What do you know? I read MMQB again, so here I am writing. Funny how that works. Peter was up to Peter King-esque types of things the last time I covered MMQB. You can probably guess what those sorts of things were. He lost his phone after putting it down in a crowded airport bathroom, wrote a haiku, and congratulated a horse on his accomplishments. This week Peter reveals Mr. Ed's real name was not Mr. Ed. And yeah, there is still an awful haiku.
So the news of the NFL week starts in Charlotte, where owners begin gathering tonight for the annual quickie spring meeting
For God's sake, use the correct gender-assigned bathroom. We don't need no trouble these days.
(24 hours for these impatient billionaires), and by sundown Tuesday we’ll have three new Super Bowl cities.
The owners are building three new cities to host the Super Bowl? Who the hell says "Rome wasn't built in a day," because the NFL owners are building three cities in one day.
Super Bowl 54, February 2020: South Florida over Los Angeles and Tampa Bay. The
truth is the NFL would love to give the Super Bowl capping the league’s
first century to the city where the first Super Bowl was played, Los
Angeles. It could happen. But the Rams would really prefer to not be
preparing for a Super Bowl in the first season the new stadium in
Inglewood is operational.
This is Peter's prediction of who gets the Super Bowl. The Rams agreed to do "Hard Knocks" and kept who the #1 overall pick was under wraps to keep the drama going, so of course it makes sense for them to be able to dictate WHEN they host the Super Bowl over the other cities that just want to host the Super Bowl at any point it is convenient for the NFL to allow that city to do so.
Rules the owners will consider in Charlotte
Video study on sidelines during games. Currently, teams
can look at still images on their Microsoft Surfaces on sidelines
during games, or on images faxed from the press box the old-fashioned
way. Last year, during a few preseason games and the Pro Bowls, coaches
and quarterbacks could watch video on the Surfaces, and the players and
coaches loved it.
Sam Bradford LOVED being able to watch "Dexter" on the sidelines while the Eagles defense was on the field. He just wished the defense could have done more to stay on the field longer so he wouldn't have gotten constantly interrupted and ended up having to go back on the field. But hey, he's a competitor, so he cherished the chance to be paid. Plus, play quarterback. That was important too.
One hour has been set aside at the meetings so the league can discuss
the next wave of research and funding for player health and safety …
One whole hour! These owners have employees who are suffering from early dementia and dying from playing football, but they are kind enough to dedicate an hour to seeing if any of this stuff can be further prevented. I imagine this hour is really like the last session prior to lunch at most conferences. The presenter flies through the slides and gets the attendees out to lunch early, so most of the time dedicated to discussing player health is spent eating cubes of cheese and bitching about there being too much sugar in the tea.
Now this is downright strange. The NFL is investigating the by-the-book
Ravens for violating one of the simplest and clearest rules in the
collective bargaining agreement: practicing in pads during their rookie
minicamp.
It's so strange the public perception of an NFL team doesn't quite match reality 100% of the time. HOW COULD THIS BE?
I would be surprised if the Ravens get docked one of their precious
mid-round draft picks; the team has had the most compensatory picks in
the league since the system was instituted in 1994. Usually the
punishment for such violations is a diminution of spring practice time
and a fine for the offending parties—either the team or the coach or
both.
Now if the NFL had heard the Ravens were using slightly deflated footballs AND practicing with pads on? That's a heavy fine and loss of a first round draft pick. Or possibly Joe Flacco would be executed in the town square. It's totally up to the Ravens. The NFL doesn't want to appear heavy-handed.
The Washington Post last week published results of a poll of 504 of
the country’s 5.4 million Native Americans—in all 50 states and the
District of Columbia—that found:
Ninety percent of those polled said the nickname of Washington’s NFL
franchise does not bother them. Only 9 percent said the nickname
bothered them, with 1 percent undecided or with no opinion.
Seventy-three percent said the word Redskin is not disrespectful.
Okay … but what of the 21 percent, the 106 (approximately) of the 504
Native Americans polled who do find the name disrespectful?
These 21% of people are in what's known as "the minority," which means "not the majority" and we live in a country where, in general, "majority rules." You can always find something that a few people consider disrespectful, which doesn't mean their feelings should be ignored, but it also doesn't mean this minority should be catered to. If the Redskins changed their name, what about the 79% who don't find the name disrespectful. They no longer count?
I personally don't give a crap if the Redskins change their name or not. I'm not Native American and have no real feelings one way or another. I try not to tell others how they should/should not feel. I'm offended by things people say or do, but it doesn't mean my minority opinion should be the majority or catered to. More importantly, and I think this is important, many of the same people writing about the Redskins team name change are more prone to favoring the name change given their political affiliation.
The media is more liberal, so it makes sense that a more liberal point of view (changing the Redskins name) would be over-represented when talking about the potential name change. But I can't emphasize enough how little of an opinion I have about this issue. If Native Americans really find it offensive, change it. If Native Americans don't care and the Washington Redskins organization doesn't want to change it, leave it as it is.
The NFL’s Incredible Shrinking Stat: touchdown numbers for running backs.
Adrian Peterson has 97, and there’s little doubt he’ll become the
10th back in history to rush for at least 100 touchdowns; in fact, this
year, he could catch Jim Brown, number five on the list with 105.
But after that, there’s a long fall to the number two active
touchdown runner: The Colts’ Frank Gore, 33 years old, enters the season
with 70 career rushing touchdowns. Number three on the active list is
DeAngelo Williams, with 57.
Hmmmm...I am proposing there is a causation issue here.
The decline in emphasis on the running game is making the touchdown run
passé. Find an offensive category in NFL history with only two of the
top 50 players of all-time being active today.
I won't argue the emphasis on the running game has declined, but couldn't this statistic be the result of teams going away from a one running back system, more quarterbacks being considered "running" quarterbacks and the evolution of players who are considered goal line backs?
Here is an example and it may be a bad one. You can judge. Jonathan Stewart has 36 career rushing touchdowns. Cam Newton has 43 career rushing touchdowns. Mike Tolbert has 33 career rushing touchdowns. Maybe this is a special case, but does Stewart's 36 career touchdowns mean the touchdown run is becoming passe or when it gets to "1st/2nd/3rd-and-goal" short situations there are a variety of players in the Carolina offense that could get the carry? There isn't just one running back that gets the ball on the goal line. This is true for several NFL teams that don't have Adrian Peterson or another stud running back.
BenJarvus Green-Ellis has 42 career rushing touchdowns. That's more than Brian Westbrook, Christian Okoye,and Gale Sayers. He has often been used as the goal line back for the Patriots/Bengals. Brandon Jacobs is 47th all-time on the rushing touchdown list with 60 rushing touchdowns. Mike Alstott is 50th with 58 career rushing touchdowns, while Warrick Dunn is 73rd with 49 career rushing touchdowns. It's possible use of the running game is declining, but rushing touchdowns are often shared by multiple running backs. So I don't think a decline in the emphasis on the running game can be the only cause here.
Jon Runyan, appointed the NFL’s vice president of policy and rules
administration (head of on-field discipline) last week, has had an
interesting life. Fourth-round pick of the Houston Oilers, 1996. Many
battles royale with Hall of Fame defensive end Michael Strahan. Voted
the No. 2 dirtiest player in the NFL by Sports Illustrated, 2006. Voted
to two terms in U.S. Congress out of south Jersey starting in 2011.
My favorite factoid about him: During one phase of his career, Runyan
would stop at a Starbucks drive-through on the way to games and order
nine shots of espresso in a venti cup. And, of course, he’d sip it in
the hours before a game. I bet he was a rip-snorter in first halfs.
Yes, Runyan probably did fart really loud all through the first half.
Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week
Two notes about air travel:
• Been stuck in a couple of long TSA lines (58 minutes at LaGuardia
in April, but nothing approaching two hours) at American airports this
spring, and I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the complaints about the
inconvenience. That’s modern travel today. We live in a dangerous world,
and you’re just going to have to accept getting to the airport two
hours before your flight as a rule now. The alternative to significant
inconvenience, I’m afraid, is much worse.
Given the fact Peter has a weekly section of MMQB dedicated to complaining about travel inconveniences, his condescension towards those who complain about waiting in line to get through security at an airport probably says more about him than any comment I could make would. It's nice how Peter understands know that even small inconveniences at the airport are worth the trade-off of ensuring each person flying through that airport stays safe. I wonder how long this message sticks with Peter?
• I was on an American Airlines flight from Kansas City to O’Hare the
other day. A man walked down the aisle and into the row of his seat, and
he bumped his head hard on the area right below the overhead bin,
causing the underside of the bin to fly open. The guy was okay, looked
at the yawning under-bin with wires hanging out, and figured he should
probably just leave it alone. The flight attendant came by and said
she’d alert maintenance. I’m thinking, Why don’t they just try to close
the hatch themselves, before calling maintenance? But, you know,
everything in the world can’t be left up to me. So we waited, and all
the passengers boarded, and it was maybe 15 minutes before a maintenance
fellow showed up. He took one look at it, carefully moved the under-bin
piece back into place, made sure none of the wires would be pinched,
and then closed it with a click. Took him seven seconds, max. But then,
of course, “the proper paperwork” had to be filled out and signed off.
Yes, the paperwork. The captain came on and said we’d be underway as
soon as “the paperwork” was complete. Five minutes. Ten minutes.
Fourteen minutes. “We’re just getting the paperwork completed, and we’ll
be underway.” All in all, it was a 31-minute delay, to snap a bin shut
and dutifully record it in some logbook.
One paragraph. It took one paragraph for Peter to go from "A little inconvenience is worth knowing you are a safe" to "I have no patience for any type of the delay that prevents me from getting to where I want to go in the fastest manner possible." I know Peter is railing against the paperwork involved, but just like TSA agents being present at security, this is about addressing and documenting a potential threat to the plane's security. It took one paragraph for Peter to turn away from his thought that the alternative to a significant inconvenience is much worse than that inconvenience.
It does sound ridiculous to have such a delay for a small issue. Peter misses the key issue here. The issue isn't whether the flight attendant can close the bin or not. Of course she could. Does Peter know where these wires attached to? Perhaps these were wires for the air that passengers can turn on during a flight, were part of the plane's lighting system or even were just wires that are required for some of the emergency buttons to light up. That's the point, that Peter has no clue what these wires do. One minute he's preaching patience through security, the next he just assumes wires hanging down from the under-bin can just be fixed by a flight attendant. It's just another day in the life of Peter King. He doesn't need to follow his own rules.
Ten Things I Think I Think
2. I think the four strangest things about the Bovada.com win-total over-unders for the 2016 season are:
c. Only five teams with a double-digit projection: Pats, Pack, Panthers, Steelers, Seahawks, all at 10.5.
Gregg Easterbrook would be PISSED if he saw these projections. I'm sure he would write, "How can a team win 0.5 of a game?" and then continue his ridiculous criticisms of these over-unders for the next two years until he mysteriously stops mentioning them like he never even brought it up after a reader points out why these over-unders do in fact make sense.
d. Bovada likes Jameis and the Bucs, and the re-made Jags: 7.5 wins
each … which is more than the over/under for the Eagles, Saints,
Dolphins and Lions (7 apiece).
(Gregg Easterbrook) "HOW CAN A TEAM WIN 7.5 GAMES? I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW AVERAGES/OVER-UNDERS WORK BUT MY LACK OF KNOWLEDGE ON THIS SUBJECT DEFINITELY IS A REFLECTION ON HOW STUPID OVER-UNDERS ARE AND IS NOT A REFLECTION ON ME!"
5. I think I did note that Brock Osweiler told our Jenny Vrentas he
holds “no grudge” with the Denver Broncos, and while I’m not accusing
him of not telling the truth, I retain the same feeling I’ve had since
he left the Super Bowl champs for a lesser team: Something happened in
Denver that Osweiler didn’t like and that led him to leave—the
late-season benching perhaps. But something.
I would think the Brinks truck of money that the Texans backed up to Osweiler's door would make him feel better, but I guess not. Perhaps Osweiler is upset he spent four seasons on the bench, played fairly well when he got a chance, and then got benched for a noodle-armed quarterback who managed to throw for 539 yards over three full playoff games, while riding his defense to a Super Bowl victory and leading his offense to the worst performance by a winning team ever? Nope, I'm really not bitter, these are just the facts. I guess the fact the Broncos were historically bad offensively in the Super Bowl, then the team waited around for the well-past-his-prime quarterback who led the team to that historically bad performance to make a decision about retirement rather than give a "fair" contract offer to his backup who had waited four years for the opportunity and feels like he had proven he could do the job had something to do with the decision by Osweiler.
Maybe. That could be it.
9. I think this will show my age. But no matter how quiet the Giants are
about what Janoris Jenkins said to Paul Schwartz of the New York Post
last week, about having five children with four women, none of whom is
his wife, they cannot be happy with it. Said Jenkins: “When they were
going with me, they understand, ‘OK, he’s a football player. He’s gonna
have multiple women.’ That just comes with dating a football player.”
The Giants knew about Jenkins' children long before they signed him to a free agent contract this offseason. Isn't it weird how the Rams drafted Jenkins and Peter didn't really have much to say about the Rams drafting him when he has five children with four women? So the Rams, a team which Peter has significant ties, draft Jenkins and Peter goes out of his way to show the support system the Rams have in place for Jenkins to meet his parental obligations. The Giants sign Jenkins as a free agent and now all of a sudden Peter "shows his age" and thinks the Giants can't be happy about all these children he has. The Rams draft Jenkins, Peter shows how they have the support system for him, the Giants sign Jenkins and now all these kids are an issue. Weird how that works isn't it?
So, monogamy is either highly unusual or just wrong for a football
player?
Come on Peter. Jenkins' comments are dumb, but we all know how much ass professional athletes get. They travel all the time, they have money...it's not the high point of morality, but after covering sports for this long you have to ask this question?
The establishment Giants owners, the Maras and Tisches, have to
be gagging at the thought that for their football-playing employees,
it’s expected that traditional families are passe.
I'm sure Steve Tisch, a man who has been married then divorced twice and has children with both of his ex-wives, is really up in arms about how traditional families are now passe. And who can forget this little fucking nugget from THIS VERY MMQB?:
u. To Laura King and Kim Zylker King: Happy First Anniversary! I hope the next 74 years together are as great as the first was.
MY GOD! PETER HAS A DAUGHTER WHO IS A LESBIAN? AND SHE IS MARRIED TO ANOTHER WOMAN?
Whatever will Peter's overlords at NBC think about him showing off how a traditional family is now passe? I'm sure whoever employs Peter's daughter is gagging at the thought of their employee giving the middle finger to the idea of a traditional family. Peter is just a clusterfuck of contradictions and lack of thought sometimes.
And what the hell is up with Peter using "passe" several times in this MMQB? Is this his word of the day or something?
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
c. Chris Sale is 9-0, and he’ll have two more starts before June 1.
Imagine being 11-0 through a third of the season. Dare we mention Denny
McLain?
You just did. Also, Peter will write "dare we mention Denny McLain" and then point out exactly why his own thought about mentioning Denny McLain in relation to Sale winning 30 games is probably not necessary.
d. Denny McLain’s the last pitcher to win 30 games in a year (31-6, in
1968), and he won his 11th game on June 16, 1968. So there’s that. Not
saying it’s anything but a remote possibility for Sale, because McLain
started every fourth day. Generally, Sale starts every fifth or sixth
day.
Also, the most games Sale has started in a season is 31. So he would have to essentially win every start while also getting a decision in every start he makes to win 30 games. It's hard enough to get a decision in every start, much less win every start. So yeah, 30 games isn't happening. Dare you mention Denny McLain though?
j. Mr. Ed died in 1970. I have a quiz for you: Do you know Mr. Ed’s real
name? I mean, it wasn’t “Mr. Ed.” Mr. Ed was Mr. Ed’s stage name.
Plus, and this is a very important point, it's a horse. So the horse didn't even know it had a stage name. Why would anyone assume "Mr. Ed" was the horse's name simply because it appeared on a show called "Mr. Ed"? I don't assume Hugh Laurie's name is "Gregory House" because he appears on a show called "House."
(Peter King) "Here is a nugget of trivia for you: The direwolf on 'Game of Thrones' is not named 'Ghost.' In fact, that direwolf's name is 'I'm a Special Effect.' I bet you didn't know that."
k. Real name:
“Bamboo Harvester.”
Though a horse named "Mr. Ed" did publicity shots after Bamboo Harvester's death in 1970. So Mr. Ed's real name actually was "Mr. Ed" for a period of time.
l. Not much of an NBA guy, as you all know.
And, as you all know, this means an observation about the NBA will immediately follow this comment. Peter can't not make an observation about the NBA without first distancing himself from the sport completely so his readers know just how stupid his following observation truly will be.
But has any team ever been set up for a draft the way the Celtics are?
They pick 3, 16, 23, 31, 35, 45, 51, 58. There are 60 picks in the
draft.
The odds of the Celtics ever using all of those picks is very, very, very low. Not to mention, the best two players in the draft also happen to be positions of need for the Celtics, so they are stuck with a perceived fall-off in talent after the first two picks, as well as a group of guards to choose from that doesn't appear to be an immediate need for them. Plus, the Celtics don't have depth issues. They have a very deep team, but they need a player they can build the team around and don't necessarily need more players.
n. The Knicks once owned the seventh, ninth and 37th overall picks in the draft. Traded them all away.
Eh, not really. The Knicks never owned these specific picks in the 2016 draft. They owned two first round picks and a second round pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, but it's not like they traded away the 7th, 9th, and 37th pick in the draft knowing those were the picks they had. The Knicks traded the 7th pick in 2011 in the Carmelo Anthony trade by allowing the Nuggets the option to switch 2016 first round picks. The Knicks traded the 9th pick in 2013 to the Raptors and the 37th pick has been through three teams and now I have a headache. My point is the Knicks didn't think they would be picking so high (low?) in the draft, so they didn't exactly trade these picks knowing where they would be picking in the 2016 NBA Draft. Still, it's awful team planning. No doubt.
The Adieu Haiku
Ed, Wilbur: both dead.
Werder, don’t you dare change that
Twitter avatar
King, please for all that is wonderful and great in this life, in the name of the traditional family that you believe others want so badly even though they don't live the life of a traditional family and neither do you, stop writing haikus.
Dare to change that haiku.
Showing posts with label cause and effect problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cause and effect problems. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Thursday, August 6, 2015
4 comments Rick Telander Thinks Jay Cutler Should Be More Like Tim Tebow Because Tebow is "An Effective Quarterback"
Bears fans wondered last year what was wrong with Jay Cutler. NFL analysts either still believe Cutler can be a great NFL quarterback or think the Bears should give up on him. John Fox is either going to make Cutler into a quarterback who makes great decisions with a conservative, run-based game plan (plus third down draws!) or pull him by Week 5 in favor of Jimmy Clausen. Not that Fox wants to re-live the Clausen Experiment of 2010 of course, but he does what he has to in order to win. He did, after all, get Tim Tebow to win games as a starting quarterback in the NFL. That's impressive. Speaking of Tim Tebow, Rick Telander believes Jay Cutler should be more like Tim Tebow. Rick wants Jay Cutler to learn how to be an effective NFL quarterback. Now unless Rick has traveled to the year 2019 during his lifetime, and at that point Tebow has actually become an effective NFL quarterback, I have no idea why he would state Tebow is an effective quarterback. But hey, we should all be more like Tebow.
Here’s a thought: If Tim Tebow can learn to be an effective NFL quarterback, why can’t our buddy Jay Cutler?
Jay Cutler's career numbers: 61-58 record as a starter, 61.7% completion, 183 TD's, 130 INT's, 27749 yards, 233.2 yards per game, 85.2 rating. 324 rushing attempts, 1425 yards, 4.4 yards per carry, 8 touchdowns.
Tim Tebow's career numbers: 8-6 as a starter, 47.9% completion, 17 TD's, 9 INT's, 2422 yards, 69.2 yards per game, 75.3 rating. 197 rushing attempts, 989 yards, 5.0 yards per carry, 12 touchdowns.
Granted, Tebow's sample size is significantly smaller, but if Telander will make the assertion then I will counter the assertion with the statistics I have. Tebow is not an effective quarterback compared to Jay Cutler, even if you include the rushing yards each has. Tebow has running plays called for him more than Cutler does, but I was surprised that Cutler has 324 rushing attempts in his career. So no, Tim Tebow did not learn to be an effective NFL quarterback and he in fact regressed as his career went along. If anything, Tebow forgot how to be an effective NFL quarterback as his career continued with the Jets and Patriots.
You may say, "Ben, we are going to learn that Tebow is working with Tom House to be an effective quarterback, so it's safe to assume this will be true." I think that's dumb, yet it's the assumption Rick Telander works this column around.
Now, I’m not saying Tebow, last seen playing quality minutes in the league back in 2011, will ever be Tom Brady. But he’s trying to be.
When I was younger, I was trying to be an NBA player. I worked hard at practicing. That doesn't mean Josh Smith needs to be more like me.
Ah yes, this is where the testimonials will begin. I'm not saying Tebow doesn't work hard, but he's hired Tom House (and I assume House is getting paid) to work with him, so naturally there will be quotes from House describing what a FANTASTIC JOB he has done with Tebow and how Tebow is working so hard. This could be true, but remember, House is getting paid (essentially) to say this. Based on quotes from someone Tim Tebow has hired, Rick Telander is making the assumption that (a) Cutler isn't working as hard as Tebow, (b) if Cutler worked this hard he would be a better quarterback, and (c) this now makes Tebow an "effective quarterback." All of these assumptions could be very, very incorrect.
Here’s a thought: If Tim Tebow can learn to be an effective NFL quarterback, why can’t our buddy Jay Cutler?
Jay Cutler's career numbers: 61-58 record as a starter, 61.7% completion, 183 TD's, 130 INT's, 27749 yards, 233.2 yards per game, 85.2 rating. 324 rushing attempts, 1425 yards, 4.4 yards per carry, 8 touchdowns.
Tim Tebow's career numbers: 8-6 as a starter, 47.9% completion, 17 TD's, 9 INT's, 2422 yards, 69.2 yards per game, 75.3 rating. 197 rushing attempts, 989 yards, 5.0 yards per carry, 12 touchdowns.
Granted, Tebow's sample size is significantly smaller, but if Telander will make the assertion then I will counter the assertion with the statistics I have. Tebow is not an effective quarterback compared to Jay Cutler, even if you include the rushing yards each has. Tebow has running plays called for him more than Cutler does, but I was surprised that Cutler has 324 rushing attempts in his career. So no, Tim Tebow did not learn to be an effective NFL quarterback and he in fact regressed as his career went along. If anything, Tebow forgot how to be an effective NFL quarterback as his career continued with the Jets and Patriots.
You may say, "Ben, we are going to learn that Tebow is working with Tom House to be an effective quarterback, so it's safe to assume this will be true." I think that's dumb, yet it's the assumption Rick Telander works this column around.
Now, I’m not saying Tebow, last seen playing quality minutes in the league back in 2011, will ever be Tom Brady. But he’s trying to be.
When I was younger, I was trying to be an NBA player. I worked hard at practicing. That doesn't mean Josh Smith needs to be more like me.
And for our little hypothetical equation, that counts for a lot.
I'm not sure what this hypothetical equation is all about, but I'm pretty sure "natural talent to be a quarterback" is a big factor in NFL success, so if that's not part of the hypothetical equation comparing Tebow and Cutler then it should be.
Is Cutler, now in his 10th year in the NFL, with 119 starts
under his belt, trying to remake himself into a winning, Super
Bowl-caliber QB? We don’t know, since Cutler communicates with the same
openness of a trap-door spider, deep in his hole.
Cutler has plenty of other problems, but isn't it funny how many sportswriters' issue with Cutler always ends up being, "He's not nice and friendly to us when we want to talk to him"? It always comes back to that at some point and leads me to believe that if Cutler turned into Jerome Bettis (minus all the drug dealing and gang-banging as a youth which will be forgotten and never brought up again), then he wouldn't get quite so much criticism for just being a decent quarterback sometimes. But the media has to be harder on Cutler because he's not nice and sweet to them. It always feels like that's part of the evaluation of Cutler, either knowingly or unknowingly, from the sports media.
But let’s say he is. Now with a new coach and his fifth
offensive coordinator in seven years, Cutler has a chance for rebirth.
If he wants to be redone. And it’s even possible. It’s not like his
career stats are terrible. He has thrown for almost 28,000 yards and 183
touchdowns. Last season, from an angle, looks like it was a dandy.
Nearly 99% of college quarterbacks who want to play in the NFL would accept these statistics happily and go live life on a pile of money, but that's not the standard Cutler should be held to is it? Lower these numbers, lower the skill level and then think, "Shouldn't Cutler be more like THAT GUY?" If the answer is "absolutely not, are you high?" then congratulations, you aren't a crazy person and Rick Telander's column makes no sense to you.
So Cutler ought to want to improve. He has to improve.
Read this sentence again while remembering that Tebow is supposedly working harder than ever and seems to be regressing in his ability and opportunities to be an NFL quarterback. Tebow peaked a few years ago and Telander is comparing Cutler to Tebow, as if Tebow hasn't regressed through his career. His statistics don't lie.
At any rate, here’s what’s up with Tebow, probably most
remembered for his college exploits at Florida: Heisman Trophy winner,
two-time NCAA national champion (2006 and 2008) and lots of Bible
messages on his eye patches. Oh, and there was the famed ‘‘Tebowing,’’
the kneeling in closed-eyes, prayerful motionlessness as teammates and
fans swirled around him.
The point is, Tebow can’t really throw. Everybody knows this.
Everybody knows this except for Tim Tebow and the people who are paid to say positive things about Tebow because they have spent time and their credibility trying to turn Tebow into a quarterback who can throw the football. These people will state they believe Tebow can throw the football, partly because they have a good reason to say this.
It’s likely the Bears, led by running back Marion Barber’s
inability to do something as simple as not run out of bounds and stop
the clock in a game against the Denver Broncos in December 2011,
extended Tebow’s quarterbacking career by a season or so.
I'm surprised Rick isn't trying to find a way to pin this on Jay Cutler somehow. I'm sure it can be done.
"You know, if Jay Cutler was a hard-working quarterback who cared about his chosen profession and wanted to answer our questions, then maybe he could have thrown the ball in this situation to run the clock out, instead of having to rely on a backup running back to do his dirty work for him."
That sad situation in Denver occurred with the Bears leading
by three. Barber cluelessly stopped the clock, giving the wild-armed
Tebow a rare moment to eke out a come-from-behind overtime win.
And this is the quarterback who Telander says Jay Cutler should emulate and he also called Tebow "an effective quarterback." Now Tebow is "wild-armed."
So Tebow, out of the game entirely for the last two seasons,
has been religiously (oops, wrong word?) training under former
major-league pitcher Tom House, learning how to pass a football. House,
most famous for catching Hank Aaron’s 715th home-run ball in the Atlanta
Braves’ bullpen, runs a complex and difficult program to break down a
quarterback’s improper throwing style and build it back up the right
way.
How does Rick know that Jay Cutler hasn't been working on improving his throwing motion or hasn't worked extra hard this offseason to improve his deficiencies from last season? Tebow has talked up his hard work because (a) he was trying to break back into the NFL, (b) wanted to keep his name out there in the mind of GM's, and (c) wanted GM's to know he was working on the biggest criticism of him, which was his throwing motion. Tebow publicized his hard work because that was one way to get back into the NFL. Jay Cutler at the very least has an NFL roster spot (possibly due to his contract), so he doesn't need to go around and tell everyone how hard he is working. Plus, why would the same guy who Rick Telander accuses of "communicating with the same openness of a trap-door spider" go around telling everyone how hard he is working? He's not good at communicating. It is possible to do hard work and not tell everyone about it.
Tebow was nothing but wrong.
He had a good run for a half season or so.
He threw the ball all with his arm, way to the side, in a
windup that was something from a Walt Disney cartoon. His throws were
slow to launch and not very accurate, made evident by his 49.7 percent
completion rate in two seasons with the Broncos and one with the New
York Jets. He was a tight end/fullback behind center.
Right, so why should Jay Cutler be like him again? The work ethic that Tebow has? Maybe, but there is a difference in not working hard and simply not publicizing how hard you are working. There is always a perception that if Cutler just worked harder he would be a better quarterback. Maybe he does work hard and all of his measurables and talent lead to what he is.
Now? Well, maybe not perfect. Maybe not even average for the
NFL. But at least hopeful. And, yes, he worked his tail off to improve.
By definition, I don't think a third-string quarterback can be considered an average NFL quarterback. Hope has nothing to do with it. Tebow can have hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled first. Also, Tebow has worked really hard to improve, that's great, but it doesn't mean Cutler needs to be more like him or doesn't work hard enough. It's entirely possible that Cutler has worked hard on becoming a great quarterback without requiring people talking about it. Maybe not, though I'm sure Rick Telander believes he knows the truth.
By definition, I don't think a third-string quarterback can be considered an average NFL quarterback. Hope has nothing to do with it. Tebow can have hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled first. Also, Tebow has worked really hard to improve, that's great, but it doesn't mean Cutler needs to be more like him or doesn't work hard enough. It's entirely possible that Cutler has worked hard on becoming a great quarterback without requiring people talking about it. Maybe not, though I'm sure Rick Telander believes he knows the truth.
‘‘He’s not one-dimensional anymore,’’ House told USA Today, ‘‘so I think he’s done a great job.’’
Ah yes, this is where the testimonials will begin. I'm not saying Tebow doesn't work hard, but he's hired Tom House (and I assume House is getting paid) to work with him, so naturally there will be quotes from House describing what a FANTASTIC JOB he has done with Tebow and how Tebow is working so hard. This could be true, but remember, House is getting paid (essentially) to say this. Based on quotes from someone Tim Tebow has hired, Rick Telander is making the assumption that (a) Cutler isn't working as hard as Tebow, (b) if Cutler worked this hard he would be a better quarterback, and (c) this now makes Tebow an "effective quarterback." All of these assumptions could be very, very incorrect.
House says it takes about 1,000 perfect repetitions to even start to change a bad habit, and 10,000 to master the skill.
Actually, Malcolm Gladwell says that. It's even in a book that Gladwell wrote called "Outliers."
Actually, Malcolm Gladwell says that. It's even in a book that Gladwell wrote called "Outliers."
‘‘He’s got his 10,000 reps,’’ House said. ‘‘Can this guy be an NFL quarterback? Well, our data says yes.’’
The data says "YES" Tebow can be an NFL quarterback. The reality does not reflect the data at this point. And again, Rick Telander is bashing Jay Cutler based on comments made by someone who works for and has skin in the game on whether Tebow ends up being an NFL quarterback. It's like asking Jay Cutler's wife if he works hard enough to be an NFL quarterback. Actually, Kristin Cavilavaillari probably has enough money on her own and wouldn't need to lie in order to give an answer. I would love to know a situation when Tom House or George Whitfield would say, "Oh hell no, this guy isn't ever going to be an NFL quarterback because he hasn't improved any" after that quarterback has worked under their tutelage. It makes no sense, because any negative comment also reflects on them. So consider the source when trying to say Cutler should work to improve like Tebow has so obviously improved.
The data says "YES" Tebow can be an NFL quarterback. The reality does not reflect the data at this point. And again, Rick Telander is bashing Jay Cutler based on comments made by someone who works for and has skin in the game on whether Tebow ends up being an NFL quarterback. It's like asking Jay Cutler's wife if he works hard enough to be an NFL quarterback. Actually, Kristin Cavilavaillari probably has enough money on her own and wouldn't need to lie in order to give an answer. I would love to know a situation when Tom House or George Whitfield would say, "Oh hell no, this guy isn't ever going to be an NFL quarterback because he hasn't improved any" after that quarterback has worked under their tutelage. It makes no sense, because any negative comment also reflects on them. So consider the source when trying to say Cutler should work to improve like Tebow has so obviously improved.
Ten thousand perfect throws is a lot. Like a serious lot.
Tebow was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles in April, so we’ll see
pretty soon if he’s actually reconstructed himself.
Yes, and if Tebow plays well for Chip Kelly then that obviously means Cutler didn't work hard enough and should be more like Tebow.
Yes, and if Tebow plays well for Chip Kelly then that obviously means Cutler didn't work hard enough and should be more like Tebow.
As for Cutler, a guy blessed with a rifle arm but cursed by a
strange social obliviousness, who knows if he would practice anything
10,000 times just to improve, to try to be the best.
EXACTLY. Rick Telander doesn't know if Cutler would practice 10,000 times in order to improve, but because Cutler isn't friendly (and it always goes back to that, never forget that) to the media then Telander assumes Cutler won't practice that much. He then assumes because Tebow does practice a lot, as described by the person paid to say such things, then Cutler should be like Tebow...even though he may already be. In the words of Telander, "who knows?"
EXACTLY. Rick Telander doesn't know if Cutler would practice 10,000 times in order to improve, but because Cutler isn't friendly (and it always goes back to that, never forget that) to the media then Telander assumes Cutler won't practice that much. He then assumes because Tebow does practice a lot, as described by the person paid to say such things, then Cutler should be like Tebow...even though he may already be. In the words of Telander, "who knows?"
Maybe, at 32, it’s too late for him to reconfigure his football body and mind.
Maybe he's already reconfigured and this is where we are at now. Who knows? Just because Cutler doesn't have a coach (who he pays) saying how reconfigured he is, it doesn't mean he hasn't put forth the effort.
Maybe he's already reconfigured and this is where we are at now. Who knows? Just because Cutler doesn't have a coach (who he pays) saying how reconfigured he is, it doesn't mean he hasn't put forth the effort.
But it’s fun to think he could.
Yes, it's fun to think Cutler could reconfigure his football body and mind like Tebow has done, as claimed by the person who has a vested interest in stating publicly that Tebow has reconfigured his body and mind. If only Cutler were more like Tebow. He would just have to be a little less successful as an NFL quarterback. It's fun to think if Cutler were a little less prickly than maybe sportswriters wouldn't (knowingly or unknowingly) factor this into their evaluation of him.
Yes, it's fun to think Cutler could reconfigure his football body and mind like Tebow has done, as claimed by the person who has a vested interest in stating publicly that Tebow has reconfigured his body and mind. If only Cutler were more like Tebow. He would just have to be a little less successful as an NFL quarterback. It's fun to think if Cutler were a little less prickly than maybe sportswriters wouldn't (knowingly or unknowingly) factor this into their evaluation of him.
Monday, April 27, 2015
5 comments John Calipari is Culpable for the Scam the NCAA Runs Simply By Choosing to Be a Head Coach
I've read a lot of John Calipari-hating columns through the years. Some I agree with and others I don't agree with as much. I'm not a huge Calipari fan, but I often find myself countering attacks against him from certain parts of the media who seem to think one-and-done was his idea. Today, a guy who writes for Deadspin and Slate (well, at least he writes for Slate for one day) states that John Calipari is culpable for the NCAA running a scam on players with the one-and-done rule because he chooses to be the head coach at the University of Kentucky. That's the gist of what he writes. If true, this means every Division-I head coach who recruits a player that leaves after one year is culpable for the NCAA scam of one-and-done. As I always state, one-and-done is not an NCAA rule, but it seems few people care about that sometimes. It always comes back to John Calipari as the bad guy because he dares to recruit one-and-done players. It is unfair for Calipari to be blamed for something the NCAA has chosen to do. The only way Calipari could not participate in the NCAA scam is if he would resign as the University of Kentucky's head basketball coach and go find something else to do with his life. I'm not sure why this ultimatum only pertains to Calipari, but it seems that it does. I've explained too much already, so I'll let you get confused by what point the author is trying to prove in blaming Calipari. The author admits that the one-and-done rule and other NCAA scams are not Calipari's fault, but fuck it, let's blame him anyway. Actually, the author's point is that if Calipari were really on the player's side then he would quit his job at Kentucky. Because that would fix everything.
Last week I wrote about the ways that both pro- and anti-NCAA camps tend to miss the mark when talking about University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari. He deserves less criticism for breaking NCAA rules and more for profiting from them, because even his “Players First” arrangement forces players to take huge risks for a reward artificially delayed by NCAA and NBA rules,
I am not going to wave a Calipari flag outside the courthouse steps or self-immolate in order to protect his honor. But let's be a little bit honest here. I like honesty. Almost every NCAA men's head basketball coach would like to be in the position that John Calipari is in. They can lie and claim differently, but the vast majority would take Karl-Anthony Towns on their team for one year. Most coaches wouldn't mind their program being a pit stop between high school and the NBA. Coaches like Bo Ryan can argue differently, but they are lying. Bo Ryan heavily recruited Kevin Looney, who is a one-and-done player. So getting that assumption out of the way, which I believe to be a correct assumption, most men's college basketball coaches wouldn't mind profiting from the NCAA rules. It is not John Calipari who forces Michael Kidd-Gilchrist to come to college for one year, it is the NBA who forces Kidd-Gilchrist to go overseas or play in college for one year. Sure, Calipari is profiting. He's not forcing these players to take these huge risks. They are free to sit out a year, go overseas (where there would still be risk for injury) or they can play college basketball for one year in the United States (where there would still be a risk for injury). Absent not playing basketball for a full year and then entering the NBA, the risk is always there. Calipari is not forcing these players to do anything because it's not his rule and he's simply recruiting these players like other men's basketball coaches are doing. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is going to play basketball for a year after high school prior to entering the NBA, it's just a matter of where.
while he himself risks nothing at all and has a guaranteed seven-figure annual reward no matter what becomes of the players who do all the valuable work.
This is an absolute strawman argument. Every men's basketball coach risks nothing at all while coaching. Saint Coach K isn't risking his career coaching Jahlil Okafor. Steve Prohm isn't risking his life or career coaching at Murray State. The risk will always be on the players. I don't know why John Calipari and his "arrangement" is more dangerous than Tom Izzo's "arrangement" where he gets paid millions of dollars and the players do all the valuable work.
On Sunday, Slate writer A.J. McCarthy published a thoughtful response to my piece. In his estimation, “Calipari’s unmatched success in getting his players to the next level—while certainly not entirely ridding him of the NCAA’s stench—does, actually, separate him from his rival coaches. Not just in degree, but in kind as well.”
To argue that Calipari’s arrangement with players is meaningfully different—in kind, not degree—from the one offered by other college coaches because of the high rate at which his players catch on in the NBA, strikes me as flawed in at least a couple of ways.
It can be a flawed argument, but it's an argument that is as flawed as arguing John Calipari is the most evil of evil head coaches because he profits from the one-and-done rule and forces his players to take huge risks prior to entering the NBA. The risks Kentucky players take are no more than the risks any college basketball player takes in wanting to make it to the NBA one day. Doug McDermott was coached by his father and his father didn't take a risk, it was Doug who did all the valuable work during his time at Creighton and took on the risk of injury.
First, and most importantly, it ignores the risk forcibly taken on even by those of Calipari’s players who emerge from his program with their NBA prospects unharmed, or even enhanced. Anthony Davis may have survived his lone season at Kentucky without, say, tearing his Achilles tendon, but he still carried the enormous risk of doing so throughout that entire season—
Every single college athlete in every single college sport suffers risk of injury during their playing career. Some of these athletes plan on making their living in sports, others don't. The risk of injury doesn't go away simply because Nigel Hayes is planning on spending four years in college rather than one year in college. If Anthony Davis tore his Achilles tendon, he has the option of going back to school for a second year. This risk of a player's stock being down or an injury occurring isn't present because John Calipari has put a gun to Anthony Davis' head forcing him to play, but because Anthony Davis is forced by NBA rules to either sit out a year, play overseas or play college basketball for a year prior to entering the NBA. Simply because John Calipari is an NCAA men's basketball head coach doesn't make him partially culpable for the NBA rule requiring Anthony Davis to play/sit out a year before entering the NBA, any more than Bill Self is culpable for coaching a group of basketball players at Kansas who may someday want to enter the NBA.
a season during which his work paid him no money, and helped John Calipari haul in at least seven figures.
You are blaming John Calipari for participation in the NCAA system. What does the author expect Calipari to do? Quit? If he quit as the head men's basketball coach at Kentucky would the NCAA system all of a sudden become fair and NBA prospects are no longer risking injury to play basketball in college? Of course not. Calipari coaches within an unfair system, but this doesn't make him culpable for the unfairness of the system.
Davis took a huge risk because artificial and unjust rules forced him to, and he’ll never be compensated for taking that risk—but his coach was.
So again, while being a problem spotter and not a problem solver, what is the solution here? Should John Calipari stop coaching college basketball because the rules are so unfair, which of course would fix nothing because 300+ other Division-I college coaches are still coaching teams under the same unfair rules they would embrace if Anthony Davis wanted to go to their school? Should John Calipari just not get paid for coaching the Kentucky men's basketball team? That seems like a rather unreasonable conclusion.
That would be true at any other college.
Which only highlights the absurdity of blaming John Calipari for an institutional problem.
Second, the notion that every instance of a star recruit making the NBA is an instance of a fair deal ignores how even those nominal successes can be screwed by their time in college (even apart from the fact that they don’t get paid for their work while there)
This is the part where the author has already blamed John Calipari for his recruits having to spend a year in college, allowing his prospective one-and-done guys to play basketball in live action games, thereby risking them getting injured, but now blames Calipari for the NBA rookie pay scale. That's his fault too now.
Consider fellow Kentucky big man Nerlens Noel. Superficially, Noel might seem to buttress McCarthy’s point: He arrived at Kentucky as the top recruit in the nation, tore his ACL just weeks before the NCAA tournament in his freshman season, and still went on to a lucrative NBA contract as the sixth overall pick in the following draft.
BUT NO! McCarthy wasn't considering factors which John Calipari didn't have a hand in creating or legislating that show how Calipari is the real problem. If you consider another factor out of Calipari's control, it just goes to show the evil nature of Calipari and how he abuses his prospective one-and-done basketball players merely by choosing to coach college basketball. This is abuse caused only by Calipari.
But then, account for the NBA’s rookie pay scale system, under the rubric of which draft position determines salary for all first-round picks. Prior to his ACL injury, Noel was the presumptive first overall pick in the 2013 draft (actually, “presumptive” may not be strong enough; that he would go first overall was a virtual certainty); when the draft finally rolled around, he fell to sixth, thanks to concerns about his leg and how recovery might hamper his development.
So once you factor John Calipari's culpability in creating the NBA rookie pay scale system (which he has none), then you can see the real evil behind his mad schemes. So what if no men's college basketball coach had anything to do with the NBA rookie pay scale system? Fuck it, blame them anyway.
Here is another scam that John Calipari participates in. This so-called "American Dream" where everyone has a shot to succeed. How about those who never got a shot to succeed? Doesn't John Calipari care about them? He earns millions of dollars working at a lucrative job, while thousands go hungry, living on the streets, and without sufficient food or shelter. If John Calipari really cared about the scam of the "American Dream" then he would move to another country where (a) there is no poverty or homelessness or (b) no one pretended to care about the poverty and homelessness. As long as John Calipari lives in the United States, he's all a part of the scam.
The first overall pick, Anthony Bennett, received a first-year salary of $4,436,900; Noel, at sixth, received $2,643,600—a difference of almost $1.8 million in their rookie season alone.
And is John Calipari going to reimburse Noel for that $1.8 million difference caused by no actions on Calipari's part other than a freak injury occurring to Noel when Calipari had chosen to put Noel in the game? Of course not. It's all a part of Calipari's plan to recruit one-and-done basketball players and then steal hypothetical money from them when they get injured on the court, all the while Calipari is manically laughing at how his team has now a lesser chance of winning a championship. It's all part of the plan that John Calipari and the NCAA have.
Of course, one could also point out that Anthony Bennett was also a one-and-done guy, so the money Noel "lost" was "gained" by Bennett through the scam Dave Rice is running at UNLV where he recruited Bennett to play basketball. Dave Rice is culpable as a basketball coach in the NCAA scam too, right?
Over the maximum five-season lifespan of his rookie deal, Noel’s draft position is worth about $11,000,000 less than if he’d gone first overall, as he would have if he hadn’t suffered the ACL injury.
This has to be one of the most poorly defended articles I have read in a while. Okay, that's sad for Noel. I have absolutely no idea what this has to do with John Calipari. If Noel didn't tear his ACL as a member of the Kentucky basketball team then he could have done it as a member of the UNC or Indiana basketball team. I wouldn't argue against the NCAA costing Noel this money, but dragging Calipari into it due to his status as a basketball coach for an NCAA team is ridiculous.
And unlike Alex Poythress, the Kentucky player who decided of his own free will to return to school and wound up with an expensive and prospect-darkening ACL injury of his own, Noel didn’t lose a dice roll of his own choosing.
So now we are differentiating between the risk on the court a guy who may be one-and-done takes with the risk on the court a guy who may play in the NBA but chooses to stay in school for 3-4 years takes? The risk is the exact same. Nerlens Noel could easily go back to school and turn into a guy who stays in college for 3-4 years. All of a sudden, Calipari is no longer responsible for Noel's draft status!
He played the single season of college ball essentially mandated by the NBA’s age restriction, got injured, and got screwed.
But Noel could have gone back to school. Alex Poythress would have left after his freshmen year too if his draft stock would have been higher at that point. Noel rolled the dice of his own choosing by not coming back to school for his sophomore year. He could have made the same decision that Poythress made.
(Before anyone does the whole Hey, Nerlens Noel made $2.6 million his rookie year—if that’s getting screwed, sign me up thing: Likely there are people who would happily do your job for 40 percent less pay, too. Probably you would feel pretty screwed if your employer told you that you were about to become one of them.)
This isn't close to being an accurate parallel. A more accurate parallel would be if I had the chance to get a job, but because of circumstances out of my control they re-opened the job search and hired someone else for the position and paid them more than they were offering me. Then I would get a similar job for less pay at another company.
None of this—the NBA’s unjust age restriction and rookie wage scale, the NCAA’s criminal restrictions on athlete compensation and unfair asymmetry of risk—is John Calipari’s doing, or John Calipari’s fault.
I must have misread that. I'll try again.
None of this—the NBA’s unjust age restriction and rookie wage scale, the NCAA’s criminal restrictions on athlete compensation and unfair asymmetry of risk—is John Calipari’s doing, or John Calipari’s fault.
Oh, what you write does say it is John Calipari's fault. The author states the following in this column:
He deserves less criticism for breaking NCAA rules and more for profiting from them, because even his “Players First” arrangement forces players to take huge risks for a reward artificially delayed by NCAA and NBA rules, while he himself risks nothing at all and has a guaranteed seven-figure annual reward no matter what becomes of the players who do all the valuable work.
It sort of sounds like he is blaming Calipari for the unfair asymmetry of risk and unjust age restriction doesn't it?
You may rightly assert that his Wildcat pedigree and Calipari’s imprimatur helped secure Noel’s draft position against concerns about his health, in service of a Coach Cal gets his guys paid! argument.
But then, account for the NBA’s rookie pay scale system, under the rubric of which draft position determines salary for all first-round picks. Prior to his ACL injury, Noel was the presumptive first overall pick in the 2013 draft (actually, “presumptive” may not be strong enough; that he would go first overall was a virtual certainty); when the draft finally rolled around, he fell to sixth, thanks to concerns about his leg and how recovery might hamper his development. The first overall pick, Anthony Bennett, received a first-year salary of $4,436,900; Noel, at sixth, received $2,643,600—a difference of almost $1.8 million in their rookie season alone.
Doesn't this sound a bit like blaming Calipari for the rookie wage scale? Specifically since this was a point brought up to counter an argument that Calipari's success makes him different from rival coaches and therefore shouldn't be put to blame for "the deal" he offers his players.
The point isn’t that Calipari is out here doing anything more evil than what his counterparts are doing at other big-money NCAA programs—he’s not—but that the NCAA system itself is so corrupt and compromised, the ripping-off of athletes so fundamental to its business, that it cannot be navigated in a humane and ethical fashion by a coach.
So why in the hell are you singling out Calipari for disdain? Other than it pumps up pageviews and the comment section to have a debate about Calipari, of course.
To coach in the NCAA is to perpetrate the rip-off. John Calipari might make it as painless as it can be, but it’s still a rip-off—for Alex Poythress, for Nerlens Noel, for Anthony Davis, for all of them—and Calipari is still on the side of it that participates by choice. The side of it that gets paid.
As is every single NCAA college coach. I don't get the point that is trying to be proven here.
Tellingly, the defense of Calipari winds up echoing defenses of the NCAA itself. McCarthy objects to the use of Poythress to illustrate the shortcomings of Calipari’s “Players First” principle, on grounds that Poythress, who stayed in college longer than he had to and suffered a torn ACL for it, will still “have a free college education to show for his time at Kentucky.”
Well, that defense sucks then. There is no required defense of John Calipari. He coaches men's basketball at the University of Kentucky. Some of his players who choose to go to the NBA after one year, as they are required to wait that long by NBA rule. Some players wait longer than one year to go to the NBA and other players of his have no chance of making the NBA. John Calipari tries to win games for the University of Kentucky while teaching his players how to play basketball better, which may or may not help them make it into the NBA. His track record says he is pretty good at getting his players into the NBA while following the one-and-done rule set out by the NBA. The rookie wage scale has nothing to do with NCAA college basketball.
Remember that Poythress will have earned this education by playing many hundreds of hours of basketball for the university—basketball that generates far more money for the university and the NCAA than they return to him in the form of his athletic scholarship.
If John Calipari died as a child, then Alex Poythress would still be playing hundreds of hours for a university and receiving no money in return for the money he generates for the university.
Poythress has not received a “free college education.” He has received an incredibly expensive one! He has paid more for his college education than the average college graduate will spend in a lifetime.
When you find evidence that John Calipari is directly responsible for college athletes not getting paid, then call me.
To accept the premise that an undergraduate education is—or even can be—a fair return for the work high-level college basketball players do is to accept the central lie of “student athletics.” If Calipari’s deal as presented by McCarthy—NBA jobs after a year of underpaid work for some, free college educations for the rest—is a fair one, then so is the NCAA itself.
Maybe this is true. It sounds like both McCarthy and the author here are arguing about whether college athletes should get paid, but putting "Calipari" in the title in effort to gain more attention for the same old tired argument.
In this case the sheen of principled rebellion evaporates from Calipari’s rules violations in an instant, and he’s just a guy who cheats to get ahead, then leaves the consequences for others to absorb.
Oh, we are talking about Calipari's rules violations now.
But the NCAA’s deal isn’t a fair one. An undergraduate education isn’t a fair return for the work college basketball players do. And so Alex Poythress’s decision to stay in school and pursue his degree doesn’t vindicate Calipari’s methods.
If the NCAA isn't a fair deal, then no methods used by any NCAA athletic coach are vindicated in any way. This is because zero college athletes get paid for participating in their sport and generating revenue for the school. This is true whether the athletes be women's soccer players at Lehigh University or football players at the University of Texas. These athletes spend hundreds of hours of their time trying to perfect the sport they aren't getting paid to perfect. If the system is corrupt, this means any athletic coach in the NCAA is culpable on the same level as Calipari. No method used by a coach, interestingly other than to commit a rules violation (that the author felt the need to randomly bring up as a case against Calipari's methods) by paying the players, will vindicate that coach's methods because the NCAA system is corrupt.
Calipari runs the scam without the bullshit pretense of some lofty pedagogical mission, but it’s still a scam.
It's a scam, but not a scam of Calipari's doing. He's trying to do what other men's basketball coaches are trying to do, which is work within the rules and recruit a team that wins games. It's not Calipari's scam, he's simply choosing to work at the University of Kentucky. His quitting as the head coach at Kentucky would have zero impact on the scam the NCAA is running. Therefore, his culpability is the same as every other coach's culpability, yet for some reason other coaches aren't mentioned in this column. Weird.
McCarthy and other defenders are right to say that Calipari offers the closest thing to an honest bargain players can get from college basketball. It’s also true, though, that the comparison makes Calipari appear better than he is. Only in the context of the NCAA would justice-minded people look at him—a millionaire management-class white dude who asks for a year of underpaid labor, rather than four, from his black teenage workers—and see a beacon of fairness.
What are Calipari's other options again? Other than to quit his job as the head coach at Kentucky, of course. I don't think some people see a beacon of fairness in having basketball players at Kentucky stay there for a year before they go to the NBA. I think Calipari offers certain college basketball players a way to reach their goal of making it into the NBA, just like other NCAA men's basketball head coaches offer prospective one-and-done players or even players that will be at the school risking injury over a four year period.
Go easy on him, the other ticks are much thirstier. That flattering comparison is another of the many ways John Calipari profits not in spite of the NCAA’s awfulness, but because of it.
I don't think this article was quite as profound or persuasive as the author believes it was. To frame this argument in the context of John Calipari and try to make it seen as he's hero for college athletes is very misguided. It's simply not true. The basic argument McCarthy was making was this:
The NCAA is, for lack of a better word, evil. But while John Calipari might not be a hero fighting against its crooked ways, he isn’t the villain that many, including Burneko, have described.
Right, Calipari isn't the villain. Because if he is the villain then every other NCAA coach who participates in the scam is a villain as well. If the author doesn't blame Calipari for the NBA's rookie salary structure, the one-and-done rule, restrictions on athletes' compensation and the asymmetry of risk then what is he blaming Calipari for? Being a cog in the machine? I guess both arguments pro- and anti-Calipari are wrong in that case.
Last week I wrote about the ways that both pro- and anti-NCAA camps tend to miss the mark when talking about University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari. He deserves less criticism for breaking NCAA rules and more for profiting from them, because even his “Players First” arrangement forces players to take huge risks for a reward artificially delayed by NCAA and NBA rules,
I am not going to wave a Calipari flag outside the courthouse steps or self-immolate in order to protect his honor. But let's be a little bit honest here. I like honesty. Almost every NCAA men's head basketball coach would like to be in the position that John Calipari is in. They can lie and claim differently, but the vast majority would take Karl-Anthony Towns on their team for one year. Most coaches wouldn't mind their program being a pit stop between high school and the NBA. Coaches like Bo Ryan can argue differently, but they are lying. Bo Ryan heavily recruited Kevin Looney, who is a one-and-done player. So getting that assumption out of the way, which I believe to be a correct assumption, most men's college basketball coaches wouldn't mind profiting from the NCAA rules. It is not John Calipari who forces Michael Kidd-Gilchrist to come to college for one year, it is the NBA who forces Kidd-Gilchrist to go overseas or play in college for one year. Sure, Calipari is profiting. He's not forcing these players to take these huge risks. They are free to sit out a year, go overseas (where there would still be risk for injury) or they can play college basketball for one year in the United States (where there would still be a risk for injury). Absent not playing basketball for a full year and then entering the NBA, the risk is always there. Calipari is not forcing these players to do anything because it's not his rule and he's simply recruiting these players like other men's basketball coaches are doing. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is going to play basketball for a year after high school prior to entering the NBA, it's just a matter of where.
while he himself risks nothing at all and has a guaranteed seven-figure annual reward no matter what becomes of the players who do all the valuable work.
This is an absolute strawman argument. Every men's basketball coach risks nothing at all while coaching. Saint Coach K isn't risking his career coaching Jahlil Okafor. Steve Prohm isn't risking his life or career coaching at Murray State. The risk will always be on the players. I don't know why John Calipari and his "arrangement" is more dangerous than Tom Izzo's "arrangement" where he gets paid millions of dollars and the players do all the valuable work.
On Sunday, Slate writer A.J. McCarthy published a thoughtful response to my piece. In his estimation, “Calipari’s unmatched success in getting his players to the next level—while certainly not entirely ridding him of the NCAA’s stench—does, actually, separate him from his rival coaches. Not just in degree, but in kind as well.”
To argue that Calipari’s arrangement with players is meaningfully different—in kind, not degree—from the one offered by other college coaches because of the high rate at which his players catch on in the NBA, strikes me as flawed in at least a couple of ways.
It can be a flawed argument, but it's an argument that is as flawed as arguing John Calipari is the most evil of evil head coaches because he profits from the one-and-done rule and forces his players to take huge risks prior to entering the NBA. The risks Kentucky players take are no more than the risks any college basketball player takes in wanting to make it to the NBA one day. Doug McDermott was coached by his father and his father didn't take a risk, it was Doug who did all the valuable work during his time at Creighton and took on the risk of injury.
First, and most importantly, it ignores the risk forcibly taken on even by those of Calipari’s players who emerge from his program with their NBA prospects unharmed, or even enhanced. Anthony Davis may have survived his lone season at Kentucky without, say, tearing his Achilles tendon, but he still carried the enormous risk of doing so throughout that entire season—
Every single college athlete in every single college sport suffers risk of injury during their playing career. Some of these athletes plan on making their living in sports, others don't. The risk of injury doesn't go away simply because Nigel Hayes is planning on spending four years in college rather than one year in college. If Anthony Davis tore his Achilles tendon, he has the option of going back to school for a second year. This risk of a player's stock being down or an injury occurring isn't present because John Calipari has put a gun to Anthony Davis' head forcing him to play, but because Anthony Davis is forced by NBA rules to either sit out a year, play overseas or play college basketball for a year prior to entering the NBA. Simply because John Calipari is an NCAA men's basketball head coach doesn't make him partially culpable for the NBA rule requiring Anthony Davis to play/sit out a year before entering the NBA, any more than Bill Self is culpable for coaching a group of basketball players at Kansas who may someday want to enter the NBA.
a season during which his work paid him no money, and helped John Calipari haul in at least seven figures.
You are blaming John Calipari for participation in the NCAA system. What does the author expect Calipari to do? Quit? If he quit as the head men's basketball coach at Kentucky would the NCAA system all of a sudden become fair and NBA prospects are no longer risking injury to play basketball in college? Of course not. Calipari coaches within an unfair system, but this doesn't make him culpable for the unfairness of the system.
Davis took a huge risk because artificial and unjust rules forced him to, and he’ll never be compensated for taking that risk—but his coach was.
So again, while being a problem spotter and not a problem solver, what is the solution here? Should John Calipari stop coaching college basketball because the rules are so unfair, which of course would fix nothing because 300+ other Division-I college coaches are still coaching teams under the same unfair rules they would embrace if Anthony Davis wanted to go to their school? Should John Calipari just not get paid for coaching the Kentucky men's basketball team? That seems like a rather unreasonable conclusion.
That would be true at any other college.
Which only highlights the absurdity of blaming John Calipari for an institutional problem.
Second, the notion that every instance of a star recruit making the NBA is an instance of a fair deal ignores how even those nominal successes can be screwed by their time in college (even apart from the fact that they don’t get paid for their work while there)
This is the part where the author has already blamed John Calipari for his recruits having to spend a year in college, allowing his prospective one-and-done guys to play basketball in live action games, thereby risking them getting injured, but now blames Calipari for the NBA rookie pay scale. That's his fault too now.
Consider fellow Kentucky big man Nerlens Noel. Superficially, Noel might seem to buttress McCarthy’s point: He arrived at Kentucky as the top recruit in the nation, tore his ACL just weeks before the NCAA tournament in his freshman season, and still went on to a lucrative NBA contract as the sixth overall pick in the following draft.
BUT NO! McCarthy wasn't considering factors which John Calipari didn't have a hand in creating or legislating that show how Calipari is the real problem. If you consider another factor out of Calipari's control, it just goes to show the evil nature of Calipari and how he abuses his prospective one-and-done basketball players merely by choosing to coach college basketball. This is abuse caused only by Calipari.
But then, account for the NBA’s rookie pay scale system, under the rubric of which draft position determines salary for all first-round picks. Prior to his ACL injury, Noel was the presumptive first overall pick in the 2013 draft (actually, “presumptive” may not be strong enough; that he would go first overall was a virtual certainty); when the draft finally rolled around, he fell to sixth, thanks to concerns about his leg and how recovery might hamper his development.
So once you factor John Calipari's culpability in creating the NBA rookie pay scale system (which he has none), then you can see the real evil behind his mad schemes. So what if no men's college basketball coach had anything to do with the NBA rookie pay scale system? Fuck it, blame them anyway.
Here is another scam that John Calipari participates in. This so-called "American Dream" where everyone has a shot to succeed. How about those who never got a shot to succeed? Doesn't John Calipari care about them? He earns millions of dollars working at a lucrative job, while thousands go hungry, living on the streets, and without sufficient food or shelter. If John Calipari really cared about the scam of the "American Dream" then he would move to another country where (a) there is no poverty or homelessness or (b) no one pretended to care about the poverty and homelessness. As long as John Calipari lives in the United States, he's all a part of the scam.
The first overall pick, Anthony Bennett, received a first-year salary of $4,436,900; Noel, at sixth, received $2,643,600—a difference of almost $1.8 million in their rookie season alone.
And is John Calipari going to reimburse Noel for that $1.8 million difference caused by no actions on Calipari's part other than a freak injury occurring to Noel when Calipari had chosen to put Noel in the game? Of course not. It's all a part of Calipari's plan to recruit one-and-done basketball players and then steal hypothetical money from them when they get injured on the court, all the while Calipari is manically laughing at how his team has now a lesser chance of winning a championship. It's all part of the plan that John Calipari and the NCAA have.
Of course, one could also point out that Anthony Bennett was also a one-and-done guy, so the money Noel "lost" was "gained" by Bennett through the scam Dave Rice is running at UNLV where he recruited Bennett to play basketball. Dave Rice is culpable as a basketball coach in the NCAA scam too, right?
Over the maximum five-season lifespan of his rookie deal, Noel’s draft position is worth about $11,000,000 less than if he’d gone first overall, as he would have if he hadn’t suffered the ACL injury.
This has to be one of the most poorly defended articles I have read in a while. Okay, that's sad for Noel. I have absolutely no idea what this has to do with John Calipari. If Noel didn't tear his ACL as a member of the Kentucky basketball team then he could have done it as a member of the UNC or Indiana basketball team. I wouldn't argue against the NCAA costing Noel this money, but dragging Calipari into it due to his status as a basketball coach for an NCAA team is ridiculous.
And unlike Alex Poythress, the Kentucky player who decided of his own free will to return to school and wound up with an expensive and prospect-darkening ACL injury of his own, Noel didn’t lose a dice roll of his own choosing.
So now we are differentiating between the risk on the court a guy who may be one-and-done takes with the risk on the court a guy who may play in the NBA but chooses to stay in school for 3-4 years takes? The risk is the exact same. Nerlens Noel could easily go back to school and turn into a guy who stays in college for 3-4 years. All of a sudden, Calipari is no longer responsible for Noel's draft status!
He played the single season of college ball essentially mandated by the NBA’s age restriction, got injured, and got screwed.
But Noel could have gone back to school. Alex Poythress would have left after his freshmen year too if his draft stock would have been higher at that point. Noel rolled the dice of his own choosing by not coming back to school for his sophomore year. He could have made the same decision that Poythress made.
(Before anyone does the whole Hey, Nerlens Noel made $2.6 million his rookie year—if that’s getting screwed, sign me up thing: Likely there are people who would happily do your job for 40 percent less pay, too. Probably you would feel pretty screwed if your employer told you that you were about to become one of them.)
This isn't close to being an accurate parallel. A more accurate parallel would be if I had the chance to get a job, but because of circumstances out of my control they re-opened the job search and hired someone else for the position and paid them more than they were offering me. Then I would get a similar job for less pay at another company.
None of this—the NBA’s unjust age restriction and rookie wage scale, the NCAA’s criminal restrictions on athlete compensation and unfair asymmetry of risk—is John Calipari’s doing, or John Calipari’s fault.
I must have misread that. I'll try again.
None of this—the NBA’s unjust age restriction and rookie wage scale, the NCAA’s criminal restrictions on athlete compensation and unfair asymmetry of risk—is John Calipari’s doing, or John Calipari’s fault.
Oh, what you write does say it is John Calipari's fault. The author states the following in this column:
He deserves less criticism for breaking NCAA rules and more for profiting from them, because even his “Players First” arrangement forces players to take huge risks for a reward artificially delayed by NCAA and NBA rules, while he himself risks nothing at all and has a guaranteed seven-figure annual reward no matter what becomes of the players who do all the valuable work.
It sort of sounds like he is blaming Calipari for the unfair asymmetry of risk and unjust age restriction doesn't it?
You may rightly assert that his Wildcat pedigree and Calipari’s imprimatur helped secure Noel’s draft position against concerns about his health, in service of a Coach Cal gets his guys paid! argument.
But then, account for the NBA’s rookie pay scale system, under the rubric of which draft position determines salary for all first-round picks. Prior to his ACL injury, Noel was the presumptive first overall pick in the 2013 draft (actually, “presumptive” may not be strong enough; that he would go first overall was a virtual certainty); when the draft finally rolled around, he fell to sixth, thanks to concerns about his leg and how recovery might hamper his development. The first overall pick, Anthony Bennett, received a first-year salary of $4,436,900; Noel, at sixth, received $2,643,600—a difference of almost $1.8 million in their rookie season alone.
Doesn't this sound a bit like blaming Calipari for the rookie wage scale? Specifically since this was a point brought up to counter an argument that Calipari's success makes him different from rival coaches and therefore shouldn't be put to blame for "the deal" he offers his players.
The point isn’t that Calipari is out here doing anything more evil than what his counterparts are doing at other big-money NCAA programs—he’s not—but that the NCAA system itself is so corrupt and compromised, the ripping-off of athletes so fundamental to its business, that it cannot be navigated in a humane and ethical fashion by a coach.
So why in the hell are you singling out Calipari for disdain? Other than it pumps up pageviews and the comment section to have a debate about Calipari, of course.
To coach in the NCAA is to perpetrate the rip-off. John Calipari might make it as painless as it can be, but it’s still a rip-off—for Alex Poythress, for Nerlens Noel, for Anthony Davis, for all of them—and Calipari is still on the side of it that participates by choice. The side of it that gets paid.
As is every single NCAA college coach. I don't get the point that is trying to be proven here.
Tellingly, the defense of Calipari winds up echoing defenses of the NCAA itself. McCarthy objects to the use of Poythress to illustrate the shortcomings of Calipari’s “Players First” principle, on grounds that Poythress, who stayed in college longer than he had to and suffered a torn ACL for it, will still “have a free college education to show for his time at Kentucky.”
Well, that defense sucks then. There is no required defense of John Calipari. He coaches men's basketball at the University of Kentucky. Some of his players who choose to go to the NBA after one year, as they are required to wait that long by NBA rule. Some players wait longer than one year to go to the NBA and other players of his have no chance of making the NBA. John Calipari tries to win games for the University of Kentucky while teaching his players how to play basketball better, which may or may not help them make it into the NBA. His track record says he is pretty good at getting his players into the NBA while following the one-and-done rule set out by the NBA. The rookie wage scale has nothing to do with NCAA college basketball.
Remember that Poythress will have earned this education by playing many hundreds of hours of basketball for the university—basketball that generates far more money for the university and the NCAA than they return to him in the form of his athletic scholarship.
If John Calipari died as a child, then Alex Poythress would still be playing hundreds of hours for a university and receiving no money in return for the money he generates for the university.
Poythress has not received a “free college education.” He has received an incredibly expensive one! He has paid more for his college education than the average college graduate will spend in a lifetime.
When you find evidence that John Calipari is directly responsible for college athletes not getting paid, then call me.
To accept the premise that an undergraduate education is—or even can be—a fair return for the work high-level college basketball players do is to accept the central lie of “student athletics.” If Calipari’s deal as presented by McCarthy—NBA jobs after a year of underpaid work for some, free college educations for the rest—is a fair one, then so is the NCAA itself.
Maybe this is true. It sounds like both McCarthy and the author here are arguing about whether college athletes should get paid, but putting "Calipari" in the title in effort to gain more attention for the same old tired argument.
In this case the sheen of principled rebellion evaporates from Calipari’s rules violations in an instant, and he’s just a guy who cheats to get ahead, then leaves the consequences for others to absorb.
Oh, we are talking about Calipari's rules violations now.
But the NCAA’s deal isn’t a fair one. An undergraduate education isn’t a fair return for the work college basketball players do. And so Alex Poythress’s decision to stay in school and pursue his degree doesn’t vindicate Calipari’s methods.
If the NCAA isn't a fair deal, then no methods used by any NCAA athletic coach are vindicated in any way. This is because zero college athletes get paid for participating in their sport and generating revenue for the school. This is true whether the athletes be women's soccer players at Lehigh University or football players at the University of Texas. These athletes spend hundreds of hours of their time trying to perfect the sport they aren't getting paid to perfect. If the system is corrupt, this means any athletic coach in the NCAA is culpable on the same level as Calipari. No method used by a coach, interestingly other than to commit a rules violation (that the author felt the need to randomly bring up as a case against Calipari's methods) by paying the players, will vindicate that coach's methods because the NCAA system is corrupt.
Calipari runs the scam without the bullshit pretense of some lofty pedagogical mission, but it’s still a scam.
It's a scam, but not a scam of Calipari's doing. He's trying to do what other men's basketball coaches are trying to do, which is work within the rules and recruit a team that wins games. It's not Calipari's scam, he's simply choosing to work at the University of Kentucky. His quitting as the head coach at Kentucky would have zero impact on the scam the NCAA is running. Therefore, his culpability is the same as every other coach's culpability, yet for some reason other coaches aren't mentioned in this column. Weird.
McCarthy and other defenders are right to say that Calipari offers the closest thing to an honest bargain players can get from college basketball. It’s also true, though, that the comparison makes Calipari appear better than he is. Only in the context of the NCAA would justice-minded people look at him—a millionaire management-class white dude who asks for a year of underpaid labor, rather than four, from his black teenage workers—and see a beacon of fairness.
What are Calipari's other options again? Other than to quit his job as the head coach at Kentucky, of course. I don't think some people see a beacon of fairness in having basketball players at Kentucky stay there for a year before they go to the NBA. I think Calipari offers certain college basketball players a way to reach their goal of making it into the NBA, just like other NCAA men's basketball head coaches offer prospective one-and-done players or even players that will be at the school risking injury over a four year period.
Go easy on him, the other ticks are much thirstier. That flattering comparison is another of the many ways John Calipari profits not in spite of the NCAA’s awfulness, but because of it.
I don't think this article was quite as profound or persuasive as the author believes it was. To frame this argument in the context of John Calipari and try to make it seen as he's hero for college athletes is very misguided. It's simply not true. The basic argument McCarthy was making was this:
The NCAA is, for lack of a better word, evil. But while John Calipari might not be a hero fighting against its crooked ways, he isn’t the villain that many, including Burneko, have described.
Right, Calipari isn't the villain. Because if he is the villain then every other NCAA coach who participates in the scam is a villain as well. If the author doesn't blame Calipari for the NBA's rookie salary structure, the one-and-done rule, restrictions on athletes' compensation and the asymmetry of risk then what is he blaming Calipari for? Being a cog in the machine? I guess both arguments pro- and anti-Calipari are wrong in that case.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
10 comments Gregg Easterbrook Says Special Teams Aren't as Important as Offense or Defense Unless Special Teams Becomes as Important as Offense and Defense
It's almost time for Gregg Easterbrook and TMQ (because they are two separate entities in Gregg's mind) to go into hibernation for the winter, or at least until draft time. So I will enjoy berating Gregg for his weekly contradictions and attempts to mislead his readers while he is still around for me to berate him. Gregg tells us this week that whichever team has a pick-six will win the Super Bowl, unless that team loses the coin toss. One would think the Authentic Games metric would allow Gregg to tell us NOW who will win the Super Bowl, but apparently the metric that predicts the Super Bowl pairing can't predict which team will actually win the Super Bowl. Gregg also takes issues with bottomless pits (irony alert!) and names his non-QB non-RB NFL MVP. I'm kidding of course. He has his readers name the winner of this award and nominates two undrafted players, a 5th round pick and a 2nd round pick in an effort to make sure the winner is undrafted or lowly drafted so he can crow about how undrafted players are the best. It's fun how Gregg skips over highly-drafted offensive and defensive players as the non-QB non-RB NFL MVP. He could include guys like Jamie Collins, Darrelle Revis, Vince Wilfork, Rob Gronkowski, Bruce Irvin, and Earl Thomas, but he wants to nominate two undrafted players and a 5th round pick as his non-QB non-RB NFL MVP. Not that Gregg would ever have an agenda of course.
There's data, there's big data, and then there is slam-dunk data. In the latter category: Teams that return an interception for a touchdown are 12-0 in the Super Bowl. Get a pick-six, win the Super Bowl. It's pretty much that simple.
So both the Patriots and Seahawks need to ignore whatever game plan they have and just try to get a pick-six. Once they do that, they can rest easy knowing they have won the game. It's slam-dunk data.
Teams that run back a fumble for a touchdown in the Super Bowl are 2-2. Teams that run a kick back for a touchdown are 4-6, that winning total diluted by two Super Bowl victors who had both kickoff and interception return touchdowns.
The pick-six rules the Super Bowl.
Again, each team's secondary should jump all routes and do whatever it takes, even if the opposing team gets a touchdown as a result, to get a pick-six.
Why do interception return touchdowns link so tightly with Super Bowl victory when other kinds of return touchdowns don't?
I'm not a smart man, but I'm guessing this is probably a coincidence and not any type of data that is indicative of a trend that actually means something. A pick-six is a big swing in a football game, but there is no reason a team that has a pick-six has won every Super Bowl. I'm not sure there is a causation here.
One answer may be sample size. There have been only 48 -- excuse me, XLVIII -- Super Bowls. Maybe that's not enough to wash out the role of luck in the XII-0 record for pick-six teams.
Right, it's a smaller sample size. I don't know of a way to find this information, but I would bet that teams over the history of the NFL (INCLUDING THE TRIASSIC PERIOD!) who have a pick-six in a game are more likely to win that game. So what we have is a smaller sample size, along with a pick-six making it more likely the team that gets the pick-six will win the game, leading to Super Bowl teams with a pick-six are now 12-0. It's an indicator a team will win a game, but not to the extent the 12-0 record in the Super Bowl shows.
Perhaps this is because high-level quarterback play is needed for Super Bowl success, and an interception returned for a touchdown causes the quarterback to lose confidence in himself -- or his teammates to lose confidence in him.
Or maybe because it's six points scored against a team while they are on offense is a large swing of points and it doesn't have a ton to do with reading the quarterback's mind and knowing if he has lost confidence or not.
Fumble return touchdowns are great, but all players know that being in the right place at the right time for a scoop-and-score is almost entirely chance.
A pick-six is partly chance too. There is skill in causing a fumble, like there is skill in making an interception, but to return it for a touchdown requires a certain amount of luck that there aren't five offensive players directly around the defender who made the interception to where he has a chance to run it back for a touchdown.
Kick return touchdowns are nice, too, but they involve special teams on both sides -- and while special-teams play is important, offense and defense are more important.
Oh. Well then, I guess it's official. Someone should tell Tony Romo or Scott Norwood that special teams aren't that important. I'm sure they probably would think otherwise. I bet the Patriots and their fans think special teams are as important in the Super Bowl as offense and defense, considering they have won two Super Bowls on game-winning kicks. As a Panthers fan, I'm liable to disagree that special teams aren't as important as offense and defense considering John Kasay kicking the ball out of bounds in the Super Bowl undid all the good work that the Panthers' offense did in the fourth quarter. But yeah, special teams isn't as important as offense and defense until it is.
Gregg kills me. Special teams isn't as important as offense or defense until a team screws up on special teams. Then it suddenly becomes as important.
When the quarterback throws an interception run back for touchdown, this may mean the quarterback, the team's leader, just made a huge mistake, or that the opponent's defense is really good. Both are unsettling. Peyton Manning won his first Super Bowl, versus Chicago, then lost his next two, versus New Orleans with Indianapolis and versus Seattle with Denver. In both losses Manning threw an interception returned for a touchdown. Both times as the intercepting player scampered down the field, one could feel the air drain from Manning's team.
There was even a measurement on the scoreboard showing how much air was in each team and after Manning threw both interceptions for a touchdown the Air Drain Percentage for the Colts and Broncos increased dramatically. Everyone in the stadium saw the Air Drain Percentage go from 4.32% to 74.3% both times Manning threw a pick-six in the Super Bowl.
While I won't doubt there is a psychological component to a pick-six, part of the reason the pick-six thrown by Manning against the Saints hurt so much is it put the Saints up ahead by more than a touchdown late in the fourth quarter. So it wasn't a matter of air being drained, but a matter of the Colts then being down by more than a touchdown late in the fourth quarter. In the Super Bowl against the Seahawks, the safety on the first play of the game set the tone for the game more than anything else did, at least in my opinion.
Super Bowl XXXV was close until early in the third quarter, when Baltimore's Duane Starks intercepted a Kerry Collins pass and ran it back for a touchdown; the Giants went on to lose 34-7. There are many examples of the interception return touchdown breaking a team's psychology.
It was close, but it was also 10-0 in favor of the Ravens prior to Collins throwing this interception. Then Ron Dixon ran a kick back for a touchdown on the ensuring kickoff, putting the Giants right back in the game where it was "close" again. Then know what happened? Jermaine Lewis of the Ravens ran a kick back for a touchdown, putting the Ravens up 24-7, which really put the game out of reach for the Giants against the Ravens' defense.
Notice how Gregg points out the pick-six broke the Giants in this Super Bowl, but fails to mention the Giants special teams unit that isn't as important as offense or defense put the Giants right back in the game to where it was (in Gregg's own words) a "close" 10 point deficit for the Giants. Then the Ravens ran a kick back for a touchdown, which put the Giants right back down by 17 points. So Gregg points to the pick-six as the psychologically damaging play, but it was really the Jermaine Lewis touchdown on the kickoff that did it, because it put the Giants down by 17 points in the third quarter. The special teams unit that wasn't as important as offense or defense suddenly became as important as offense or defense in the very example Gregg uses to show the damage to a team's psyche that a pick-six can do.
Come Sunday, should Seattle or New England take an interception back for a touchdown, turn to your friends and confidently predict victory for that team. Act like you have access to some incredible Vegas insider service. And if the pick-six team doesn't win, remember this column's ironclad guarantee: All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back.
"If I'm right, tell everyone how smart I am and know that the pick-six is a definite indicator of whether a team will win the Super Bowl or not, but if I'm wrong, then it's all a joke anyway and I have no idea what I'm talking about. When I'm right, it's because my conclusion is based on fact, when I'm wrong, it was all a joke anyway so don't take me seriously."
This is the same shit Gregg did with the Authentic Games metric. He wants it both ways. He wants credit for his accurate metric when it's right, but when it's wrong, the metric was only a joke anyway so don't take it so seriously.
In column news, it's time to name the recipient of the coveted "longest award in sports" -- Entertainment and Sports Programming Network's Tuesday Morning Quarterback Non-Quarterback Non-Running Back National Football League Most Valuable Player.
As with last year, I nominate, then readers decide. Before you jump to a conclusion spelled "J.J. Watt," remember only players from teams that reach the Super Bowl are eligible -- my logic being if one is to wear the mantle of Most Valuable, one must have created value.
And of course, how could a defensive player who had one of the best individual performances ever by a defensive player have created value for his team? According to Gregg Easterbrook, the answer is that he did not.
The idea a player doesn't create value if his team doesn't make the Super Bowl is ridiculous. Just dumb. It's the same line of thinking that MVP voters in MLB use.
Stats To Ponder No. 1: This season, when New England and Seattle win the coin flip that starts a game, they are 18-2; when losing the flip, they are 10-6.
Clearly whichever team wins the coin flip will win the game, but what if the team that wins the coin flip gets a pick-six? What if both teams get a pick-six?
Last week, I asked readers for their favorite bottomless pits.
And if there is ever an expert on a bottomless pit, then it's Gregg. Every week TMQ is a bottomless pit of misleading information and facts withheld in order to help prove the point Gregg wants to prove that week.
Mike Turschmann of White Plains, New York, noted that in "300," Leonidas has a bottomless pit in Sparta that he uses to dispose of Persians. If Sparta could build bottomless pits 2,500 years ago, why did Persia rule the ancient world?
Because it's a fictional movie.
Ryan Ottele of Renton, Washington, notes that in "Return of the Jedi," the evil emperor ends up hurled into a bottomless pit that conveniently is about 10 feet from his throne. I know if I ruled the galaxy, I'd want a bottomless pit in my office.
Ryan Ottele of Renton, Washington should probably know that it wasn't a bottomless pit that Emperor Palpatine was thrown into, but the reactor shaft of the Death Star. So he didn't have a bottomless pit hanging around his throne, but he had a reactor shaft for the Death Star near his throne. And the reactor shaft wasn't even bottomless, as can be seen in that video where there is an explosion when Palpatine hits the bottom. So this is just a big fail by Ryan, though it would help if Gregg wouldn't print something as bottomless when it was not indeed bottomless. It would require research to find out if the "bottomless pit" was in fact a bottomless pit and Gregg has no time for silly things like research.
Spencer Ferrero of Los Angeles notes that in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Indy has to leap across a bottomless pit, then is pulled out of an abyss -- the secret temple had one of each! -- by his father.
The secret temple didn't haven abyss, but an abyss was created when the temple started pulling apart, sort of like what happens during an earthquake when the ground separates to create an abyss.
John Yaeger of Minneapolis notes there is an actual bottomless pit in Minnesota.
If Minnesota has a bottomless pit, then why don't they rule the world?
The physics of bottomless pits are never spelled out. How is one built?
I don't know, ask the people in Minnesota.
Where does the stuff go?
Well Gregg, since it's bottomless I think that question sort of answers itself doesn't it?
Why don't bottomless pits have guard rails?
Darth Vader did have to raise the Emperor over a rail before dumping him down the reactor shaft. So...maybe watch the movie or something.
Since the MVP award almost always goes to a quarterback or running back, Tuesday Morning Quarterback confers an MVP for which quarterbacks and running backs are not eligible. Given pass-wacky trends, soon the award may be the Non-QB Non-WR MVP.
Because wide receivers are winning the MVP award all the time now and all. The last time a wide receiver won the MVP award was....it was....oh yeah, never. Anyway, I think I'll worry about it becoming the non-QB non-WR MVP as soon as a wide receiver actually wins the MVP for the first time ever.
Only players from teams that reached the Super Bowl are eligible.
Which is dumb.
Cast your vote nearby. Next week's column will announce the winner.
And of course Gregg has to provide the nominations for his readers to ensure that no highly-drafted glory boy would be named non-QB non-RB MVP or anything like that. So Gregg nominates as many undrafted and lowly drafted players as possible so he can lead his readers in the direction of voting an undrafted player as non-QB non-RB MVP. This achieves the purpose of allowing Gregg to crow about how an undrafted player was voted as the winner, as if he didn't provide nominations that led the voting in that direction in the first place.
New England, offense: Dan Connolly, guard. Undrafted out of lower-division Southeast Missouri State, Connolly is the man who replaced perennial Pro Bowler Logan Mankins. For five seasons, Connolly has started almost every Patriots game. Against Indianapolis, most of the Patriots' rushing yards came up the middle between the guards. Connolly helped open holes a runner could have gone through holding a medicine ball.
You mean the guy who was rated by Pro Football Focus as the Patriots' worst offensive linemen? That guy? I'm sure those numbers don't mean anything though and Gregg's visual observation that Connolly was undrafted and plays for a team in the Super Bowl means PFF is wrong.
New England, defense: Rob Ninkovich, linebacker. Kyle Arrington, Darrelle Revis and Jamie Collins have had fine years for the Flying Elvii defense,
But two of them are highly-drafted players, so Gregg can't count them as part of this discussion for fear he won't get to go on a "Undrafted players are so valuable and here's proof" rant.
He has great instincts whether dropping into coverage or rushing the passer, and must be accounted for. Bonus: Ninkovich was let go by New Orleans (twice!) and by Miami.
That is a bonus! Obviously knowing Ninkovich was let go years ago by two NFL teams means his performance on the field in 2014 should be judged in a more positive light. Ninkovich may be a 5th round pick but he's also considered "unwanted" by Gregg.
Seattle, defense: Bobby Wagner, linebacker. On a team of defensive standouts, Wagner is the man who gets it done. Who's most "valuable" is usually hard to measure, but not in this case. Wagner missed a few games because of injury: Seattle was 3-2 without him, 11-2 with him. Offensive coordinators find Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman annoying; Wagner makes them tear their hair out.
Wagner was a second round pick, so he's the only hope to win this award and prevent Gregg talking about how valuable undrafted players are compared to highly-drafted glory boys. You know highly drafted guys like Earl Thomas, who is the catalyst for the Seahawks' defense. Notice that Wagner's draft position is not included in the discussion of how valuable he is.
The Super Bowl may be over at the coin flip, since Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick both like to defer and their teams perform better when deferring.
Deferring is thought to confer a slight tactical advantage since the team that gets the second-half kickoff knows what happened in the first half, what tactics were used and what the scoreboard situation is. Deferring also creates the chance of the back-to-back score -- scoring to end the first half, then scoring again to begin the second half. This can be demoralizing for the opponent.
Unless that opponent then gets a pick-six, in which case they have then demoralized their opponent that got back-to-back scores. The nature of demoralization is very complicated.
New England's performance has been reasonably uniform, a 292-194 margin in the first half then a 265-157 margin after intermission. The Patriots' best quarter is the second. They've outscored opponents by 79 points in the second quarter, which has fourth-quarter tactical dynamics but lacks the drama of the fourth quarter.
I think there are certain times in TMQ that Gregg just starts rambling without totally thinking about what he's rambling about. This may be one of those times.
Since about the middle of 2013, the Seahawks have disdained the blitz -- they brought pressure on five of 65 Green Bay snaps in the NFC Championship Game, much lower than the league average of 20 percent blitzing.
But as I always say, it's not just a matter of the Seahawks deciding they aren't blitzing, it's also a matter of the fact they can get pressure with four pass rushers. Not every team can get pressure with just four rushers, so teams that are able to do this don't have to blitz as much.
Given extra time to prepare, Seattle may try to surprise Brady by offering coverages it hasn't shown on film this season.
Or they may not offer coverages not shown on film this season. It may or may not happen.
When Seattle has the ball, expect a traditionalist approach of run-run-run then play-fake and throw long. In a pass-wacky era, the Seahawks' offense is a throwback. Early three-and-outs that might frustrate other teams don't seem to frustrate the Seattle offense,
Partially because the Seahawks' offense knows their defense is good enough to not allow points that would put the Seahawks behind by a lot in the game. It's easy to not get frustrated with a three-and-out when you know that your defense won't allow the other team to score a ton of points and the three-and-out won't cause your offense to change the game plan drastically.
New England has been using press corners this season, playing a similar style to Seattle's. Adding Revis made press corners possible for the Patriots.
Adding Revis allowed the Patriots to change their entire defensive strategy, but he's not in the running for non-QB non-RB MVP because he's a first round pick.
Statistically, by yards, Seattle is superior to New England on offense as well as on defense. Football Outsiders finds the Patriots' special teams better,
Yeah, but special teams aren't as important as offense and defense, so I'm not even sure why Gregg is choosing to discuss special teams at all.
and three of the past five Super Bowls included important special-teams plays by the victors.
Gregg Easterbrook from earlier in the column:
Kick return touchdowns are nice, too, but they involve special teams on both sides -- and while special-teams play is important, offense and defense are more important.
Gregg Easterbrook now:
"One thing that may make a difference in the Super Bowl is special teams. Three of the last five teams to win the Super Bowls had important special teams plays by the team that won. So special teams aren't as important as offense and defense, unless it is as important as offense or defense. It depends on what point needs to be proven at that moment."
The latest New England ethical lapse -- how many times do the Patriots have to let the whole country down? -- means Bill Belichick henceforth will be Bill Belichick* to this column.
Oh God, please don't let this become a "thing" in TMQ. Please.
A Nissan commercial showing a car driving through a pack of evil living snowmen says "do not attempt." If you encounter evil living snowmen, don't drive through them!
I think what the disclaimer means is don't drive your car through a lot of snow because it could damage the car in some way. It's more fun though to be intentionally ignorant and think the disclaimer is about evil snowmen.
The last time Bill Belichick's*
Crap, it's a "thing" that Gregg is going to be doing.
Patriots reached the final contest and also were in hot water was Super Bowl XLII, versus the Giants, the season of Spygate. As punishment for cheating, the football gods denied New England the first 19-0 record in NFL history. Now the Patriots once again have reached the final contest while being in hot water. Will the football gods once again exact vengeance?
They very well could. The football gods have been punishing the Patriots for Spygate so far by only allowing them to reach two Super Bowls since Spygate was uncovered, as well as allowing them to be one of the best teams in the NFL since 2007. It's been a harsh punishment, so I don't see why it would end in this upcoming Super Bowl.
When astronomers are puzzled by unknown high-energy events in the cosmos, TMQ asks: Why assume what we are seeing is natural? Perhaps astronomers are seeing the muzzle flashes of doomsday weapons.
This from the guy who has a real issue with the use of bottomless pits in a fictional movie. Gregg has no issue with high-energy events in the cosmos possibly being muzzle flashes of doomsday weapons. Of course if a movie tried to set up a scenario where these were muzzle flashes of doomsday weapons then Gregg would make a great effort to point out how unrealistic this and then point out the scientific fallacies which the writers of the movie ignored and should not have.
Belichick* told the packed house. Shocked, shocked! In the famous scene from "Casablanca," the moment after Captain Renault shuts down Rick's cafe because he is shocked, shocked to find out gambling was going on, the croupier walks up, hands the captain cash and says, "Your winnings, sir." Captain Renault takes the cash and says, "Thank you very much." So when Belichick* declared himself shocked about Patriots cheating, a team assistant should have walked up to the podium and said, "Your Super Bowl plane ticket, sir."
I realize Gregg is attempting to be funny, but his example isn't the same as the scenario presented in the movie. In "Casablanca," Captain Renault was handed the very object which proved he should not have been shocked by the gambling. In Gregg's scenario, a Super Bowl ticket isn't the very object which proved Belichick should not have been shocked by the deflating of footballs. If the team assistant had walked up to the podium and said, "Here is the deflated football you ordered" then Gregg's scenario would make sense. Even when making a joke, Gregg just sort of mails it in without worrying about whether the joke makes sense in the context of the real life event he's commenting on.
Newspaper front pages, the lead story of network evening newscasts, 24-7 cable news coverage -- if the Patriots doctored game balls, that's wrong, but why the four-alarm level of coverage?
One reason is simply that football is the king of sports. America is obsessed with this game, down to its minutiae. The NFL has an outsized role in society, and never hesitates to use that outsized role for money and ratings. When the NFL screws up, it's an outsized screwup.
That's the long and short of it. The NFL is very, very popular and any news that happens involving the NFL is big news. It's the main reason the deflating of footballs has led news coverage.
Initially mulling this, I was tempted to say another factor in the reaction is that so many people viscerally dislike Belichick*. But the Saints' bounty scandal and the Ray Rice imbroglio got four-alarm treatment, and neither involved Belichick*.
The fact the Patriots were involved with Spygate a few years ago had something to do with the coverage, but before mulling it too long, just know the reason the deflating of footballs story is so big is because the NFL is so big.
But on reflection I don't think the reaction to PSIcheated is about Belichick*. It's about the assumption that people reach positions of power and privilege -- in sports, business, government, school, Wall Street -- by cheating, and most are never caught.
I'm just glad Gregg is finally getting to the bottom of what this football deflating scandal is really about. Because it certainly can't be about a Hall of Fame-caliber coach and quarterback suspected of cheating for a second time. It can't be that simple. It has to be about society and the idea people in power cheat to get there. There has to be some sort of macro-level to the Patriots deflating footballs, so it can't simply be about how some people believe Belichick and Brady are found to have cheated for the second time and they are about to appear in the Super Bowl (some claim) as a direct result of cheating. That can't be it.
But if there's a fair, open competition and one person ends up with a powerful, highly remunerative position while another ends up with little or nothing, we may prefer to believe the whole thing was fixed. Seeing a powerful, wealthy person caught cheating reinforces this.
Or many people just don't like the idea one team is cheating in order to win games. Or many people don't like the Patriots and can't wait to eviscerate them for getting caught violating NFL rules for a second time.
Postscript No. 3: TMQ regularly reminds -- including in this 2007 column as Spygate started
I find it interesting that Gregg links a column from 2007 and refers to it as when "Spygate started" considering a few years ago he tried to justify his whole "The Patriots haven't won a Super Bowl or had postseason success because of football gods punished them" stance based on Spygate not really having started until AFTER the Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the Giants. Gregg wanted to push the start of Spygate to the end of the season to justify his insistence the Patriots had not had postseason success since Spygate occurred. I can't find the exact TMQ, but that was Gregg's position. When called out on this being incorrect, I recall Gregg mealy-mouthed his way around it by saying Spygate didn't start until the Patriots were punished for it. So basically, I find it interesting he acknowledges Spygate started before the 2007 season started, because that wasn't always his position when he had a point he wanted to prove.
Postscript No. 4: Andrew Luck's hand size (pinkie to thumb with fingers spread) is 10 inches, Brady's is 9.4 inches. That's a bigger distinction than it may seem.
This is an excellent example of how Gregg's position on an issue will change depending on what he wants to prove. After most NFL seasons, Gregg writes in TMQ about "hyper specificity" and how there is no difference in a player running a 4.41 40-yard dash and a 4.48 40-yard dash because both should be rounded to 4.4 or 4.5. All of a sudden, Brady's hand size isn't 9 inches or 10 inches wide. Not at all. Now Gregg embraces hyper specificity and says Brady's hand size is 9.4 inches long. In fact, here is Gregg mocking those who do exactly what he's doing here.
Football is wild for absurd precision. Here, a combine 40-yard dash time is touted as "4.27" seconds, trailing only a record of "4.24" seconds. A player who runs a "4.24" is half of 1 percent faster than a player who runs a "4.27," and would finish a 40-yard dash three inches ahead.
Maryland just raised its state income tax rate to 8.95 percent. It's certainly not 9 percent!
Medicare taxes are rising this year by 0.9 percent for many filers to help finance ObamaCare. It's certainly not a 1 percent increase!
When Gregg has a point to prove, he is allowed to use hyper specificity, but it's outrageous when anyone else dares to say Medicare taxes are rising 0.9 percent rather than 1.0 percent. Gregg's own rules need not apply to himself.
In the aftermath of Green Bay facing four fourth-and-1s in the NFC Championship Game and kicking four times, many readers, including Rebecca Wayne of Bellingham, Washington, noted that as the decisions happened, Fox's on-air announcers seemed to agree. She wrote, "So in hindsight Mike McCarthy was wrong but it wasn't obvious in real time."
In most fourth-and-short situations, on-air personnel for CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC (CBS provides the booth crew for NFL Network broadcasts) express approval when the coach sends out the kicking unit. Announcers tend to assume that if coaches who do nothing all year but study football think kicking on fourth-and-short is the right move, they must be right.
This could be true. What is also true is that most play-by-play guys are older and the analysts tend to be older ex-football players as well. I view going for it on fourth down as a more progressive and more recent trend. Those people, like on-air personnel, that don't have to make the decision and have traditionally favored taking points over going for it on fourth down will think the head coach did the right thing by taking the points. It's why Twitter blows up with negativity when a coach like Mike McCarthy kicks a field goal so close to the end zone. Twitter trends younger and younger people tend to favor the more aggressive and progressive tactics, while the tactic of "take the points" isn't as entrenched in them as it is the older play-by-play guys and analysts. It's my small little theory about why on-air personnel tend to seem more conservative.
It's obvious when athletes make errors -- interceptions are not supposed to happen -- but not obvious when coaches err, thus they receive the benefit of the doubt. Announcers even use the "have to" construction. As in, "It's fourth-and-1, the Screaming Lemurs have to punt."
Again, they favor less aggressive tactics because going for it on fourth down being supported by data stating this is the right strategy is a relatively new thing. It's why baseball announcers also tend to be more conservative and less accepting of newer Sabermetric principles. They call the game based on how they played/grew up around the game, which may be slightly different from how the current game is played in terms of strategy.
Blame-shifting is essential to understanding why so many football coaches opt for the "safe" tactic even if it reduces the odds of winning. Of course every coach wants to win, but that is not necessarily the No. 1 objective in the coach's mind. Avoiding criticism, and thus prolonging job security, may be objective No. 1.
Mike McCarthy just signed a new contract extension that takes him through 2018 and it's probably worth more than the $5 million per year he got in his last contract extension. So why would McCarthy give a shit about job security? If he gets fired, the Packers will be paying him for four seasons that he doesn't even coach the team. Job security isn't objective No. 1. Maybe this blanket criticism is correct for other head coaches, but Gregg can't explain away why McCarthy was conservative against Seattle with this "job security" explanation. It doesn't pass the bullshit test.
Usually coaches are criticized for fourth-down tries -- Belichick* was hammered for going for it in Patriots territory at Indianapolis. McCarthy's situation is a rare case of a coach criticized for doing the "safe" thing.
Probably because it was so egregious. Gregg explains job security is the concern of a coach when he decides not to go for it on fourth down. I don't think that pertains to McCarthy, so I would love to know if Gregg thinks McCarthy is that concerned about avoiding criticism. I can't believe McCarthy would have that thin of skin.
Football aside: Yours truly watched the tape of the fourth-and-1 decisions and was struck by this: All four times Aaron Rodgers trotted off passively, not arguing to go for it. Can anyone believe Brett Favre in this situation would have trotted off passively? This may be emblematic of the difference between the modern analytics-based, emotionally cool approach to sports and old-fashioned passion for athletic battle.
For the love of God, running off the field and throwing a tantrum like a child or questioning the head coach while yelling at him IS NOT LEADERSHIP! It is not. I wish Gregg would get this out of his head. Maybe Favre would trot off passively, maybe he wouldn't. Rodgers was probably thinking about how the Packers left opportunities to score on the field instead of thinking about showing "leadership" by acting like a child and stomping off the field.
Trotting off passively has nothing to do with an analytics-based approach to sports. It has to do with real leaders not questioning their coach publicly or acting like a spoiled brat in cases where that quarterback doesn't agree with the decision of his coach. Is leadership showing fellow teammates that it's okay to question the coach? Is leadership showing fellow teammates that it's okay to act like a spoiled brat? This is not leadership.
Political aside: Hillary Clinton is so far ahead in the early polls that the very size of the lead ought to make her nervous. The Packers thought a 16-0 lead was insurmountable, too.
I'm sure Hillary Clinton knows that being far ahead in an early poll isn't the same thing as the Packers having a 16-0 lead in a football playoff game. If only Gregg knew it.
Next Week: That Super Bowl thing you might have heard about.
Actually the Super Bowl takes place this week. Is this an example of Reverse-Creep where Gregg talks about an event occurring next week when it really takes place this week?
There's data, there's big data, and then there is slam-dunk data. In the latter category: Teams that return an interception for a touchdown are 12-0 in the Super Bowl. Get a pick-six, win the Super Bowl. It's pretty much that simple.
So both the Patriots and Seahawks need to ignore whatever game plan they have and just try to get a pick-six. Once they do that, they can rest easy knowing they have won the game. It's slam-dunk data.
Teams that run back a fumble for a touchdown in the Super Bowl are 2-2. Teams that run a kick back for a touchdown are 4-6, that winning total diluted by two Super Bowl victors who had both kickoff and interception return touchdowns.
The pick-six rules the Super Bowl.
Again, each team's secondary should jump all routes and do whatever it takes, even if the opposing team gets a touchdown as a result, to get a pick-six.
Why do interception return touchdowns link so tightly with Super Bowl victory when other kinds of return touchdowns don't?
I'm not a smart man, but I'm guessing this is probably a coincidence and not any type of data that is indicative of a trend that actually means something. A pick-six is a big swing in a football game, but there is no reason a team that has a pick-six has won every Super Bowl. I'm not sure there is a causation here.
One answer may be sample size. There have been only 48 -- excuse me, XLVIII -- Super Bowls. Maybe that's not enough to wash out the role of luck in the XII-0 record for pick-six teams.
Right, it's a smaller sample size. I don't know of a way to find this information, but I would bet that teams over the history of the NFL (INCLUDING THE TRIASSIC PERIOD!) who have a pick-six in a game are more likely to win that game. So what we have is a smaller sample size, along with a pick-six making it more likely the team that gets the pick-six will win the game, leading to Super Bowl teams with a pick-six are now 12-0. It's an indicator a team will win a game, but not to the extent the 12-0 record in the Super Bowl shows.
Perhaps this is because high-level quarterback play is needed for Super Bowl success, and an interception returned for a touchdown causes the quarterback to lose confidence in himself -- or his teammates to lose confidence in him.
Or maybe because it's six points scored against a team while they are on offense is a large swing of points and it doesn't have a ton to do with reading the quarterback's mind and knowing if he has lost confidence or not.
Fumble return touchdowns are great, but all players know that being in the right place at the right time for a scoop-and-score is almost entirely chance.
A pick-six is partly chance too. There is skill in causing a fumble, like there is skill in making an interception, but to return it for a touchdown requires a certain amount of luck that there aren't five offensive players directly around the defender who made the interception to where he has a chance to run it back for a touchdown.
Kick return touchdowns are nice, too, but they involve special teams on both sides -- and while special-teams play is important, offense and defense are more important.
Oh. Well then, I guess it's official. Someone should tell Tony Romo or Scott Norwood that special teams aren't that important. I'm sure they probably would think otherwise. I bet the Patriots and their fans think special teams are as important in the Super Bowl as offense and defense, considering they have won two Super Bowls on game-winning kicks. As a Panthers fan, I'm liable to disagree that special teams aren't as important as offense and defense considering John Kasay kicking the ball out of bounds in the Super Bowl undid all the good work that the Panthers' offense did in the fourth quarter. But yeah, special teams isn't as important as offense and defense until it is.
Gregg kills me. Special teams isn't as important as offense or defense until a team screws up on special teams. Then it suddenly becomes as important.
When the quarterback throws an interception run back for touchdown, this may mean the quarterback, the team's leader, just made a huge mistake, or that the opponent's defense is really good. Both are unsettling. Peyton Manning won his first Super Bowl, versus Chicago, then lost his next two, versus New Orleans with Indianapolis and versus Seattle with Denver. In both losses Manning threw an interception returned for a touchdown. Both times as the intercepting player scampered down the field, one could feel the air drain from Manning's team.
There was even a measurement on the scoreboard showing how much air was in each team and after Manning threw both interceptions for a touchdown the Air Drain Percentage for the Colts and Broncos increased dramatically. Everyone in the stadium saw the Air Drain Percentage go from 4.32% to 74.3% both times Manning threw a pick-six in the Super Bowl.
While I won't doubt there is a psychological component to a pick-six, part of the reason the pick-six thrown by Manning against the Saints hurt so much is it put the Saints up ahead by more than a touchdown late in the fourth quarter. So it wasn't a matter of air being drained, but a matter of the Colts then being down by more than a touchdown late in the fourth quarter. In the Super Bowl against the Seahawks, the safety on the first play of the game set the tone for the game more than anything else did, at least in my opinion.
Super Bowl XXXV was close until early in the third quarter, when Baltimore's Duane Starks intercepted a Kerry Collins pass and ran it back for a touchdown; the Giants went on to lose 34-7. There are many examples of the interception return touchdown breaking a team's psychology.
It was close, but it was also 10-0 in favor of the Ravens prior to Collins throwing this interception. Then Ron Dixon ran a kick back for a touchdown on the ensuring kickoff, putting the Giants right back in the game where it was "close" again. Then know what happened? Jermaine Lewis of the Ravens ran a kick back for a touchdown, putting the Ravens up 24-7, which really put the game out of reach for the Giants against the Ravens' defense.
Notice how Gregg points out the pick-six broke the Giants in this Super Bowl, but fails to mention the Giants special teams unit that isn't as important as offense or defense put the Giants right back in the game to where it was (in Gregg's own words) a "close" 10 point deficit for the Giants. Then the Ravens ran a kick back for a touchdown, which put the Giants right back down by 17 points. So Gregg points to the pick-six as the psychologically damaging play, but it was really the Jermaine Lewis touchdown on the kickoff that did it, because it put the Giants down by 17 points in the third quarter. The special teams unit that wasn't as important as offense or defense suddenly became as important as offense or defense in the very example Gregg uses to show the damage to a team's psyche that a pick-six can do.
Come Sunday, should Seattle or New England take an interception back for a touchdown, turn to your friends and confidently predict victory for that team. Act like you have access to some incredible Vegas insider service. And if the pick-six team doesn't win, remember this column's ironclad guarantee: All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back.
"If I'm right, tell everyone how smart I am and know that the pick-six is a definite indicator of whether a team will win the Super Bowl or not, but if I'm wrong, then it's all a joke anyway and I have no idea what I'm talking about. When I'm right, it's because my conclusion is based on fact, when I'm wrong, it was all a joke anyway so don't take me seriously."
This is the same shit Gregg did with the Authentic Games metric. He wants it both ways. He wants credit for his accurate metric when it's right, but when it's wrong, the metric was only a joke anyway so don't take it so seriously.
In column news, it's time to name the recipient of the coveted "longest award in sports" -- Entertainment and Sports Programming Network's Tuesday Morning Quarterback Non-Quarterback Non-Running Back National Football League Most Valuable Player.
As with last year, I nominate, then readers decide. Before you jump to a conclusion spelled "J.J. Watt," remember only players from teams that reach the Super Bowl are eligible -- my logic being if one is to wear the mantle of Most Valuable, one must have created value.
And of course, how could a defensive player who had one of the best individual performances ever by a defensive player have created value for his team? According to Gregg Easterbrook, the answer is that he did not.
The idea a player doesn't create value if his team doesn't make the Super Bowl is ridiculous. Just dumb. It's the same line of thinking that MVP voters in MLB use.
Stats To Ponder No. 1: This season, when New England and Seattle win the coin flip that starts a game, they are 18-2; when losing the flip, they are 10-6.
Clearly whichever team wins the coin flip will win the game, but what if the team that wins the coin flip gets a pick-six? What if both teams get a pick-six?
Last week, I asked readers for their favorite bottomless pits.
And if there is ever an expert on a bottomless pit, then it's Gregg. Every week TMQ is a bottomless pit of misleading information and facts withheld in order to help prove the point Gregg wants to prove that week.
Mike Turschmann of White Plains, New York, noted that in "300," Leonidas has a bottomless pit in Sparta that he uses to dispose of Persians. If Sparta could build bottomless pits 2,500 years ago, why did Persia rule the ancient world?
Because it's a fictional movie.
Ryan Ottele of Renton, Washington, notes that in "Return of the Jedi," the evil emperor ends up hurled into a bottomless pit that conveniently is about 10 feet from his throne. I know if I ruled the galaxy, I'd want a bottomless pit in my office.
Ryan Ottele of Renton, Washington should probably know that it wasn't a bottomless pit that Emperor Palpatine was thrown into, but the reactor shaft of the Death Star. So he didn't have a bottomless pit hanging around his throne, but he had a reactor shaft for the Death Star near his throne. And the reactor shaft wasn't even bottomless, as can be seen in that video where there is an explosion when Palpatine hits the bottom. So this is just a big fail by Ryan, though it would help if Gregg wouldn't print something as bottomless when it was not indeed bottomless. It would require research to find out if the "bottomless pit" was in fact a bottomless pit and Gregg has no time for silly things like research.
Spencer Ferrero of Los Angeles notes that in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Indy has to leap across a bottomless pit, then is pulled out of an abyss -- the secret temple had one of each! -- by his father.
The secret temple didn't haven abyss, but an abyss was created when the temple started pulling apart, sort of like what happens during an earthquake when the ground separates to create an abyss.
John Yaeger of Minneapolis notes there is an actual bottomless pit in Minnesota.
If Minnesota has a bottomless pit, then why don't they rule the world?
The physics of bottomless pits are never spelled out. How is one built?
I don't know, ask the people in Minnesota.
Where does the stuff go?
Well Gregg, since it's bottomless I think that question sort of answers itself doesn't it?
Why don't bottomless pits have guard rails?
Darth Vader did have to raise the Emperor over a rail before dumping him down the reactor shaft. So...maybe watch the movie or something.
Since the MVP award almost always goes to a quarterback or running back, Tuesday Morning Quarterback confers an MVP for which quarterbacks and running backs are not eligible. Given pass-wacky trends, soon the award may be the Non-QB Non-WR MVP.
Because wide receivers are winning the MVP award all the time now and all. The last time a wide receiver won the MVP award was....it was....oh yeah, never. Anyway, I think I'll worry about it becoming the non-QB non-WR MVP as soon as a wide receiver actually wins the MVP for the first time ever.
Only players from teams that reached the Super Bowl are eligible.
Which is dumb.
Cast your vote nearby. Next week's column will announce the winner.
And of course Gregg has to provide the nominations for his readers to ensure that no highly-drafted glory boy would be named non-QB non-RB MVP or anything like that. So Gregg nominates as many undrafted and lowly drafted players as possible so he can lead his readers in the direction of voting an undrafted player as non-QB non-RB MVP. This achieves the purpose of allowing Gregg to crow about how an undrafted player was voted as the winner, as if he didn't provide nominations that led the voting in that direction in the first place.
New England, offense: Dan Connolly, guard. Undrafted out of lower-division Southeast Missouri State, Connolly is the man who replaced perennial Pro Bowler Logan Mankins. For five seasons, Connolly has started almost every Patriots game. Against Indianapolis, most of the Patriots' rushing yards came up the middle between the guards. Connolly helped open holes a runner could have gone through holding a medicine ball.
You mean the guy who was rated by Pro Football Focus as the Patriots' worst offensive linemen? That guy? I'm sure those numbers don't mean anything though and Gregg's visual observation that Connolly was undrafted and plays for a team in the Super Bowl means PFF is wrong.
New England, defense: Rob Ninkovich, linebacker. Kyle Arrington, Darrelle Revis and Jamie Collins have had fine years for the Flying Elvii defense,
But two of them are highly-drafted players, so Gregg can't count them as part of this discussion for fear he won't get to go on a "Undrafted players are so valuable and here's proof" rant.
He has great instincts whether dropping into coverage or rushing the passer, and must be accounted for. Bonus: Ninkovich was let go by New Orleans (twice!) and by Miami.
That is a bonus! Obviously knowing Ninkovich was let go years ago by two NFL teams means his performance on the field in 2014 should be judged in a more positive light. Ninkovich may be a 5th round pick but he's also considered "unwanted" by Gregg.
Seattle, defense: Bobby Wagner, linebacker. On a team of defensive standouts, Wagner is the man who gets it done. Who's most "valuable" is usually hard to measure, but not in this case. Wagner missed a few games because of injury: Seattle was 3-2 without him, 11-2 with him. Offensive coordinators find Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman annoying; Wagner makes them tear their hair out.
Wagner was a second round pick, so he's the only hope to win this award and prevent Gregg talking about how valuable undrafted players are compared to highly-drafted glory boys. You know highly drafted guys like Earl Thomas, who is the catalyst for the Seahawks' defense. Notice that Wagner's draft position is not included in the discussion of how valuable he is.
The Super Bowl may be over at the coin flip, since Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick both like to defer and their teams perform better when deferring.
Deferring is thought to confer a slight tactical advantage since the team that gets the second-half kickoff knows what happened in the first half, what tactics were used and what the scoreboard situation is. Deferring also creates the chance of the back-to-back score -- scoring to end the first half, then scoring again to begin the second half. This can be demoralizing for the opponent.
Unless that opponent then gets a pick-six, in which case they have then demoralized their opponent that got back-to-back scores. The nature of demoralization is very complicated.
New England's performance has been reasonably uniform, a 292-194 margin in the first half then a 265-157 margin after intermission. The Patriots' best quarter is the second. They've outscored opponents by 79 points in the second quarter, which has fourth-quarter tactical dynamics but lacks the drama of the fourth quarter.
I think there are certain times in TMQ that Gregg just starts rambling without totally thinking about what he's rambling about. This may be one of those times.
Since about the middle of 2013, the Seahawks have disdained the blitz -- they brought pressure on five of 65 Green Bay snaps in the NFC Championship Game, much lower than the league average of 20 percent blitzing.
But as I always say, it's not just a matter of the Seahawks deciding they aren't blitzing, it's also a matter of the fact they can get pressure with four pass rushers. Not every team can get pressure with just four rushers, so teams that are able to do this don't have to blitz as much.
Given extra time to prepare, Seattle may try to surprise Brady by offering coverages it hasn't shown on film this season.
Or they may not offer coverages not shown on film this season. It may or may not happen.
When Seattle has the ball, expect a traditionalist approach of run-run-run then play-fake and throw long. In a pass-wacky era, the Seahawks' offense is a throwback. Early three-and-outs that might frustrate other teams don't seem to frustrate the Seattle offense,
Partially because the Seahawks' offense knows their defense is good enough to not allow points that would put the Seahawks behind by a lot in the game. It's easy to not get frustrated with a three-and-out when you know that your defense won't allow the other team to score a ton of points and the three-and-out won't cause your offense to change the game plan drastically.
New England has been using press corners this season, playing a similar style to Seattle's. Adding Revis made press corners possible for the Patriots.
Adding Revis allowed the Patriots to change their entire defensive strategy, but he's not in the running for non-QB non-RB MVP because he's a first round pick.
Statistically, by yards, Seattle is superior to New England on offense as well as on defense. Football Outsiders finds the Patriots' special teams better,
Yeah, but special teams aren't as important as offense and defense, so I'm not even sure why Gregg is choosing to discuss special teams at all.
and three of the past five Super Bowls included important special-teams plays by the victors.
Gregg Easterbrook from earlier in the column:
Kick return touchdowns are nice, too, but they involve special teams on both sides -- and while special-teams play is important, offense and defense are more important.
Gregg Easterbrook now:
"One thing that may make a difference in the Super Bowl is special teams. Three of the last five teams to win the Super Bowls had important special teams plays by the team that won. So special teams aren't as important as offense and defense, unless it is as important as offense or defense. It depends on what point needs to be proven at that moment."
The latest New England ethical lapse -- how many times do the Patriots have to let the whole country down? -- means Bill Belichick henceforth will be Bill Belichick* to this column.
Oh God, please don't let this become a "thing" in TMQ. Please.
A Nissan commercial showing a car driving through a pack of evil living snowmen says "do not attempt." If you encounter evil living snowmen, don't drive through them!
I think what the disclaimer means is don't drive your car through a lot of snow because it could damage the car in some way. It's more fun though to be intentionally ignorant and think the disclaimer is about evil snowmen.
The last time Bill Belichick's*
Crap, it's a "thing" that Gregg is going to be doing.
Patriots reached the final contest and also were in hot water was Super Bowl XLII, versus the Giants, the season of Spygate. As punishment for cheating, the football gods denied New England the first 19-0 record in NFL history. Now the Patriots once again have reached the final contest while being in hot water. Will the football gods once again exact vengeance?
They very well could. The football gods have been punishing the Patriots for Spygate so far by only allowing them to reach two Super Bowls since Spygate was uncovered, as well as allowing them to be one of the best teams in the NFL since 2007. It's been a harsh punishment, so I don't see why it would end in this upcoming Super Bowl.
When astronomers are puzzled by unknown high-energy events in the cosmos, TMQ asks: Why assume what we are seeing is natural? Perhaps astronomers are seeing the muzzle flashes of doomsday weapons.
This from the guy who has a real issue with the use of bottomless pits in a fictional movie. Gregg has no issue with high-energy events in the cosmos possibly being muzzle flashes of doomsday weapons. Of course if a movie tried to set up a scenario where these were muzzle flashes of doomsday weapons then Gregg would make a great effort to point out how unrealistic this and then point out the scientific fallacies which the writers of the movie ignored and should not have.
Belichick* told the packed house. Shocked, shocked! In the famous scene from "Casablanca," the moment after Captain Renault shuts down Rick's cafe because he is shocked, shocked to find out gambling was going on, the croupier walks up, hands the captain cash and says, "Your winnings, sir." Captain Renault takes the cash and says, "Thank you very much." So when Belichick* declared himself shocked about Patriots cheating, a team assistant should have walked up to the podium and said, "Your Super Bowl plane ticket, sir."
I realize Gregg is attempting to be funny, but his example isn't the same as the scenario presented in the movie. In "Casablanca," Captain Renault was handed the very object which proved he should not have been shocked by the gambling. In Gregg's scenario, a Super Bowl ticket isn't the very object which proved Belichick should not have been shocked by the deflating of footballs. If the team assistant had walked up to the podium and said, "Here is the deflated football you ordered" then Gregg's scenario would make sense. Even when making a joke, Gregg just sort of mails it in without worrying about whether the joke makes sense in the context of the real life event he's commenting on.
Newspaper front pages, the lead story of network evening newscasts, 24-7 cable news coverage -- if the Patriots doctored game balls, that's wrong, but why the four-alarm level of coverage?
One reason is simply that football is the king of sports. America is obsessed with this game, down to its minutiae. The NFL has an outsized role in society, and never hesitates to use that outsized role for money and ratings. When the NFL screws up, it's an outsized screwup.
That's the long and short of it. The NFL is very, very popular and any news that happens involving the NFL is big news. It's the main reason the deflating of footballs has led news coverage.
Initially mulling this, I was tempted to say another factor in the reaction is that so many people viscerally dislike Belichick*. But the Saints' bounty scandal and the Ray Rice imbroglio got four-alarm treatment, and neither involved Belichick*.
The fact the Patriots were involved with Spygate a few years ago had something to do with the coverage, but before mulling it too long, just know the reason the deflating of footballs story is so big is because the NFL is so big.
But on reflection I don't think the reaction to PSIcheated is about Belichick*. It's about the assumption that people reach positions of power and privilege -- in sports, business, government, school, Wall Street -- by cheating, and most are never caught.
I'm just glad Gregg is finally getting to the bottom of what this football deflating scandal is really about. Because it certainly can't be about a Hall of Fame-caliber coach and quarterback suspected of cheating for a second time. It can't be that simple. It has to be about society and the idea people in power cheat to get there. There has to be some sort of macro-level to the Patriots deflating footballs, so it can't simply be about how some people believe Belichick and Brady are found to have cheated for the second time and they are about to appear in the Super Bowl (some claim) as a direct result of cheating. That can't be it.
But if there's a fair, open competition and one person ends up with a powerful, highly remunerative position while another ends up with little or nothing, we may prefer to believe the whole thing was fixed. Seeing a powerful, wealthy person caught cheating reinforces this.
Or many people just don't like the idea one team is cheating in order to win games. Or many people don't like the Patriots and can't wait to eviscerate them for getting caught violating NFL rules for a second time.
Postscript No. 3: TMQ regularly reminds -- including in this 2007 column as Spygate started
I find it interesting that Gregg links a column from 2007 and refers to it as when "Spygate started" considering a few years ago he tried to justify his whole "The Patriots haven't won a Super Bowl or had postseason success because of football gods punished them" stance based on Spygate not really having started until AFTER the Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the Giants. Gregg wanted to push the start of Spygate to the end of the season to justify his insistence the Patriots had not had postseason success since Spygate occurred. I can't find the exact TMQ, but that was Gregg's position. When called out on this being incorrect, I recall Gregg mealy-mouthed his way around it by saying Spygate didn't start until the Patriots were punished for it. So basically, I find it interesting he acknowledges Spygate started before the 2007 season started, because that wasn't always his position when he had a point he wanted to prove.
Postscript No. 4: Andrew Luck's hand size (pinkie to thumb with fingers spread) is 10 inches, Brady's is 9.4 inches. That's a bigger distinction than it may seem.
This is an excellent example of how Gregg's position on an issue will change depending on what he wants to prove. After most NFL seasons, Gregg writes in TMQ about "hyper specificity" and how there is no difference in a player running a 4.41 40-yard dash and a 4.48 40-yard dash because both should be rounded to 4.4 or 4.5. All of a sudden, Brady's hand size isn't 9 inches or 10 inches wide. Not at all. Now Gregg embraces hyper specificity and says Brady's hand size is 9.4 inches long. In fact, here is Gregg mocking those who do exactly what he's doing here.
Football is wild for absurd precision. Here, a combine 40-yard dash time is touted as "4.27" seconds, trailing only a record of "4.24" seconds. A player who runs a "4.24" is half of 1 percent faster than a player who runs a "4.27," and would finish a 40-yard dash three inches ahead.
Maryland just raised its state income tax rate to 8.95 percent. It's certainly not 9 percent!
Medicare taxes are rising this year by 0.9 percent for many filers to help finance ObamaCare. It's certainly not a 1 percent increase!
When Gregg has a point to prove, he is allowed to use hyper specificity, but it's outrageous when anyone else dares to say Medicare taxes are rising 0.9 percent rather than 1.0 percent. Gregg's own rules need not apply to himself.
In the aftermath of Green Bay facing four fourth-and-1s in the NFC Championship Game and kicking four times, many readers, including Rebecca Wayne of Bellingham, Washington, noted that as the decisions happened, Fox's on-air announcers seemed to agree. She wrote, "So in hindsight Mike McCarthy was wrong but it wasn't obvious in real time."
In most fourth-and-short situations, on-air personnel for CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC (CBS provides the booth crew for NFL Network broadcasts) express approval when the coach sends out the kicking unit. Announcers tend to assume that if coaches who do nothing all year but study football think kicking on fourth-and-short is the right move, they must be right.
This could be true. What is also true is that most play-by-play guys are older and the analysts tend to be older ex-football players as well. I view going for it on fourth down as a more progressive and more recent trend. Those people, like on-air personnel, that don't have to make the decision and have traditionally favored taking points over going for it on fourth down will think the head coach did the right thing by taking the points. It's why Twitter blows up with negativity when a coach like Mike McCarthy kicks a field goal so close to the end zone. Twitter trends younger and younger people tend to favor the more aggressive and progressive tactics, while the tactic of "take the points" isn't as entrenched in them as it is the older play-by-play guys and analysts. It's my small little theory about why on-air personnel tend to seem more conservative.
It's obvious when athletes make errors -- interceptions are not supposed to happen -- but not obvious when coaches err, thus they receive the benefit of the doubt. Announcers even use the "have to" construction. As in, "It's fourth-and-1, the Screaming Lemurs have to punt."
Again, they favor less aggressive tactics because going for it on fourth down being supported by data stating this is the right strategy is a relatively new thing. It's why baseball announcers also tend to be more conservative and less accepting of newer Sabermetric principles. They call the game based on how they played/grew up around the game, which may be slightly different from how the current game is played in terms of strategy.
Blame-shifting is essential to understanding why so many football coaches opt for the "safe" tactic even if it reduces the odds of winning. Of course every coach wants to win, but that is not necessarily the No. 1 objective in the coach's mind. Avoiding criticism, and thus prolonging job security, may be objective No. 1.
Mike McCarthy just signed a new contract extension that takes him through 2018 and it's probably worth more than the $5 million per year he got in his last contract extension. So why would McCarthy give a shit about job security? If he gets fired, the Packers will be paying him for four seasons that he doesn't even coach the team. Job security isn't objective No. 1. Maybe this blanket criticism is correct for other head coaches, but Gregg can't explain away why McCarthy was conservative against Seattle with this "job security" explanation. It doesn't pass the bullshit test.
Usually coaches are criticized for fourth-down tries -- Belichick* was hammered for going for it in Patriots territory at Indianapolis. McCarthy's situation is a rare case of a coach criticized for doing the "safe" thing.
Probably because it was so egregious. Gregg explains job security is the concern of a coach when he decides not to go for it on fourth down. I don't think that pertains to McCarthy, so I would love to know if Gregg thinks McCarthy is that concerned about avoiding criticism. I can't believe McCarthy would have that thin of skin.
Football aside: Yours truly watched the tape of the fourth-and-1 decisions and was struck by this: All four times Aaron Rodgers trotted off passively, not arguing to go for it. Can anyone believe Brett Favre in this situation would have trotted off passively? This may be emblematic of the difference between the modern analytics-based, emotionally cool approach to sports and old-fashioned passion for athletic battle.
For the love of God, running off the field and throwing a tantrum like a child or questioning the head coach while yelling at him IS NOT LEADERSHIP! It is not. I wish Gregg would get this out of his head. Maybe Favre would trot off passively, maybe he wouldn't. Rodgers was probably thinking about how the Packers left opportunities to score on the field instead of thinking about showing "leadership" by acting like a child and stomping off the field.
Trotting off passively has nothing to do with an analytics-based approach to sports. It has to do with real leaders not questioning their coach publicly or acting like a spoiled brat in cases where that quarterback doesn't agree with the decision of his coach. Is leadership showing fellow teammates that it's okay to question the coach? Is leadership showing fellow teammates that it's okay to act like a spoiled brat? This is not leadership.
Political aside: Hillary Clinton is so far ahead in the early polls that the very size of the lead ought to make her nervous. The Packers thought a 16-0 lead was insurmountable, too.
I'm sure Hillary Clinton knows that being far ahead in an early poll isn't the same thing as the Packers having a 16-0 lead in a football playoff game. If only Gregg knew it.
Next Week: That Super Bowl thing you might have heard about.
Actually the Super Bowl takes place this week. Is this an example of Reverse-Creep where Gregg talks about an event occurring next week when it really takes place this week?
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