I tend to immediately be suspicious when Rick Reilly tries to do any type of real sports analysis or discuss sports in any real depth. He's the "I have friends who play sports" type sportswriter who has all the connections in the industry, but doesn't seem to care about sports more than just knowing the players and the teams while not caring to go deeper than that. Then I see Rick is criticizing ESPN's 100 Players list, which has to be bad based on the fact (a) ESPN is publishing the list and (b) ESPN "experts" make up the panel of 63 voters. I'm shocked Tim Tebow wasn't #1, followed by LeBron James. But then, I read the column and Rick drops forced pop culture references and somehow his comments about ESPN's Top 100 list actually makes the list seem logical and when the list isn't logical, Rick's criticisms are very Reilly-esque.
What Rick's column is representative of is ESPN's self-perpetuating news cycle. They create news by stating an opinion, then they get others within ESPN to comment on that opinion thereby creating some sense of authenticity for this opinion because someone else is talking about it, this opinion gets picked up by the media and now this opinion has become a full-fledged news story. In this situation, ESPN creates a list of the Top 100 NFL players, encourages people to debate the list on Twitter, then have their columnists given an opinion on what they think about the list and now we have a debate. Great success! It's a self-perpetuating news cycle that doesn't require actual news, but requires a simple opinion that the ESPN machine can then turn into a news story.
Until now, most of us here at ESPN were unaware of the dangerously high
amount of hallucinogens being introduced into our cafeteria coffee.
So begins Rick Reilly's 300 word weekly column. It doesn't shock me those at ESPN weren't aware of the dangerously high amount of hallucinogens in the coffee, but the rest of the sports-loving world probably figured out the content of hallucinogens in the ESPN coffee was high based on "First Take" still being on the air and Skip Bayless still existing as a real person who gets a forum to share his opinion. Oh, and ESPN re-signed Rick so that's another sign there is something in the ESPN cafeteria coffee.
This is the only way to explain the way our 63-member panel of NFL
experts voted in our poll of the top 100 offensive and defensive players
in the NFL, which is complete today. At the risk of offending some very
large people, were they groggy?
Not one to do research, Rick feels free to criticize the Top 100 but fails to realize the only way the list of voters would be large is if they are obese. Check out that list. There aren't a lot of ex-football players on the list. Most of them are journalists and those who cover sports. Why would Rick allow accuracy to get in the way of a cheap joke though?
I'm fine with Aaron Rodgers at No. 1.
And that's about where it ends.
It mostly ends there because Aaron Rodgers is the only name on the list that Rick recognizes. Well, he recognizes Peyton Manning and Tom Brady too, but since Rick spends most of his Sunday afternoons pretending to choke a celebrity in an effort to be as repetitious and cheesy as possible he doesn't have much time to watch football. And yet another "well," there are really two rankings that Rick agrees with, but it sounds so much more controversial to say he only agrees with one player's placement on the list.
Lions WR Calvin Johnson at No. 2 should be No. 6, with everybody moving up one.
Great opinion, but why? Why is Johnson better than Drew Brees, but not better than Peyton Manning and Tom Brady? Brees had a pretty damn good year last year for a Saints team that he seemed to singlehandedly carry for a large portion of the year.
No. 9 A.J. Green shouldn't be in the top 10 at all. That's a year or two too soon.
A.J. Green shouldn't be top 10 at all, that's too soon after playing in the NFL for two seasons, but in a minute Rick will complain Alfred Morris should be ranked in the 40's despite the fact he was only a rookie last year. Rick will also say Luke Kuechly is a Top 10 defender despite only having played on year in the NFL. Consistency is not Rick's thing. Rick's thing is writing very bad, short columns.
And Texans WR Andre Johnson shouldn't be No. 12. That's a year or two too late.
So a receiver who had 97 catches for 1350 yards and 11 touchdowns shouldn't be the 9th best offensive player because that's too high, but a receiver who had 112 catches for 1598 yards and 4 touchdowns shouldn't be the 12th best offensive player because that's too high for him? So what does it take to be the 9th or 12th best offensive player in the NFL? I would love to know how it's too soon or too late if the numbers back up the ranking. Rick should realize Andre Johnson broke his career high for receiving yards in 2012, so I'm not sure how the opinion he was a better receiver in 2010 or 2011 makes sense. I think, and this sounds crazy I know, that Rick is just making shit up right now.
Seattle was more overrated than Daft Punk in this thing.
That's right. Rick is making a reference to Daft Punk. He couldn't name a Daft Punk song if his life depended on it. But hey, pop culture references work for Bill Simmons so why not continuing trying them out for himself?
CB Richard Sherman at 8? He's not even the best DB on that team (Earl Thomas at 17).
Based on what though? Fine, disagree with the rankings, but how is Richard Sherman not as good as Earl Thomas? First off, just saying they both are DB's is misleading since Sherman has much different responsibilities as a cornerback than Thomas has as a safety. They are both great, but it looks like Sherman had a better year on paper last year.
Please: 49ers TE Vernon Davis? At 18? Really? In what world is Vernon Davis better than Falcons QB Matt Ryan (22)? Please tell me, oh Senile 63, because I want to go there and see if they rank Kate Moss over Kate Upton.
In terms of career earnings and becoming an icon within the industry then I think Kate Moss would be ranked over Kate Upton. But yes, this was another pop culture reference for Rick and they are feeling more and more forced as the column goes on.
Plus: In nobody's imagination is Jason Witten the 21st-best player in the league, including, possibly, Witten's.
Tony Gonzalez was ranked #20 on the list (he was tied with Witten and given the #20 spot and Witten was put at #21) and Rick has no issue with that? Andre Johnson has one of the best years of his career and Rick criticizes his selection at #12 by saying "that's a year or two late" while Gonzalez is 37 years old and is outperformed by the tight end who is #21 on the list, so naturally Rick has a problem with the tight end ranked #21 being too high and no issues with Gonzalez's ranking. Witten had more catches and more receiving yards than Gonzalez yet he and Gonzalez tied on the list. Plus, Gonzalez is ranked above his quarterback, Matt Ryan, which is ridiculous and Rick just stated it was ridiculous by saying Ryan should be ranked better than #22. Rick has no issue with Tony Romo being ranked 62nd, so he admits Ryan is the better quarterback. Witten is tied with Gonzalez despite having the worse quarterback and better statistics in 2012. But yeah, it's Witten's ranking that's off.
(Speaking of the Cowboys, the $108 million man, Tony Romo, was 62nd. Seems about right.)
Two things:
1. See, even Rick agrees that Gonzalez has the better quarterback which has to positively affect Gonzalez's statistics, right? So if anyone deserves it is #21 on the list it is Jason Witten and not Tony Gonzalez. I know this is a straw-man argument, but I don't care.
2. Rick claims he only agrees with one person's placement on this list (Aaron Rodgers), but it seems he actually agrees with two. The fact Rick only agrees with one selection is in the title of the article, yet Rick states he agrees with two selections. Just saying, I'm not a fan of cutesy bullshit over accuracy when discussing the accuracy of a list.
Explain to me how the 13-3 Denver Broncos have only seven players in the top 100, the same as the Kansas City Chiefs, who went 2-14.
Because it is a list ranking individual players on a team and not a list ranking the players based on the strength of the overall team. This seems kind of obvious, no?
The other thing I don't like about the poll is how lumpy it is, which is to say lumpier than Johnny Knoxville's skull.
If this were 2005 I would still make fun of this pop culture reference.
For instance, The Senile 63 took a look at the 49ers' two terrific DEs -- Aldon Smith and Justin Smith -- and decided they were the 10th- and 11th-best defensive players, respectively.
Ahh, who has time to tell the difference? Stick them together. I'm double-parked.
This is a cumulative list, so it's not like one person just lumped these two together. These rankings could be recognition that Aldon Smith and Justin Smith work well together and probably don't work as well apart from each other. Justin Smith is very good at holding up blockers which allows Aldon Smith to successfully blitz and Aldon Smith helps Justin Smith get attention for getting Aldon Smith sacks. It goes deeper than that, but I can see where these two players would have such a symbiotic relationship are ranked next to each other. Of course, I also watch the NFL and know the symbiotic relationship between these two, which isn't something I am confident enough to say for sure about Rick.
The same with clumping all four Young Guns -- QBs Andrew Luck (41) of the Colts, Colin Kaepernick (42) of the 49ers, Robert Griffin III of the Redskins (46) and Russell Wilson (47) of the Seahawks -- into some one-size-fits-all sock.
Crap! Forgot about all the great new QBs! Let's cram them all into the 40s and hope nobody notices.
Rick clearly has trouble understanding how statistics work. These are the spots in which each of these quarterbacks were voted based on how 63 people voted. These QB's were crammed into the 40's, but not by one person, but these rankings are a reflection that all four QB's are considered to be equally as good right now by a group of 63 people.
They all had Schwab's drug store seasons. But Luck had the best one. He
took a team that has only three players in the top 200 (third-worst
overall) to an 11-5 record and the playoffs. Without any kind of running
back. Or defense. As a rookie. In a locker room that had been cleaned
out of everything but the chinstraps by the wacky owner.
I'm not sure how Rick can consider the Colts locker room to have been cleaned out when there was still two Hall of Famers on the team last year, but that's beside the point. In 2009 this Colts team went to the Super Bowl and until the 2011 season had made the playoffs eight straight seasons. The Colts didn't have much of a running game, but the team wasn't completely cleaned out.
You didn't ask, so I'll tell you. I would've had them: Luck (29), Griffin (32), Kaepernick (42) and Wilson (59).
I can play this game. Kaepernick took over a team that made the NFC Championship Game the prior season, while Russell Wilson took over a 7-9 Seahawks team that lacked offensive weapons. Rick would have ranked Andrew Luck #29 after one {let's be honest, he was good, but not great...he only completed 54.5% of his passes, committed 23 turnovers (fumbles lost plus interceptions...only Mark Sanchez committed more...if you want to count fumbles overall plus interceptions Luck had 28 turnovers which was the third most behind Philip Rivers and Sanchez), and had a 76.5 rating} rookie season in the NFL, but he's outraged that A.J. Green is #9 after two great seasons. So I presume if Andrew Luck actually managed to put up good numbers in 2013 it would be too soon to rank him in the Top 10, right?
Joe Flacco
was rated 40th. Fortieth! The guy who just won the Super Bowl. The guy
who has won at least one playoff game in five straight seasons. The guy
who was just given a contract worth the Gross National Product of Chile.
The QB with more wins (63, including playoffs) than any other QB since
2008.
So I wonder where Flacco should be then? Should he be better than Luck at #29? Better than Griffin at #32? He won a Super Bowl and that's fantastic, but his contract should have absolutely nothing to do with where he is ranked as an individual player.
It gets worse: Flacco is 40th and Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger is 24th. Who the …? What the …? Are you mad?
Well, using your own criteria that involves Super Bowl rings, Roethlisberger has two Super Bowl rings to Flacco's one Super Bowl ring. So using that criteria Roethlisberger should be ranked above Flacco.
You say, "Well, Roethlisberger has been hurt the past two years." I say: Hurt is part of this! Get un-hurt! It's in the game!
That's a very simplistic way of looking at it. As ESPN's own statistics point out, Roethlisberger has been sacked 30 times for seven straight seasons. It's not easy to "get un-hurt" when you are getting sacked constantly, but again, Rick doesn't care to delve that deeply when second-guessing Roethlisberger's ranking. He wants to crack wise with a few quips he thinks are funny and call it a day.
Taking a look at Roethlisberger's statistics, it's not hard to see how he got ranked above Flacco, but I like how two Super Bowl rings all of a sudden mean nothing to Rick simply because Flacco won a Super Bowl last year. The media loves the use of immediacy to evaluate a player over the long-term.
And then there was this: Perhaps out of fear of never getting any more
interviews, The Senile 63 threw a wheelbarrow of QBs in at the last
second, like a chef who panics and suddenly throws in two cups of
oregano at the end. Detroit's Matthew Stafford was 94th. Panic. Chicago's Jay Cutler was 97th. Panic. Carolina's Cam Newton 100th. Panic. Was there a sale?
Again, this is a cumulative ranking and I doubt every voter put each quarterback in these respective spots because they didn't know where else to put them. These rankings are a cumulative score based on 63 different opinions, so the end result can't be easily packaged into one certain line of thought as to why a player was ranked where he was.
And yet Matt Schaub, who has been better than all of them, was 108th. (They let us see the entire list.)
Well, Schaub got hurt in 2011 and as you say Rick, he needs to "get un-hurt." So I'm sure that affected Schaub's ranking and I'm not sure how Rick can argue against injuries being factored into the ranking since Rick uses injuries to lower Roethlisberger from #24 on the list. Stay healthy, get ranked higher, right?
I'm not a big Matthew Stafford fan, but I would definitely rank him over Matt Schaub.
Washington RB Alfred Morris, the second leading rusher in the league last year, is only 75th?
How about Morris makes it in a year or two? You know, like you said should be done for A.J. Green. Running backs are devalued in the NFL right now and I think this ranking reflects that.
Like One Direction, the kid should be in the top 40, easy.
My God, please stop writing shit like this and stop dropping terrible pop culture references.
So Morris needs to be in the Top 40 easily, huh? Alfred Morris should be ranked above Colin Kaepernick, Russell Wilson, Vincent Jackson, Matt Forte, and Maurice Jones-Drew? So Alfred Morris is better than Forte and Jones-Drew after playing one year in the NFL? LeSean McCoy is #38 and Frank Gore is #37. I would love to know how Mr. "One or two years too early" Reilly thinks Morris should be ranked compared to these two running backs. This is the problem when randomly second-guessing these rankings and moving a player like Morris up so far after one year. Morris moves up after one great year and all of a sudden being a consistently great running back like Jones-Drew or Forte means less.
You don't say about running backs, "Let's see how the youngster
develops." Running backs come out of the womb with cleats on. He's a
star. Get over it.
Fine, but moving Morris up into the Top 40 means you think he is better than star running backs like Matt Forte and Maurice Jones-Drew. Of course Jones-Drew was injured last year, so I guess he can go "get un-hurt."
Panthers LB Luke Kuechly
clear down at 22? That's a crime and should be punishable by every
member of The Senile 63 getting cable. The kid is a monster. He plays
like he's triplets. He's a top-10 defensive player or the poll should be
dissembled, boxed up and dropped into Lake Erie.
The contradictions never end. Kuechly has played one season in the NFL and already Rick Reilly has him as a Top 10 defensive player, which is insane. Back to A.J. Green, how does Green need to prove himself more after two great seasons in the NFL, but Luke Kuechly is all of a sudden a Top 10 defensive player after one season? It makes not of sense. At least show some consistency.
It's fascinating, like your first ant farm.
Your pop culture references make a Bill Simmons column read like he is Ernest Hemingway.
Michael Vick, who was once the fastest thing this side of Rob Gronkowski's contact list, was ranked 169th. You can't start him, right? Except his backup, Nick Foles, was 249th, so you better.
It's ridiculous to say you can't start Mike Vick because he doesn't appear on this Top 100 list. I'm not sure Joe Flacco would have been in the Top 80 if the list had been completed at the end of the 2011 season.
Jets QB Mark Sanchez finished 247th. If you're Rex Ryan, there's no way you start the 247th-ranked offensive player in the league, right? Except Geno Smith was 250th.
Which means it's going to be another long season for Rex Ryan. He's definitely going to need some of our coffee.
I'm not sure which is more awful, the fact ESPN ranked the Top 100 NFL players and Rick thinks the ratings are indicative of one consistent line of thought from 63 people or that Rick Reilly wrote a column second-guessing the ESPN's Top 100 NFL players and this was the end result. I've decided, they are both awful.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
4 comments Gregg Easterbrook Is Just Repeating TMQ Topics on a Weekly Basis Now
Gregg tends to write about three basic topics in TMQ. Those three topics are:
1. Concussions and how the NFL isn't setting an example for youth league and college football teams.
2. NCAA and NFL teams that score a lot of points at a fast pace.
3. Gregg will discuss whichever team is currently playing the best in the NFL and then he attributes some new method that team is using to their success.
It's basically those three topics that Gregg tackles in TMQ, which only underscores how little Gregg actually has to say about the NFL. He doesn't really have that much to talk about in TMQ, which is probably why he pads it with so much political talk and criticism of television shows. This week's TMQ is a mix of topic #2 and topic #3. Gregg Easterbrook has decided to focus on how the Pacific Northwest rules the football world. Despite the fact he has written multiple TMQ's about Chip Kelly and the style of offense played by Oregon football, they must not have been ruling football until the Seahawks became a Super Bowl contender this season. Of course, zero teams in the Northwest have won a national championship in college football nor a Super Bowl, but I guess it is possible to rule the football landscape without actually winning a championship in the mind of Gregg Easterbrook. Not to take away anything from the Seahawks or Oregon Ducks of course, they are both good teams. So it's the same shit from Gregg (second-guessing coach's decisions and all the crap like that), but just a different week. In fact, I could probably sum this all up by simply writing,
"Gregg did the same shit this week that he did last week,"
but what would be the fun in that?
Forget the West Coast offense and the Steel Curtain defense -- Pacific Northwest football has arrived.
There's no such thing.
Oregon and Washington state, known for being laid-back, are titans astride the football landscape. The Seattle Seahawks have football's best defense, while the University of Oregon Ducks have football's best offense.
Seattle has a great defense, but it has been two weeks since they have had the best defense in the NFL. They didn't even have the most defense in their own division during the 2012 season. Perhaps we should give it a few more weeks before determining the Seahawks are like the Steel Curtain of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
One of the league's storylines since Colin Kaepernick became the Niners' quarterback is that no one can stop San Francisco, whose offense has rolled over power teams such as the Packers and Falcons, plus gained 468 yards in the Super Bowl. No one -- except the Seahawks, who stop them cold. In their last two meetings, Seattle bested San Francisco by a combined 71-16.
In the interest of full disclosure, and I realize Gregg isn't talking about Seattle's offense here, the 49ers held the Seahawks to 290 total yards on 70 plays for 4.1 yards per play. Seattle held the 49ers to 207 yards on 51 plays for (you guessed it) 4.1 yards per play. So it's not like the 49ers defense was much worse than the Seahawks defense and the 49ers had a better defense than Seattle last year as well. The 49ers were 3rd in the NFL in total yards to the Seahawks 4th in the NFL in total yards last season. So for the purposes of this column and a tidy Pacific Northwest football narrative we will say Gregg is correct, but Seattle hasn't been this dominant defensive force as compared to just the 49ers. The Seahawks defense didn't dominate on Sunday evening when it comes to yards per play as compared to the yards per play the 49ers defense allowed. In fact, both defenses allowed the exact same yards per play.
One of the league's storylines since Colin Kaepernick became the Niners' quarterback is that no one can stop San Francisco, whose offense has rolled over power teams such as the Packers and Falcons, plus gained 468 yards in the Super Bowl. No one -- except the Seahawks, who stop them cold. In their last two meetings, Seattle bested San Francisco by a combined 71-16.
Because if there is anyone who needs to be doing analysis on why a team's defense is playing well then that person is Gregg Easterbrook. Gregg's reasons for why the Seahawks defense is playing well probably will consist solely of "The cornerbacks aren't getting caught looking the backfield" and "They have unwanted and lowly drafted players on their defense."
(Spoiler alert: I'm right, that's close to his entire explanation for why the Seahawks defense is playing well)
Oregon hasn't faced a ranked team yet, so its production is likely to decline.
Stand back people, so you don't get hurt while Gregg is tearing through some analysis.
Still, this is the fourth year of warp-speed yardage in Eugene.
Which has resulted in a very successful program, but also resulted in exactly zero national titles so far, which is why I find it hard to proclaim the Pacific Northwest as ruling the football landscape.
Initially the Blur Offense came as a surprise. Now there's plenty of film to study, opponents know what the Ducks will do, and the Blur keeps flying down the field.
It's almost like the Blur Offense is a football strategy and not just a gimmick the Oregon Ducks use to confuse their opponent temporarily.
The Blur Offense may or may not succeed in the NFL at Philadelphia, but is the most interesting offense around.
Gregg wrote just last week about Chip Kelly's Blur Offense in Philadelphia and this week he is writing about the Blur Offense in Oregon. Gregg really does repeat his topics from week-to-week and simply changes the team/coach names around to fit whichever team is talking about during that current week.
Perhaps all of football should study the Seahawks -- because broadly across the sport, the scoreboard continues to spin.
It's not about just studying the Seahawks. Teams have to have good defensive players like the Seahawks have and have those players succeed in the defensive scheme the team runs.
Alabama visited Texas A&M, the sort of pairing that traditionally would end 13-10. The result was 49-42.
The score in the Texas A&M-Alabama game from last year was 29-24, so I'm not sure how "traditionally" the score would be 13-10.
NFL average scoring per team per game has risen from 18.7 points two decades ago to 22.8 points in 2012. Football Bowl Subdivision scoring has risen from 20.6 points per game per team in 1972 to 28.3 points in 2012.
Gregg is comparing NFL scoring data from 40 years ago to scoring data from 2012. The game of football has changed so much in terms of becoming a more passing-oriented league that it is inevitable that scoring would also rise.
The uptick continues; last weekend, all of FBS averaged 30.7 points per school per game, and 427 yards of offense per team per game. The average big-college football team exceeded 400 yards.
So what's the conclusion that is being drawn by Gregg? What information is he trying to convey to us? That's my question. College football teams score a lot of points and run up a lot of yardage because the pace of the game has changed and the way an offense attacks a defense has changed. Gregg loves to list data and not really tell his readers anything they don't already feel like they know. Yep, scoring has increased. Listing the yardage in ten football games from the past weekend doesn't make you any smarter for noticing this.
Structural differences between the NCAA and NFL accentuate offense in college, where the football factories have a huge recruiting edge over many opponents, and clock rules are somewhat different. In 2012, only three pro teams -- the Patriots, Saints and Lions -- averaged 400 yards or more per game. That year, 10 FBS schools averaged at least 500 yards.
For God's sake, this isn't even close to be a comparison that can tell us anything. First off, Gregg is comparing NFL teams who averaged 400 yards or more per game versus FBS schools that averaged 500 yards per game. The yards per game being compared are different. Second, there are 32 NFL teams and there were 120 FBS schools during the 12-13 year. So using straight numbers to compare them is misleading since there are nearly quadruple the amount of FBS schools as there are NFL teams. A better number to use would be that 60 FBS schools averaged over 400 yards per game on offense during the 12-13 year, but only 3 NFL teams averaged 400 yards per game on offense during the 2012 season. Besides, given the talent disparity between FBS schools and NFL teams, there is no reason to even make a comparison. It's nearly impossible to compare college athletes to professional athletes and be able to come to a conclusion that means something.
And suppose your team was averaging 65 points a game yet its won-loss record was only 1-3, how would you feel?
I would feel like my team needs a much better defense and the head coach should be fired for not teaching his players how to play defense.
TMQ has been on the North Dakota State bandwagon for some time, noting in this space a year ago that the banner of the Bison, not of the Crimson Tide, hangs in NCAA headquarters as college football champions. This remains true today, since North Dakota repeated. Because the FCS has a playoff and FBS does not, the NCAA considers the Bison the college title-holder.
Of course Gregg considers the Bison to be the college title-holder. Of course he does.
In other football news, in the entire 2012 NFL season there were four safeties. Already in 2013, there have been six. The league told players it was concerned about safety -- so the players produced safeties.
(Gregg yanks on his collar) "I get no respect I tell ya'"
I thought only Rick Reilly would be the one to tell bad jokes at ESPN? Bill Simmons tells tired jokes and Rick Reilly gets the bad, corny jokes. The division of jokes is very clear in ESPN's policy and procedures manual. I'm not sure why Gregg insists on telling bad, corny jokes.
Sweet Play of the Week: Game scoreless, Kansas City had second-and-goal on the Dallas 2. Dexter McCluster, a running back who often lines up wide,
McCluster is really a running back/wide receiver hybrid and not just a running back who lines up wide, but I know Gregg has to see only black and white with no shades of gray, so this is what I get.
Why is a professional receiver pulling up short of the down marker? Hoover damn, the play was sour.
Fuck it in a bucket saying "Hoover damn" is pretty cheesy.
City of Tampa led New Orleans 14-13 with 24 seconds remaining, Saints ball on the Buccaneers' 40, New Orleans out of timeouts. Where oh where might the pass go? Maybe up the field! Yet Tampa had only one safety deep, as if expecting a power rush. Thirty-one yard completion to Marques Colston, game-winning field goal after a spike to stop the clock. Sour, sour defense.
TMQ noted in my NFC preview that weasel coach Greg Schiano plays his safeties too close to the line -- "Even after the Bucs were repeatedly burned deep in 2012, Schiano kept the safeties low, as if he were coaching an NCAA game."
This is part of the reason the Buccaneers were the best in the NFL at stopping the run last year. More importantly, I don't know what the hell "keeping the safeties low as if he is coaching an NCAA game" means. NCAA coaches keep their safeties close to the line of scrimmage and don't have their safeties play Cover-2 or Cover-3? I think this isn't true at all, but what do I know?
Trailing Carolina 23-17 with 1:36 remaining, out of timeouts, the Bills took possession on their 20. Rookie quarterback E.J. Manuel drove the hosts to the Panthers' 2-yard line with 6 ticks showing. Touchdown to Stevie Johnson. Sweet.
Johnson lined up in the slot with Chris Hogan on his side. Johnson is a star; Hogan has never caught an NFL pass. At the snap, Carolina blitzed, meaning no safety near the Johnson-Hogan combo.
It would not have mattered if there was a safety near Johnson-Hogan, because the route Johnson ran would have been away from the safety even if Carolina had one safety back, which is as many safeties as they could have back with the Bills going three-wide and still pay some heed to the Bills possibly running the ball. My point after all that rambling, is the issue on this play was with Carolina's corners, not the play-call.
Two defensive backs doubled Hogan, leaving no one at all on Johnson. Sour.
Gregg takes special care to point out Hogan isn't a star and Johnson is, but doesn't Gregg talk about how smart it is for NFL teams to use rarely-used players and surprise the opposing team? So this is the flip-side of an NFL team guarding against an opposing team getting the ball to a rarely-used player on the goal line. Carolina didn't leave Hogan open and Johnson's defender didn't cover him due to gross incompetence.
Sweet bonus: as Buffalo kicked the PAT with 68,000 people roaring, flagship play-by-play announcer John Murphy cried in joyous excitement, "It's tied! The game is tied! The Bills have tied the game!" Actually they'd won the game.
The Bills' Twitter account also indicated Buffalo had tied the game. Of course, Gregg stays off Twitter during a game for fear he would Tweet an observation about the game that didn't involve him purely using hindsight to make himself look smart.
Sweet 'N' Sour Play of the Week No. 2 Vikings leading 30-24 with 16 ticks remaining, Chicago faced third-and-10 on the Minnesota 16. Touchdown pass to Martellus Bennett, and the Bears win despite allowing the Vikings two return touchdowns. Sweet.
On the play, Minnesota rushed four and Chicago kept an extra blocker back. That meant the Vikes had seven men to cover four receivers -- and Bennett got open. Plus, Minnesota knew the play had to reach the end zone --
Why did the play have to reach the end zone? Chicago could have thrown the ball and then the receiver could have gotten out of bounds (which Bennett failed to do two plays before his touchdown catch). So while I'm not excusing the Vikings giving up a touchdown in this situation, the Bears didn't have to go for the end zone if their receiver could get out of bounds to stop the clock.
In Philadelphia, the home crowd booed loudly as no one covered Eddie Royal of San Diego on his third-quarter touchdown reception -- made worse because the Nesharim rushed only three. Sure you just opened the season with a monster "Monday Night Football" victory, but what have you done for us lately? In Baltimore, the home crowd booed the defending champions as they jogged off the field for intermission trailing Cleveland 6-0. Sure you just won the Super Bowl. But what have you done for us lately?
Because it's fine for Gregg Easterbrook to criticize the Eagles in TMQ for giving up a touchdown when they only rush three, but it's completely unacceptable for Eagles fans to boo the Eagles for giving up a touchdown when they rush three. Also, the Ravens were losing to the Browns a week after losing big to the Broncos. Booing could be in order in this situation.
After your columnist said he liked the FX series "Justified" -- entertaining but unrealistic crime drama about a modern wild-west-style lawman -- many readers suggested the A&E series "Longmire," also about a modern wild-west-style lawman, but realistic. "Longmire," which just wrapped its second season, is thoroughly enjoyable.
And the purpose of television is to be entertaining to the viewers, so even though "Justified" is unrealistic but entertaining, being entertaining is sort of the point of a television show anyway.
The show follows the sheriff and his deputies in fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming.
Oh, so it is a realistic show that takes place in a fictional town. It already sounds very realistic.
An awful lot of murders occur in the county on "Longmire" -- at least 25 in the episodes so far, which track a year of Walt Longmire's life. Twenty-five murders per year is the recent average for all of Wyoming, let alone a sparsely populated rural county.
But because Gregg Easterbrook wants to call this show realistic, it is realistic. Sure, it messes with actual murder figures and takes place in a fictional town with an unknown geography, both criticisms that Gregg levies against "Justified," but "Longmire" is realistic because that's what Gregg wants to call the show. See, there is very little gunplay and that's realistic, so Gregg ignores all the other parts of the show that he would normally criticize for being unrealistic.
Most actual law enforcement officers never fire their weapons in the line of duty; on TV, the cops are blazing away left and right. Not on "Longmire." The protagonist has pulled the trigger only a couple times.
Most law enforcement officers never fire their weapon, but on "Longmire" the protagonist has pulled the trigger a couple of times. Wouldn't this make the show unrealistic, since most law enforcement officers don't pull their weapon in the line of duty through their entire career and the protagonist has done so a couple of times in two seasons?
Though extolling the beauty of Wyoming, "Longmire" is filmed in New Mexico,
Very realistic film in New Mexico but the setting of the show is supposed to be in Wyoming.
Different angles of the same log-constructed modern house are used as different characters' residences, and the same river seems to flow past every location in the "Longmire" universe.
And we all know there is no river on Earth that flows through an entire city.
"Longmire's" fictional county has a huge gambling casino, an exotic-dance establishment staffed with women who appear to have flown in from a swimsuit modeling competition, and a championship-quality golf course.
Gregg is levying the exact same criticisms at "Longmire" that he levies at other shows like "Justified," "Star Trek," and "Under the Dome," except he insists "Longmire" is realistic because that's how he chooses to view the series. The only difference I am seeing is that Gregg wants to label "Longmire" realistic and wants to criticize other television shows for not being realistic enough.
In one episode, the sheriff is inexplicably driving a federal convict a long distance on remote rural roads to transfer him to some FBI agents who are inexplicably driving other federal convicts on a remote road. What is the purpose of this strange prisoner transfer?
Walt is a good detective but, like all investigators on crime shows, never takes notes. Few crimes would be solved if real-world law enforcement officers failed to take notes.
Longmire always gets the killer to confess, but never records the confession nor has a witness present, nor first gives the standard warning against self-incrimination.
It sounds to me like Gregg doesn't think this show is realistic at all.
Concussion Watch: The NFL has suspended Dashon Goldson of the Buccaneers for one game for a helmet-to-helmet hit against New Orleans. This is a progressive step. Players don't like fines, but being small compared to an NFL income, fines don't seem to change behavior. A suspension not only represents a big chunk of money -- every football player knows that if he can't play, he may lose his job.
Dashon Goldson isn't going to lose his job for a helmet-to-helmet hit and I very much doubt any NFL player is going to be released simply because he gets suspended for a game due to a helmet-to-helmet hit. An NFL player would have to repeatedly get suspended by the NFL for a team to consider releasing him.
TMQ gets credit for campaigning against R*dsk*ns on NFL.com itself...My first column on NFL.com, from Nov. 25, 2003, contained this explanation: "I think R*dsk*ns
Tick … tick ... tick. The clock is ticking down to the end of the R*dsk*ns name.
Everyone knows Gregg is writing "Redskins" and covering it up with asterisks isn't not writing "Redskins." If I wrote an email to a co-worker that said,
"You can go f*ck yourself. You are a useless s*n of a b*tch and I am going to sneak into your h**se and m*rd*r your entire family tonight. Burn in "H*ll" with your b*tch w*fe and k*ds."
I'm pretty sure I would be fired, if not charged with conveying a threat, despite my super-discreet use of asterisks at certain points in the conversation. My point is that if Gregg isn't writing the word "Redskins" then he shouldn't write it and using asterisks to take the vowels out of the word doesn't mean Gregg isn't writing the word.
Forget the Name Issue, Maybe Washington Team Should Wear Disguises: Ye gods, the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons look bad. Robert Griffin III has regressed from superstar to average player. Did his injury change him, is it rust from skipping the preseason, or did he try to come back too soon? Whatever the explanation, RG III is struggling.
Quick! Now that Robert Griffin has been elevated let's tear him down quicker than he was built up!
Philadelphia and then Green Bay have blitzed him with impunity, knowing he lacks the quickness to get outside and make a defense pay for blitzing. A rushing threat last year -- Griffin ran for 815 yards and a 6.8-yard average -- RG III has been no factor on the ground this season. That means no zone read and no Washington offense.
I guess Robert Griffin's senatorial campaign isn't getting off to a rousing start. Maybe he isn't like Bill Bradley after all.
The Persons lack talent on defense -- which is the price of Washington trading three first-rounders and a second-round draft choice for Griffin.
You can't win with idiot media members like Gregg Easterbrook. When things are going well, he writes about what a great choice it was for the Redskins to trade up and draft Robert Griffin. When things aren't going well, he writes that a lack of talent on defense is the price Washington has paid for trading up to get Griffin. It's not like it was unforeseen that the Redskins would miss three first round draft picks and a second round draft pick.
Washington has some promising defensive backs who are very green; cornerback David Amerson allowed a 57-yard catch when he made the high school mistake of looking into the backfield rather than guarding his man.
It's also possible Amerson, being a rookie, got confused about the defense the Redskins were running. In his own words:
Then CB David Amerson let Jones go right by him for a 57-yard bomb. "We started off in one defense and I didn't hear the check to another defense," said Amerson.
So a little research shows Amerson didn't "make the high school mistake of looking into the backfield rather than guarding his man" as Gregg constantly and annoyingly always states as the sole reason why a cornerback got beaten, but he didn't hear the check to a different defense (presumably the move from a zone to man or another defense where he would stay with Jones). But hey, what fun is research when Gregg can just make shit up as to why a cornerback got beaten?
In the front seven, Washington just lacks talent, with no defensive lineman drafted in two years.
Brian Orakpo and Ryan Kerrigan would like a word with you Gregg for stating the front seven lacks talent.
Sweet 'N' Sour Player of the Week: Tennessee leading 17-16 late at Houston, on third-and-21, Matt Schaub threw a back shoulder pass intended for first-round draft choice DeAndre Hopkins -- who casually ran a go, waving his arm to say, "I'm open!" He was open because he was supposed to cut the route short. The ball was at that instant being picked off and returned for a touchdown. Sour.
It's almost like rookie wide receivers playing their second game in the NFL might make a mistake. How dare this happen.
Book News: One week from today is publication day for "The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America," which can be purchased electronically on iTunes. Next week, I may be mentioning something about "The King of Sports" -- which just got a starred review from Library Journal. Yes, this is some chance that next week, I may be mentioning the book.
Gregg is telling us this week that he may mention something about a book next week in TMQ? That's "Book Creep!"
Pundits often pen tomes that boil down to, "I knew it all along, I just forgot to say so."
This should be the motto of TMQ. Gregg loves telling us why something happened after it happened, in a way that he makes it seem like he knew this event would happen.
How Does Seattle Do It? The short version of the success of the Seahawks' defense is good players who hustle, communicate with each other and wrap-up tackle. Contemporary NFL defenses are so plagued by players' desire for spectacular plays that make "SportsCenter" that blown coverages and missed assignments have become de rigueur.
Oh, so the Seahawks have a good defense because they tackle well? I guess other defenses watch "SportsCenter" and try to make a fantastic, exceptional play and that's why they don't tackle well. I also guess talent and coaching has nothing to do with it.
The Seahawks play a conventional 4-3-4 with press corners -- none of the funky fronts or extreme blitzes that are popular. Thus the Seattle defense supports the maxim, "Classic never goes out of style."
And the part of this "analysis" (and I use that term ever-so-loosely) is that the Seahawks have the personnel to get a pass rush without blitzing a lot and they can play press corners because they have corners who have the talent, size, and skill level to play press coverage. Not every NFL team can get pressure without blitzing and not every NFL team has corners that play well in press coverage. A lot of good NFL teams use funky fronts, use extreme blitzes, and don't play press coverage, yet somehow manage to win games.
Seattle leading 12-0 late in the third, San Francisco reached third-and-goal on Seahawks' 3. No tricks, the Seahawks ran a four-man rush and tight coverage. Nobody was open. When the 49ers settled for a field goal, TMQ wrote the words "game over" in his notebook.
Again, the Seahawks have the corners who can play tight coverage on the goal line like this. Also, you know Gregg wrote "Game Over" in pencil in case he needed to erase it a little later should the 49ers start to comeback.
Seattle has football's best defense -- and other than the gentlemen just mentioned, how many starters can you name without peeking?
Cliff Avril, Bruce Irvin, Brandon Mebane, Kam Chancellor, Chris Clemons, Earl Thomas, K.J. Wright. Just because Gregg can't name players on a team's defense doesn't mean other NFL fans can't name players on that defense. Gregg assumes everyone is as ignorant as he is when this isn't true.
The Seattle defenders are remarkable in being a collection of late draft picks and castoffs. Only safety Earl Thomas was a first-round choice by the team he now plays for.
See, Gregg is so ignorant about the Seahawks defense that he thinks so highly of suddenly that he doesn't know Bruce Irvin was a first round pick for the Seahawks last year. Gregg is so oblivious. He thinks he is educating his readers, but he really doesn't know enough about the topic he is discussing to understand how little he knows. Bruce Irvin is suspended at the beginning of the 2013 season and Gregg didn't pay attention to the Seahawks defense prior to this year, so he has no clue Irvin is a first round pick drafted by the Seahawks. Also, being a first round pick is being a first round pick, regardless of which team drafted that player. So it isn't like a player comes to play for Seattle and his status as a first round pick suddenly disappears.
Unlike teams with lots of high-drafted defenders who spend their time complaining, Seattle has lots of hand-me-downs who spend their time working. That is a classic approach to success, and classic never goes out of style.
This is such a crock of bullshit. The San Francisco 49ers (who had a better defense than the Seahawks during the 2012 season) have a great defense and they start seven first round draft picks, two third round draft picks, a fifth round draft pick, and a player taken in the third round of the supplemental draft. This doesn't include the first round pick that plays nickel corner for them. So the 49ers have 8 defenders that were drafted in the first round, so how did they succeed without taking the classic approach to success with defenders who spend their time working? Aren't these first round players supposed to be spending their time complaining? This doesn't explain the success of the 49ers defense. It's almost like Gregg's theories are bullshit.
Maybe Kelly needs to work with the Philadelphia defense, which allowed 539 yards at home with crowd energy on its side.
The downside to the Blur Offense is that if the Eagles are scoring a lot of points quickly it doesn't give their defense a lot of time to rest, which becomes a problem if the opposing team's defense can force the Eagles into three-and-outs while the opposing team's offense can possess the ball for long periods of time. The crowd doesn't really give the Eagles energy, so if the defense was gassed hearing their fans may yell loudly not help too much.
At Oregon, Kelly spent his time with the offense -- that was his trademark -- while assuming the Ducks' recruiting-power edge would lead to defensive success.
This is such an idiotic statement it doesn't even require a retort. Gregg perceives himself to be a master of explaining other people's intentions, even if these intentions are not explicitly stated.
But in the NFL, every team is loaded. Bolts leading 13-10 in the third quarter, San Diego faced third-and-7 on their 43. Straight defense here makes an incompletion likely.
Why is an incompletion here likely? What sort of data does Gregg have which supports his contention on third-and-7 an incompletion is likely if the Eagles only rush four? He has none, but instead if just making assumptions that help to prove his point. People who read TMQ on a weekly basis have to be incredibly gullible just to believe whatever Gregg is writing is the truth.
Instead Eagles' coaches radio in an all-out blitz, hoping for a flashy play.
The Eagles weren't looking to stop the Chargers from getting a first down, they wanted to make a flashy play. Got it.
Untouched Touchdown Of The Week: Seattle leading San Francisco 5-0 in the third quarter, the Bluish Men Group faced second-and-goal on the 49ers 15. Marshawn Lynch took a simple delay draw and ran left behind James Carpenter and Paul McQuistan, never touched by San Francisco's vaunted linebackers. It's pretty fun to run 15 yards for a touchdown on prime-time television when everyone in front of you has been knocked out of the way.
Lynch probably wasn't touched because the first round pick, highly drafted glory boy who is lazy and only cares about himself James Carpenter did a good job of blocking. It's not like the 49ers linebackers will always make a great tackle on every single play, so calling them "vaunted" as if they supposed to be perfect when they messed up on one play seems entirely unfair and ridiculous.
Manning Bowl a Snoozer: Are the Broncos that good or the Giants that bad? Denver reaching the Jersey/A 2-yard line in the third quarter, Wes Welker -- the player most likely to get the ball -- did a simple down-and-in.
Why is Welker most likely to get the ball here? This is another example of an assumption that Gregg makes to help try to prove one of his points. Julius Thomas scored two touchdowns during Week 1 and the Broncos could easily have gotten the ball to Eric Decker and Demaryius Thomas on this play, so why is Welker most likely to get the ball? A defensive coordinator can't just think Welker is most likely to get the football and ignore the other offensive players on the field. If Welker is most likely to get the ball then should the Giants defense simply ignore Thomas/Thomas/Decker?
From the early third quarter on, the hosts began dogging it. Jersey/A's signature tactic under Tom Coughlin -- pressuring the passer with a conventional four-man rush -- was not on display. Peyton Manning had enough time in the pocket to film a television commercial.
It's almost like the Denver Broncos have an offensive line that is supposed to block the Giants defensive line. So let me ask this...if the Giants couldn't get pressure with a four-man rush, does Gregg think they should blitz to get to the passer or just accept they can't get to Peyton Manning? Gregg doesn't like it when teams try exotic blitzes, so I guess Gregg would think the Giants should just accept they were going to lose rather than start calling blitzes in an effort to confuse Peyton Manning. After all, blitzing leads to a team losing, unlike the classic approach to success like the Seahawks use of rushing four. That's why the Giants won, because they used the classic approach to defense and didn't blitz or use crazy defensive fronts. Wait, that's not right, the Giants lost.
Then, desperate for more material to pad TMQ with, Gregg starts listing all the college football teams that had 500 yards of offense and lost. It's actually more boring to read than how I just described it. There are only so many examples of a team losing while gaining 500 yards that can remain interesting, yet Gregg makes this a weekly feature because of course he does.
TMQ thinks the Falcons' allergy to rushing stands between this strong team and the Super Bowl. Hosting Les Mouflons, Atlanta jumped to a seemingly insurmountable 24-3 lead. But the stats showed a weakness -- at intermission, Atlanta had 237 yards passing and 1 yard rushing. Yes, Steven Jackson left the contest hurt,
The Rams have a very good defensive line by the way and their linebackers aren't too shabby either. I like how Gregg is like "Well sure, the Falcons starting running back was injured, but every running back on the Falcons roster should play as well as Steven Jackson does." Sure, that's logical to expect the backup running backs to play as well as the starting running back.
but he has understudies: it's not that Atlanta lacks running backs, it's that Atlanta lacks run-the-ball psychology.
Oh, it's not a talent problem with Jacquizz Rodgers and Jason Snelling, it's that the Falcons lack a run-the-ball mentality. I guess that's the sort of thing that happens when Roddy White, Julio Jones, Harry Douglas and Tony Gonzalez are Matt Ryan's receivers. So how bad did the Falcons lose to the Rams?
The hosts would hold on to win,
Oh.
while the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons defense was gasping for air at the Eagles' pace, Kedric Golston dropped with an "injury," necessitating a stop in play. On the next series he re-entered the game, miraculously cured. Perhaps Persons' trainers keep a bottle of the waters of Lourdes on their sideline. Reader Thon Morse of Austin, Texas, suggests a rule change -- instead of an injured player being required to sit out the next play, he should sit out till the end of the quarter.
I guess these are the types of idiotic suggestions you get from someone named "Thon."
After all, if a player is injured, time to rest and be examined should be required.
Unless the player isn't severely injured and only requires a quick visit to the team doctor in order to ensure he is physically capable of playing. Otherwise, a player who may have only had the wind knocked out of him or just twisted an ankle that needs to be taped up would have to sit out an entire quarter. This is a terrible suggested rule change.
Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! Seattle leading 12-3, the Seahawks faced third-and-4 on the San Francisco 7 early in the fourth quarter. The Niners, who usually play straight defense, blitzed seven; Marshawn Lynch took a short pass and walked into the end zone for his second untouched touchdown of the evening.
And of course it was the blitz that caused this touchdown to be scored, especially since the 49ers had given up a rushing touchdown previously in the game (which Gregg covered just a few paragraphs ago) where they didn't blitz. So the 49ers shouldn't blitz because it can cause them to give up a rushing touchdown, but they also can give up a rushing touchdown if they don't blitz. It's almost like creating hard-and-fast rules about blitzing is stupid.
Next Week What if the Harbaugh brothers coached the Manning brothers?
Jim Harbaugh did almost coach Peyton Manning just last year (which, of course, isn't something I would expect Gregg to know...he writes an NFL column where he second-guesses the decisions head coaches make and has no time to actually pay attention to the NFL otherwise), but Manning chose to to go Denver instead.
1. Concussions and how the NFL isn't setting an example for youth league and college football teams.
2. NCAA and NFL teams that score a lot of points at a fast pace.
3. Gregg will discuss whichever team is currently playing the best in the NFL and then he attributes some new method that team is using to their success.
It's basically those three topics that Gregg tackles in TMQ, which only underscores how little Gregg actually has to say about the NFL. He doesn't really have that much to talk about in TMQ, which is probably why he pads it with so much political talk and criticism of television shows. This week's TMQ is a mix of topic #2 and topic #3. Gregg Easterbrook has decided to focus on how the Pacific Northwest rules the football world. Despite the fact he has written multiple TMQ's about Chip Kelly and the style of offense played by Oregon football, they must not have been ruling football until the Seahawks became a Super Bowl contender this season. Of course, zero teams in the Northwest have won a national championship in college football nor a Super Bowl, but I guess it is possible to rule the football landscape without actually winning a championship in the mind of Gregg Easterbrook. Not to take away anything from the Seahawks or Oregon Ducks of course, they are both good teams. So it's the same shit from Gregg (second-guessing coach's decisions and all the crap like that), but just a different week. In fact, I could probably sum this all up by simply writing,
"Gregg did the same shit this week that he did last week,"
but what would be the fun in that?
Forget the West Coast offense and the Steel Curtain defense -- Pacific Northwest football has arrived.
There's no such thing.
Oregon and Washington state, known for being laid-back, are titans astride the football landscape. The Seattle Seahawks have football's best defense, while the University of Oregon Ducks have football's best offense.
Seattle has a great defense, but it has been two weeks since they have had the best defense in the NFL. They didn't even have the most defense in their own division during the 2012 season. Perhaps we should give it a few more weeks before determining the Seahawks are like the Steel Curtain of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
One of the league's storylines since Colin Kaepernick became the Niners' quarterback is that no one can stop San Francisco, whose offense has rolled over power teams such as the Packers and Falcons, plus gained 468 yards in the Super Bowl. No one -- except the Seahawks, who stop them cold. In their last two meetings, Seattle bested San Francisco by a combined 71-16.
In the interest of full disclosure, and I realize Gregg isn't talking about Seattle's offense here, the 49ers held the Seahawks to 290 total yards on 70 plays for 4.1 yards per play. Seattle held the 49ers to 207 yards on 51 plays for (you guessed it) 4.1 yards per play. So it's not like the 49ers defense was much worse than the Seahawks defense and the 49ers had a better defense than Seattle last year as well. The 49ers were 3rd in the NFL in total yards to the Seahawks 4th in the NFL in total yards last season. So for the purposes of this column and a tidy Pacific Northwest football narrative we will say Gregg is correct, but Seattle hasn't been this dominant defensive force as compared to just the 49ers. The Seahawks defense didn't dominate on Sunday evening when it comes to yards per play as compared to the yards per play the 49ers defense allowed. In fact, both defenses allowed the exact same yards per play.
One of the league's storylines since Colin Kaepernick became the Niners' quarterback is that no one can stop San Francisco, whose offense has rolled over power teams such as the Packers and Falcons, plus gained 468 yards in the Super Bowl. No one -- except the Seahawks, who stop them cold. In their last two meetings, Seattle bested San Francisco by a combined 71-16.
Because if there is anyone who needs to be doing analysis on why a team's defense is playing well then that person is Gregg Easterbrook. Gregg's reasons for why the Seahawks defense is playing well probably will consist solely of "The cornerbacks aren't getting caught looking the backfield" and "They have unwanted and lowly drafted players on their defense."
(Spoiler alert: I'm right, that's close to his entire explanation for why the Seahawks defense is playing well)
Oregon hasn't faced a ranked team yet, so its production is likely to decline.
Stand back people, so you don't get hurt while Gregg is tearing through some analysis.
Still, this is the fourth year of warp-speed yardage in Eugene.
Which has resulted in a very successful program, but also resulted in exactly zero national titles so far, which is why I find it hard to proclaim the Pacific Northwest as ruling the football landscape.
Initially the Blur Offense came as a surprise. Now there's plenty of film to study, opponents know what the Ducks will do, and the Blur keeps flying down the field.
It's almost like the Blur Offense is a football strategy and not just a gimmick the Oregon Ducks use to confuse their opponent temporarily.
The Blur Offense may or may not succeed in the NFL at Philadelphia, but is the most interesting offense around.
Gregg wrote just last week about Chip Kelly's Blur Offense in Philadelphia and this week he is writing about the Blur Offense in Oregon. Gregg really does repeat his topics from week-to-week and simply changes the team/coach names around to fit whichever team is talking about during that current week.
Perhaps all of football should study the Seahawks -- because broadly across the sport, the scoreboard continues to spin.
It's not about just studying the Seahawks. Teams have to have good defensive players like the Seahawks have and have those players succeed in the defensive scheme the team runs.
Alabama visited Texas A&M, the sort of pairing that traditionally would end 13-10. The result was 49-42.
The score in the Texas A&M-Alabama game from last year was 29-24, so I'm not sure how "traditionally" the score would be 13-10.
NFL average scoring per team per game has risen from 18.7 points two decades ago to 22.8 points in 2012. Football Bowl Subdivision scoring has risen from 20.6 points per game per team in 1972 to 28.3 points in 2012.
Gregg is comparing NFL scoring data from 40 years ago to scoring data from 2012. The game of football has changed so much in terms of becoming a more passing-oriented league that it is inevitable that scoring would also rise.
The uptick continues; last weekend, all of FBS averaged 30.7 points per school per game, and 427 yards of offense per team per game. The average big-college football team exceeded 400 yards.
So what's the conclusion that is being drawn by Gregg? What information is he trying to convey to us? That's my question. College football teams score a lot of points and run up a lot of yardage because the pace of the game has changed and the way an offense attacks a defense has changed. Gregg loves to list data and not really tell his readers anything they don't already feel like they know. Yep, scoring has increased. Listing the yardage in ten football games from the past weekend doesn't make you any smarter for noticing this.
Structural differences between the NCAA and NFL accentuate offense in college, where the football factories have a huge recruiting edge over many opponents, and clock rules are somewhat different. In 2012, only three pro teams -- the Patriots, Saints and Lions -- averaged 400 yards or more per game. That year, 10 FBS schools averaged at least 500 yards.
For God's sake, this isn't even close to be a comparison that can tell us anything. First off, Gregg is comparing NFL teams who averaged 400 yards or more per game versus FBS schools that averaged 500 yards per game. The yards per game being compared are different. Second, there are 32 NFL teams and there were 120 FBS schools during the 12-13 year. So using straight numbers to compare them is misleading since there are nearly quadruple the amount of FBS schools as there are NFL teams. A better number to use would be that 60 FBS schools averaged over 400 yards per game on offense during the 12-13 year, but only 3 NFL teams averaged 400 yards per game on offense during the 2012 season. Besides, given the talent disparity between FBS schools and NFL teams, there is no reason to even make a comparison. It's nearly impossible to compare college athletes to professional athletes and be able to come to a conclusion that means something.
And suppose your team was averaging 65 points a game yet its won-loss record was only 1-3, how would you feel?
I would feel like my team needs a much better defense and the head coach should be fired for not teaching his players how to play defense.
TMQ has been on the North Dakota State bandwagon for some time, noting in this space a year ago that the banner of the Bison, not of the Crimson Tide, hangs in NCAA headquarters as college football champions. This remains true today, since North Dakota repeated. Because the FCS has a playoff and FBS does not, the NCAA considers the Bison the college title-holder.
Of course Gregg considers the Bison to be the college title-holder. Of course he does.
In other football news, in the entire 2012 NFL season there were four safeties. Already in 2013, there have been six. The league told players it was concerned about safety -- so the players produced safeties.
(Gregg yanks on his collar) "I get no respect I tell ya'"
I thought only Rick Reilly would be the one to tell bad jokes at ESPN? Bill Simmons tells tired jokes and Rick Reilly gets the bad, corny jokes. The division of jokes is very clear in ESPN's policy and procedures manual. I'm not sure why Gregg insists on telling bad, corny jokes.
Sweet Play of the Week: Game scoreless, Kansas City had second-and-goal on the Dallas 2. Dexter McCluster, a running back who often lines up wide,
McCluster is really a running back/wide receiver hybrid and not just a running back who lines up wide, but I know Gregg has to see only black and white with no shades of gray, so this is what I get.
Why is a professional receiver pulling up short of the down marker? Hoover damn, the play was sour.
Fuck it in a bucket saying "Hoover damn" is pretty cheesy.
City of Tampa led New Orleans 14-13 with 24 seconds remaining, Saints ball on the Buccaneers' 40, New Orleans out of timeouts. Where oh where might the pass go? Maybe up the field! Yet Tampa had only one safety deep, as if expecting a power rush. Thirty-one yard completion to Marques Colston, game-winning field goal after a spike to stop the clock. Sour, sour defense.
TMQ noted in my NFC preview that weasel coach Greg Schiano plays his safeties too close to the line -- "Even after the Bucs were repeatedly burned deep in 2012, Schiano kept the safeties low, as if he were coaching an NCAA game."
This is part of the reason the Buccaneers were the best in the NFL at stopping the run last year. More importantly, I don't know what the hell "keeping the safeties low as if he is coaching an NCAA game" means. NCAA coaches keep their safeties close to the line of scrimmage and don't have their safeties play Cover-2 or Cover-3? I think this isn't true at all, but what do I know?
Trailing Carolina 23-17 with 1:36 remaining, out of timeouts, the Bills took possession on their 20. Rookie quarterback E.J. Manuel drove the hosts to the Panthers' 2-yard line with 6 ticks showing. Touchdown to Stevie Johnson. Sweet.
Johnson lined up in the slot with Chris Hogan on his side. Johnson is a star; Hogan has never caught an NFL pass. At the snap, Carolina blitzed, meaning no safety near the Johnson-Hogan combo.
It would not have mattered if there was a safety near Johnson-Hogan, because the route Johnson ran would have been away from the safety even if Carolina had one safety back, which is as many safeties as they could have back with the Bills going three-wide and still pay some heed to the Bills possibly running the ball. My point after all that rambling, is the issue on this play was with Carolina's corners, not the play-call.
Two defensive backs doubled Hogan, leaving no one at all on Johnson. Sour.
Gregg takes special care to point out Hogan isn't a star and Johnson is, but doesn't Gregg talk about how smart it is for NFL teams to use rarely-used players and surprise the opposing team? So this is the flip-side of an NFL team guarding against an opposing team getting the ball to a rarely-used player on the goal line. Carolina didn't leave Hogan open and Johnson's defender didn't cover him due to gross incompetence.
Sweet bonus: as Buffalo kicked the PAT with 68,000 people roaring, flagship play-by-play announcer John Murphy cried in joyous excitement, "It's tied! The game is tied! The Bills have tied the game!" Actually they'd won the game.
The Bills' Twitter account also indicated Buffalo had tied the game. Of course, Gregg stays off Twitter during a game for fear he would Tweet an observation about the game that didn't involve him purely using hindsight to make himself look smart.
Sweet 'N' Sour Play of the Week No. 2 Vikings leading 30-24 with 16 ticks remaining, Chicago faced third-and-10 on the Minnesota 16. Touchdown pass to Martellus Bennett, and the Bears win despite allowing the Vikings two return touchdowns. Sweet.
On the play, Minnesota rushed four and Chicago kept an extra blocker back. That meant the Vikes had seven men to cover four receivers -- and Bennett got open. Plus, Minnesota knew the play had to reach the end zone --
Why did the play have to reach the end zone? Chicago could have thrown the ball and then the receiver could have gotten out of bounds (which Bennett failed to do two plays before his touchdown catch). So while I'm not excusing the Vikings giving up a touchdown in this situation, the Bears didn't have to go for the end zone if their receiver could get out of bounds to stop the clock.
In Philadelphia, the home crowd booed loudly as no one covered Eddie Royal of San Diego on his third-quarter touchdown reception -- made worse because the Nesharim rushed only three. Sure you just opened the season with a monster "Monday Night Football" victory, but what have you done for us lately? In Baltimore, the home crowd booed the defending champions as they jogged off the field for intermission trailing Cleveland 6-0. Sure you just won the Super Bowl. But what have you done for us lately?
Because it's fine for Gregg Easterbrook to criticize the Eagles in TMQ for giving up a touchdown when they only rush three, but it's completely unacceptable for Eagles fans to boo the Eagles for giving up a touchdown when they rush three. Also, the Ravens were losing to the Browns a week after losing big to the Broncos. Booing could be in order in this situation.
After your columnist said he liked the FX series "Justified" -- entertaining but unrealistic crime drama about a modern wild-west-style lawman -- many readers suggested the A&E series "Longmire," also about a modern wild-west-style lawman, but realistic. "Longmire," which just wrapped its second season, is thoroughly enjoyable.
And the purpose of television is to be entertaining to the viewers, so even though "Justified" is unrealistic but entertaining, being entertaining is sort of the point of a television show anyway.
The show follows the sheriff and his deputies in fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming.
Oh, so it is a realistic show that takes place in a fictional town. It already sounds very realistic.
An awful lot of murders occur in the county on "Longmire" -- at least 25 in the episodes so far, which track a year of Walt Longmire's life. Twenty-five murders per year is the recent average for all of Wyoming, let alone a sparsely populated rural county.
But because Gregg Easterbrook wants to call this show realistic, it is realistic. Sure, it messes with actual murder figures and takes place in a fictional town with an unknown geography, both criticisms that Gregg levies against "Justified," but "Longmire" is realistic because that's what Gregg wants to call the show. See, there is very little gunplay and that's realistic, so Gregg ignores all the other parts of the show that he would normally criticize for being unrealistic.
Most actual law enforcement officers never fire their weapons in the line of duty; on TV, the cops are blazing away left and right. Not on "Longmire." The protagonist has pulled the trigger only a couple times.
Most law enforcement officers never fire their weapon, but on "Longmire" the protagonist has pulled the trigger a couple of times. Wouldn't this make the show unrealistic, since most law enforcement officers don't pull their weapon in the line of duty through their entire career and the protagonist has done so a couple of times in two seasons?
Though extolling the beauty of Wyoming, "Longmire" is filmed in New Mexico,
Very realistic film in New Mexico but the setting of the show is supposed to be in Wyoming.
Different angles of the same log-constructed modern house are used as different characters' residences, and the same river seems to flow past every location in the "Longmire" universe.
And we all know there is no river on Earth that flows through an entire city.
"Longmire's" fictional county has a huge gambling casino, an exotic-dance establishment staffed with women who appear to have flown in from a swimsuit modeling competition, and a championship-quality golf course.
Gregg is levying the exact same criticisms at "Longmire" that he levies at other shows like "Justified," "Star Trek," and "Under the Dome," except he insists "Longmire" is realistic because that's how he chooses to view the series. The only difference I am seeing is that Gregg wants to label "Longmire" realistic and wants to criticize other television shows for not being realistic enough.
In one episode, the sheriff is inexplicably driving a federal convict a long distance on remote rural roads to transfer him to some FBI agents who are inexplicably driving other federal convicts on a remote road. What is the purpose of this strange prisoner transfer?
Walt is a good detective but, like all investigators on crime shows, never takes notes. Few crimes would be solved if real-world law enforcement officers failed to take notes.
Longmire always gets the killer to confess, but never records the confession nor has a witness present, nor first gives the standard warning against self-incrimination.
It sounds to me like Gregg doesn't think this show is realistic at all.
Concussion Watch: The NFL has suspended Dashon Goldson of the Buccaneers for one game for a helmet-to-helmet hit against New Orleans. This is a progressive step. Players don't like fines, but being small compared to an NFL income, fines don't seem to change behavior. A suspension not only represents a big chunk of money -- every football player knows that if he can't play, he may lose his job.
Dashon Goldson isn't going to lose his job for a helmet-to-helmet hit and I very much doubt any NFL player is going to be released simply because he gets suspended for a game due to a helmet-to-helmet hit. An NFL player would have to repeatedly get suspended by the NFL for a team to consider releasing him.
TMQ gets credit for campaigning against R*dsk*ns on NFL.com itself...My first column on NFL.com, from Nov. 25, 2003, contained this explanation: "I think R*dsk*ns
Tick … tick ... tick. The clock is ticking down to the end of the R*dsk*ns name.
Everyone knows Gregg is writing "Redskins" and covering it up with asterisks isn't not writing "Redskins." If I wrote an email to a co-worker that said,
"You can go f*ck yourself. You are a useless s*n of a b*tch and I am going to sneak into your h**se and m*rd*r your entire family tonight. Burn in "H*ll" with your b*tch w*fe and k*ds."
I'm pretty sure I would be fired, if not charged with conveying a threat, despite my super-discreet use of asterisks at certain points in the conversation. My point is that if Gregg isn't writing the word "Redskins" then he shouldn't write it and using asterisks to take the vowels out of the word doesn't mean Gregg isn't writing the word.
Forget the Name Issue, Maybe Washington Team Should Wear Disguises: Ye gods, the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons look bad. Robert Griffin III has regressed from superstar to average player. Did his injury change him, is it rust from skipping the preseason, or did he try to come back too soon? Whatever the explanation, RG III is struggling.
Quick! Now that Robert Griffin has been elevated let's tear him down quicker than he was built up!
Philadelphia and then Green Bay have blitzed him with impunity, knowing he lacks the quickness to get outside and make a defense pay for blitzing. A rushing threat last year -- Griffin ran for 815 yards and a 6.8-yard average -- RG III has been no factor on the ground this season. That means no zone read and no Washington offense.
I guess Robert Griffin's senatorial campaign isn't getting off to a rousing start. Maybe he isn't like Bill Bradley after all.
The Persons lack talent on defense -- which is the price of Washington trading three first-rounders and a second-round draft choice for Griffin.
You can't win with idiot media members like Gregg Easterbrook. When things are going well, he writes about what a great choice it was for the Redskins to trade up and draft Robert Griffin. When things aren't going well, he writes that a lack of talent on defense is the price Washington has paid for trading up to get Griffin. It's not like it was unforeseen that the Redskins would miss three first round draft picks and a second round draft pick.
Washington has some promising defensive backs who are very green; cornerback David Amerson allowed a 57-yard catch when he made the high school mistake of looking into the backfield rather than guarding his man.
It's also possible Amerson, being a rookie, got confused about the defense the Redskins were running. In his own words:
Then CB David Amerson let Jones go right by him for a 57-yard bomb. "We started off in one defense and I didn't hear the check to another defense," said Amerson.
So a little research shows Amerson didn't "make the high school mistake of looking into the backfield rather than guarding his man" as Gregg constantly and annoyingly always states as the sole reason why a cornerback got beaten, but he didn't hear the check to a different defense (presumably the move from a zone to man or another defense where he would stay with Jones). But hey, what fun is research when Gregg can just make shit up as to why a cornerback got beaten?
In the front seven, Washington just lacks talent, with no defensive lineman drafted in two years.
Brian Orakpo and Ryan Kerrigan would like a word with you Gregg for stating the front seven lacks talent.
Sweet 'N' Sour Player of the Week: Tennessee leading 17-16 late at Houston, on third-and-21, Matt Schaub threw a back shoulder pass intended for first-round draft choice DeAndre Hopkins -- who casually ran a go, waving his arm to say, "I'm open!" He was open because he was supposed to cut the route short. The ball was at that instant being picked off and returned for a touchdown. Sour.
It's almost like rookie wide receivers playing their second game in the NFL might make a mistake. How dare this happen.
Book News: One week from today is publication day for "The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America," which can be purchased electronically on iTunes. Next week, I may be mentioning something about "The King of Sports" -- which just got a starred review from Library Journal. Yes, this is some chance that next week, I may be mentioning the book.
Gregg is telling us this week that he may mention something about a book next week in TMQ? That's "Book Creep!"
Pundits often pen tomes that boil down to, "I knew it all along, I just forgot to say so."
This should be the motto of TMQ. Gregg loves telling us why something happened after it happened, in a way that he makes it seem like he knew this event would happen.
How Does Seattle Do It? The short version of the success of the Seahawks' defense is good players who hustle, communicate with each other and wrap-up tackle. Contemporary NFL defenses are so plagued by players' desire for spectacular plays that make "SportsCenter" that blown coverages and missed assignments have become de rigueur.
Oh, so the Seahawks have a good defense because they tackle well? I guess other defenses watch "SportsCenter" and try to make a fantastic, exceptional play and that's why they don't tackle well. I also guess talent and coaching has nothing to do with it.
The Seahawks play a conventional 4-3-4 with press corners -- none of the funky fronts or extreme blitzes that are popular. Thus the Seattle defense supports the maxim, "Classic never goes out of style."
And the part of this "analysis" (and I use that term ever-so-loosely) is that the Seahawks have the personnel to get a pass rush without blitzing a lot and they can play press corners because they have corners who have the talent, size, and skill level to play press coverage. Not every NFL team can get pressure without blitzing and not every NFL team has corners that play well in press coverage. A lot of good NFL teams use funky fronts, use extreme blitzes, and don't play press coverage, yet somehow manage to win games.
Seattle leading 12-0 late in the third, San Francisco reached third-and-goal on Seahawks' 3. No tricks, the Seahawks ran a four-man rush and tight coverage. Nobody was open. When the 49ers settled for a field goal, TMQ wrote the words "game over" in his notebook.
Again, the Seahawks have the corners who can play tight coverage on the goal line like this. Also, you know Gregg wrote "Game Over" in pencil in case he needed to erase it a little later should the 49ers start to comeback.
Seattle has football's best defense -- and other than the gentlemen just mentioned, how many starters can you name without peeking?
Cliff Avril, Bruce Irvin, Brandon Mebane, Kam Chancellor, Chris Clemons, Earl Thomas, K.J. Wright. Just because Gregg can't name players on a team's defense doesn't mean other NFL fans can't name players on that defense. Gregg assumes everyone is as ignorant as he is when this isn't true.
The Seattle defenders are remarkable in being a collection of late draft picks and castoffs. Only safety Earl Thomas was a first-round choice by the team he now plays for.
See, Gregg is so ignorant about the Seahawks defense that he thinks so highly of suddenly that he doesn't know Bruce Irvin was a first round pick for the Seahawks last year. Gregg is so oblivious. He thinks he is educating his readers, but he really doesn't know enough about the topic he is discussing to understand how little he knows. Bruce Irvin is suspended at the beginning of the 2013 season and Gregg didn't pay attention to the Seahawks defense prior to this year, so he has no clue Irvin is a first round pick drafted by the Seahawks. Also, being a first round pick is being a first round pick, regardless of which team drafted that player. So it isn't like a player comes to play for Seattle and his status as a first round pick suddenly disappears.
Unlike teams with lots of high-drafted defenders who spend their time complaining, Seattle has lots of hand-me-downs who spend their time working. That is a classic approach to success, and classic never goes out of style.
This is such a crock of bullshit. The San Francisco 49ers (who had a better defense than the Seahawks during the 2012 season) have a great defense and they start seven first round draft picks, two third round draft picks, a fifth round draft pick, and a player taken in the third round of the supplemental draft. This doesn't include the first round pick that plays nickel corner for them. So the 49ers have 8 defenders that were drafted in the first round, so how did they succeed without taking the classic approach to success with defenders who spend their time working? Aren't these first round players supposed to be spending their time complaining? This doesn't explain the success of the 49ers defense. It's almost like Gregg's theories are bullshit.
Maybe Kelly needs to work with the Philadelphia defense, which allowed 539 yards at home with crowd energy on its side.
The downside to the Blur Offense is that if the Eagles are scoring a lot of points quickly it doesn't give their defense a lot of time to rest, which becomes a problem if the opposing team's defense can force the Eagles into three-and-outs while the opposing team's offense can possess the ball for long periods of time. The crowd doesn't really give the Eagles energy, so if the defense was gassed hearing their fans may yell loudly not help too much.
At Oregon, Kelly spent his time with the offense -- that was his trademark -- while assuming the Ducks' recruiting-power edge would lead to defensive success.
This is such an idiotic statement it doesn't even require a retort. Gregg perceives himself to be a master of explaining other people's intentions, even if these intentions are not explicitly stated.
But in the NFL, every team is loaded. Bolts leading 13-10 in the third quarter, San Diego faced third-and-7 on their 43. Straight defense here makes an incompletion likely.
Why is an incompletion here likely? What sort of data does Gregg have which supports his contention on third-and-7 an incompletion is likely if the Eagles only rush four? He has none, but instead if just making assumptions that help to prove his point. People who read TMQ on a weekly basis have to be incredibly gullible just to believe whatever Gregg is writing is the truth.
Instead Eagles' coaches radio in an all-out blitz, hoping for a flashy play.
The Eagles weren't looking to stop the Chargers from getting a first down, they wanted to make a flashy play. Got it.
Untouched Touchdown Of The Week: Seattle leading San Francisco 5-0 in the third quarter, the Bluish Men Group faced second-and-goal on the 49ers 15. Marshawn Lynch took a simple delay draw and ran left behind James Carpenter and Paul McQuistan, never touched by San Francisco's vaunted linebackers. It's pretty fun to run 15 yards for a touchdown on prime-time television when everyone in front of you has been knocked out of the way.
Lynch probably wasn't touched because the first round pick, highly drafted glory boy who is lazy and only cares about himself James Carpenter did a good job of blocking. It's not like the 49ers linebackers will always make a great tackle on every single play, so calling them "vaunted" as if they supposed to be perfect when they messed up on one play seems entirely unfair and ridiculous.
Manning Bowl a Snoozer: Are the Broncos that good or the Giants that bad? Denver reaching the Jersey/A 2-yard line in the third quarter, Wes Welker -- the player most likely to get the ball -- did a simple down-and-in.
Why is Welker most likely to get the ball here? This is another example of an assumption that Gregg makes to help try to prove one of his points. Julius Thomas scored two touchdowns during Week 1 and the Broncos could easily have gotten the ball to Eric Decker and Demaryius Thomas on this play, so why is Welker most likely to get the ball? A defensive coordinator can't just think Welker is most likely to get the football and ignore the other offensive players on the field. If Welker is most likely to get the ball then should the Giants defense simply ignore Thomas/Thomas/Decker?
From the early third quarter on, the hosts began dogging it. Jersey/A's signature tactic under Tom Coughlin -- pressuring the passer with a conventional four-man rush -- was not on display. Peyton Manning had enough time in the pocket to film a television commercial.
It's almost like the Denver Broncos have an offensive line that is supposed to block the Giants defensive line. So let me ask this...if the Giants couldn't get pressure with a four-man rush, does Gregg think they should blitz to get to the passer or just accept they can't get to Peyton Manning? Gregg doesn't like it when teams try exotic blitzes, so I guess Gregg would think the Giants should just accept they were going to lose rather than start calling blitzes in an effort to confuse Peyton Manning. After all, blitzing leads to a team losing, unlike the classic approach to success like the Seahawks use of rushing four. That's why the Giants won, because they used the classic approach to defense and didn't blitz or use crazy defensive fronts. Wait, that's not right, the Giants lost.
Then, desperate for more material to pad TMQ with, Gregg starts listing all the college football teams that had 500 yards of offense and lost. It's actually more boring to read than how I just described it. There are only so many examples of a team losing while gaining 500 yards that can remain interesting, yet Gregg makes this a weekly feature because of course he does.
TMQ thinks the Falcons' allergy to rushing stands between this strong team and the Super Bowl. Hosting Les Mouflons, Atlanta jumped to a seemingly insurmountable 24-3 lead. But the stats showed a weakness -- at intermission, Atlanta had 237 yards passing and 1 yard rushing. Yes, Steven Jackson left the contest hurt,
The Rams have a very good defensive line by the way and their linebackers aren't too shabby either. I like how Gregg is like "Well sure, the Falcons starting running back was injured, but every running back on the Falcons roster should play as well as Steven Jackson does." Sure, that's logical to expect the backup running backs to play as well as the starting running back.
but he has understudies: it's not that Atlanta lacks running backs, it's that Atlanta lacks run-the-ball psychology.
Oh, it's not a talent problem with Jacquizz Rodgers and Jason Snelling, it's that the Falcons lack a run-the-ball mentality. I guess that's the sort of thing that happens when Roddy White, Julio Jones, Harry Douglas and Tony Gonzalez are Matt Ryan's receivers. So how bad did the Falcons lose to the Rams?
The hosts would hold on to win,
Oh.
while the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons defense was gasping for air at the Eagles' pace, Kedric Golston dropped with an "injury," necessitating a stop in play. On the next series he re-entered the game, miraculously cured. Perhaps Persons' trainers keep a bottle of the waters of Lourdes on their sideline. Reader Thon Morse of Austin, Texas, suggests a rule change -- instead of an injured player being required to sit out the next play, he should sit out till the end of the quarter.
I guess these are the types of idiotic suggestions you get from someone named "Thon."
After all, if a player is injured, time to rest and be examined should be required.
Unless the player isn't severely injured and only requires a quick visit to the team doctor in order to ensure he is physically capable of playing. Otherwise, a player who may have only had the wind knocked out of him or just twisted an ankle that needs to be taped up would have to sit out an entire quarter. This is a terrible suggested rule change.
Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! Seattle leading 12-3, the Seahawks faced third-and-4 on the San Francisco 7 early in the fourth quarter. The Niners, who usually play straight defense, blitzed seven; Marshawn Lynch took a short pass and walked into the end zone for his second untouched touchdown of the evening.
And of course it was the blitz that caused this touchdown to be scored, especially since the 49ers had given up a rushing touchdown previously in the game (which Gregg covered just a few paragraphs ago) where they didn't blitz. So the 49ers shouldn't blitz because it can cause them to give up a rushing touchdown, but they also can give up a rushing touchdown if they don't blitz. It's almost like creating hard-and-fast rules about blitzing is stupid.
Next Week What if the Harbaugh brothers coached the Manning brothers?
Jim Harbaugh did almost coach Peyton Manning just last year (which, of course, isn't something I would expect Gregg to know...he writes an NFL column where he second-guesses the decisions head coaches make and has no time to actually pay attention to the NFL otherwise), but Manning chose to to go Denver instead.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
10 comments MMQB Review: Really Loud in Seattle Edition
Peter King summed up what he felt was a pretty uneventful Week 1 of the NFL season last week in MMQB. He reiterated that trading Anquan Boldin to the 49ers (which again, it was a tough decision, but Peter himself had written about the potential for the Ravens to purge veterans this past offseason so I'm confused as to why he was harping on the issue) wasn't the Ravens best offseason move, gave us a Quote of the Week that he admits probably isn't a Quote of the Week, and didn't mention Tavon Austin once. This week Peter talks about how loud the Seahawks crowd is, talks about how Johnny Manziel is so much like Tim Tebow, and reminds us all that it is early in the NFL season and too early to make certain conclusions, followed by Peter feeling certain about making conclusions about the NFL season so far. Peter loves to do this. He loves to remind his readers not to do something, followed by Peter doing the exact same thing he warned his readers against doing.
Thirty years of covering the NFL demands you have perspective after a night like last night. After all, it’s Week 2. Arizona won in Foxboro in Week 2 last year. Peyton Manning threw three interceptions in the first nine minutes in Week 2 last year. Strange things happen in September, before true patterns develop.
It's way too early to make any definitive statements. Everyone calm down and trust Peter's veteran sportswriting presence to tell us that Week 2 is way too early to determine what's going to happen. Just listen to Peter be reasonable and adjust your reactions.
But it’s hard not to wonder this about the NFC playoff race: If Seattle wins home-field advantage, what team is going into that cauldron of sound and fury, CenturyLink Field, and winning a football game?
Peter says "fuck it," he already has Seattle going 8-0 at home and if they win four road games, what's to stop them from making it to the Super Bowl? Nothing will stop the Seahawks. So true patterns haven't developed, but Peter is pretty sure the 2-0 Seahawks are going to make the Super Bowl based on their victories over the Panthers and 49ers.
San Francisco has been a hot mess in only one place since 2012 dawned—Seattle—and no one can tell me it doesn’t have a lot to do with the crowd.
A lot of teams are a hot mess when they come to Seattle. Also, Peter just wrote "a hot mess." I'm not sure if this is Peter King writing MMQB this week or a stereotypical sassy gay sidekick from a romantic comedy, but since the first paragraphs of the column consist of the writer telling everyone what not to do and then the writer doing the same thing he said no one else should do, it's safe to assume Peter King is writing this column and not a character based on Sean Hayes.
It was so loud, Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor told me, that the Seattle defense, which normally has an edge when the crowd is going nuts, had trouble hearing middle linebacker Bobby Wagner call the plays in the defensive huddle. The defense had to use hand signals for those who didn’t hear what Wagner was saying, even in a tight huddle. But it was still a huge edge for Seattle, because obviously it was impossible for Colin Kaepernick to communicate in any way but a non-verbal one.
This is as opposed to the hand signals the Seahawks defense had to use to communicate and hear what Bobby Wagner was saying, which apparently is a verbal way of communicating in Peter's opinion.
Probably the most amazing thing is the place was louder after the 60-minute weather delay, and after halftime: It got to 136.6 decibels in the third quarter, 16.6 decibels louder than the sound generated by a jet engine on an open runway.
It was very, very loud and this obviously had an effect on the 49ers. I mean, it had to have had an effect. Let's hear from Richard Sherman,
“It was electric,’’ cornerback Richard Sherman, the star of the show, told me from Seattle. “You could cut the energy in the stadium with a knife.
Hmmm...I think our Stanford-attending Richard Sherman is mixing his metaphors a little bit. I think it's silence that is supposed to be cut with a knife.
“This wasn’t the Super Bowl tonight,’’ said Sherman. “We haven’t won anything yet. We have to act like we’ve been here before. This was just another game, to tell you the truth.’’
You can cut Sherman's truthfulness with a knife.
Sherman went to his coaches to ask if he could shadow Anquan Boldin in certain schemes. Normally, Sherman is the left corner. Period. He moved around to shadow Buffalo’s Stevie Johnson some last season, but mostly he stays left. “The coaches said it was fine,’’ said Sherman. “Sunday night football, everybody is watching, so watch this. I had him when he was split out, when he was in the left slot, right slot. Didn’t matter.’’ Sherman covered Boldin on about 75 percent of the snaps. Last week the Niners receiver caught 12 balls for 208 yards. This week: one for seven yards.
And I really, really thank you Richard Sherman for sparing us another week of "The Anquan Boldin Chronicles" where Peter tries to figure out exactly why the Ravens traded Boldin for a sixth round pick.
“It makes me feel good—like I can execute a game plan the way it’s called,’’ Sherman said. “But no, I’m not surprised.”
Yeah, but we all know that Anquan Boldin is worth $6 million per year as the 12th highest paid wide receiver, getting paid more than Steve Smith, A.J. Green, Wes Welker, Jordy Nelson, Vincent Jackson, Hakeem Nicks and Julio Jones (granted Green, Nicks and Jones are still in their rookie contract seasons).
The Seahawks’ front never let Frank Gore breathe. San Francisco backs ran 11 times and gained 13 yards. They’d better figure a way to run it by the time of the rematch Dec. 8 in Candlestick.
Absolutely, they should figure out a way to run the football before December 8. Because the 49ers play no meaningful games before December 8 and the winner of the December 8 rematch between the Seahawks and 49ers will determine who wins the Super Bowl, if not the fate of humanity.
They know the truth, and the 49ers do too: If the road to the Super Bowl goes through Seattle, it’s going to be the biggest disadvantage in recent football history for the road team.
Yeah, possibly, but it's not like there are 14 other games left in the season to be played and there are other teams who could have a better record than the Seahawks even if they do end up with a better record than the 49ers.
Manziel, in his third year of eligibility at Texas A&M, could declare for the 2014 draft if he wants to come out, which seems likely. (He can also stay in and play the 2014 college season, and 2015 as well.) But Manziel, to many teams right now, would be undraftable because they’re scared of his mood swings and off-field questions.
Plus, Manziel tends to throw the ball up into traffic unnecessarily. So while sometimes this works, like it did once in the Alabama game on the fantastic play where he got away from approximately 29 Crimson Tide defenders to complete a prayer of a pass for a first down, it also can be a drawback when Manziel throws a stupid interception at a bad time, like he did in the Alabama game. He's like a shorter, more fame-driven Brett Favre (and calling someone more fame-driven than Brett Favre is saying a lot). All it takes is one team to think he is a future star and he will go in the first round.
But it only takes one team out of 32 to fall for him. And some team will, unless he self-destructs between today and draft day.
I just wrote that. I've watched Manziel play a few times and I would be much more worried about the risks he takes on the football field then his behavior off the football field if I were an NFL team. Scampering all over the field and then throwing a pass up for grabs works in college football, but it may not work so well in the NFL.
The MMQB’s Greg A. Bedard was in College Station Saturday, and he’ll report the Manziel story for us tomorrow. I can’t wait to read what he thinks of the kid, and what the pro football men in his rolodex think. As I said on NBC Sunday night, Browns assistant GM Ray Farmer scouted the game. Hmmmmmm. Johnny Dawg Pound!
That would be great if the Browns went from an extremely mature quarterback in Brandon Weeden to a quarterback that many scouts consider to be an extremely immature quarterback.
The NFC East does not. Most of us think the NFC’s a better conference, right? It’s not acting like it. The AFC was 4-0 in cross-conference games Sunday. The NFC East went 0-4, three of the losses coming to the supposedly weak AFC West: Denver over the Giants, San Diego over the Eagles, and Kansas City over Dallas.
And because the NFC East isn't very good then obviously the entire NFC conference can't be as good as "we" thought it was. After all, the NFC East is the only division that matters in the entire NFC.
My surprise team of the first eighth of the season? Miami (2-0).
But of course it is too early in Peter's opinion to draw any permanent conclusions on which teams are the real surprise of the 2013 season.
And did you notice Ryan Tannehill bested Luck Sunday?
No, but I noticed that the Dolphins as a team beat the Colts as a team.
Andy Reid is 2-0 too … and he returns to the scene of his prime Thursday night. “Listen, you know me,’’ he said over the phone from Arrowhead Sunday after the 17-16 win over Dallas. “I haven’t thought about that stuff. I don’t get caught up in it. All I know is it’s a short week and we’ve got to get ready to play on the road in a hurry.” Uh, come on. You’re returning to the place you coached 14 years. Thursday night. Prime time. E-A-G-L-E-S! EAGLES! Sound familiar?
How dare Andy Reid treat this like any other game and not feed into the hype of his return to Philadelphia! The NFL is no fun to watch if there can't be storylines that go along with the game being played.
Good for Mike McCoy, who thinks before he snaps. So the Chargers had a 21-point lead with 21 minutes to play Monday night and blew it, losing 31-28 to Houston. Same old Norvy Chargers, right? “I went back and watched the tape,’’ McCoy said Sunday from Philadelphia. “I tortured myself. I went back and forth over the plays we called, wondering what we should have done. In this business, you know every time a play doesn’t work, you say, ‘I should have called something else.’ And after I examined all those plays down the stretch, you know what? I wouldn’t change a single one. I have faith in my coaches and what we called. We just had to play better, and that’s what I told my team.”
So basically Mike McCoy is saying he didn't make any mistakes in his play-calling and the responsibility for the loss is totally on his players. I can buy how players need to take responsibility for their actions on the field, but a coach saying he wouldn't change a single play down the stretch doesn't sound like a coach I would want to play for.
"Oh no, I did everything right. You guys just need to execute better," has quickly become Rivera-speak that actually means, "I don't know exactly what went wrong, the players should have won the game for us."
On Sunday, reclamation project Eddie Royal scored his third, fourth and fifth touchdowns of the season (Eddie Royal—he still plays?), Philip Rivers threw for 419 yards, and San Diego, on a short week, stunned the Eagles 33-30. Heck of a job preparing his team by McCoy.
But the Chargers won the next game, so clearly McCoy's strategy of doing everything perfectly and telling his players to execute better worked. Coach of the Year candidate?
The anatomy of a win. In Buffalo, coach Doug Marrone told E.J. Manuel at the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter, with Carolina up three and driving for an insurance field goal, that he was going to burn all three timeouts. “You’ll get the ball back, down six, with about 1:40 to go, and you’ll have to go the length of the field with no timeouts, okay?’’ Marrone told Manuel. His rookie quarterback was fine with that.
I'm guessing the conversation went more like this. "I'm going to burn all my timeouts. The defense will hold Carolina to a choice between a field goal attempt and going for it on fourth down. Ron Rivera will go for the field goal and then the Carolina defense will give up a touchdown. In fact, I'm not going to even call plays when you get the ball back on offense. Just do whatever the hell you want and draw plays in the grass. Trust me, we have this game won."
Here came the heavy rush. Two Carolina defenders messed up the coverage on Stevie Johnson, leaving him wide open. Touchdown. Buffalo wins, 24-23.
Actually one player, Josh Norman, messed up the coverage. He was told to switch off on his man by a teammate and Norman decided it would be best to ignore this. And of course Ron Rivera didn't want to use one of his timeouts in order to sort out this confusion or, you know, see what offensive set the Bills are showing and then adjust to that set forcing the Bills to call another play or stick with the one they have knowing Carolina has seen the formation. Doing any of those things would involve coaching which apparently Rivera doesn't believe is his job. His job is to motivate the players and then tell everyone after the game why the game was lost. 2-14 in games decided by seven points or less. It will be 2-20 before the end of this season at this rate.
Then Peter recommends a couple of books, because where else would be a good place to get a book recommendation?
The Fine Fifteen
Oh yes, NFL teams randomly placed in order of strength until 15 NFL teams have been listed.
2. Seattle (2-0).
4. New Orleans (2-0). Unimpressive win at Tampa Bay,
Because the Seahawks win at Carolina by five points was just so impressive the week before.
5. Miami (2-0). Excellent start for the Dolphins, with two road wins. Miami has had the best defense in football over the first two weeks, with nine sacks and foes completing just 53 percent of their passes.
The Dolphins beat the Browns. That's not incredibly impressive. I'm guessing much of this ranking is based on the Dolphins beating Andrew Luck (not the Colts team, but Andrew Luck) this past weekend. Either way, Peter is so impressed with Miami's 2-0 start he doesn't put either Indianapolis or Cleveland in his Fine Fifteen. So Peter is impressed that Miami beat two teams on the road that he doesn't think are average .
7. Chicago (2-0). Jay Cutler hung in after a bad interception. Matt Forte hung in after an ugly strip-fumble by the Vikes. This is an imperfect team, but the Bears play in an imperfect division.
This is as opposed to which NFC or AFC division that is perfect?
12. Green Bay (1-1). Amazing Aaron Dept.: Rodgers is averaging a 406-yard, 3.5-touchdown-pass day through two weeks. And he did his part of it Sunday after undergoing a massage/neck-maneuvering from club medics before the game.
If this were Brett Favre he would show post pictures of him getting the neck massage and then talk about how bad his neck hurts, but be very clear it would not affect his performance on the field, though his neck hurts like super-bad and he probably shouldn't be playing, but he will play because he's tough so please give him attention for how tough he is.
13. New England (2-0). Most advantageous opening schedule in recent league history: Two rookie quarterbacks to start—including Geno Smith having to go on the road in a short week—followed by a mini-bye (the Pats had the three-day weekend off) and a team with some civil war issues (Tampa Bay) coming up Sunday. In Foxboro.
So this isn't really a 2-0 record for New England, especially since the Patriots have been at full strength on offense for both of these games and all.
Offensive Players of the Week
James Jones, WR, Green Bay. The enjoyable thing about watching Jones play is that he’s not just a deep threat who runs all the vertical routes in the Packers playbook and juts out of bounds. He’s a physical receiver, and his 11-catch, 178-yard day—not exceeded by a Packer since 2004 (Javon Walker, 11 for 200 from Brett Favre) showed Jones as the complete receiver he’s become.
I like Jones, but he is 29 years old and has never had more than 784 yards receiving in a season. I think Peter is using the term "complete receiver" a bit loosely here. Also, this "complete receiver" had zero catches and zero targets against the 49ers defense in Week 1. Do "complete receivers" completely disappear against good teams?
Goat of the Week
Greg Schiano, head coach, Tampa Bay. The choice Schiano had to make with 70 seconds left in the fourth quarter and a 14-13lead over New Orleans, with a 4th-and-3 at the Saints’ 29, in a game in which neither team had any timeouts left: He could have punted and pinned Drew Brees at the, say, 10-yard line with 64 seconds left. Brees would have needed maybe 60 yards to get into Garrett Hartley field-goal range.
I can't believe I'm going to semi-defend Greg Schiano, here goes...
Peter is assuming this punt would be downed at the 10 yard line. If the punter kicks it into the end zone then the Buccaneers have netted 17 yards and Schiano has passed up the chance to put three more points on the board to gain seventeen extra yards. In fact, I think punting is the worst option here. The Buccaneers should have gone for it, kicked the field goal and then very, very last punted the ball.
Or he could have the August waiver signing from Buffalo, Rian Lindell, try a 47-yard field goal. If Lindell made it, the Saints would have had to drive for a touchdown to win the game. If Lindell missed it, the Saints would get the ball at their 37- and need 30 yards to be in field-goal range. Schiano decided to try the field goal. It was shanked. Brees went 54 yards, sweatlessly, to the winning chip-shot field goal as the clock expired. Bad decision by a coach under fire.
I agree, he should have gone for it on fourth down as opposed to letting the football get back into Drew Brees' hands. Punting doesn't seem like a great option to me in this situation.
“If we’re not starting fast, it’s my fault. Put that on my shoulders. I’ll take it. We’re not starting fast because of me.”
—Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III, and truer words this season have not yet been spoken. Griffin’s team has fallen behind in the first two games 33-7 after 32 minutes, and 31-7 after 38 minutes.
I guess after a season of building Robert Griffin up it's time to start tearing him down now. After all, it's his fault the Redskins defense has given up 30+ points after 30+ minutes in both games this season.
We will all debate now whether Johnny Manziel will be a good NFL quarterback. I feel strongly he’ll be playing on Sundays, almost certainly beginning in 2014 after the first NFL draft for which he’ll be eligible … of course, barring the kind of off-field immaturity Manziel has been sometimes known for while at Texas A&M.
I believe strongly that Manziel will be playing on Sundays also. All it takes is one team to like him enough to draft him. It's not exactly going out on a limb to say Manziel will probably be taken in the first round, especially since we've seen quarterbacks like Tim Tebow taken in the first round recently. All it takes is one team.
I may be damning Manziel with faint praise here, but stylistically as a college player, he has some things in common with Tim Tebow.
(Peter King reclining in his chair talking to himself with his dog Bailey at his feet on Sunday evening) "How can I slip a Tim Tebow reference into MMQB this week?"
(Bailey barks and whimpers because Peter is accidentally spilling a pumpkin latte on his head out of Peter's well-worn recyclable Starbucks cup)
(Peter King) "Great point, Bailey! I will compare Johnny Manziel to Tim Tebow since they are both white and both played quarterback at SEC universities. Nevermind Manziel is smaller than Tebow, has a more pure traditional motion, is a better passer, a completely different runner and really has nothing in common with Tebow. Let's go for it!"
Manziel can make people miss more, and he’s by any measure more accurate.
Other than his throwing style and running style, Manziel is the exact same quarterback as Tim Tebow!
But there is one thing they definitely don’t have in common: Tebow’s second game against ‘Bama, in the 2009 SEC title game, was mediocre; Manziel’s second game against Alabama, after the Tide worked all offseason to be ready to stop him, was a success—despite two turnovers. He threw for 211 more yards in his second game against Alabama than in his first.
Both players played Alabama more than once! Has anyone seen Tebow and Manziel in the same room at the same time? Are we sure they aren't the same person?
So basically these "things in common" that Manziel has with Tebow are exactly what I stated. They both white, mobile quarterbacks who played at SEC universities.
You can say a 6-1, 210-pound quarterback (or whatever Manziel is) will have trouble lasting in NFL. He may. But it’d be because of his off-field nonsense, not what he’d do on the field, in my opinion. Just watch Russell Wilson. Watch a more pocketed Drew Brees. Small guys can play. Especially small guys who put the fear of God into Nick Saban.
At no point in this part of MMQB did Peter explain one thing that Tebow and Manziel have in common. At this point, I think it's fair to assume Peter is just simply mentioning Tebow out of habit or his analysis of Tebow being like Manziel is epically terrible.
“I would like to see Carroll and Harbaugh have a rage-off at midfield during halftime.”
—@ChrisWarcraft, author and former Vikes punter Chris Kluwe, watching Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines during the first half of Seahawks-Niners.
Chris Kluwe is so clever. His cleverness has shades of Tim Tebow.
1. I think this is what I liked about Week 2:
These things that Peter likes have things in common with things that Tim Tebow likes.
a. The NFL Matchup Show on ESPN, which had this bit of prescience from Ron Jaworski Sunday on Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III: “His mechanics are flawed right now because of the injury.” Which is what Jon Gruden said during the Monday Night Football telecast in Week 1.
Did Jaworski ever decide whether Colin Kaepernick was the greatest quarterback in NFL history yet? I also imagine Gruden followed up his comment about Griffin's mechanics by saying,
"But, this guy...if I had to choose one NFL quarterback to start an NFL game then it would be Robert Griffin or any of the other quarterbacks currently on an NFL roster."
2. I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 2:
b. Geno Smith’s fourth-quarter efficiency.
Right, because Geno Smith should be efficient in his second career start with offensive weapons like he has. How dare he struggle in his second NFL game when surrounded by average NFL receivers against the team that played in the AFC Championship Game last year.
f. Corner route in Buffalo. Two seconds left. Game on the line. Stevie Johnson runs into the end zone and … no one covers him. One of the two Carolina defensive backs who both turned away from Johnson to cover the inside guy, Josh Norman or D.J. Moore, should wear the goat horns this morning in Charlotte. Huge, huge mistake.
Josh Norman is the one who didn't hear D.J. Moore tell him to switch off and cover Johnson. What a dumpster fire of incompetence.
3. I think Jacksonville’s the worst team in the league, and it’s not close. It’s taken only eight quarters to prove it definitively.
But again, it's too early to draw conclusions from just two weeks of NFL play. That is, unless Peter wants to draw conclusions, at which case he is free to ignore his own advice of having perspective after two weeks and start jumping to conclusions.
Then Peter publishes a letter from Robert Klemko's 79 year-old grandmother who doesn't like the NFL's clear bag rule. She promises she won't hurt anyone. Oh well, if people will just promise not to hurt anyone I guess there's no reason to keep the rule.
6. I think the good will of the Panthers’ 5-1 finish in 2012 has vanished. Cam Newton is 13-21 as a starting quarterback,
Very true and his head coach is 2-14 in games decided by seven points or less. Also, it was pretty obvious losing was going to happen this season because Ron Rivera is incompetent and has no chance of magically becoming competent. I hope for Cam's sake he chooses an organization better dedicated to helping him grow as a quarterback when he becomes a free agent in two years. Any chance he has of excelling is being wasted with Mike Shula as his offensive coordinator and Ron Rivera as his coach.
and the Panthers played it safe at the end of regulation in Buffalo, helping the Bills rally at the end.
After all, with a mobile quarterback who is 250 pounds what are the odds you can gain one yard on fourth down?
7. I think, in the wake of one of the most bizarre endings to a football game ever (Wisconsin-Arizona State, at 2 a.m. ET Sunday), I want to perform a public service for the Wisconsin coaching staff. Read this story from The MMQB in August. It centers on Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians coaching the minutiae to his young players. Never assume your players know all the rules, or will execute them properly. And remember Arians’ words: “There are no little things. The little things are all big things.” The little things cost the Badgers a game when their quarterback, Joe Stave, placed a ball down on the field, thinking he was downing it in good position to kick a game-winning field goal. But it happened so fast—even though Stave had time to kneel and put the ball down properly—that the officials and Sun Devil players weren’t sure what happened, and some ASU players flopped on the ball as the clock continued to run, and expire.
I feel like that was on the officials. Stave made it very clear he had downed the ball and then officials refused to pull the Sun Devils players off the ball, call them for a delay of game or show any urgency in getting the ball reset. I don't know how Stave could have made his attempt to down the ball any clearer outside of downing the ball and holding up a sign saying, "I have downed the ball and would like it to be reset in a timely fashion."
Stave needed to make it clear he was kneeling down and giving himself up, and it happened so fast no one could tell what he was doing. You can blame the officials, who were indecisive, but Stave has to execute the play with enough time on the clock and set Wisconsin up for the field goal.
He did make it clear. It is up to the officials to reset the football and control the football game by not allowing the Arizona State players to flop on the ball. To me, this was all on the officials for not controlling the game.
Then Peter starts to explain that Greg Schiano doesn't have a personal conflict with Josh Freeman, but instead he has a performance conflict with Freeman. Okay, I guess that makes more sense. It's fun to go back and read Peter's MMQB from Week 1 of the 2012 season where he talks about how Schiano has gained the respect of the Bucs players. Less than a year later many of the players reportedly don't like Schiano. I guess they don't have a personal issue with Schiano, but their issues are performance-based. You know, the Tampa Bay players want to win games.
10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:
b. Saw something I’d never seen before, at any level of football: a timeout called at halftime. Well, almost. Army came out for the start of the third quarter, took the field, and the quarterback called a timeout.
So a timeout wasn't really called at halftime? So Peter didn't see something he had never seen before?
e. Can some doctor out there tell me why the University of Minnesota should keep Jerry Kill coaching football after his fourth seizure in three years on a Gopher game day? I don’t want to be insensitive. I’d really like to know if it makes sense to keep him on as coach.
Yeah, they should fire Kill after he had a seizure. That seems like the best possible move since Kill doesn't seem to want to retire or quit. Just fire him after he had a seizure. Brilliant.
h. C.C. Sabathia, 4.90 ERA. C.C. Sabathia, owed $96 million over the next four seasons.
If this were Dan Shaughnessy writing then he would say Sabathia can't handle the stress of playing in New York anymore and that explains his high ERA.
j. Helton hasn’t been great for five or six years, but he had a better career than you thought.
Thanks for telling me how great of a career I thought Helton had. I wasn't sure of my own thoughts, but now you have cleared them up for me.
Better career on-base percentage than Albert Pujols (.415 to .410), more hits than Mickey Mantle (2,505 to 2,415), more homers than Yogi Berra (367 to 358), more doubles than Tony Gwynn (585 to 543), better on-base-plus-slugging-percentage than Alex Rodriquez (.954 to .944),
Otherwise known as OPS.
and a better lifetime batting average than Derek Jeter (.317 to .312).
Better than the baseball player that Peter think is the best player of the last 25 years! That's amazing.
l. Coffeenerdness: One thing I don’t understand about baristas. I bring a re-useable grande cup into Starbucks and order a macchiato. Most often, the baristas take a short cup, line it up under the espresso filters, and push the button. The espresso flows into the cup, and the barista pours the espresso on top of the milk in the cup. Then the barista tosses the cup away. There are two other ways to do this—either by pouring the shots directly into the glass shot cups, or by having the shots flow directly into the cup filled two-thirds with milk. Instead, there’s a wasted paper cup. Time to issue a memo to baristas, Seattle.
God, you are an asshat for constantly telling people how to do their jobs. Maybe Starbucks insists the baristas do this. Maybe you could go purchase a machine that makes a macchiato and make your own coffee at home since Starbucks can't live up to your high standards. I hope the next time Peter goes into a Starbucks they use 10 cups to pour his coffee and then throw every single cup away in front of him.
o. I guess I have made a big mistake (my first). Never watched Breaking Bad. You know that feeling when everyone says you’ve got to watch a show, and you’re so far behind, and you throw your hands up in the air and say, “I’ll never catch up?” That’s me and Breaking Bad.
There are these things called "Blu-Ray's," or "DVD's" as is more likely the case for Peter. He can watch these DVD's/Blu-Ray's and catch up on episodes of "Breaking Bad," but I guess that's just absolutely out of the question.
The Adieu Haiku
Manziel strafes Saban.
Again. I see in Cleveland
Furrowed brows by Browns.
Good point, maybe the Browns should hire Nick Saban after they realize Rob Chudzinski is a better offensive coordinator than a head coach.
Thirty years of covering the NFL demands you have perspective after a night like last night. After all, it’s Week 2. Arizona won in Foxboro in Week 2 last year. Peyton Manning threw three interceptions in the first nine minutes in Week 2 last year. Strange things happen in September, before true patterns develop.
It's way too early to make any definitive statements. Everyone calm down and trust Peter's veteran sportswriting presence to tell us that Week 2 is way too early to determine what's going to happen. Just listen to Peter be reasonable and adjust your reactions.
But it’s hard not to wonder this about the NFC playoff race: If Seattle wins home-field advantage, what team is going into that cauldron of sound and fury, CenturyLink Field, and winning a football game?
Peter says "fuck it," he already has Seattle going 8-0 at home and if they win four road games, what's to stop them from making it to the Super Bowl? Nothing will stop the Seahawks. So true patterns haven't developed, but Peter is pretty sure the 2-0 Seahawks are going to make the Super Bowl based on their victories over the Panthers and 49ers.
San Francisco has been a hot mess in only one place since 2012 dawned—Seattle—and no one can tell me it doesn’t have a lot to do with the crowd.
A lot of teams are a hot mess when they come to Seattle. Also, Peter just wrote "a hot mess." I'm not sure if this is Peter King writing MMQB this week or a stereotypical sassy gay sidekick from a romantic comedy, but since the first paragraphs of the column consist of the writer telling everyone what not to do and then the writer doing the same thing he said no one else should do, it's safe to assume Peter King is writing this column and not a character based on Sean Hayes.
It was so loud, Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor told me, that the Seattle defense, which normally has an edge when the crowd is going nuts, had trouble hearing middle linebacker Bobby Wagner call the plays in the defensive huddle. The defense had to use hand signals for those who didn’t hear what Wagner was saying, even in a tight huddle. But it was still a huge edge for Seattle, because obviously it was impossible for Colin Kaepernick to communicate in any way but a non-verbal one.
This is as opposed to the hand signals the Seahawks defense had to use to communicate and hear what Bobby Wagner was saying, which apparently is a verbal way of communicating in Peter's opinion.
Probably the most amazing thing is the place was louder after the 60-minute weather delay, and after halftime: It got to 136.6 decibels in the third quarter, 16.6 decibels louder than the sound generated by a jet engine on an open runway.
It was very, very loud and this obviously had an effect on the 49ers. I mean, it had to have had an effect. Let's hear from Richard Sherman,
“It was electric,’’ cornerback Richard Sherman, the star of the show, told me from Seattle. “You could cut the energy in the stadium with a knife.
Hmmm...I think our Stanford-attending Richard Sherman is mixing his metaphors a little bit. I think it's silence that is supposed to be cut with a knife.
“This wasn’t the Super Bowl tonight,’’ said Sherman. “We haven’t won anything yet. We have to act like we’ve been here before. This was just another game, to tell you the truth.’’
You can cut Sherman's truthfulness with a knife.
Sherman went to his coaches to ask if he could shadow Anquan Boldin in certain schemes. Normally, Sherman is the left corner. Period. He moved around to shadow Buffalo’s Stevie Johnson some last season, but mostly he stays left. “The coaches said it was fine,’’ said Sherman. “Sunday night football, everybody is watching, so watch this. I had him when he was split out, when he was in the left slot, right slot. Didn’t matter.’’ Sherman covered Boldin on about 75 percent of the snaps. Last week the Niners receiver caught 12 balls for 208 yards. This week: one for seven yards.
And I really, really thank you Richard Sherman for sparing us another week of "The Anquan Boldin Chronicles" where Peter tries to figure out exactly why the Ravens traded Boldin for a sixth round pick.
“It makes me feel good—like I can execute a game plan the way it’s called,’’ Sherman said. “But no, I’m not surprised.”
Yeah, but we all know that Anquan Boldin is worth $6 million per year as the 12th highest paid wide receiver, getting paid more than Steve Smith, A.J. Green, Wes Welker, Jordy Nelson, Vincent Jackson, Hakeem Nicks and Julio Jones (granted Green, Nicks and Jones are still in their rookie contract seasons).
The Seahawks’ front never let Frank Gore breathe. San Francisco backs ran 11 times and gained 13 yards. They’d better figure a way to run it by the time of the rematch Dec. 8 in Candlestick.
Absolutely, they should figure out a way to run the football before December 8. Because the 49ers play no meaningful games before December 8 and the winner of the December 8 rematch between the Seahawks and 49ers will determine who wins the Super Bowl, if not the fate of humanity.
They know the truth, and the 49ers do too: If the road to the Super Bowl goes through Seattle, it’s going to be the biggest disadvantage in recent football history for the road team.
Yeah, possibly, but it's not like there are 14 other games left in the season to be played and there are other teams who could have a better record than the Seahawks even if they do end up with a better record than the 49ers.
Manziel, in his third year of eligibility at Texas A&M, could declare for the 2014 draft if he wants to come out, which seems likely. (He can also stay in and play the 2014 college season, and 2015 as well.) But Manziel, to many teams right now, would be undraftable because they’re scared of his mood swings and off-field questions.
Plus, Manziel tends to throw the ball up into traffic unnecessarily. So while sometimes this works, like it did once in the Alabama game on the fantastic play where he got away from approximately 29 Crimson Tide defenders to complete a prayer of a pass for a first down, it also can be a drawback when Manziel throws a stupid interception at a bad time, like he did in the Alabama game. He's like a shorter, more fame-driven Brett Favre (and calling someone more fame-driven than Brett Favre is saying a lot). All it takes is one team to think he is a future star and he will go in the first round.
But it only takes one team out of 32 to fall for him. And some team will, unless he self-destructs between today and draft day.
I just wrote that. I've watched Manziel play a few times and I would be much more worried about the risks he takes on the football field then his behavior off the football field if I were an NFL team. Scampering all over the field and then throwing a pass up for grabs works in college football, but it may not work so well in the NFL.
The MMQB’s Greg A. Bedard was in College Station Saturday, and he’ll report the Manziel story for us tomorrow. I can’t wait to read what he thinks of the kid, and what the pro football men in his rolodex think. As I said on NBC Sunday night, Browns assistant GM Ray Farmer scouted the game. Hmmmmmm. Johnny Dawg Pound!
That would be great if the Browns went from an extremely mature quarterback in Brandon Weeden to a quarterback that many scouts consider to be an extremely immature quarterback.
The NFC East does not. Most of us think the NFC’s a better conference, right? It’s not acting like it. The AFC was 4-0 in cross-conference games Sunday. The NFC East went 0-4, three of the losses coming to the supposedly weak AFC West: Denver over the Giants, San Diego over the Eagles, and Kansas City over Dallas.
And because the NFC East isn't very good then obviously the entire NFC conference can't be as good as "we" thought it was. After all, the NFC East is the only division that matters in the entire NFC.
My surprise team of the first eighth of the season? Miami (2-0).
But of course it is too early in Peter's opinion to draw any permanent conclusions on which teams are the real surprise of the 2013 season.
And did you notice Ryan Tannehill bested Luck Sunday?
No, but I noticed that the Dolphins as a team beat the Colts as a team.
Andy Reid is 2-0 too … and he returns to the scene of his prime Thursday night. “Listen, you know me,’’ he said over the phone from Arrowhead Sunday after the 17-16 win over Dallas. “I haven’t thought about that stuff. I don’t get caught up in it. All I know is it’s a short week and we’ve got to get ready to play on the road in a hurry.” Uh, come on. You’re returning to the place you coached 14 years. Thursday night. Prime time. E-A-G-L-E-S! EAGLES! Sound familiar?
How dare Andy Reid treat this like any other game and not feed into the hype of his return to Philadelphia! The NFL is no fun to watch if there can't be storylines that go along with the game being played.
Good for Mike McCoy, who thinks before he snaps. So the Chargers had a 21-point lead with 21 minutes to play Monday night and blew it, losing 31-28 to Houston. Same old Norvy Chargers, right? “I went back and watched the tape,’’ McCoy said Sunday from Philadelphia. “I tortured myself. I went back and forth over the plays we called, wondering what we should have done. In this business, you know every time a play doesn’t work, you say, ‘I should have called something else.’ And after I examined all those plays down the stretch, you know what? I wouldn’t change a single one. I have faith in my coaches and what we called. We just had to play better, and that’s what I told my team.”
So basically Mike McCoy is saying he didn't make any mistakes in his play-calling and the responsibility for the loss is totally on his players. I can buy how players need to take responsibility for their actions on the field, but a coach saying he wouldn't change a single play down the stretch doesn't sound like a coach I would want to play for.
"Oh no, I did everything right. You guys just need to execute better," has quickly become Rivera-speak that actually means, "I don't know exactly what went wrong, the players should have won the game for us."
On Sunday, reclamation project Eddie Royal scored his third, fourth and fifth touchdowns of the season (Eddie Royal—he still plays?), Philip Rivers threw for 419 yards, and San Diego, on a short week, stunned the Eagles 33-30. Heck of a job preparing his team by McCoy.
But the Chargers won the next game, so clearly McCoy's strategy of doing everything perfectly and telling his players to execute better worked. Coach of the Year candidate?
The anatomy of a win. In Buffalo, coach Doug Marrone told E.J. Manuel at the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter, with Carolina up three and driving for an insurance field goal, that he was going to burn all three timeouts. “You’ll get the ball back, down six, with about 1:40 to go, and you’ll have to go the length of the field with no timeouts, okay?’’ Marrone told Manuel. His rookie quarterback was fine with that.
I'm guessing the conversation went more like this. "I'm going to burn all my timeouts. The defense will hold Carolina to a choice between a field goal attempt and going for it on fourth down. Ron Rivera will go for the field goal and then the Carolina defense will give up a touchdown. In fact, I'm not going to even call plays when you get the ball back on offense. Just do whatever the hell you want and draw plays in the grass. Trust me, we have this game won."
Here came the heavy rush. Two Carolina defenders messed up the coverage on Stevie Johnson, leaving him wide open. Touchdown. Buffalo wins, 24-23.
Actually one player, Josh Norman, messed up the coverage. He was told to switch off on his man by a teammate and Norman decided it would be best to ignore this. And of course Ron Rivera didn't want to use one of his timeouts in order to sort out this confusion or, you know, see what offensive set the Bills are showing and then adjust to that set forcing the Bills to call another play or stick with the one they have knowing Carolina has seen the formation. Doing any of those things would involve coaching which apparently Rivera doesn't believe is his job. His job is to motivate the players and then tell everyone after the game why the game was lost. 2-14 in games decided by seven points or less. It will be 2-20 before the end of this season at this rate.
Then Peter recommends a couple of books, because where else would be a good place to get a book recommendation?
The Fine Fifteen
Oh yes, NFL teams randomly placed in order of strength until 15 NFL teams have been listed.
2. Seattle (2-0).
4. New Orleans (2-0). Unimpressive win at Tampa Bay,
Because the Seahawks win at Carolina by five points was just so impressive the week before.
5. Miami (2-0). Excellent start for the Dolphins, with two road wins. Miami has had the best defense in football over the first two weeks, with nine sacks and foes completing just 53 percent of their passes.
The Dolphins beat the Browns. That's not incredibly impressive. I'm guessing much of this ranking is based on the Dolphins beating Andrew Luck (not the Colts team, but Andrew Luck) this past weekend. Either way, Peter is so impressed with Miami's 2-0 start he doesn't put either Indianapolis or Cleveland in his Fine Fifteen. So Peter is impressed that Miami beat two teams on the road that he doesn't think are average .
7. Chicago (2-0). Jay Cutler hung in after a bad interception. Matt Forte hung in after an ugly strip-fumble by the Vikes. This is an imperfect team, but the Bears play in an imperfect division.
This is as opposed to which NFC or AFC division that is perfect?
12. Green Bay (1-1). Amazing Aaron Dept.: Rodgers is averaging a 406-yard, 3.5-touchdown-pass day through two weeks. And he did his part of it Sunday after undergoing a massage/neck-maneuvering from club medics before the game.
If this were Brett Favre he would show post pictures of him getting the neck massage and then talk about how bad his neck hurts, but be very clear it would not affect his performance on the field, though his neck hurts like super-bad and he probably shouldn't be playing, but he will play because he's tough so please give him attention for how tough he is.
13. New England (2-0). Most advantageous opening schedule in recent league history: Two rookie quarterbacks to start—including Geno Smith having to go on the road in a short week—followed by a mini-bye (the Pats had the three-day weekend off) and a team with some civil war issues (Tampa Bay) coming up Sunday. In Foxboro.
So this isn't really a 2-0 record for New England, especially since the Patriots have been at full strength on offense for both of these games and all.
Offensive Players of the Week
James Jones, WR, Green Bay. The enjoyable thing about watching Jones play is that he’s not just a deep threat who runs all the vertical routes in the Packers playbook and juts out of bounds. He’s a physical receiver, and his 11-catch, 178-yard day—not exceeded by a Packer since 2004 (Javon Walker, 11 for 200 from Brett Favre) showed Jones as the complete receiver he’s become.
I like Jones, but he is 29 years old and has never had more than 784 yards receiving in a season. I think Peter is using the term "complete receiver" a bit loosely here. Also, this "complete receiver" had zero catches and zero targets against the 49ers defense in Week 1. Do "complete receivers" completely disappear against good teams?
Goat of the Week
Greg Schiano, head coach, Tampa Bay. The choice Schiano had to make with 70 seconds left in the fourth quarter and a 14-13lead over New Orleans, with a 4th-and-3 at the Saints’ 29, in a game in which neither team had any timeouts left: He could have punted and pinned Drew Brees at the, say, 10-yard line with 64 seconds left. Brees would have needed maybe 60 yards to get into Garrett Hartley field-goal range.
I can't believe I'm going to semi-defend Greg Schiano, here goes...
Peter is assuming this punt would be downed at the 10 yard line. If the punter kicks it into the end zone then the Buccaneers have netted 17 yards and Schiano has passed up the chance to put three more points on the board to gain seventeen extra yards. In fact, I think punting is the worst option here. The Buccaneers should have gone for it, kicked the field goal and then very, very last punted the ball.
Or he could have the August waiver signing from Buffalo, Rian Lindell, try a 47-yard field goal. If Lindell made it, the Saints would have had to drive for a touchdown to win the game. If Lindell missed it, the Saints would get the ball at their 37- and need 30 yards to be in field-goal range. Schiano decided to try the field goal. It was shanked. Brees went 54 yards, sweatlessly, to the winning chip-shot field goal as the clock expired. Bad decision by a coach under fire.
I agree, he should have gone for it on fourth down as opposed to letting the football get back into Drew Brees' hands. Punting doesn't seem like a great option to me in this situation.
“If we’re not starting fast, it’s my fault. Put that on my shoulders. I’ll take it. We’re not starting fast because of me.”
—Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III, and truer words this season have not yet been spoken. Griffin’s team has fallen behind in the first two games 33-7 after 32 minutes, and 31-7 after 38 minutes.
I guess after a season of building Robert Griffin up it's time to start tearing him down now. After all, it's his fault the Redskins defense has given up 30+ points after 30+ minutes in both games this season.
We will all debate now whether Johnny Manziel will be a good NFL quarterback. I feel strongly he’ll be playing on Sundays, almost certainly beginning in 2014 after the first NFL draft for which he’ll be eligible … of course, barring the kind of off-field immaturity Manziel has been sometimes known for while at Texas A&M.
I believe strongly that Manziel will be playing on Sundays also. All it takes is one team to like him enough to draft him. It's not exactly going out on a limb to say Manziel will probably be taken in the first round, especially since we've seen quarterbacks like Tim Tebow taken in the first round recently. All it takes is one team.
I may be damning Manziel with faint praise here, but stylistically as a college player, he has some things in common with Tim Tebow.
(Peter King reclining in his chair talking to himself with his dog Bailey at his feet on Sunday evening) "How can I slip a Tim Tebow reference into MMQB this week?"
(Bailey barks and whimpers because Peter is accidentally spilling a pumpkin latte on his head out of Peter's well-worn recyclable Starbucks cup)
(Peter King) "Great point, Bailey! I will compare Johnny Manziel to Tim Tebow since they are both white and both played quarterback at SEC universities. Nevermind Manziel is smaller than Tebow, has a more pure traditional motion, is a better passer, a completely different runner and really has nothing in common with Tebow. Let's go for it!"
Manziel can make people miss more, and he’s by any measure more accurate.
Other than his throwing style and running style, Manziel is the exact same quarterback as Tim Tebow!
But there is one thing they definitely don’t have in common: Tebow’s second game against ‘Bama, in the 2009 SEC title game, was mediocre; Manziel’s second game against Alabama, after the Tide worked all offseason to be ready to stop him, was a success—despite two turnovers. He threw for 211 more yards in his second game against Alabama than in his first.
Both players played Alabama more than once! Has anyone seen Tebow and Manziel in the same room at the same time? Are we sure they aren't the same person?
So basically these "things in common" that Manziel has with Tebow are exactly what I stated. They both white, mobile quarterbacks who played at SEC universities.
You can say a 6-1, 210-pound quarterback (or whatever Manziel is) will have trouble lasting in NFL. He may. But it’d be because of his off-field nonsense, not what he’d do on the field, in my opinion. Just watch Russell Wilson. Watch a more pocketed Drew Brees. Small guys can play. Especially small guys who put the fear of God into Nick Saban.
At no point in this part of MMQB did Peter explain one thing that Tebow and Manziel have in common. At this point, I think it's fair to assume Peter is just simply mentioning Tebow out of habit or his analysis of Tebow being like Manziel is epically terrible.
“I would like to see Carroll and Harbaugh have a rage-off at midfield during halftime.”
—@ChrisWarcraft, author and former Vikes punter Chris Kluwe, watching Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines during the first half of Seahawks-Niners.
Chris Kluwe is so clever. His cleverness has shades of Tim Tebow.
1. I think this is what I liked about Week 2:
These things that Peter likes have things in common with things that Tim Tebow likes.
a. The NFL Matchup Show on ESPN, which had this bit of prescience from Ron Jaworski Sunday on Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III: “His mechanics are flawed right now because of the injury.” Which is what Jon Gruden said during the Monday Night Football telecast in Week 1.
Did Jaworski ever decide whether Colin Kaepernick was the greatest quarterback in NFL history yet? I also imagine Gruden followed up his comment about Griffin's mechanics by saying,
"But, this guy...if I had to choose one NFL quarterback to start an NFL game then it would be Robert Griffin or any of the other quarterbacks currently on an NFL roster."
2. I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 2:
b. Geno Smith’s fourth-quarter efficiency.
Right, because Geno Smith should be efficient in his second career start with offensive weapons like he has. How dare he struggle in his second NFL game when surrounded by average NFL receivers against the team that played in the AFC Championship Game last year.
f. Corner route in Buffalo. Two seconds left. Game on the line. Stevie Johnson runs into the end zone and … no one covers him. One of the two Carolina defensive backs who both turned away from Johnson to cover the inside guy, Josh Norman or D.J. Moore, should wear the goat horns this morning in Charlotte. Huge, huge mistake.
Josh Norman is the one who didn't hear D.J. Moore tell him to switch off and cover Johnson. What a dumpster fire of incompetence.
3. I think Jacksonville’s the worst team in the league, and it’s not close. It’s taken only eight quarters to prove it definitively.
But again, it's too early to draw conclusions from just two weeks of NFL play. That is, unless Peter wants to draw conclusions, at which case he is free to ignore his own advice of having perspective after two weeks and start jumping to conclusions.
Then Peter publishes a letter from Robert Klemko's 79 year-old grandmother who doesn't like the NFL's clear bag rule. She promises she won't hurt anyone. Oh well, if people will just promise not to hurt anyone I guess there's no reason to keep the rule.
6. I think the good will of the Panthers’ 5-1 finish in 2012 has vanished. Cam Newton is 13-21 as a starting quarterback,
Very true and his head coach is 2-14 in games decided by seven points or less. Also, it was pretty obvious losing was going to happen this season because Ron Rivera is incompetent and has no chance of magically becoming competent. I hope for Cam's sake he chooses an organization better dedicated to helping him grow as a quarterback when he becomes a free agent in two years. Any chance he has of excelling is being wasted with Mike Shula as his offensive coordinator and Ron Rivera as his coach.
and the Panthers played it safe at the end of regulation in Buffalo, helping the Bills rally at the end.
After all, with a mobile quarterback who is 250 pounds what are the odds you can gain one yard on fourth down?
7. I think, in the wake of one of the most bizarre endings to a football game ever (Wisconsin-Arizona State, at 2 a.m. ET Sunday), I want to perform a public service for the Wisconsin coaching staff. Read this story from The MMQB in August. It centers on Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians coaching the minutiae to his young players. Never assume your players know all the rules, or will execute them properly. And remember Arians’ words: “There are no little things. The little things are all big things.” The little things cost the Badgers a game when their quarterback, Joe Stave, placed a ball down on the field, thinking he was downing it in good position to kick a game-winning field goal. But it happened so fast—even though Stave had time to kneel and put the ball down properly—that the officials and Sun Devil players weren’t sure what happened, and some ASU players flopped on the ball as the clock continued to run, and expire.
I feel like that was on the officials. Stave made it very clear he had downed the ball and then officials refused to pull the Sun Devils players off the ball, call them for a delay of game or show any urgency in getting the ball reset. I don't know how Stave could have made his attempt to down the ball any clearer outside of downing the ball and holding up a sign saying, "I have downed the ball and would like it to be reset in a timely fashion."
Stave needed to make it clear he was kneeling down and giving himself up, and it happened so fast no one could tell what he was doing. You can blame the officials, who were indecisive, but Stave has to execute the play with enough time on the clock and set Wisconsin up for the field goal.
He did make it clear. It is up to the officials to reset the football and control the football game by not allowing the Arizona State players to flop on the ball. To me, this was all on the officials for not controlling the game.
Then Peter starts to explain that Greg Schiano doesn't have a personal conflict with Josh Freeman, but instead he has a performance conflict with Freeman. Okay, I guess that makes more sense. It's fun to go back and read Peter's MMQB from Week 1 of the 2012 season where he talks about how Schiano has gained the respect of the Bucs players. Less than a year later many of the players reportedly don't like Schiano. I guess they don't have a personal issue with Schiano, but their issues are performance-based. You know, the Tampa Bay players want to win games.
10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:
b. Saw something I’d never seen before, at any level of football: a timeout called at halftime. Well, almost. Army came out for the start of the third quarter, took the field, and the quarterback called a timeout.
So a timeout wasn't really called at halftime? So Peter didn't see something he had never seen before?
e. Can some doctor out there tell me why the University of Minnesota should keep Jerry Kill coaching football after his fourth seizure in three years on a Gopher game day? I don’t want to be insensitive. I’d really like to know if it makes sense to keep him on as coach.
Yeah, they should fire Kill after he had a seizure. That seems like the best possible move since Kill doesn't seem to want to retire or quit. Just fire him after he had a seizure. Brilliant.
h. C.C. Sabathia, 4.90 ERA. C.C. Sabathia, owed $96 million over the next four seasons.
If this were Dan Shaughnessy writing then he would say Sabathia can't handle the stress of playing in New York anymore and that explains his high ERA.
j. Helton hasn’t been great for five or six years, but he had a better career than you thought.
Thanks for telling me how great of a career I thought Helton had. I wasn't sure of my own thoughts, but now you have cleared them up for me.
Better career on-base percentage than Albert Pujols (.415 to .410), more hits than Mickey Mantle (2,505 to 2,415), more homers than Yogi Berra (367 to 358), more doubles than Tony Gwynn (585 to 543), better on-base-plus-slugging-percentage than Alex Rodriquez (.954 to .944),
Otherwise known as OPS.
and a better lifetime batting average than Derek Jeter (.317 to .312).
Better than the baseball player that Peter think is the best player of the last 25 years! That's amazing.
l. Coffeenerdness: One thing I don’t understand about baristas. I bring a re-useable grande cup into Starbucks and order a macchiato. Most often, the baristas take a short cup, line it up under the espresso filters, and push the button. The espresso flows into the cup, and the barista pours the espresso on top of the milk in the cup. Then the barista tosses the cup away. There are two other ways to do this—either by pouring the shots directly into the glass shot cups, or by having the shots flow directly into the cup filled two-thirds with milk. Instead, there’s a wasted paper cup. Time to issue a memo to baristas, Seattle.
God, you are an asshat for constantly telling people how to do their jobs. Maybe Starbucks insists the baristas do this. Maybe you could go purchase a machine that makes a macchiato and make your own coffee at home since Starbucks can't live up to your high standards. I hope the next time Peter goes into a Starbucks they use 10 cups to pour his coffee and then throw every single cup away in front of him.
o. I guess I have made a big mistake (my first). Never watched Breaking Bad. You know that feeling when everyone says you’ve got to watch a show, and you’re so far behind, and you throw your hands up in the air and say, “I’ll never catch up?” That’s me and Breaking Bad.
There are these things called "Blu-Ray's," or "DVD's" as is more likely the case for Peter. He can watch these DVD's/Blu-Ray's and catch up on episodes of "Breaking Bad," but I guess that's just absolutely out of the question.
The Adieu Haiku
Manziel strafes Saban.
Again. I see in Cleveland
Furrowed brows by Browns.
Good point, maybe the Browns should hire Nick Saban after they realize Rob Chudzinski is a better offensive coordinator than a head coach.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
5 comments Bill Simmons Does an NFC Power Poll
Bill Simmons has followed up his AFC power poll with an NFC power poll. I briefly discussed the issue with doing the NFC and AFC power polls separately and the issue is that teams won't be ranked in chronological order of their strength, but Bill has tried to remedy this by providing the AFC team names in the respective numerical spot he ranked them in the AFC power poll. It seems kind of silly to me and it just would have been easier to do an NFL power poll with 16 teams on Thursday and 16 teams on Friday, but who I am to question the all-knowing Bill Simmons? I'm nobody and Bill is a somebody. Just ask him. I'm sure Bill would state he is somebody and then use his own opinion of how great he is as proof this is true. So without more rambling, here is Bill's NFC power poll.
If you missed Grantland's 2013 NFL preview coverage — including my three-part NFL over/under podcast from Vegas with Cousin Sal,
I didn't read or pay attention to any of this stuff, but I wouldn't say I missed it.
If you missed my AFC Power Poll heading into the 2013 season, which went up Thursday afternoon on Grantland, click here. That column included my Baltimore-Denver pick — after I ranked the Ravens ahead of the Broncos and grabbed the +7.5 points, they lost in Denver by 25.
It's almost like there is no science or rules behind gambling and in the end it is all guesswork. This couldn't be true though, right?
Today, we're cranking out an NFC Power Poll. For no extra charge, I included yesterday's AFC rankings within today's column so you could see every team on one list.
BUT WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST PUT THEM ALL IN ONE LIST ORIGINALLY? THIS ISN'T FAIR TO PEOPLE WITH OCD, LIKE MYSELF!
25. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
I juggled six possibilities for "NFC's worst team," which is a fancy way of saying, "they're better than anyone in the AFC's bottom seven, only they have the misfortune of playing in a stacked conference."
I'm not sure you can count any conference that has Ron Rivera as the head coach for one of the teams in that conference as "stacked."
Then you have second-year coach Greg Schiano, voted the winner of last November's Sporting News poll for "The Coach You'd Least Want to Play For."
Who else was on this list?
Bill Belichick
Tom Coughlin
Andy Reid
Mike Shanahan
Jim Harbaugh
That's ten Super Bowl appearances and six Super Bowl victories in there. This reminds me of a quote from "The Sopranos" where Tony was trying to stop Christopher Moltisanti from being the whiny bitch he could be at times,
"You don't have to love, but you will respect me."
Exactly. You don't have to love them, but you have to respect them because they win games. I'm not a fan of Greg Schiano, but his name on this list means very little as long as he is successful.
What's more likely — the Bucs making the 2013 playoffs, or Schiano and Freeman being jettisoned out of Tampa five months from now, then Schiano landing a college job and eventually ending up in one of those Mike Rice–type scandals because he attacked some poor sophomore with a tackling dummy?
It's very much more likely the Buccaneers make the 2013 playoffs.
DEAD MEN WALKING
24. The Lions of Detroit
23. Carolina Panthers
Both teams have killer fantasy QBs (Matt Stafford and Cam Newton) and one-of-a-kind blue-chippers (Calvin Johnson and Luke Kuechly). Both teams were well-represented at your 2013 fantasy draft.
And we all know that fantasy rankings always accurately represent real-life talent.
Know this: I've seen everything I needed to see from the Jim Schwartz and Ron Rivera eras already. It's a shame about the Panthers — blessed with Newton and one of the best defensive front sevens in football — who somehow have gone 2-12 in games decided by seven points or fewer since Newton and Rivera teamed up.
2-13 now. Yippee!
Football Outsiders' excellent DVOA season prediction model likes the 2013 Panthers for that very reason: Bad luck tends to even out over time.
But stupid decision-making stands the test of time. Upon having his previous offensive coordinator inexplicably get a head coaching job with the Browns, Ron Rivera decided to save his job he would turn to Mike Shula to run the offense. That's like a television show having falling ratings and then seeing if Ted McGinley is available to give the show a shot in the arm.
THE SHORT STRAWS
22. St. Louis Rams
21. Arizona Cardinals
We think Jeff Fisher is a good coach even though he has coached 16 full seasons and finished above .500 in only six of them.
I'm completely torn between being happy that more people are noticing Jeff "8-8" Fisher's overratedness and being really sad that Bill Simmons is agreeing with me.
He hasn't won a playoff game since 2003. He's an average coach. Not great, not bad. He's somewhere in the middle.
(whispers) Exactly right.
If it's OK with you, I'm crossing off the Rams. As for the Cardinals, they were looking sleeperish until they lost no. 7 overall pick Jonathan Cooper with a broken leg. (So much for improving their offensive line.)
So Bill was high on the Cardinals until they lost a rookie offensive lineman? At that point he thought, "Well that screws up the entire season" because a rookie offensive lineman got injured? Sounds like Bill had pretty much the entire Cardinals season riding on Cooper, which is especially odd to me. Who the hell has a team's entire season riding on one offensive lineman? It sounds like Bill just wanted an excuse to count the Cardinals out and couldn't think of a different football-related reason.
That reminds me, I went against someone who started Peyton Manning, Wes Welker and Demaryius Thomas in Week 1. It's Friday and I'm down 97.9 points already. Why is fantasy football fun again?
This reminds me, no one cares about the fantasy team of someone they don't know. Who am I kidding though? The Simmonsites care about everything Bill says and does.
A (VERY) FAINT WHIFF OF FRISKINESS
20. Philadelphia Eagles
Ottawa reader Neil Varan wonders, "Who's the leading candidate for your 2013 Man-Crush?" The answer: Eagles coach Chip Kelly. I love his brain, love his system, love the rapid-fire play thing … I mean, I would have picked the Eagles as my 2013 sleeper if Michael Vick weren't so prominently involved. Last year, we decided that (a) his decision-making just wasn't good enough, (b) it was too hard for him to stay healthy,
It was hard for Vick to stay healthy because he held onto the ball too long. In the Chip Kelly offense he isn't supposed to hold the ball long, so I guess we'll see.
Now he's going to spearhead an offense that runs 85 plays a game and relies on him to make MORE decisions? If Kelly makes this one work in Year 1, he's even better than I thought. And I think he's gonna be great. Eventually.
I'm not sure there is an "eventually" about it. I think Chip Kelly will be great running his offense from his first year in the league and then make the appropriate adjustments once the NFL adjusts to him.
Then again, Indiana reader Rick Vaughn throws something he calls "The Barnwell Theory" at us, explaining, "When Bill Barnwell and the Advanced Stat Troubadours (trademark pending) win the public over and blatantly influence a line, the team in question is guaranteed to prove them wrong. This year's example: Barnwell's regression-laden fingerprints are all over the Colts over/under for season wins (8.5). Quick reminder: they play half their games against the California penal league: Jags twice, Titans twice, Oakland (home), Dolphins (home), San Diego (away), and Cardinals (away). They're 5-3 over that stretch if Gary Hogeboom is under center. I'm guessing 6-2. Yes, they play the NFC West, but let's also consider the 2nd year leap for franchise QBs like Montana, Marino, Elway, and Manning. Three years ago this over/under is 9.5.
Ah yes, it's a Bill Simmons reader who gets his email published because it plugs the column of another Grantland columnist. Not only that, but this is an email from a Simmons reader who makes up statistics as if they are facts and not just something he made up prior to writing the email. So the over/under on wins for a quarterback making the 2nd year leap three years ago was 9.5? What was the over/under five years ago? How about ten years ago? I guess you can prove yourself to be correct if you make up a statistic that helps to prove your point.
I'd say Atlanta (9.5 wins), Minnesota (7 wins) and Carolina (7.5 wins — too high in that case) would be your Barnwell Theory value candidates.
Great, Rick from Indiana you have now made this Barnwell Theory a "thing" that Bill will recite in his mailbags and columns as if it was a fact. Who knows, maybe Bill will just outright steal the theory like he did the Ewing Theory.
THE KARDASHIANS
(shakes head sadly)
14. Dallas Cowboys
Who's the best "Overrated, Underrated or Properly Rated?" argument in the entire league? Antonio Ramiro Romo, that's who. You can argue both sides until you're blue in the face.
So not only is Bill getting ready to argue on under/overratedness, which is an argument that can't be proven definitively one way or another due to it being entirely subjective, but he has just proclaimed Tony Romo as the best topic for this argument, even though Romo being the best topic for this argument can also not be proven definitively one way or another definitively. At this point, nearly everything Bill would write on this topic is purely an opinion that he would try to pass off as a fact.
I'll spare you from having to read it. The stats say that some people underrate Tony Romo while those who use anecdotal evidence say Romo is overrated because he will give the opposing team a turnover at the perfect time they need one. Nothing has been decided in regard to over/underratedness, Bill thinks Romo will be underrated this year.
THE HOVERERS
12. New York Giants
But as far as the Super Bowl goes, I thought these two lists were interesting … Over-60 coaches who won the Super Bowl: Tom Coughlin (65), '11 Giants; Dick Vermeil (63), '99 Rams; Weeb Ewbank (61), '69 Jets.
In 2007, I created the Speed Limit Theory for NFL head coaches — once they creep over 55, it starts to get a little dicey. That doesn't mean they can't succeed. Coughlin and Vermeil won Super Bowls. Marty Schottenheimer won 14 games when he was 63. Marv Levy made four straight Super Bowls in his 60s.
Bill created this theory and then of course Tom Coughlin won two Super Bowls while being over the age of 55, while Bill Belichick made it two Super Bowls while being 54 years old and 58 years old.
35-and-over QBs who won the Super Bowl: John Elway (37, 38), '97 and '98 Broncos; Jim Plunkett (36), '83 Raiders; Roger Staubach (35), '77 Cowboys.
Wow, I'm not sure how this pertains to the New York Giants since Eli Manning isn't over the age of 35---
A couple of points: First, the 2013 Patriots have a 61-year-old coach AND a 36-year-old QB. They'd be making history twice by winning the Super Bowl — it's one of many reasons why I'm picking against them winning a fourth Super Bowl.
But...but...we aren't talking about the Patriots. We are talking about the New York Giants. The Patriots have already been discussed and are in the AFC, not the NFC.
Second, only two QB-coach combos have ever had their combined ages exceed 90 and still win a Super Bowl: Coughlin and Eli Manning in 2011 (95), and Vermeil and Kurt Warner in 1999 (91).
I always love it when Bill does simple math, creates a half-assed theory and then believes it means something. Bill likes to create complicated theories that can easily be summed up in another fashion. Basically, older quarterbacks generally don't win Super Bowls very often and older head coaches don't win Super Bowls very often. So the odds of an older head coach and an older quarterback winning a Super Bowl together are not high.
By the way, John Fox and Peyton Manning's ages add up to 95. It's not often an older quarterback wins a title and it's not often he wins the title with an older coach. There doesn't need to be a made-up theory to help prove this.
Third, Coughlin is two years older than my dad (who spent three hours sitting in the sun for a Saturday Red Sox–Dodgers game last month and was basically delirious for the next 36 hours),
I'm guessing Tom Coughlin, who happens to be a football coach and is used to being in the sun, probably is in better shape than Bill's dad. It wouldn't be a Bill Simmons column if he didn't try to attribute something to his friends or family that isn't necessarily attributable to just them.
I'm not saying he can't win the Super Bowl — shit, Tom Coughlin might be superhuman for all we know.
He did win a Super Bowl two apparently very, very long years ago in 2011, a time when Bill Simmons seems to believe Tom Coughlin was a decade younger than he is now.
I'm just pointing out that we have nearly 50 years of Super Bowl data at our disposal right now — only the 1993 Bills made the Super Bowl with a coach in his late 60s (Levy, age 68) and an over-30 QB (Jim Kelly, age 33). So if the 2013 Giants win the Super Bowl, they really will be making history. If it's all right, I'm picking against it.
Typical Bill Simmons. Notice how he is picking against the Giants for completely non-football related reasons. He has no clue how to pick against them based on their roster, so he makes up some theory in order to pick against them that way. At least count them out for a reason that is football-related.
I am slowly coming to the conclusion that Bill Simmons doesn't understand sports outside of NBA basketball. He tends to shy away from actually analyzing a team's strengths and weaknesses and prefers to focus on half-assed theories that will help lead him to the conclusion he is incapable of reaching while using analysis and a sports-related line of thought. Maybe not, but it seems Bill's default mechanism is to create a theory to explain something rather than just explain it in easier terms.
11. Chicago Bears
It's time for my annual "I know I discounted you in my over/under podcast with Cousin Sal, but I thought about it some more and now I think you're gonna be good" flip-flop pick!
Much like in the AFC Preview, Bill has chosen to play both sides with certain teams. If the Bears stink then he can claim his original point of view was correct, but if they are good then he can point out he knew the Bears would be good. Bill is terrified of being seen as wrong, so playing both sides works out well for him.
I love everything I'm reading about Marc Trestman — if he gets Jay Cutler and Matt Forte going, and Cutler can shed his QBPTSD issues after three years of pummelings (this photo spread is incredible), you'd have to throw Chicago into that six-team circle of "Teams That Can Win The Super Bowl."
Bill thinks the Bears are one of the six teams that can win the Super Bowl, but ranks them 11th in his power rankings and doesn't have them winning their Wild Card round game. So I guess they "can" win the Super Bowl, but Bill doesn't seem to think they will, except he said they can so either way he gets to be right and doesn't have to worry about being wrong and that's all that matters.
Thanks to the salary cap, the scheduling, unpredictable injuries and the NFL's love for parity, it's become harder and harder for one team to just dominate for five straight months and win the Super Bowl. You just want to be one of the five or six teams with a legitimate chance in January — you want to get to the point where a couple of Jacoby Jones–Rahim Moore plays swing your way and suddenly you're holding the trophy.
Oh, so now Bill is predicting which NFL teams will have the most amount of luck this year. I'm sure there is a theory to follow.
Anyway, we've reached the point of the Power Poll in which any of these 12 teams have a chance to make that circle.
Oh, so the six-team circle is now a twelve-team circle. You know what, let's just make it a thirty-two team circle and get it over with.
I don't trust Cutler's track record enough to stick Chicago in that circle yet, but I see them sniffing around it in January.
Well I guess the Bears are out of the circle now. Let me sum up Bill's statements on the Bears:
-He doesn't think they will be very good this year.
-He has changed his mind and thinks they will be good and are the 11th best team in the NFL.
-They are one of six teams that can win the Super Bowl.
-There are actually one of twelve teams that can win the Super Bowl.
-The Bears probably aren't good enough to win the Super Bowl.
No contradictions in there, right?
(If I offered every Packers fan 10 and 6 and the no. 5 seed right now, would they take it? I bet they would.)
THEY WOULD BILL! THEY WOULD TAKE THIS! YOU ARE ALWAYS SO RIGHT BECAUSE YOU ARE BILL SIMMONS!
I think if you offered fans of 26 of 32 teams in the NFL a 10-6 season and a fifth seed they would take it. I'm not sure why Bill seems to think because the Packers have a difficult schedule he is going really far out on on a limb in saying the Packers fans would accept a 10-6 season with a No. 5 seed in the playoffs.
Second, the Saints went 7-9 last year … and the coaching upgrade from the Superdome janitor to Sean Payton has to be worth at least a plus-4 WARM.
That's not a real thing...well, it is a real thing but people who don't strive to be the most clever person in the room will simply say "Having Sean Payton back has to be worth four additional wins for the Saints."
(There's a fourth reason that I hesitate to mention: Somehow I ended up with Aaron Rodgers as my starting QB in both fantasy leagues. I've had terrible fantasy football mojo ever since the glorious 2007 season, when I rode LaDainian Tomlinson, rookie Adrian Peterson and Wes Welker to my West Coast title, nearly went undefeated — jinxing that quest by stupidly writing about it — and spent way too much time crowing about it afterward. The following year, I built my season around Tom Brady and it was gone in eight minutes. I've never been the same — it's the fantasy equivalent of the Pirates losing Bonds and going into a two-decade tailspin. I haven't come close to winning a title since. Now I have all my eggs in the Aaron Rodgers basket. If I'm a fantasy mush, this can't be good for the Packers. If you don't believe me — again, it's Friday and I'm down by 97.9 points in one of my leagues right now. Sorry, Packers fans. I'm apologizing in advance.)
Please do tell me more about your fantasy team. In fact, give us a year-by-year breakdown of your fantasy seasons including your own personal thoughts on each season while including as much whining as possible.
Also, everyone spent the offseason (a) figuring out how to stop the read-option (which caught everyone by surprise last year), and (b) blowing smoke up Colin Kaepernick's butt and treating him like a superstar even though he's started only 10 games. I kept waiting for everything to go to his head in the form of a "My Name Is Colin" music video …
Then Bill links the "My Name is Willie" video from "Any Given Sunday" because we all know movies are exactly like real life.
Think about how much Baltimore struggled last night with subpar receivers once they fell behind, think about San Francisco falling behind by 17 or more in their last two playoff games, then think about having money on San Francisco anytime they're down 10 this season. It's a little nerve-racking. Seriously, what if the league figures out that read-option?
Then it appears Colin Kaepernick will successfully sling the ball all around the field and with the help of the 49ers very good defense do his best to help the 49ers come back to win the game.
3. Atlanta Falcons
Barnwell made an impressive regression case for them on Grantland, which corresponded nicely with Vegas's surprisingly low over/under of 9½ for them. (RICK VAUGHN ALERT!) I'm going the other way: I loved the way the Falcons played in the playoffs. I liked their draft. I think Steven Jackson has 2004 Corey Dillon potential.
Naturally, there is no more apt comparison to Steven Jackson than a comparison to a New England Patriots running back. It's not like there has ever been another free agent running back who joined a new team that ended up making the Super Bowl.
More importantly: We just watched the future of pro football in last night's Broncos-Ravens game. In the third quarter, the combination of Denver's pace with the altitude and Baltimore's offense falling into a three-and-out rut was absolutely deadly. You could see Baltimore's defense fading as that quarter dragged on. They couldn't handle it.
The Falcons and the Patriots ran a hurry-up offense long before the Broncos ran one with Peyton Manning. Not to mention, Atlanta doesn't play their home games at a high altitude so I'm not sure what the Denver altitude has to do with the Falcons. The future of pro football "we" saw in the Broncos-Ravens game seems irrelevant as it pertains to the Falcons. The Falcons were already running the hurry-up offense and they play in a dome, not in a high altitude.
If you have a franchise QB and a couple big playmakers, and you can rip off plays at a breakneck pace, that's the single biggest advantage of the "Nobody's Allowed To Crush Receivers Over The Middle Anymore" era.
If a team has a franchise QB and a couple playmakers I think that's an advantage no matter what pace that teams plays at, no?
But you need the right QB, you need the home-field advantage, you need the big-play guys, and you need to be REALLY good at the no-huddle thing. Atlanta checks all four of those boxes.
And yet, this advantage didn't get them to the Super Bowl last year and this year they have a shakier offensive line and a younger, less experienced defense. Who am I to argue with Bill's ability to make a list and check off boxes though?
1. Seattle Seahawks
Year after year after year, I can see the Niners and Seahawks measuring themselves against one another, lobbing potshots at each other, making sketchy roster moves clearly intended to piss off the other team (Chris Harper, everybody!)
I'm not sure this was a sketchy roster move since the Seahawks released Harper on their own accord fully knowing a division rival could claim him.
If it gets REALLY good, once or twice, we'll see a free agent switch from one side to the other for more money, and we'll all consider him a massive traitor — like how Red Sox fans felt about Johnny Damon in 2006.
I think Bill is getting a little bit (well, a lot) ahead of himself here.
It's going to be fantastic. I can't wait. But for 2013? I think it's Seattle's year. In Russell Wilson we trust.
No, in Russell Wilson you trust. "We" aren't you and you don't speak for "we."
If you missed Grantland's 2013 NFL preview coverage — including my three-part NFL over/under podcast from Vegas with Cousin Sal,
I didn't read or pay attention to any of this stuff, but I wouldn't say I missed it.
If you missed my AFC Power Poll heading into the 2013 season, which went up Thursday afternoon on Grantland, click here. That column included my Baltimore-Denver pick — after I ranked the Ravens ahead of the Broncos and grabbed the +7.5 points, they lost in Denver by 25.
It's almost like there is no science or rules behind gambling and in the end it is all guesswork. This couldn't be true though, right?
Today, we're cranking out an NFC Power Poll. For no extra charge, I included yesterday's AFC rankings within today's column so you could see every team on one list.
BUT WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST PUT THEM ALL IN ONE LIST ORIGINALLY? THIS ISN'T FAIR TO PEOPLE WITH OCD, LIKE MYSELF!
25. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
I juggled six possibilities for "NFC's worst team," which is a fancy way of saying, "they're better than anyone in the AFC's bottom seven, only they have the misfortune of playing in a stacked conference."
I'm not sure you can count any conference that has Ron Rivera as the head coach for one of the teams in that conference as "stacked."
Then you have second-year coach Greg Schiano, voted the winner of last November's Sporting News poll for "The Coach You'd Least Want to Play For."
Who else was on this list?
Bill Belichick
Tom Coughlin
Andy Reid
Mike Shanahan
Jim Harbaugh
That's ten Super Bowl appearances and six Super Bowl victories in there. This reminds me of a quote from "The Sopranos" where Tony was trying to stop Christopher Moltisanti from being the whiny bitch he could be at times,
"You don't have to love, but you will respect me."
Exactly. You don't have to love them, but you have to respect them because they win games. I'm not a fan of Greg Schiano, but his name on this list means very little as long as he is successful.
What's more likely — the Bucs making the 2013 playoffs, or Schiano and Freeman being jettisoned out of Tampa five months from now, then Schiano landing a college job and eventually ending up in one of those Mike Rice–type scandals because he attacked some poor sophomore with a tackling dummy?
It's very much more likely the Buccaneers make the 2013 playoffs.
DEAD MEN WALKING
24. The Lions of Detroit
23. Carolina Panthers
Both teams have killer fantasy QBs (Matt Stafford and Cam Newton) and one-of-a-kind blue-chippers (Calvin Johnson and Luke Kuechly). Both teams were well-represented at your 2013 fantasy draft.
And we all know that fantasy rankings always accurately represent real-life talent.
Know this: I've seen everything I needed to see from the Jim Schwartz and Ron Rivera eras already. It's a shame about the Panthers — blessed with Newton and one of the best defensive front sevens in football — who somehow have gone 2-12 in games decided by seven points or fewer since Newton and Rivera teamed up.
2-13 now. Yippee!
Football Outsiders' excellent DVOA season prediction model likes the 2013 Panthers for that very reason: Bad luck tends to even out over time.
But stupid decision-making stands the test of time. Upon having his previous offensive coordinator inexplicably get a head coaching job with the Browns, Ron Rivera decided to save his job he would turn to Mike Shula to run the offense. That's like a television show having falling ratings and then seeing if Ted McGinley is available to give the show a shot in the arm.
THE SHORT STRAWS
22. St. Louis Rams
21. Arizona Cardinals
We think Jeff Fisher is a good coach even though he has coached 16 full seasons and finished above .500 in only six of them.
I'm completely torn between being happy that more people are noticing Jeff "8-8" Fisher's overratedness and being really sad that Bill Simmons is agreeing with me.
He hasn't won a playoff game since 2003. He's an average coach. Not great, not bad. He's somewhere in the middle.
(whispers) Exactly right.
If it's OK with you, I'm crossing off the Rams. As for the Cardinals, they were looking sleeperish until they lost no. 7 overall pick Jonathan Cooper with a broken leg. (So much for improving their offensive line.)
So Bill was high on the Cardinals until they lost a rookie offensive lineman? At that point he thought, "Well that screws up the entire season" because a rookie offensive lineman got injured? Sounds like Bill had pretty much the entire Cardinals season riding on Cooper, which is especially odd to me. Who the hell has a team's entire season riding on one offensive lineman? It sounds like Bill just wanted an excuse to count the Cardinals out and couldn't think of a different football-related reason.
That reminds me, I went against someone who started Peyton Manning, Wes Welker and Demaryius Thomas in Week 1. It's Friday and I'm down 97.9 points already. Why is fantasy football fun again?
This reminds me, no one cares about the fantasy team of someone they don't know. Who am I kidding though? The Simmonsites care about everything Bill says and does.
A (VERY) FAINT WHIFF OF FRISKINESS
20. Philadelphia Eagles
Ottawa reader Neil Varan wonders, "Who's the leading candidate for your 2013 Man-Crush?" The answer: Eagles coach Chip Kelly. I love his brain, love his system, love the rapid-fire play thing … I mean, I would have picked the Eagles as my 2013 sleeper if Michael Vick weren't so prominently involved. Last year, we decided that (a) his decision-making just wasn't good enough, (b) it was too hard for him to stay healthy,
It was hard for Vick to stay healthy because he held onto the ball too long. In the Chip Kelly offense he isn't supposed to hold the ball long, so I guess we'll see.
Now he's going to spearhead an offense that runs 85 plays a game and relies on him to make MORE decisions? If Kelly makes this one work in Year 1, he's even better than I thought. And I think he's gonna be great. Eventually.
I'm not sure there is an "eventually" about it. I think Chip Kelly will be great running his offense from his first year in the league and then make the appropriate adjustments once the NFL adjusts to him.
Then again, Indiana reader Rick Vaughn throws something he calls "The Barnwell Theory" at us, explaining, "When Bill Barnwell and the Advanced Stat Troubadours (trademark pending) win the public over and blatantly influence a line, the team in question is guaranteed to prove them wrong. This year's example: Barnwell's regression-laden fingerprints are all over the Colts over/under for season wins (8.5). Quick reminder: they play half their games against the California penal league: Jags twice, Titans twice, Oakland (home), Dolphins (home), San Diego (away), and Cardinals (away). They're 5-3 over that stretch if Gary Hogeboom is under center. I'm guessing 6-2. Yes, they play the NFC West, but let's also consider the 2nd year leap for franchise QBs like Montana, Marino, Elway, and Manning. Three years ago this over/under is 9.5.
Ah yes, it's a Bill Simmons reader who gets his email published because it plugs the column of another Grantland columnist. Not only that, but this is an email from a Simmons reader who makes up statistics as if they are facts and not just something he made up prior to writing the email. So the over/under on wins for a quarterback making the 2nd year leap three years ago was 9.5? What was the over/under five years ago? How about ten years ago? I guess you can prove yourself to be correct if you make up a statistic that helps to prove your point.
I'd say Atlanta (9.5 wins), Minnesota (7 wins) and Carolina (7.5 wins — too high in that case) would be your Barnwell Theory value candidates.
Great, Rick from Indiana you have now made this Barnwell Theory a "thing" that Bill will recite in his mailbags and columns as if it was a fact. Who knows, maybe Bill will just outright steal the theory like he did the Ewing Theory.
THE KARDASHIANS
(shakes head sadly)
14. Dallas Cowboys
Who's the best "Overrated, Underrated or Properly Rated?" argument in the entire league? Antonio Ramiro Romo, that's who. You can argue both sides until you're blue in the face.
So not only is Bill getting ready to argue on under/overratedness, which is an argument that can't be proven definitively one way or another due to it being entirely subjective, but he has just proclaimed Tony Romo as the best topic for this argument, even though Romo being the best topic for this argument can also not be proven definitively one way or another definitively. At this point, nearly everything Bill would write on this topic is purely an opinion that he would try to pass off as a fact.
I'll spare you from having to read it. The stats say that some people underrate Tony Romo while those who use anecdotal evidence say Romo is overrated because he will give the opposing team a turnover at the perfect time they need one. Nothing has been decided in regard to over/underratedness, Bill thinks Romo will be underrated this year.
THE HOVERERS
12. New York Giants
But as far as the Super Bowl goes, I thought these two lists were interesting … Over-60 coaches who won the Super Bowl: Tom Coughlin (65), '11 Giants; Dick Vermeil (63), '99 Rams; Weeb Ewbank (61), '69 Jets.
In 2007, I created the Speed Limit Theory for NFL head coaches — once they creep over 55, it starts to get a little dicey. That doesn't mean they can't succeed. Coughlin and Vermeil won Super Bowls. Marty Schottenheimer won 14 games when he was 63. Marv Levy made four straight Super Bowls in his 60s.
Bill created this theory and then of course Tom Coughlin won two Super Bowls while being over the age of 55, while Bill Belichick made it two Super Bowls while being 54 years old and 58 years old.
35-and-over QBs who won the Super Bowl: John Elway (37, 38), '97 and '98 Broncos; Jim Plunkett (36), '83 Raiders; Roger Staubach (35), '77 Cowboys.
Wow, I'm not sure how this pertains to the New York Giants since Eli Manning isn't over the age of 35---
A couple of points: First, the 2013 Patriots have a 61-year-old coach AND a 36-year-old QB. They'd be making history twice by winning the Super Bowl — it's one of many reasons why I'm picking against them winning a fourth Super Bowl.
But...but...we aren't talking about the Patriots. We are talking about the New York Giants. The Patriots have already been discussed and are in the AFC, not the NFC.
Second, only two QB-coach combos have ever had their combined ages exceed 90 and still win a Super Bowl: Coughlin and Eli Manning in 2011 (95), and Vermeil and Kurt Warner in 1999 (91).
I always love it when Bill does simple math, creates a half-assed theory and then believes it means something. Bill likes to create complicated theories that can easily be summed up in another fashion. Basically, older quarterbacks generally don't win Super Bowls very often and older head coaches don't win Super Bowls very often. So the odds of an older head coach and an older quarterback winning a Super Bowl together are not high.
By the way, John Fox and Peyton Manning's ages add up to 95. It's not often an older quarterback wins a title and it's not often he wins the title with an older coach. There doesn't need to be a made-up theory to help prove this.
Third, Coughlin is two years older than my dad (who spent three hours sitting in the sun for a Saturday Red Sox–Dodgers game last month and was basically delirious for the next 36 hours),
I'm guessing Tom Coughlin, who happens to be a football coach and is used to being in the sun, probably is in better shape than Bill's dad. It wouldn't be a Bill Simmons column if he didn't try to attribute something to his friends or family that isn't necessarily attributable to just them.
I'm not saying he can't win the Super Bowl — shit, Tom Coughlin might be superhuman for all we know.
He did win a Super Bowl two apparently very, very long years ago in 2011, a time when Bill Simmons seems to believe Tom Coughlin was a decade younger than he is now.
I'm just pointing out that we have nearly 50 years of Super Bowl data at our disposal right now — only the 1993 Bills made the Super Bowl with a coach in his late 60s (Levy, age 68) and an over-30 QB (Jim Kelly, age 33). So if the 2013 Giants win the Super Bowl, they really will be making history. If it's all right, I'm picking against it.
Typical Bill Simmons. Notice how he is picking against the Giants for completely non-football related reasons. He has no clue how to pick against them based on their roster, so he makes up some theory in order to pick against them that way. At least count them out for a reason that is football-related.
I am slowly coming to the conclusion that Bill Simmons doesn't understand sports outside of NBA basketball. He tends to shy away from actually analyzing a team's strengths and weaknesses and prefers to focus on half-assed theories that will help lead him to the conclusion he is incapable of reaching while using analysis and a sports-related line of thought. Maybe not, but it seems Bill's default mechanism is to create a theory to explain something rather than just explain it in easier terms.
11. Chicago Bears
It's time for my annual "I know I discounted you in my over/under podcast with Cousin Sal, but I thought about it some more and now I think you're gonna be good" flip-flop pick!
Much like in the AFC Preview, Bill has chosen to play both sides with certain teams. If the Bears stink then he can claim his original point of view was correct, but if they are good then he can point out he knew the Bears would be good. Bill is terrified of being seen as wrong, so playing both sides works out well for him.
I love everything I'm reading about Marc Trestman — if he gets Jay Cutler and Matt Forte going, and Cutler can shed his QBPTSD issues after three years of pummelings (this photo spread is incredible), you'd have to throw Chicago into that six-team circle of "Teams That Can Win The Super Bowl."
Bill thinks the Bears are one of the six teams that can win the Super Bowl, but ranks them 11th in his power rankings and doesn't have them winning their Wild Card round game. So I guess they "can" win the Super Bowl, but Bill doesn't seem to think they will, except he said they can so either way he gets to be right and doesn't have to worry about being wrong and that's all that matters.
Thanks to the salary cap, the scheduling, unpredictable injuries and the NFL's love for parity, it's become harder and harder for one team to just dominate for five straight months and win the Super Bowl. You just want to be one of the five or six teams with a legitimate chance in January — you want to get to the point where a couple of Jacoby Jones–Rahim Moore plays swing your way and suddenly you're holding the trophy.
Oh, so now Bill is predicting which NFL teams will have the most amount of luck this year. I'm sure there is a theory to follow.
Anyway, we've reached the point of the Power Poll in which any of these 12 teams have a chance to make that circle.
Oh, so the six-team circle is now a twelve-team circle. You know what, let's just make it a thirty-two team circle and get it over with.
I don't trust Cutler's track record enough to stick Chicago in that circle yet, but I see them sniffing around it in January.
Well I guess the Bears are out of the circle now. Let me sum up Bill's statements on the Bears:
-He doesn't think they will be very good this year.
-He has changed his mind and thinks they will be good and are the 11th best team in the NFL.
-They are one of six teams that can win the Super Bowl.
-There are actually one of twelve teams that can win the Super Bowl.
-The Bears probably aren't good enough to win the Super Bowl.
No contradictions in there, right?
(If I offered every Packers fan 10 and 6 and the no. 5 seed right now, would they take it? I bet they would.)
THEY WOULD BILL! THEY WOULD TAKE THIS! YOU ARE ALWAYS SO RIGHT BECAUSE YOU ARE BILL SIMMONS!
I think if you offered fans of 26 of 32 teams in the NFL a 10-6 season and a fifth seed they would take it. I'm not sure why Bill seems to think because the Packers have a difficult schedule he is going really far out on on a limb in saying the Packers fans would accept a 10-6 season with a No. 5 seed in the playoffs.
Second, the Saints went 7-9 last year … and the coaching upgrade from the Superdome janitor to Sean Payton has to be worth at least a plus-4 WARM.
That's not a real thing...well, it is a real thing but people who don't strive to be the most clever person in the room will simply say "Having Sean Payton back has to be worth four additional wins for the Saints."
(There's a fourth reason that I hesitate to mention: Somehow I ended up with Aaron Rodgers as my starting QB in both fantasy leagues. I've had terrible fantasy football mojo ever since the glorious 2007 season, when I rode LaDainian Tomlinson, rookie Adrian Peterson and Wes Welker to my West Coast title, nearly went undefeated — jinxing that quest by stupidly writing about it — and spent way too much time crowing about it afterward. The following year, I built my season around Tom Brady and it was gone in eight minutes. I've never been the same — it's the fantasy equivalent of the Pirates losing Bonds and going into a two-decade tailspin. I haven't come close to winning a title since. Now I have all my eggs in the Aaron Rodgers basket. If I'm a fantasy mush, this can't be good for the Packers. If you don't believe me — again, it's Friday and I'm down by 97.9 points in one of my leagues right now. Sorry, Packers fans. I'm apologizing in advance.)
Please do tell me more about your fantasy team. In fact, give us a year-by-year breakdown of your fantasy seasons including your own personal thoughts on each season while including as much whining as possible.
Also, everyone spent the offseason (a) figuring out how to stop the read-option (which caught everyone by surprise last year), and (b) blowing smoke up Colin Kaepernick's butt and treating him like a superstar even though he's started only 10 games. I kept waiting for everything to go to his head in the form of a "My Name Is Colin" music video …
Then Bill links the "My Name is Willie" video from "Any Given Sunday" because we all know movies are exactly like real life.
Think about how much Baltimore struggled last night with subpar receivers once they fell behind, think about San Francisco falling behind by 17 or more in their last two playoff games, then think about having money on San Francisco anytime they're down 10 this season. It's a little nerve-racking. Seriously, what if the league figures out that read-option?
Then it appears Colin Kaepernick will successfully sling the ball all around the field and with the help of the 49ers very good defense do his best to help the 49ers come back to win the game.
3. Atlanta Falcons
Barnwell made an impressive regression case for them on Grantland, which corresponded nicely with Vegas's surprisingly low over/under of 9½ for them. (RICK VAUGHN ALERT!) I'm going the other way: I loved the way the Falcons played in the playoffs. I liked their draft. I think Steven Jackson has 2004 Corey Dillon potential.
Naturally, there is no more apt comparison to Steven Jackson than a comparison to a New England Patriots running back. It's not like there has ever been another free agent running back who joined a new team that ended up making the Super Bowl.
More importantly: We just watched the future of pro football in last night's Broncos-Ravens game. In the third quarter, the combination of Denver's pace with the altitude and Baltimore's offense falling into a three-and-out rut was absolutely deadly. You could see Baltimore's defense fading as that quarter dragged on. They couldn't handle it.
The Falcons and the Patriots ran a hurry-up offense long before the Broncos ran one with Peyton Manning. Not to mention, Atlanta doesn't play their home games at a high altitude so I'm not sure what the Denver altitude has to do with the Falcons. The future of pro football "we" saw in the Broncos-Ravens game seems irrelevant as it pertains to the Falcons. The Falcons were already running the hurry-up offense and they play in a dome, not in a high altitude.
If you have a franchise QB and a couple big playmakers, and you can rip off plays at a breakneck pace, that's the single biggest advantage of the "Nobody's Allowed To Crush Receivers Over The Middle Anymore" era.
If a team has a franchise QB and a couple playmakers I think that's an advantage no matter what pace that teams plays at, no?
But you need the right QB, you need the home-field advantage, you need the big-play guys, and you need to be REALLY good at the no-huddle thing. Atlanta checks all four of those boxes.
And yet, this advantage didn't get them to the Super Bowl last year and this year they have a shakier offensive line and a younger, less experienced defense. Who am I to argue with Bill's ability to make a list and check off boxes though?
1. Seattle Seahawks
Year after year after year, I can see the Niners and Seahawks measuring themselves against one another, lobbing potshots at each other, making sketchy roster moves clearly intended to piss off the other team (Chris Harper, everybody!)
I'm not sure this was a sketchy roster move since the Seahawks released Harper on their own accord fully knowing a division rival could claim him.
If it gets REALLY good, once or twice, we'll see a free agent switch from one side to the other for more money, and we'll all consider him a massive traitor — like how Red Sox fans felt about Johnny Damon in 2006.
I think Bill is getting a little bit (well, a lot) ahead of himself here.
It's going to be fantastic. I can't wait. But for 2013? I think it's Seattle's year. In Russell Wilson we trust.
No, in Russell Wilson you trust. "We" aren't you and you don't speak for "we."
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