disappointing trend.
2) Defensively they quit trying to put pressure on quarterbacks when sitting on a lead in the fourth quarter. They often go into a three-man rush and rarely use the zone blitzing schemes that are very effective at generating pressure even with four rushers. The disappointing play from the safety position (more on that in a moment) has resulted in an inability to effectively control the hurry-up offense when there’s no pressure on the quarterback. So why aren’t they using more zone blitzing, rushing 5+ and rarely using the three-man rush plays even late in games?
3) One fundamental issue has been Flacco’s snapping the ball with time on the clock late in games when trying to burn time. A specific example was the Ravens final drive in regulation of the Texans game. Flacco left 19 seconds on the clock, snapping the ball early. Had they snapped it at the last second each time, they’d have been able to call a run play on 3rd and 2, and run the clock down to the two minute warning. With those 19 seconds on the clock, the Texans were getting the ball with a two minute warning stoppage in their pocket no matter what the Ravens did on that third down.

Talent
There is no question this Ravens team has talent on it. The problem is, I think many people assume that there’s a great deal more talent than there really is. The result is a predictable underperformance compared with expectations. Three positions highlight a large gap between perception of and actual talent, but the reality is that the Ravens are actually lacking talent in a lot of key positions.

The three positions: The Ravens are perceived to have great talent at three positions that they don’t actually have. Michael Oher was at one time leading the Pro Bowl voting for AFC tackles. While he hasn’t been terrible, he certainly hasn’t been Pro Bowl caliber. He’s committed several penalties of all sorts. He’s not only been beaten regularly, but is regularly missing assignments and allowing rushers to come at Flacco untouched. He’s played well at RT, but has been average at best at LT.

Gaither’s absence has had a big impact on the entire line, not just with Oher’s shift. Oher’s move off RT forces Yanda away from RG where he has Pro Bowl talent, into RT where he is merely average. This has pushed Chester, an adequate backup but in no way a decent starter, into RG. With Birk showing his age, and Grubbs no more than an average LG, no one on the line is better than an average player, and overall the line is predictably performing poorly.

Ed Reed, while boasting an impressive four picks in seven games so far, is barely playing replacement level at safety. None of his four picks were “vintage” Ed Reed, reading the QB and jumping the route. They’ve come off tipped or badly overthrown balls, three of them he was far behind the play as it developed and happened to be lucky with the ball coming right to him. He’s often lined up deep and away from the LoS, where most of the action happens. He is no longer fast enough to jump routes. And he’s taking bad angles, which leaves him out of position in pass coverage, often resulting in long completions given up.

Largely this isn’t Reed’s fault. He’s the victim of a body breaking down from a mix of years of launching his 5’11, 200 pound frame into much larger bodies with abandon, and an impinged nerve in his neck that is both unfixable and very painful. In July I wrote that Reed should retire and I’ve seen nothing thus far that has changed my opinion.

And finally, Ray Lewis is, with 15 seasons nearly under his belt, a shadow of what he once was. He’s regularly blown off the ball, not getting off his blocks, slow in pass pursuit and missing tackles more than he ever has. He’s still one of the smartest and best at reading the play, which allows him to make up for his physical deficiencies. But those deficiencies are starting to have a significant bearing on how he’s able to impact the game.

Again, this isn’t Lewis’ fault. To know that he’s still able to play MLB at an average NFL level in his 15th season is an amazing accomplishment. Look back at some of the greatest LBs to play the game. Singletary. LT. Ham. Lambert. Butkus. Lanier. Virtually every great LB has been playing golf for two or three seasons by this time in Lewis’ career. Of the great LBs, only Junior Seau played significantly longer than Lewis has. And by this time in Seau’s career, he was starting half or less of the season and didn’t have more than 58 tackles in a season after his 14th year.

These three players, while creating an illusion of great talent due to name recognition where it’s actually average or worse. But they’re hardly the only positions where the Ravens lack even average talent. I’ve already covered the OL. The rest of it lies with the defense.

Reed isn’t the only problem in the secondary. Dawan Landry is a below average safety struggling to make even fundamental plays. The loss of Foxworth combined with the disappointment of Fabian Washington has created a vacuum at corner. And while Josh Wilson, Chris Carr and Lardarius Webb have played admirably for nickel-level players, they aren’t NFL quality starters. And Lewis, while just average at this point, remains the best linebacker on the team. There is no talent beside him at ILB, and if you count Suggs at DE – which is where he’s lining up most plays these days – there’s little to speak of at OLB either.

While the defensive line, particularly Suggs and Ngata, is playing quite well, and statistically they’re top ten in yards and top five in points, clearly the defense isn’t what it once was. Giving up long drives and fourth quarter leads is out of character, and the talent deficiency is a big part of it.

The Fans and Media
Okay, let’s get real for a minute. While this team has its problems, the level of crazy in Baltimore right now is off the charts. Fans and media are calling for the heads of coaches and giving up on games. Between message board watching and several chat conversations on Monday night vs. the Texans, I lost count of how many people told me some version of “game over” when the Ravens punted in overtime.

The Baltimore fan base has always been rabid. The media consistently paints the Ravens as the perceived bad guys fighting adversity. And the city has largely felt like they’re the step-children of the league, fighting for respect but preferring the role of underdog. Meanwhile, many believe the Ravens are an elite team that should be Superbowl contenders if not favorites. And while watching eight blown fourth quarter leads will wear on any fan, the reality is, the team is 5 games over .500 and two in front of any wild-card contender with three to play. They control their destiny to win the Superbowl, have not lost to anyone by more than five points and have the seventh highest point differential in the league.

The Ravens fan-base and some of the Baltimore media are making things out to be far more dire than they really are. While the Ravens aren’t the best team in the NFL this year, they’re without question in contention for the Superbowl. And fans of no less than 18 other teams would love to be in the position the Ravens are in, and enjoy the regular success the Ravens enjoy year in and year out.

Some Ravens Numbers

2010-12-14T21:40:00.004-05:00

In our email discussion thread, Craig made some commentary around analysis of certain situations. I've been watching the Pens/Flyers game tonight and decided to cut up some data during the game, to take a look at various situations to satisfy my own curiosity.

This is only partial data. As a Football Outsiders game charter, I've charted 20 of the Ravens 54 + 3 (OT) quarters across 8 of their 13 games. All data comes from their charting sheets and my personal charts.

One would have to assume that this data is representative of the whole, but I don't see a whole lot of reason to think it isn't. The only reason I could see is that of the 10 halves I've charted, six are first halves and four are second halves. Otherwise I don't think there's much to indicate this isn't representative.

- The Ravens run the ball a little over 55% of the time on first downs (last year they ran 53% of the time on first down). Their success on run vs. pass plays are pretty similar. They average 4.5 ypp on the pass, 4.2 on the run. But 53% of the pass attempts resulted in 0 or negative yards, while 17% of the run plays did.
- They run the ball 47% of the time on second downs, regardless of distance. On second and short (defined as 3 or fewer yards), they run 78% of the time.
- On 3rd and short, they run the ball only 33% of the time! They were in shotgun nearly 50% of the time, and had a 3+ WR set 67% of the time. Flacco has completed only 43% of all attempts (includes sacks) on those passing plays, 14% of those completions did not pick up the first down (sample size very small, so may not be truly represntative). Thus, the Ravens pick up the first down on third and short less than 40% of the time when they throw the ball. This, as compared to a 63% first down pick-up rate when they run on third and short.
- In the red zone, they run 60% of the time, though they run 76% of the time in the red zone on short yards to go situations. Inside the 3 yard line, they run ~60% of the time, the same percent of first/second down plays.

The bullet on 3rd and short is representative of why Ravens fans are generally frustrated with the coaching / offensive play calling. I've got an article brewing in my head breaking down the Ravens season thus far, and what's "wrong" with the team. I use the term "wrong" lightly, given they have four losses thus far...only so much can be wrong with such a team. Part of it is, in my belief, the coaching. There will be more around this in the coaching section I think.

In the mean-time, if there are any other particular stats anyone can think of they'd like to see, I'm happy to post them.

Ngata and the Ravens OT win

2010-12-14T15:44:00.002-05:00

I've replayed that final play - Josh Wilson's pick 6 to end the Baltimore @ Houston game - several times now. Haloti Ngata is the key to the play's success.

Ngata made a terrific move to get by the blockers. Houston double teams him with C-LG. Ngata starts to rush as if he's going right into the teeth of that double-team. Then he suddenly re-directs to his left, using his left arm to get outside the C, makes a swim move with the right and comes to the C's right, leaving the OG standing around looking for someone to block. The C was beat badly by the swim move and the RG couldn't disengage in time to pick him up.

Ngata comes free inside and bee-lines to Schaub. Schaub has to back-peddle, make an off-balance throw, and rather than deliver a bullet which could have been complete, he throws a soft duck that hangs in the air long enough for Wilson to jump on.

It was a terrific play by one of the league's premiere defensive players, and is the reason the Ravens won the game.

A hidden issue

2010-12-13T23:31:00.002-05:00

Watching the end of the Ravens/Texans game, and seeing yet another issue that I think is at least playing a part in the Ravens problems holding late leads. On this drive that started with 6:00 left in the 4th and the Ravens up 8 points, Joe Flacco has snapped the ball early on every play except one. He's left nothing less than 19 seconds on the clock.

This is actually a pretty consistent problem. If you watch, Flacco's not burning the time off the clock when the clock is still running. I don't know if it's a coaching issue, an awareness issue or what. But it's a definite problem, and it's GOT to be corrected.

Dirty Pool, Mister

2010-12-13T14:54:00.003-05:00

If the Sal Alosi ridiculousness doesn't result in a firing, and hopefully a league ban, then I'm not sure what would.

I suppose we could make some commentary about how this is representative of the Jets attitude of entitlement. I'd like to think this could happen to any NFL team, one bad apple in the system. But I also think it's more likely to happen within certain organizations...the Jets is one of them.

The Collapse of a Division Leader

2010-12-12T15:10:00.006-05:00

Today the Arizona Cardinals will be trotting out John Skelton to play sacrificial lamb under center. Skelton is known most for his works as a satirist poet and tutoring Prince Henry. Apparently he's not as well known for having been reborn as a football player hailing from Fordham...

Fordham. ESPN announced this morning that Skelton would start for the Cards, and they posted a graphic touting well known Fordham graduates. You know you're in a bad situation when ESPN is comparing your starting quarterback to other notables that graduated from their college, and Captain Kangaroo leads the list.

The Cardinals have been a spectacular failure this season. They've improved their win total each of the last three seasons, and in the previous two years they've won 19 regular season games, 4 post-season games and were a Ben Roethlisberger wink-and-a-prayer from winning the Superbowl.

Now, it's unfair to put all of their problems on the offense. Defensively, the Cards are 28th in yards allowed and have given up the most points in the league. But they've never been known as a defensive powerhouse. Last year, their best defensive season in five years, they were 14th in points allowed and 20th in yards allowed.

But it's the offensive collapse that's been simply spectacular. Part of it has to do with some of the positional turnover. The loss of Anquan Boldin being the second most major loss on offense this off-season for them. But it's without question the loss of Warner, and the franchise's inability to account for it, that has crushed the life out of them in a pathetically weak division.

During Warner's tenure as the primary starter, their offense averaged in the top ten and was one of the best in the NFL in '08. He completed over 65% of his passes for over 7.5 YPA, threw a TD every 21 att and a pick one out of 36 tosses. Compare this with the Cards passers this season, which are completing 51.5% for 6.1 YPA, throwing a TD every 51.5 passes and a pick in half as many attempts. The result has been a predictable plunge from the upper echelon of the offenses in the league into the bottom two in points scored and yards gained.

The real issue has to be that the Cards are showing the signs of being the same old whipping boy organization it's always been, making poor decisions and allowing good players to walk without replacing them with other good players. Obviously Warner wasn't able to be retained. But when your contingency plan includes hoping Matt Leinart - a career 71 rated passer after four seasons - turns into a good option, signing Derek Anderson - who's career includes 3 awesome games and a ton of terrible ones - to compete and picking up whoever off the street happens to be able to have a working arm to throw a ball, you have to expect what's actually happened.

It's got to be a disappointment in a division led by two teams that look like they'll both struggle to finish .500. I'm struggling to remember a time that the opportunity to win a division has been so easily out there for the taking, and the collapse at one position has allowed that opportunity to be squandered.