Nobody's Ever Seen a Smiling Zebra in the Wild
An obvious unnecessary roughness call in the AFC championship game last night was made by an official and more or less gave the Chiefs their chance to win the game on a last-second field goal, which they did. This made many people, not all of them Cincinnati Bengals, very mad.
The night before that, an equally obvious foul by the Celtics on LeBron James was not called, giving the Celts a chance to win their game with the Lakers in overtime, which they did. This made a lot of people very mad, too.
The resulting brouhahas make yours truly feel very very tired. There is nothing in sports so tedious and soul-wearying as arguments about officiating in big games, in any game (one of the first things I learned in sportswriting was that whatever game you were at was the biggest in the world to the people in it). These disputes, the #NFLisrigged hashtags polluting social media this morning, stem from two facts about human nature so basic they were known to Cro-Magnon Man. To wit, losing sucks. To further wit, human beings and human endeavors can never be perfect.
There's a third fact in play here, too, one most sports fans and sports leagues refuse to acknowledge. Officials are athletes. NFL and NBA officials are top notch world-class athletes. Maybe they're not as big, strong and fast as the athletes they regulate, but they face stresses those jocks don't.
No load management for NBA refs. They go the full 48 every night. No two-platoon officiating crews in the NFL. They don't have heated benches, big parkas or stocking caps like the players did last night, either. They freeze their asses off the whole game.
We the observers accept that the playing athletes, even the very best, can have bad games. We even more easily accept they can make bad plays at crucial times, plays that decide games. We even accept that coaches and managers can make boneheaded decisions. These things can break fans' hearts. They can spur civic outrage and despair. But we the crowd know these misfortunes take place all the time, and are to be borne as another part of the suffering that is the sports' followers destiny 98 times out of 100.
At the same time, everybody in sports denies this tolerance to officiating. That's gotta be perfect. When it isn't, we wuz robbed. It's all fixed. Change the rules, add another replay camera, have somebody issue a groveling apology.
All these remedies and more have been tried and none have worked. As often happens in human affairs, some remedies have made things worse, particularly instant replay, the most significant effort to make the imperfect perfect.
Human beings screw up no matter how many electronic devices they have to help them. Replay showed Devonta Smith did not make a spectacular catch to set up the Eagles' first touchdown in their NFC title game victory yesterday evening. But 49ers' coach Kyle Shanahan, doubtless dreaming of his opening drive "scheme," failed to throw a challenge flag, and the Eagles got off their next play before the league office in New York wised up. That wasn't the fault of an official making a wrong call of a spectacular bang-bang play. It was the fault of those supposed to correct it.
One of the more pernicious side effects of instant replay is that it has turned many TV fans (the largest group of fans) into rules ninnies. They can see the call, or rather, think they see it. After a dozen slow motion replays of action that took less than a second in real time, every five-beers-in bozo with a five buck bet on the first half over/under is sure he knows what the call should be, or should have been.
Nothing shows this double standard better than the "controversy" over the last play from scrimmage in the Chiefs-Bengals game. Even the most diehard Chiefs fan has compassion for Bengals linebacker Joseph Ossai, who had played an excellent game up until his fatal push on Mahomes, But there are howls that the call was "the refs deciding the game." Of course, as the Lakers-Celtics game showed, if the flag hadn't been thrown, that would've been "the refs deciding the game" too.
Oh, but what about all the calls against Kansas City the refs missed on the play? "So what?" is the only possible answer to that question. News flash: there are likely uncalled fouls on half the plays in every NFL game. For a playoff game, make three out of four. The only way to prevent that would be to have 22 officials, one for every player. There'd be fewer uncalled fouls, although it might get a little crowded out there, particularly in the red zone.
The officials in both conference championships yesterday did not have great games. As happens with players, this was probably the result of pressing. After a bad decision (as with the Eagles' non-catch) or a loss of control by the crew (as when the Chiefs got two third downs in the second half), games tend to become officiated by seven Principal Skinners, as lost in the really complicated rulebook as Shanahan was in his playsheet, missing the forest to throw flags on skinny stunted trees.
That happens. It'll happen again, hopefully not in the Super Bowl. But the call that finally swung the game to the Chiefs was so correct I cannot imagine why it's controversial except for fact one: losing sucks and people have a hard time accepting it.
My former colleague Bob Ryan wrote this decades ago. Bad calls happen. If a bad call costs a team a game, it's its own damn fault for not playing well enough to be ahead by so much a bad call couldn't hurt it.
Shut up and play. Or root. Or bet. But when the topic is the officials, just for the love of sport shut up.
Left the Field Under His Own Power
The meant-to-be-reassuring mantra that's the title of this post was chanted four times by Jim Nantz during the broadcast of yesterday's Bills-Patriots game. It followed the obligatory lengthy commercial breaks following an injury in an NFL game that results in a stoppage of play longer than, oh, 30 seconds.
The mantra is intended to reassure viewers that whatever bodily harm resulted in a huge man unable to regain his feet for a prolonged period was not essentially serious. "He's OK, he can walk off by himself." It's the first step on the pro football injury scale, followed by in order, going into the blue tent then the locker room, leaving the field on the cart, and finally, a life-threatening or life-altering catastrophe such as the cardiac arrest suffered by Bills safety Damar Hamlin six days earlier, in the game the Bills and Bengals never finished.
Hamlin's life was saved by the prompt actions of the Bills and Bengals' athletic training staff, team doctors, the EMTs who took him to the hospital and the staff of the University of Cincinnati medical center. These men and women, all highly trained and skilled at their professions, knew just what to do in a dire medical emergency and did it. It is thanks to them, and to his own youth and strength, that Hamlin appears to have emerged from his near-death experience in near-miraculous good condition. He isn't only alive, it looks as if he'll have a life.
It is, I believe, fair to say that everyone involved reacted well to the terrifying events of last Monday night. The Bills and Bengals did the right thing by making it clear they wouldn't play the game any further. The NFL eventually concurred in this decision with a delay of only about an hour. That's rapid response for a league that still really can't define what's a legal catch of a forward pass after a century of trying. If Buffalo fans and Roger Goodell were both in self-congratulatory mode at yesterday's game, it's hard to blame 'em.
But the universal relief and happiness over Hamlin's condition (still critical, mind you) made Nantz's injury mantra chilling, not reassuring. It made it clear that pro football, from NFL headquarters down to the most casual of fans, works on parallel tracks when it comes to the sport's undeniable risks to human health. It is well prepared to cope with the horrible disasters that are football's rare exceptions. It cannot cope at all with the lower-grade injuries and health risks which are the sport's more deadly rule.
Football is bad for you. Repetitive orthopedic injuries and surgeries do not lead to a sparkling quality of life from age 45 on. Check out the gaits of the old-timers at this summer's Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. They tend to walk like sailors their first day ashore after an eight-month trip round Cape Horn in a three-masted schooner. They don't bend from the waist too easily either.
The dangers of repeated concussions and the horrors of CTE from years of apparently routine collisions on the playing field are both well known. I'm sure the NFL would prefer neither existed, and in the case of concussions, they've tried mitigation if nothing else. But get rid of either? Nobody knows how.
It's an unusual NFL offensive lineman who can go though a career of four years or more without an orthopedic injury of some kind. But even those lucky souls leave the sport facing a significant morbidity risk. A diet akin to that of a French goose being raised for foie gras combined with a regimen of daily anaerobic exercise is a cardiologist's nightmare. The NFL doesn't even recognize this as a problem, It pays former players five years' worth of health insurance after they leave the game. After that, they're on their own. They shouldn't play golf at courses which don't have defibrillators on site.
None of what I said in those last three paragraphs is news to anyone inside or outside the NFL. Since outside some owners, nobody in the league is an actual monster, I assume they'd do something about those issues if they could think of a way to do so without, you know, stopping the game. In a thoroughly human response, the league, and the players, and the fans all choose to if not ignore, to push football's long-term high percentage risks to the backs of their minds, to be revisited in the event of catastrophe, then firmly pushed back into the dustiest attic of the cerebral cortex.
Nobody who liked watching football before going to stop watching because of those high-percentage long term risks. Nor will what happened to Damar Hamlin make anyone stop.
I say this because as he documented at length on social media, there wasn't a person in the country who enjoyed watching the Patriots and Bills play yesterday than Damar Hamlin himself.
A Half Full Glass Seldom Slakes Thirst.
Their 23-21 win over the Miami Dolphins yesterday gave the New England Patriots an 8-8 record for the 2022 season. That's as average as average can be, the living definition of the NFL's beloved "parity." It isn't coal for Christmas, but it sure isn't the luxury car with the big bow on top.
But, as is being pointed out by everyone even dimly aware of the Patriots around here, the win also kept the Patriots capable of qualifying for the playoffs should they win their final game of the regular season come Sunday. That's praiseworthy, which is said without irony. It's also far from unusual.
There are seven other teams with 8-8 records in the league, and six of 'em could also possibly make the postseason, some by simply winning their final game, others through a combination of winning plus one or more of their mediocre rivals losing. The other one of the seven is already in. The 8-8 Buccaneers won the NFC South title yesterday. Need I mention this largely was because Tom Brady had his best game by far of 2022? Hope messing up the rest of your life for an NFC South Champs commemorative cap was worth it, Tom.
Here's the cold truth of the Patriots' situation, and those of their six other playoff contenders as well. It exists solely through the NF'L's fanatical commitment to creating more "product," its endless pursuit of revenue over actual product quality. Were it not for the league's expansion to a 14 team rather than 12 team playoff field in 2020, the Patriots would already have been eliminated from the playoffs. So would've five of those six other contenders. The Pats, like the Packers, Lions, Seahawks, Dolphins and Steelers, are batting for the seventh and final playoff seed a/k/a "Parity's Revenge." Being average would have earned these teams what average should earn a team in any sport, a good spot outside the ballroom window looking in at as the party takes place.
(This is a non-Pats related digression. The real ultimate absurdity of the new and unimproved NFL setup, both the 17-game season and the 14-team playoff, doesn't involve New England at all. If the Titans beat the Jaguars Saturday night, they will finish 8-9 but still win the AFC South and will be seeded fourth in the playoffs. The Bucs have already clinched the NFC fourth seed. Suppose they rest their starters and blow off competing next Sunday to finish 8-9. Did you know that the two teams in Super Bowl 56, the Rams and Bengals, were the fourth seeds last season. The odds of it happening are approximately 150 billion to one, but there is a chance the Super Bowl could feature two teams with losing records. I can't see how any real fan of both football and cosmic humor isn't rooting hard for the longshot to come home.)
Returning to parochial concerns, I want to repeat that the Patriots' remaining eligible for the playoffs is to be respected. The rules are the rules, and all any team can do is play the schedule and see how events sort out. The playoffs are the playoffs and its far better to be in 'em than out. Long shots do come in every so often. Ask Rich Strike, 82-1 winner of the Kentucky Derby. And in the cold world of NFL reality, having the 19th or 20th draft pick in the first round isn't all that different from having numbers 15-18.
It is all too easy to underrate the abilities of a .500 team. Football isn't like baseball, where a team with 79 to 84 wins can mosey along in comfortable anonymity, identified by one and all as mediocre by Memorial Day. Football's far shorter schedule and the random, chaotic nature of the sport breeds extreme mood swings even among supposedly neutral observers, let alone fans, who are supposed to be overemotional.
.500 NFL teams are, by contrast, usually mixtures of excellence and wretchedness, of super high highs and deep dark low lows. They are their own best friends and worst enemies. This makes them frustrating to watch. Imagine how it feels to play for one. Or coach one. And it makes them dangerously easy to misjudge.
The 2022 Patriots are the epitome of that split personality. Their strengths have canceled out their weaknesses half the time and vice versa. Everyone who's watched them this season knows what they are. Hell, one could have watched only the Bengals game on Christmas Eve and seen what both were. So only a brief description is needed.
The Patriots are 8-8 and not 11-5 or better because their offense has ranged from indifferent to terrible all season long. Specifically, their passing game, that is, quarterback Mac Jones and his bunch of kinda OK receivers, has been, to be kind, unproductive. Jones ranks in the bottom third of most statistical measures of quarterback play, and that's after two straight more or less "good" (for him, in 2022) games.
Fairness requires that I also state that Jones' recent improvement is in parallel with the improvement of the offensive line's ability to keep him free from bodily harm. But it does no one any favors to sugar coat the truth. He just hasn't been good enough to make the Pats a winning team this year.
Obvious weakness, meet obvious strength. New England is 8-8 and not 5-11 or worse because of its defense. Specifically, that unit's ability to rush the passer (second in the league in sacks) and its not unrelated ability to score defensive touchdowns. The Pats' seven defensive scores are more than twice that of any other squad. If one's offense has trouble scoring touchdowns, having the defense put one up every other game is most helpful.
It's not a panacea, however. The all time record for team defensive touchdowns, set in a 16-game season, was 10, by the 1998 Seattle Seahawks, a team so unmemorable I doubt it recalls itself. Seattle's record that season was, of course you've guessed, 8-8.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about .500 NFL teams is that they live on the sport's margins more than truly poor or quality ones, always more susceptible to the football's funny bounces, the role of random chance beyond human control or even understanding. Even here, the Patriots have put good and ill fortune in exquisite balance. Before any Pats' fan bemoans the red zone fumble against the Bengals, or the insane lateral that lost the Raiders game on the final play, they're instructed to remember the amazing string of backup quarterbacks and/or starters that then became backups on whom the defense feasted all year long, including against the Dolphins yesterday.
So it's fitting that the Pats' potential playoff scenarios are 1. neatly balanced between cheer and gloom and 2, Out of their hands to a significant extent. The oft-repeated statement that the Patriots "control their own destiny" is both technically accurate and largely misleading.
The optimistic scenario depends on the Chiefs and Raiders. If Las Vegas wins Saturday night, then Buffalo will have clinched at worst the second seed in the AFC regardless of how they do against the Bengals tonight. So, the New England optimist reasons, the Bills will sit their most vital personnel, particularly Josh Allen, against a Patriots team with all to play for.
Problem number one with the optimism case is that the Bills might not do that. Some teams do, some don't. Problem number two is that the Chiefs might win Saturday and the Bills might win tonight, leaving Buffalo to play for home field throughout the playoffs in the Pats' game (the way winter has gone so far up there, assuming Buffalo even has a home field all this month is itself optimistic).
Problem number three with the Pats' playoff case rests on what might happen if it comes true. Suppose New England beats Buffalo Sunday. They're in as the seventh seed. Yay!
In all likelihood, their reward would be the chance to do it all over again, playing the Bills in Buffalo the following week.
Fourteen team playoff or no, 500 football's a real bitch.
