Another, but Shorter, Football Risk-Reward Post
The following post is not intended as criticism of a trade that took place in September. I defended that trade as beneficial to the Patriots at the time, and I still believe that.
BUT....
Last night in the fourth quarter was the first time this season I found myself thinking, "You know, Richard Seymour would sure come in handy right about now."
Risk Management Is What People in Suits Call Gambling
The math professors, Internet smart-alecks, and other football quants who are always writing about how the numbers show that coaches should go for it more often on fourth and short now know why coaches mostly don't.
Bill Belichick chose to go for it on fourth and two with the game in the balance last night. The Pats' subsequent failure to convert and the Colts' even-more-subsequent 35-34 victory means that decision was and will continue to be the subject of some talk, especially hereabouts. It being a second-guesser's universe, the call is destined to go down in history as the equivalent of putting one's life savings in a big chuck of Bear, Stearns stock in January, 2008. The nice prudent punt that would have given Peyton Manning the ball needing to go 70 yards in two minutes to win will be held up as an example of why the phrase "conventional wisdom" does contain that last word.
The second guess is as overwrought as those "damn the torpedoes" equations arguing that teams essentially don't need punters at all. Calls that don't work aren't always bad calls. Math and the in-game human circumstances facing Belichick were on the side of the decision he made. They just didn't justify the size of the bet he made with the call.
It is, in a way, a tribute to the Pats' coach that he ignored the primal reason 999 out of 1000 NFL head coaches would have punted when he did not. Belichick did not start his decision-making process with the question, "What happens if this doesn't work?" Most coaches' strategic choices in all sports are in effect decisions to postpone the decision. Play for time, extend the game and put the burden of winning or losing on the other guy. Playing the percentages means postponing them.
Belichick, to his credit, saw the situation from the positive side of the equation. Faced with the choice of having Tom Brady try to make one play to win, or trying to stop Manning from making five or six plays to keep from losing, he went with his best player as the preferred option.
Belichick forced the issue. THIS will be the play that decides the game. He went all-in with a good hand, with aces, and the Colts defense cracked them. In the World Series of Poker last week, Phil Ivey went all-in with A-K against a guy he perceived correctly had Q-J, and got toasted on the flop. Nobody then said, "Boy, that's the worst call of Ivey's career." They said, "that's gambling." Poker is a game built entirely on percentages, and the smartest people in it know that the ultimate truth about percentages is that they're ratios, not guarantees.
And yet, while I understand Belichick's decision, and it would be satisfyingly contrarian to defend it wholeheartedly, I cannot. Based on the Pats' performance during the game to that point, I believe the coach underrated the viability of the prudent punt. In other words, he dissed his defense more than was warranted.
At that moment, the Colts had had 13 possessions. Four had been shockingly easy, and more relevantly, quick, touchdown drives. But seven had ended in punts, and two in interceptions. Leaving aside how much more difficult game-winning TD drives are than drives for game-winning field goals, the Pats' D already had a better than 67 percent success rate against Manning. I believe Belichick let the memory of Indianapolis' last possession, one of those very quick scores, affect his judgment.
But then, he was there, looking into the eyes and feeling the collective will of the defense. If Belichick truly thought those guys were gassed, I can't argue with that assessment. I would say, however, that a precedent has been set, and not a good one from the Pats' point of view. Game plan meetings for the Jets this week, and for all future Pats' opponents, are going to begin with the statement, "Belichick doesn't believe his defense can stop us when it counts." That's an exaggeration, as Manning does not lead just any NFL offense, but it has a grain or two of truth. The Pats are going to win with offense, and they know it. Imbalanced football teams are easier to prepare for -- and to beat.
Or maybe I'm overthinking this entirely (gosh, it's great the way the Internet has space for equivocation). Perhaps an extraordinarily competitive man got caught up in the frenzy of an extraordinary competition. Maybe Belichick just WANTED to gamble.
After Pickett's Charge, another late-game play call that didn't pan out for the visiting team, three Confederate generals had three different postgame thoughts, all of which can be applied to to Belichick's decision.
Richard Ewell, commander II Corps, said "It took a dozen errors to lose the battle of Gettysburg, and I committed a good many of them."
No one point loss hinges on a single play. Two turnovers in the Colts' end zone and wretched time management (which is on Belichick) were as responsible for the Pats' defeat as the choice to go for it.
James Longstreet, commander I Corps, said of his immediate superior and commanding general, "When the hunt was up, his aggressiveness became overwhelming."
Robert E. Lee, commander Army of Northern Virginia, said "It is all my fault. I thought my men were invincible."
No men are invincible. Not even Hall of Fame quarterbacks. That's why punters have steady jobs.
Not Fooled Again, Just Bored Again
Some time back, before the market value of their target audience's homes fell by 70 percent of so, concert promoters assembled a few 18-wheelers full of $50 bills and visited a few formerly well-known musicians. Their proposition was simple: A Jefferson Airplane reunion tour.
The idea was promptly rejected by Grace Slick with the immortal words, "What could be more pathetic than a bunch of old farts up on stage playing rock and roll?"
So we can cross Gracie off the list of performers we'll be seeing at future Super Bowl halftime shows. The guys (and they're all guys) who run the NFL are positive EVERYONE wants to see Medicare-eligible rock stars of yesteryear strut their stuff between Doritos commercials.
The Who, or rather, Roger Daltrey, Peter Townshend and two other guys who aren't The Who, will be the halftime act at Super Bowl XLIV next February. Having once, very briefly, been a performing musician, I can't hold this against them. Big star or scuffling minor-league wannabe, work is work. But it's sad anyway. The reason the remnants of one of the greatest bands in rock history are playing this gig is because they're SAFE. The NFL knows that "sex, drugs and rock and roll" has seamlessly degraded into "light beer, rock and roll and NO sex."
Let's face it. "Pictures of Lily" is not going to be on the band's song list at the Super Bowl. The Who will play only their songs used as TV themes and in television commercials. Great songs, each and every one -- but also a shout-out to their audience that "you shouldn't feel bad about your life. These guys sold out, too."
Most of all from the league's perspective, the Who will show no human nipples. Since the Great Wardrobe Malfunction of Super Bowl XXXVIII, (which I missed due to being at the game, hundreds of feet above the field in the press box), the performers listed below have done the Super Bowl halftime show (capsule reviews attached).
Super Bowl XXXIX: Paul McCartney (they're great songs, and he's an old trouper).
Super Bowl XL: The Rolling Stones (sad beyond words).
Super Bowl XLI: Prince (pretty good, actually).
Super Bowl XLII: Tom Petty (meh).
Super Bowl XLIII: Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band (a good, hokey halftime show. He grokked the Super Bowl).
The alert reader will note the most obvious fact about this list. No breasts. All the performers were guys, older guys. No danger of illicit flesh French-frying the brains of America's psychopathic and repressed religious fundamentalist groups. Nothing to divert America from watching more Doritos commercials. He or she will also note that the acts, even Prince, have always had predominately white audiences.
The even more alert reader will add The Who to the list and note that half of the acts selected to perform at our country's biggest sports event are furriners -- Brits to be precise. It was an insult to the history of rock that the Stones did the Super Bowl in Detroit. Berry Gordy should've sued. Holy cow, is Aretha Franklin too sexy for pro football?
I have some sympathy for the NFL here. Super Bowl halftime shows shouldn't be controversial. They're just part of the hoopla of our weirdest national holiday, and the entertainers shouldn't muscle in trying to make themselves the big story. But the law of diminishing returns is going to kick in with a vengeance on the "rock stars of yesteryear" policy before too long.
The years are going to keep getting more yester, and the acts deemed big enough for the Super stage are going to start looking bad and performing worse. That section of the audience too young to recall The Who (or whoever) in its prime will conclude, not without reason, that the NFL is culturally clueless. That section that, like me, is old enough to remember how amazing those acts were in their prime will only get depressed. Might turn us off Doritos for life.
Happily, there's more to popular music than stadium rock. The list of entertainers, young and old, who could do a terrific Super Bowl halftime show is a long one. You want young? Taylor Swift or Beyonce would get the job done and then some. You want old? Merle Haggard could do a Super Bowl show. Or Tony Bennett. There wouldn't be a musician in the world who wouldn't want to be in either of those guys' backup bands for that gig.
He's really old, and performs sitting in a chair these days, and is not in good health. But it would be a tremendous event if B.B. King had 12 minutes of the Super Bowl to play Lucille before the tens of millions of Americans who have never been lucky enough to see him perform.
The odds of any of those acts appearing in future Super Bowls range from long to theoretical mathematical concepts. The National Football League IS culturally clueless. I mean, look at Roger Goodell. Is that a man who has ever rocked? Hell, I'll bet he's never even swung.
So I have a backup to the future plan for the halftime show, one I proposed to scoffing league officials over a decade ago.
Bring back the Grambling band.
A Choice Not an Echo, or, The Failure of Media Deregulation
At approximately 3:30 p.m., the Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti program on WBZ-FM featured Bill Simmons discussing his feud with Glenn Ordway.
A quick flick of the radio to WEEI-AM revealed that at that same moment, Glenn Ordway was discussing his feud with Bill Simmons. Sports talk about sports talk about sports talkers. If "metaidiocy" wasn't a word before this afternoon, it is now.
Ordway and Simmons are highly successful media personalities and have the knack for self-promotion that goes with that territory (that's no knock, it's a necessary skill for their business). Fake feuds have a long and almost honorable history in show business hype. Ordinarily, I'd be inclined to shrug off this pointless war of easily bruised egos as just another day's work by two guys who are hardcore marketers.
But I can't shake the feeling they mean it. Ordway and Simmons have hurt each other's feelings. If true, that's too bad. But why drag innocent sports fans who only want to hear about Jason Varitek's option year into it? It's always the children who suffer in these fights.
Or rather, it's always the children who have them.
World Series, Part 2: The Victors
Philadelphia sports fans are taught from a very early age to despise all other teams -- and their own, too. So Yankee-hating has always seemed weird to me.
I can understand why Red Sox fans hate the Yanks. They are rivals for the same prize each year. I can see why Mets hate the Yanks. Being a perennial number two in the same racket in the same town can blot the sunshine out of life. Take it from a former Herald employee.
But everyone else? I don't get why fans in someplace like Seattle or Houston would be a professional Yankee-hater. I know those folks have existed since the 1920s, and some of it has to do with our nation's extremely conflicted feelings about money, power, and our largest city, so as an American Studies major I understand. As a sports follower, I don't. You root for teams you play to fail, but if they're not on the schedule, who cares about them?
When it comes to individual Yankees, the hatred makes even less sense. Who could possibly dislike Hideki Matsui, or Jorge Posada, or Mariano Rivera? (Not even the most zealous Sox fans dislike Mo, although they all fear him). It isn't Derek Jeter's fault Tim McCarver likes him so much. A-Rod is the most neurotic superstar of our time, and people razz him mostly because they know it bothers him. That is legitimate fan gamesmanship. It doesn't change the reality of his greatness as a player.
Successful team/athlete hatred exists in all sports (except golf and tennis. Must be a WASP thing). The simplest and best way to see its stupidity is to look at it from the other side of the telescope. Patriots fans complain, and rightly so, about the cardboard cutout stereotype of Bill Belichick held by fans and media from other markets. They should switch to the Red Sox fan side of their brain and examine their A-Rod opinions. It's possible those are caricatures of reality as well.
Pressed to the wall, your Yankee hater will say that his primary objection to the franchise is how it "buys championships." The Yankees commit the cardinal sin of exploiting their inherent economic advantages to win. It's not fair.
No, it's not. It's not fair that New York City has more of the good things of life such as arts, restaurants, centers of learning, etc. than your town just because it's bigger, either. But anyone who complained about that would be regarded as a first-degree crank. Why should sports be different?
(Red Sox fans, who root for a team that is second to none in the ruthless monetizing of that love, should be pelted with rotten fruit if THEY complain about the Yankees spending habits.)
Of all the Yankee-haters, there is no greater poseur than the twit who says he hates the team for socioeconomic reasons; the old "rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel" idea first posited in the Great Depression. It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now. Let me tell you a story about that.
In the spring and summer of 1987, I had the most unusual sportswriting gig of my life. I was Yankee beat writer for the "Village Voice." At that time, the giant figures of American leftist political journalism who had helped found the Voice were still at the paper, people like Jack Newfield and Nat Hentoff.
And almost all of them were sick Yankees fans!! These men, whom I grew up admiring to the max, sought me out to discuss the Yanks, which was flattering if bizarre. It was also hilarious. This citadel of rebellion against the American status quo rooted for the ballclub that exemplifies the status quo.
Of course, ideology had nothing to do with. The lefty Yankee fans were fans for the same reason almost everyone is -- it's how they were brought up. Which brings me back to my opening paragraph.
I hated seeing the Yankees win the Series. But that hatred had nothing to do with them. The Yankees don't suck. Losing does.
World Series, Part I: The Vanquished
There's no strength or will here to give the Phillies a hometown boo. They didn't earn one. Sometimes, losing is just a no-fault bummer.
The Phillies had three excellent chances to seize control of the World Series against the Yankees; at the start of Game Two, when they took a 3-0 lead in Game Three, and when they tied up Game Four in the bottom of the eighth. They couldn't take advantage of any of 'em. Playing uphill is no way to beat that opponent.
It is part of the grandeur and misery of postseason baseball that any weakness a team had in the regular season will inevitably reveal itself at the worst possible -- usually fatal -- moment in the playoffs. It even happened to New York, when Joe Girardi's lust for overmanaging cost them a win against the Angels.
The Phillies' weaknesses in 2009 were, in order of appearance, Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge. They each had a shot to be a Series hero, and were goats instead. This is sad, but hardly surprising.
Analyzing my feelings about the Series today, I was surprised at my relative lack of them. Oh, I was disappointed last night, and this morning, but my predominant sentiment was a kind of washed out blur of blah. I think it's baseball overdose. The playoffs are so long, if a fan commits to them, he or she is going to experience far too many highs and lows to keep them all straight. It takes a whole heap of energy to get twisted up over the failure of what one knows damn well is a 10,000 to 1 shot at a comeback. Better to surrender to the void when Hideki Matsui shoves you into it.
Besides, too much sorrow would be an unseemly memorial for the 2009 Phils. Bitching that the defending World Series champion only returned to the Series and couldn't win again is the kind of behavior that ought to get one thrown out of the better class of barrooms. Then there's this: by any rational analysis, the Phillies shouldn't even have made the playoffs in the first place.
Hamels and Lidge were the primary reasons the Phillies won the championship in 2008. They both pretty much sucked all year. Here is a team that could not depend on its number one starter or its closer from Opening Day on. And it made the World Series anyway. SOMEBODY, make that about 23 other somebodies, on the roster must've played his/their asses off.
And so they did, from start to flawed finish (it's hard to hit 11 home runs in six games and lose 4 of them, but the Phillies did). They were an admirable ballclub. I'm glad I spent almost my free time since October 1 admiring them.
S%*#-Stirring: A Primer
It is one of the duties of a professional opinionizer, in whatever medium, to occasionally piss off their audience. A commentator who fails to have at least a few provocative opinions is not doing his or her job properly, just as a commentator who's never glaringly wrong is also playing it too safe to justify their paycheck.
But journalistic ethics apply to opinions as much they do to the presentation of facts. There's a right and wrong way to send the audience's blood pressure up to 220/140. Boiling it down to a song title, you gotta be sincere.
Commentators have to believe in their comments. The opinion being expressed must be an honest expression of belief. It's EASY to make people mad, especially sports fans. Making up ideas to do so is wrong on a number of levels, not least the most basic moral level. People who get a charge out of irritating others are jackasses nobody wants to be around. There are commentators who do exactly that, not just in sports, and some of them are rich and famous, too. I wouldn't be them for all their riches. It's not my idea of fun, or life.
Upon review, the two columns I wrote at the Herald that angered the most people stand up to that test. When I wrote in 1991 that the Celtics, were they to avoid a long period of failure, needed to break up their team by trading Larry Bird, I acknowledged this would never happen. That's fair. And I believed with all my heart they had to break up the '80s team or face a decade in the wilderness. Older and in some ways more aware, I have a better understanding of how impossible that was for the team's management. History, however, has partially absolved me.
Now where I was flat wrong. In the latter stages of the 2003 NFL season, I posited that the Patriots needed to end their long winning streak in the regular season, because otherwise they would do so in the playoffs, as it was impossible for any team in our time to win 15 straight games. Boy, people hated that one! I was surprised, actually.
The Pats made me eat my belief and more power to 'em (although I looked dangerously close to being right in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XXXVIII). But while I was wrong, I wasn't dissembling. My opinion, as stated, reflected my true beliefs and interpretation of the facts at the time. That's honest provocation. Dumb maybe, but fair to the angered audience.
Since I kicked the snot out of him last week, it gives me pleasure to come to the defense of my former colleague Tony Massarotti this morning. Tony wrote a column for Boston.com that has pissed off Boston fans more than I ever did. He stated that Red Sox fans should root for the Yankees in the World Series. A New York title would shame Sox management out of complacency and spur on the franchise to new heights of free-spending genius in the offseason.
From my vantage point, Tony is about as wrong as he can be in his underlying charge against the Sox. I saw no evidence of organizational torpor in the 2009 season. The acquisition of Victor Martinez is enough evidence to find a directed verdict of "not guilty." The problems the Sox had this year were not exactly of their own making. In the regular season, the Yankees were better than they were. In the playoffs, the Angels were considerably better than the Sox. As they say at West Point, the enemy has a vote.
But I listened carefully to Tony's defense of his opinion this week during his and Michael Felger's radio show (well, I did for 15 minutes stuck in traffic on 128 one afternoon. Then I put in a Smokey Robinson CD). He meant it. His defense of his misbegotten opinion rang completely true, mainly because it got more coherent and detailed the more he was challenged. People who just throw an opinion out there haven't usually put enough thought into the idea to defend it by any means except repeating it.
Massarotti's audience should feel free to disagree with him as vigorously as they wish. I just did. But as a reforming s@#!-stirrer, I advise the audience that Mazz stirred in accordance with the standards of that odd profession.
Bye Week Self-Scouting
NFL players and coaches love the bye week, for understandable if quite different reasons (time off vs. more time to plan and fret). Writers, at least in my time, were more ambivalent. On the one hand, there's less hanging around football stadiums. On the other, just because nothing's happening with your team doesn't mean you get to stop writing about it.
Astute and compassionate readers should not complain if the Patriots' articles in their daily papers seem like pretty thin gruel today, tomorrow, and Monday. It actually is quite a literary accomplishment to make stone soup taste as good as thin gruel.
Bloggers, especially lazy ones like me, have the option of simply ignoring football during the bye week. But I guess those years of listening to Bill Belichick and other workaholic coaches made more of an impact on me than I'm sure they suspected. As dutifully as any first-year assistant to the assistant quality control coach, yours truly will use the bye to go over game tapes (past posts) and see where I stand.
Since it is me doing this, the review process will not be a lengthy one.
Before the 2009 NFL season began, I forecast its outcome in the following descending order of probability: 1. Patriots win Super Bowl. 2. Steelers win Super Bowl. 3. Some NFC team wins Super Bowl in big upset. How has roughly the first half of the season affected that prediction.
Short answer: Hardly at all -- yet.
Both the Patriots and Steelers are 5-2, and their losses may be attributed to natural phenomena. In Pittsburgh's case, it was the loss of Troy Polamalu to an injury. He's back, and we may regard the Steelers' win over the Vikings as more indicative of their status than their losses to the Bears and Bengals.
The Pats played VERY poorly on offense in the second half of their road losses to the Jets and Broncos. This almost certainly was due to the natural and expected adjustment process Tom Brady faced returning after missing an entire season with an injury. Coming back from much less injury down time threw Peyton Manning off for about half a season in 2008. He seems to have bounced back nicely. Anyone who doesn't think Brady has is on the same path is the kind of person I like to find when gambling.
No, the only possible reasons I find to doubt my forecast have nothing to do with the teams I named in it. So far, the Colts have been a much better team than I expected. The Saints have been much, much, much better.
By a happy coincidence, the Patriots will play both teams in the near future, on the road yet. Unless New England loses both games by 17 points or so, I abide by my predictions with serene confidence.
OK, almost serene.
I Contain Multitudes -- Very Silly Multitudes
Gosh, I love America. Just this afternoon, going to a well-known retail chain to buy a leaf-blower, I saw the following Christmas ornament for sale -- an inflatable Santa doll the size of a pony. No biggie, huh? Check this. Santa had somehow bumped Jimmie Johnson and was waving maniacally from behind the wheel of the number 48 Hendricks Brothers Lowe's Chevrolet.
I'd get one, but I don't want the sudden deaths of the entire membership of the Lexington Historical Society on my conscience.
But wait, it gets better! I turn on ESPN and there's a segment on one of their features shows on Ron Artest's new life as a member of the Lakers. You'll be happy to know that since he's arrived in LA, Ron has decided to become involved in mentoring -- as a mentor.
Hanging out here and there, Ron has struck up an acquaintance with a younger celebrity in need of guidance. He's taken Lindsay Lohan under his wing, giving her the benefit of his experience in how to bounce back from the occasional life mistake.
What happens when SportsCenter meets TMZ. Probably America's Most Wanted.
