Good reading

I really enjoy Football Outsiders. They're the best sports analytical site I've found, and their annual almanac is always enjoyable and informative. They also have regular content updates on their site (duh), but this was a particularly enjoyable read.

Mike Tanier is probably my favorite writer for them. He did several chapters in the FO Almanac, including the NFCS teams. The chapter he wrote on Atlanta is one of the best chapters I've read of any book, blending information and entertainment wonderfully. Most of his stuff is "information" with a sprinkling of "entertainment." This article is more the other way around.

When blogger Billy Rios discovered a glitch in the ESPN Fantasy Football site that made it easy to make changes to his opponent's roster, he tested his ability to hack the system by making a fellow owner pick up Grossman. Hilarious. It's like making the computer in "WarGames" start a global thermonuclear war, only worse because it's Grossman.

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Two ways to look at Ravens-Steelers

Patch emailed me something from sbrforum today, an analyst or handicapper looking at the individual players in this Sunday's Ravens-Steelers game. It was very interesting. And it got me to thinking.

There are two distinct ways of looking at this game. And depending on which viewpoint you adopt, it's obvious who should win the game. I mean it's utterly, completely clear who's going to win. What's not obvious is which viewpoint is the correct one. ( I guess it'll be obvious during or after the game, but what fun is that?)

Viewpoint #1: The Steelers are playing well this season, and the Ravens are not.

Pittsburgh is #3 in the FO's ratings this week (#1 in "DAVE"), Baltimore is #18. Some people have the Steelers as the best team in the NFL. They have won all their games, some against good teams, and they have looked like themselves doing it. The D is baaa-aaack; in particular, Troy Polumalo and Aaron Smith. And the running game is back: Rashard Mendenhall is the NFL's 4th-leading rusher. Meanwhile, Baltimore has not played well. Their offense was AWOL the first two games of the season, while Flacco thew 5 INTs. When the offense finally showed a pulse in week 3, the defense got pushed around. The Ravens gave up 173 yards on the ground, to Cleveland. 6.0 yards per carry!

This, then, is the Ravens-Steelers matchup: two teams going in opposite directions. And the best team in the NFL, playing at home, will blow the Ravens off the field.


Viewpoint #2: The Ravens & Steelers are very, very evenly matched, so the significant players who are out will determine the winner.

From 2008 on, the Ravens & Steelers have played 5 games against each other. These have been the final margins:

3 pts (overtime)
4 pts
9 pts (iced by a late 4th Q Polumalu INT return)
3 pts
3 pts

That 2008 AFC Championship game was a 2-pt game with 4 or 5 mins to go, until Flacco threw the pick-6.

Ravens-Steelers games have been exciting, hard-fought – the rivalry has become must-see football, one of the most anticipated matchups in the league. Pittsburgh has won 4 of those games, so they have been better (they were the 2008 SB Champs, after all); but the margin separating these teams has been thin. Distinct, but thin.

So now these two teams line up against each other again, but with some key people out. The Ravens are missing starting RT Jared Gaither, and the Steelers are missing –

Ben Roethlisberger.

!

Now, Jared Gaither is an important player. But, can we all agree that Ben Roethlisberger is miles and miles more important to the Steelers than Jared Gaither is to the Ravens? I mean, it's not close, right?

I know Rashard Mendenhall is a big-time player now, and the Steelers have a new offensive identity that they haven't had in recent years. Fine. But (no matter what it looked like last week against Cleveland) you just can't earn a living running against the Ravens D. It is not going to happen. The difference-maker for the Steelers offense has been Big Ben hanging in the pocket on third down and miraculously keeping drives alive. If he's not there, the Steelers are not going to move the ball, and their biggest threat to score will be Polumalu. Meanwhile the Ravens also have an added dimension on offense, courtesy of Anquan Boldin.

This, then, is the Ravens-Steelers matchup: the usual slugfest, but without Big Ben's miracles. The game will look like a replay of the Ravens-Jets Monday Night season opener: two teams slogging it out, with the home team unable to do a thing offensively, and the Ravens stringing together just enough offense to leave with the win.

~

So. One of those viewpoints is obviously right. But, uh, which?

__________________________________________________

Edit

Chris emailed me me after the post went up: "Jim – No mention of Reed as a pretty important player missing for the Ravens?"

Uh, oops.

I still think the salient part of viewpoint #2 is that Ben Roethlisberger has been the most important difference-maker for the Steelers in their games against the Ravens (more important even than Polumalu), and he's gone. (You could even argue that without Big Ben back there, the Ravens don't need Ed Reed.)

We'll see how it plays out.

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The best thing I've read (recently) about wide receivers

It's been 25 years since John Madden wrote his first book Hey, wait a minute, I wrote a book and entitled a chapter, "Wide receivers are like artists". This might be the most sympathetic/insightful thing I've read about WRs since:

Five Things We Learned From The Ravens 24-17 win
by Kevin Van Valkenburg
Let's remember that, in order to play wide receiver in the NFL, you need a little diva in you. You have to believe you're open every play, because if you lose that edge, it's really hard to get it back. It takes a certain level of minor insanity and tremendous courage to run really fast, get open for a half second, catch a pass and then let your body get hammered by a defender who could potentially seriously injure you on every play. So when we talk about Derrick Mason, let's respect that. His self-confidence is the reason he has been as good as he is for as long as he has.

But it's obvious he's frustrated. It's clear he doesn't like getting three passes a game thrown his way. We don't need to hear him talk to understand it.

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Rumor

To be clear, I haven't heard this anywhere. I am starting this rumor, not passing along anything I know. (Because I know nothing.)

Parcells will be coaching the Giants next year.

It's plausible. He's available now; and Ernie Accorsi revealed in his book that Parcells was interested, and would have been the choice when Coughlin was hired, but the Maras didn't learn of Parcells' interest until Coughlin was already offered. And suddenly Coughlin seems like a good bet not to survive the season.

I dunno, Coughlin is very tenacious, and tends to wriggle out when his back is to the wall. Watch him pull another Super Bowl win out of his hat.

But, Parcells. You heard it here first.

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Da Browns

For a team that sucks – the Browns suck, right? That's the general consensus, that they suck, that they are the weak sisters of the AFC North. They are coming off consecutive seasons of 4 and 5 wins, and they're projected to get stepped on this season as well – for a team that sucks, the Brownies have an awfully good offensive line.

LT Joe Thomas might be the best player at his position in the NFL.
LG Eric Steinbach can play.
C Alex Mack is last year's 21st overall pick, and looks excellent.
RT Tony Pashos may only be solid and reliable, but he is solid and reliable. He's an ex-Raven, and with Jared Gaither out, "solid and reliable" looks pretty good. I wish we still had him.

I don't know anything about RGs Floyd Womack & Shawn Lauvao, but judging by the way the Browns controlled Kelly Gregg & Haloti Ngata, and the way Peyton Hillis (!) ran wild against the Ravens (!!) today, I suspect at least one of them is pretty decent.

O-line is the single most important unit of a football team. (Ok, and QB is the most important single position.) If you have a good O-line, everything else on offense becomes possible. I don't know if the Brownies have their QB question answered: seems like it'll be a while before we know anything about Colt McCoy. But after what I saw from them today, I wouldn't be shocked if everything came together for them very quickly. That O-line might be the best in the AFC North.

Eh, maybe I'm overreacting to one good game. Maybe the Ravens overlooked them, with the Steelers looming next week. The Browns defense looked porous today (to be charitable). And they play in a brutal division.

Still. That unit is much better than the O-line a terrible team should have.

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A quarterback regressing?

Joe Flacco's statistics through two games give some cause for concern:
48% completion rate, 5.2 YPA, 1 TD and 5 INTs
Now, granted it's only two games, and they were on the road, in a six day period and against the #1 and #6 passing defenses from last year. And while I'm far from panicking over whether Flacco is in serious regression, or if it was just a bad streak in a tough situation, there are some signs of true concern that deserve some attention.

The biggest sign has been the media's favorite tag-line of the week. Flacco's mechanics were terrible against Cincinnati, and he was consistently throwing off his back foot. Part of this may have been due to the fact that despite not allowing a sack, the Ravens OL really had a poor game. Flacco was constantly under pressure and forced to either throw on the run, or simply get a throw off with someone in his face or in the process of tackling him.

But there's at least one more concerning possibility. One that I thought about at the time, but didn't know enough about to speak up on. I still don't "know" a ton, but what's a good conspiracy theory if it goes untold?

Last year, the Ravens lost Hue Jackson - Flacco's quarterback coach - to the Raiders. Jackson is an accomplished and respected coach that was credited for helping Flacco develop quickly into a solid QB. There was hope he could replace Cam Cameron as offensive coordinator if he were given another shot as a head coach, before getting the opportunity in Oakland. He was later replaced by the much maligned as a head coach, but seemingly well respected quarterback coach, Jim Zorn. The hire was lauded as an excellent replacement for Jackson to continue Flacco's development.

The concern I have, and had at the time of hire, was that Zorn was never a quarterback known for his mechanics. He was more of an instinctual player. My concern is, how does a guy that plays on guts teach good form?

I don't have a lot other than that. There's no proof. In fact, Zorn coached Matt Hasselbeck from '01 to '07. The difference between his stats in that time vs. the rest of his career are striking:
With Zorn: 61% comp rate, 7.1 YPA, 4.5% TD rate, 2.7% INT rate
Without: 58% comp rate, 6.1 YPA, 3.4% TD rate, 4.0% INT rate

But I'm still not sure about it. And after two games, while it's too small a sample to say the jury's out, I've hardly had my mind put at ease.

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Monday Tidbits - Week 2

Steelers 19 - Titans 11
Titans - Seven turnovers and still had a shot to win at the end. Fans were left wondering how they managed to get the Ravens for their team.
Steelers - After the game, Tomlin announced that he still wasn't sure whether Roethlisberger would be his starting quarterback upon his return, or if he'd simply draft someone out of the stands, as he really doesn't need one to win games.

Packers 34 - Bills 7
Bills - Displaying Marshawn Lynch's talents to the team most likely to pick him up may have backfired.
Packers - Realized somewhere around 7 minutes left in the first period that they really don't need to run the ball anyway.

Bengals 15 - Ravens 10
Ravens - Joe Flacco sends the city of Baltimore into a panic as they wonder whether the spirit of Kyle Boller has somehow taken over his body. Ray Lewis puts everyone's mind at ease by opening himself to a $3.8MM fine blasting the refs.
Bengals - Carson Palmer laments at how bad of a quarterback he is by missing an uncovered Chad Eightfive repeatedly, thanks the refs for bailing him out.

Falcons 41 - Cardinals 7
Cardinals - The harsh, sad reality of Derek Anderson sets in.
Falcons - The uplifting, enjoyable reality of the Cardinals defense sets in.

Chiefs 16 - Browns 14
Browns - Cleveland fans hanging their hat on not having lost to a team with a loss yet.
Chiefs - Realizing they don't need an offense to score points, the Chiefs lobby to be allowed to play nothing but defense and special teams all 60 minutes.

Bears 27 - Cowboys 20
Cowboys - Jerry Jones brags to the media about his paper championship being almost as good as the real thing.
Bears - Cutler is bewildered as he didn't turn the ball over once for an entire game.

Eagles 35 - Lions 32
Lions - Shaun Hill does his best John Elway impersonation leading the Lions back to have a potential game winning drive in the closing minutes. Then on the final drive he does his best Shaun Hill impersonation to close out the loss.
Eagles - Mike Vick was caught preparing his post-game presser on the sidelines in case of a loss with a statement of how if the Eagles had allowed him to play defense all game as well, they'd have won the game.

Dolphins 14 - Vikings 10
Vikings - Minnesota fans realizing that life is nowhere near as fun with Human Favre as it is with Superman Favre.
Dolphins - I've got nothing. Seriously, if this wasn't the most boring win of the week, I don't know what was.

Bucs 20 - Panthers 7
Panthers - Realizing nothing was working, the Panthers decided to try the bold strategy of laying down and doing nothing. This worked well enough to hold the Bucs to only 20 points.
Bucs - Tampa fans unsure of what to think of the fact that they seem to have a legitimate quarterback.

Broncos 31 - Seahawks 14
Seahawks - Pete Carrol realizing that things are hard when the other teams are allowed to pay their players too.
Broncos - Xander working on a petition to be allowed to play terrible teams at home every week in the hopes of going .500 on the year.

Raiders 16 - Rams 14
Rams - Sam Bradford can play a little. Too bad the rest of the team can't.
Raiders - Cable has a violent flashback at half-time of life with Jamarcus Russell and benches his starting QB, not realizing it's Jason Campbell. Upon that realization, is relieved to find he hasn't benched anyone with actual talent.

Jets 28 - Patriots 14
Patriots - Justin Bieber asks Tom Brady to style his hair differently after the game cause he's not living up to its expectations.
Jets - Rex led away in handcuffs after trying to steal the Lombardy, yelling to onlooking media "Did you see what we just did? We're gonna own that thing anyway, I was just trying to save everyone the time!"

Chargers 38 - Jaguars 13
Jaguars - Jags announce their intentions of remaining a tease and renew their vows to scrape out close wins against bad teams and get thrashed by mediocre ones.
Chargers - Norv dials up a 50 yard pass play after fearing 8 minutes may be enough for an anemic Jacksonville offense to ring up 25 points and threaten a come-back.

Texans 30 - Redskins 27
Redskins - McNabb suffers violent delusions of angry fans claiming he didn't do enough defensively to help them win the game. Calms himself by realizing he's no longer in Philadelphia.
Texans - Gary Kubiak caught in post-game handshake with Shanahan saying "Hey dude, thanks for coming up with that brilliant idea of taking a time out right before the FG attempt!"

Colts 38 - Giants 14
Giants - Brandon Jacobs forcibly restrained from removing his pants and throwing them in the stands after doing so with his helmet.
Colts - Big brother erases all doubt about who the real NFL quarterback is.
Both teams - Rest of the non-Manning rosters ready to pull hair out after hearing "Manning Bowl" for 18,243rd time.

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The Show for the Hardcore Fan

In the mornings on ESPN - sometimes ultra-early, but you can get it as late as 7:30 AM - is the best football show on TV, NFL Matchup. It's a show not widely watched, so much so it is almost cancelled pretty much every season. Then at the last minute, ESPN decides to bring it back, after hearing from the few but die-hard fans that love it. But Google it and there isn't even a website for the show...ESPN does little to try to promote it.

Still, there needs to be some love for this show. The greatness of this show comes through in several different areas.

- The two analysts - Ron Jaworski and Merrill Hoge - are two of the best in the business. They display an excellent knowledge not simply of the game and players, but of all the facets of each play going on that make a play succeed or fail.
- It's the only show on the air that uses coaches tape. This is the angle from high in the box that allows you to see every player on the field. They use the tape to highlight players and angles and show how players find holes in zones, seal blocks effectively, read defenses and run through progressions, etc.
- They show typically one or two plays per game, spending two to four minutes per play showing every aspect of it, what the teams do to make the play work and ultimately why it did or didn't work.

The depth the show brings to each play gives the fan a better appreciation for how much work it takes for every play to succeed in the NFL. It's a great view into what separates professional football players and coaches from the rest of us. If you're not already watching, I'd suggest checking it out.

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Brother Ray Speaks

Video from the Ravens weekly show 1 Winning Drive. Original available here:
1 Winning Drive week 1 segment 2
Copyright by the Ravens.

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Monday Tidbits

Realizing that I'm one of the guys that has access to and largely watches the 8-game channel Direct TV offers me, so most weeks on top of seeing game recaps I've actually seen most of the games themselves. As such, I'm going to try to write some random thoughts - some serious, some not - on each of the Sunday games. Weeks I miss will largely be due to weeks I'm attending Ravens games, and don't catch much action.

I'll also note to make sure you go below and read Patrick's and Jim's excellent posts from Sun/Mon on the Calvin Johnson no-catch and Ravens preview.

Texans 34 - Colts 24
Colts - Stuck trying to find a witty comment covering both Colts run D sucking and Bob Sanders getting injured for the 83rd time. Went the obvious route.
Texans - As Texans-nation began to panic about another Colts come-back, Arian Foster stepped up and said "My ball, stop me if you can." They couldn't.

Bears 19 - Lions 14
Lions - LOLWTF that was a catch amirite???
Bears - Leave it to the Bears to out-gain a team by 300 yards and require a ridiculously stupid call of a no-catch to actually win the game.

Giants 31 - Panthers 18
Panthers - Panther fans in disbelief, wondering how they'd cut Jake Delhomme and yet he was still starting for them.
Giants - Looks like their defense is back. And that Hakeem Nicks guy might be pretty good, too.

Titans 38 - Raiders 13
Raiders - Yep.
Titans - Chris Johnson thinks he'll go for 2,500 rushing yards this year, then is suddenly thankful he doesn't play the Raiders every week as it would leave him with the vastly disappointing total of 2,272 rushing yards.

Jaguars 24 - Broncos 17
Broncos - They are who we thought they were.
Jaguars - See that? They didn't need Tim Tebow! Tyson Alualualualualualu had three times more sack yards than Tebow had rush yards.

Steelers 15 - Falcons 9
Falcons - One is almost left to wonder how many catches Tony G has had negated by penalties after his 1,000th was negated by a penalty. Immediately afterward we remember we don't care as he records his actual 1,000th catch.
Steelers - Defensive monsters as Polamalu's hair is too big for offensive players to run around and to thick and lusterous for them to run through.

Dolphins 15 - Bills 10
Bills - Only losing by 5 to the Dolphins has to be a sign that things aren't as bad as everyone believed them to be.
Dolphins - Only beating the Bills by 5 has to be a sign that things aren't as good as everyone believed them to be.

Patriots 38 - Bengals 24
Bengals - Wait. You mean Chad Eightfive and TO are NOT the greatest combination since peanut butter and jelly? I don't believe you!
Patriots - What is the NFL without Wes Welker being a human ball-catching machine, and Randy Moss whining? They were just doing their parts to ensure we all remember what the NFL season is truly about.

Buccaneers 17 - Browns 14
Browns - Browns fans disheartened after realizing that Jake Delhomme did NOT stay in Carolina, as previously believed while watching the Panthers game.
Bucs - Sometimes you want to believe an opening game win by a perceived bad team is a sign of a shocking season. Then you realize, it was just a 3 point win over the Browns at home.

Seahawks 31 - 49ers 6
49ers - Singletary thanked Coach Carroll for kicking their tails. Later plans to thank John York for firing him.
Seahawks - I really wanted to use the line "Somewhere Matt Millen was watching Mike Williams and saying 'Now you want to play, hunh?' " Then I found out someone beat me to it. Figures.

Cardinals 17 - Rams 13
Rams - Sam Bradford is going to be really good. Assuming he doesn't get killed, first.
Cardinals - Number of times the Cardinals scored: 3. Number of times the Cardinals lost fumbles: 4.

Packers 27 - Eagles 20
Eagles - Kevin Kolb enjoyed a nice five minute span where Eagle fans didn't boo their starting quarterback. Then things returned to normal.
Packers - They tried their hardest to give this game away, but just couldn't quite finish the job.

Redskins 13 - Cowboys 7
Cowboys - Scientists hypothesize that there are alternate universes where every possible alternate reality that could be, actually exists. I wonder if there's one in which Alex Barron commits no penalties? Probably not.
Redskins - In his post-game presser, McNabb expressed his disappointing debut performance on not being used to fans cheering him. "I promise to get back to my playing abilities, even if you refuse to boo me out of the stadium. It's simply going to take some adjusting to the difference in the noise type and level."

How I see tonight playing out
Jets - Hey, Rex. STFU
Ravens - Hey, Rex. Have some STFU.

Chiefs - Entirely new year! Same crappy team...
Chargers - Phillip Rivers learns life isn't as easy without a really good LT protecting your blind-side and a really big target to throw the ball to every other play.

Hope you enjoyed this week's!

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