tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-280990112024-03-07T01:20:49.892-05:00homegameA veteran sportswriter without a platform can't quite break the habit of giving his sometimes informed opinions.Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.comBlogger1385125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-75484478886374231462024-01-20T11:06:00.001-05:002024-01-20T11:06:30.953-05:00Memo to Whom It May Concern in Patriotsland<p> Dear Sirs and/or Madams in the Front Office: The following is a list of quarterbacks drafted with the third pick in the NFL draft since the merged NFL-AFL draft began in 1967.</p><p>1967: Steve Spurrier (note, number four pick Bob Griese is in the Hall of Fame).</p><p>1970: Mike Phipps</p><p>1971: Dan Pastorini</p><p>1979 Jack "The Throwin' Samoan" Thompson (4th pick Dan Hampton, Hall of Fame</p><p>1986: Jim Everett</p><p>1994: Heath Shuler</p><p>1995: Steve McNair</p><p>1999: Akili Smith (4th pick Edgerrin James, Hall of Fame)</p><p>2002: Joey Harrington</p><p>2006: Vince Young</p><p>2008: Matt Ryan</p><p>2014: Blake Bortles</p><p>2018: Sam Darnold</p><p>2021: Trey Lance</p><p> As a group, these QBs fail to impress. Everett and Pastorini had OK careers. McNair and Ryan did better than that. Each won an MVP, each had a team reach the Super Bowl but lost. Otherwise, oy. There are some historic failures on the lost -- Firing an executive or two type failures.</p><p>Past performance is no guarantee of future success, as the Wall Street ads say, but this list strongly suggests the Pats should do even deeper study of their tapes of Marvin Harrison Jr.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-15096760132294655182024-01-17T21:13:00.002-05:002024-01-17T21:13:58.826-05:00The Triumph of Hope Over Experience<p> In the winter of 2020, the New England Patriots organization, led by coach Bill Belichick but certainly including team owner Robert Kraft, decided that the team could lose quarterback Tom Brady and continue with business as usual, maybe with a hiccup or two, but nothing that couldn't be handled.</p><p>This assessment turned out to be erroneous.</p><p>In the winter of 2024, owner Robert Kraft decided the resulting disasters were Belichick's fault (he bears his share of blame and then some), so he fired the coach and replaced him with young, smart, Jerod Mayo, whose only football experience was working for Belichick. In fact, as far as can be told, the entire organization created and ruled by Belichick for a quarter of a century will remain in place. Their natural talents will bloom without the shade cast by the previous hooded tyrant.</p><p>Could be. Kraft's smart, too. But I'd keep my money in my pocket when a Patriots game goes on the board next fall.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-83632480782364752392023-09-08T17:35:00.000-05:002023-09-08T17:35:11.596-05:00You Gotta Be a Football Hero to Get Along With the Beautiful Girls. Or a Baseball Hero<p>One tell about Boston opinion about the Patriots going into the 2023 season opener is that local TV news, the ultimate homers, are focusing on the Tom Brady ceremony/whatever the hell it is event at halftime rather than the actual game against the Eagles.</p><p>Well, there's nothing local TV likes better than some meaningless feel good event, so there's been deep coverage. One station (I'm leaving a lot out here, because the nice lady at the center of this piece deserves better than what's coming) found a sweet woman in her 80s who allegedly was the inspiration for the ho "80 for Brady" horror movie. </p><p>The usual fluff feature ensued, but there was a twist. Some enterprising intern, who I hope this post doesn't get fired, discovered that in her youth, this woman had been Miss New Hampshire 1948. Moreover, he or she also found some newspaper or publicity still in which she appears next to Ted Williams in full Red Sox uniform.</p><p>The picture told 10 million words. Ted was very obviously throwing major moves at this sweet young this and she was just as obviously not unhappy about it. At all.</p><p>The saying goes that the Splendid Splinter hit .344 on the field and .844 off it. I think we can regard that photo as another occasion where Ted sent one deep over the bullpen into the Fenway bleachers.</p><p>What I'm saying here is that this sweet old lady is still a hardcore and together sports groupie. And for that, I salute her. That spirit is what makes America greay.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-82041529207296820262023-05-18T06:19:00.002-05:002023-05-18T06:19:59.206-05:00Second Guessing Never Stops the Clock<p> Once upon a long ago time there was a basketball coach. Among other of his qualities, he was famous for hating to ever call time outs when his team was struggling with its play or facing an opponent's surge. He almost never did this, which even back in this era was considered most unconventional if not controversial. But the coach believed that his players were properly prepared and could, indeed should, figure out their problems in real time during game action.</p><p>This coach's name was John Wooden. Check his record out sometime. Then think about if you really want to insist Joe Mazzulla was the reason the Celtics lost to Miami last night or if maybe, just maybe, the incredibly gifted and even more incredibly inconsistent team Boston puts on the floor had something to do with it.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-35525198632983985212023-02-28T10:37:00.003-05:002023-02-28T10:37:34.825-05:00Final Thought, I Promise, on NBA Minutes Played<p> Back in<i> my </i>day, NBA stars did load management the<i> right</i> way. They half-assed it on the court on the nights they felt tired.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-6775898820597982912023-02-25T13:54:00.001-05:002023-02-25T13:54:51.300-05:00Quiet Times Breed Noisy Takes<p>The Boston Celtics have the best record in the NBA so far this season. According to some however, the team must address a serious problem. Its best player is playing too much.</p><p>No, really. It is posited that because Jayson Tatum is averaging a fraction over 37 minutes a game of playing time, the Celtics are in danger of burning out their top star and MVP candidate before the playoffs, the "real season" begin and certainly by the NBA Finals, which incidentally the observers tend to assume the Celts will make anyway.</p><p>Leave aside that Tatum's time spent on the court might have something, indeed, a good deal, to do with Boston's gaudy 43-17 record to date. The worrywarts sure do. Let's generously assume that <i>in theory</i>, there's a point where Tatum could be overused, where his play would begin to slip due to his workload. In reality, where might that point be?</p><p>Tatum is 24 years old. By happy coincidence, Larry Bird was that age in the 1980-1981 season, when the Celtics won the first of their three NBA titles of the 80s. In that regular season, Bird averaged 39 1/2 minutes per game. In 1983-84, when Boston was again the champ, and Bird won the first of three straight MVP awards, he was granted about an extra 80 seconds of rest a game, averaging 38 plus minutes of PT.</p><p>Was that too long ago to be relevant to today's basketball? Only to the foolish, but in the spirit of generosity, I present a more contemporary comparison. Boston's last NBA championship came in the 2007-2008 season. That was a far more veteran team than today's Celts, but in terms of playing style, Paul Pierce is probably the closest comp to Tatum.</p><p>Pierce was 30 years old that season. He averaged 36 minutes per game in the regular season. This slowed him down so much Pierce was only able to average 38 per game in the playoffs.</p><p>History lesson over. I didn't go back any further than Bird because the increasingly large section of the basketball public too young to remember back then tends not to believe the statistics of the '60s and '70s. (If you must know, John Havlicek averaged 41 minutes a game for the '74 Celtic champs at age 33 and Bill Russell, age 34, averaged 43 minutes a game for the '69 champs).</p><p>In any event, none of these numbers suggest that Tatum's being driven/driving himself into the ground by coach Joe Mazzulla or by his own desires for personal glory. He's played about how much Celtics superstars have played for the last 40 years. Tatum is indeed second in the league in minutes played per game. But he's getting all of 84 seconds on the floor per night more than LeBron James, age 38. James is 12th in average minutes per game. </p><p>If Tatum tells us he's tired, I'll believe he is. Until then, I'll believe that his 37 minutes per game is closely related to that 43-17 record.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-44668112560778442472023-02-18T11:46:00.000-05:002023-02-18T11:46:01.373-05:00If Wishes Were All-Pros, Beggars Could Ride Deep Into the Playoffs<p>Offseasons in all sports breed plans and schemes. Unfortunately for their creators, these are most often just dreams.</p><p>So it's not too surprising that a consensus has emerged within the New England Patriots' media-industrial complex that there's nothing wrong with the franchise that five or six new Pro Bowl calibers couldn't fix. For the record, I agree. I would also agree if this diagnosis was given for any of the 17 other teams that didn't make the postseason in 2022, even the lowest of the low like the Bears and Texans. Put the likes of Roquan Smith, Darius Slay and Cooper Kupp on any of 'em and it's a cinch they'd win more games in 2023.</p><p>The Pats' commentators wish list is a long one. In no particular order, it goes, new tackle for the offensive line, a new number one corner, a new number one wide receiver, and several new linebackers. Also a new third down running back would be nice, and of course the team has to replace its kickers. How all this is to be accomplished in the 4 1/2 short months before training camp is left for Bill Belichick to figure out.</p><p>My guess is that Belichick will indeed figure out how to acquire a couple, or maybe even one more than a couple, of the items on the above wish list. But the only management genius who could get all of them for the current Patriots by late next summer is Santa Claus.</p><p>The means by which a team may acquire better NFL players are well-known. There's the draft, trades, free agency, and rarest of all, coaching or an athlete's natural development results in dramatic improvement by a guy already on the roster. </p><p>The Pats have cap space to spend on free agents. But free agency is a two-way street. They also have free agents to lose, notably cornerback Jonathan Jones and wideout Jakobi Myers. The website Sportrac estimates each man's market value at $12.5 million per season, an exponential raise from their 2022 salaries.</p><p>Either the Pats let the two go or spend more for them. Whichever choice they make, a significant chunk of their free agent budget will go for running hard to stay in the same place. This isn't mismanagement, it's how the system is supposed to work.</p><p>Then there are trades. The nihilists on Felger and Mazz have floated the idea the Pats want to acquire Deebo Samuel from the 49ers. Splendid idea. Samuel is a wholly admirable player, the kind who truly would improve any team. This is why he's unlikely to come cheap. Since the Pats' primary desirable asset is draft capital, they'd once again give up a means of improvement to improve via another.</p><p>None of this is the result of mismanagement. It is the way the NFL system is set up to work. The whole idea of the league is that it is easier to rise to the middle from the bottom than to rise from the middle to the top. Indeed, it's far easier to slide off the top to the middle, another built-in feature. </p><p>Nothing I've written above is news to anyone, or shouldn't be. The people making up those five-point plans for a New England renaissance know it perfectly well. I can't fault the lists for what's in them, only for the assumption, and in some cases the outright statements, by the listmakers that all these changes can and should be made immediately. letting the Pats return to their manifest destiny as one of the NFL's top five (at least) teams.</p><p>How spoiled is that? How is it that media and fans here can accurately describe Tom Brady as the greatest quarterback of his time and yet pretend losing Brady shouldn't have cost the Pats a few spots in the standings? All dynasties end. The Patriots' dynasty ended the day Brady left for Tampa, and what's left here in New England is the stubborn refusal to accept the fact the team is now, well, just one of the bunch of middle strivers caught in the near-impossible process of becoming consistent playoff qualifiers.</p><p>There's maybe one or two other men alive who know as much about NFL history than Belichick. Rest assured he knows the record perfectly well. There's only been one franchise ever to lose a Hall of Fame QB and return to the title without a long, painful interregnum, the 49ers of the '80s and '90s. That's because they had Hall of Famer Steve Young to replace Joe Montana.</p><p>Maybe Mac Jones will take the kind of leap Josh Allen has, or Jalen Hurts did last season. Maybe not, too. And if he does, well then Jones will be looking for at least Kyler Murray money, like $45 million a year. There may be a quarterback someday who turns out to be as good as Brady, but none will ever come along who'll take lower salaries for the "good of the team" as Brady did with the Pats. He himself will tell QBs not to.</p><p>The football takes funny bounces, players indeed get better, or stay healthier or both. It's certainly possible the Patriots could rebound to one of the NFL's best records in 2023. Look at what the Vikings did last season.</p><p>Oh, was that a bad example?</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-32138764457829737212023-02-13T11:00:00.001-05:002023-02-13T11:00:49.284-05:00The Forecasters' Hall of Fame Has No Members<p> Way back in the summer of 2002, Bill Belichick was more willing to answer reporters' questions than he is today, even questions from yours truly, whom Belichick, when feeling mellow, would treat as a dim but earnest pupil. </p><p>On the opening day of training camp, I asked the coach if it was different starting a new season with the defending Super Bowl champions.</p><p>You could see the thought balloon over the coach's head. "Aha," it read. "This uninformed question will allow me to make an important point with my answer."</p><p>"No," Belichick actually said. "You start every season from the same place, the beginning, because every team is different and every season is different."</p><p>As often happens, Belichick was right. The 2002 Pats were indeed very different from the 2001 edition, and not in a happy way. Their historic distinction will be to go down as the only team in which a healthy Tom Brady did not qualify for the playoffs.</p><p>Every NFL team starts every season at zero, except for the ones that start at a negative number. It cannot be otherwise. The sport is too random, the roster churn generated by free agency and the salary cap too large, the impact of unforeseeable yet inevitable injuries too vast. We can all say we expect the Chiefs and Eagles to make the playoffs next season. We're more likely to be right than wrong. But not by enough to put real money on that proposition this morning. </p><p>The two number one seeds of the 2021 season, the Titans and Packers, had losing records in 2022. Seven of the 14 playoff teams from 2021 were done after the regular season in 2022, including New England. The fact that the oddsmakers set lines on next year's Super Bowl winner last night is a tribute to their devout and correct belief in human folly.</p><p>I have no idea what the 2023 Patriots will be. Neither does Bob Kraft or Belichick for that matter. We're all at ground zero. All we know for certain is that either the 2022 Eagles or the 2022 Chiefs would've vaporized last season's Pats outfit 98 times out of 100. </p><p>By the way, both the Chiefs and Eagles will be the visiting team at Gillette Stadium during the 2023 season. By the time either one gets there, New England could be a double-digit favorite in the game. Or a double-digit underdog or anything in between.</p><p>The knowledge of the awful uncertainty of the NFL is not exclusive to Belichick. Everybody in the league knows it (well, maybe not those associated with the Texans). In all the blather about the astonishing-to-morons fact that Belichick and Brady seem to think well of each other, one simple factor in their relationship was ignored.</p><p>The two men couldn't savor, or even acknowledge, their mutual triumphs until one of them was out of the sport altogether. Those active in the National Football League have no time for the dangerous leisure of memories. Especially the good ones.</p><p><br /></p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-9250639904952731422023-02-12T10:13:00.001-05:002023-02-12T10:13:14.592-05:00Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down at the Super Bowl<p> The Monica Lewinsky scandal broke five days before Super Bowl XXXII. It was a good week to be covering the game, as it was a sanctuary of football insanity within the storm of national insanity. Aside from a plethora of dirty jokes, the hardworking (honest!) hacks of the sports media were able to ignore what now is an increasingly forgotten historical blip.</p><p><i>But</i> the Super Bowl encompasses far more than mere football, which is why the ads cost so much. And pols are sort of human beings, as eager to participate in one of our society's best parties as anyone else. So early risers were treated to a strange sight in the lobby of the main media hotel on Super Sunday morning.</p><p>Workmen were busily removing the Super Bowl-themed decorations in a corner of the lobby. In their place, other hotel staff members were setting up overstuffed imitation leather chairs, a heavy wooden desk, and fake bookshelves complete with fake books. TV network employees were placing lights and cables around the area.</p><p>They were all building a set, designed to accommodate some of our country's more prominent elected officials. They were all of course dying to get on the Sunday morning Washington blather shows and blather about this latest crisis of the Republic. Yet at the same time, they were not eager to let their constituents learn they'd been whooping it up at the Super Bowl rather than attending to weighty affairs of state. So where just the night before there'd been pictures of John Elway and Brett Favre, now there was an "important pol's office."</p><p>Twenty-five years later, the Republic survives. That's probably because hotel security didn't let any fans wearing Broncos or Packers jerseys wander into camera view.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-76607376731067226162023-02-01T09:45:00.003-05:002023-02-01T09:45:47.570-05:00The First Time as Farce, the Second Time as Slapstick<p>February 1, 2022: Tom Brady retires from the professional football.</p><p>March 13, 2022: Tom Brady ends retirement from professional football</p><p>February 1, 2023: Tom Brady retires from professional football again. "For good,." he says on social media.</p><p>Fast forward to January 28, 2024. Ford Field, Detroit, site of the NFC championship game. We cut to the Fox Sports Announcers Booth:</p><p>Play by Play Announcer Kevin Burkhardt: "Well, Tom, the Lions are certainly up against it. They're down 10-0 and both quarterback Jared Goff and his backup Nate Sudfield have left the game with injuries. What should coach Dan Campbell do for halftime adjustments, Tom? Tom? Tom? Where'd he go?"</p><p>Enter NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell: Hi, Kevin. I'm here to tell fans about a secret rule change that was made at last March's owners' meeting. By rule, Tom Brady is empowered to act as the emergency quarterback at any game he's broadcasting as the color man. We wanted to avoid what happened to the 49ers in last season's NFL title game."</p><p>Burkhardt: "Thank you Commissioner. But what about me? Who's my emergency partner?</p><p>A beaming Rob Gronkowski enters the booth.</p><p>Burkhardt: "Give me a sec to call my agent while we're on break."</p><p>On the Lions sideline, Brady is being outfitted with a Lions uniform as he signs a 24-hour contract. It doesn't fit too well as the jersey belongs to a backup tight end who's now listed as "doubtful" to return. Equipment men feverishly use athletic tape to cover the guy's name and number and put "Brady" and "12" on the jersey's back in Magic Marker. Brady dons a special helmet that will allow him to interview teammates at game's end, created by Fox technicians at the direct order of Rupert Murdoch.</p><p>Fast forward two more hours. Up in the booth, Burkhardt declares, "And that's the ending to one of the most remarkable games in NFL history as the Lions beat the 49ers 21-20 to advance to their first ever Super Bowl thanks to the play of my former and future colleague Tom Brady. How Tom was able to recover the fumble of his own interception in the end zone for the winning score just defies belief."</p><p>All Niners' bettors across America, "I'll say."</p><p>In the Lions locker room, Brady is interviewing ecstatic Lions players. Coach Campbell embraces Brady, saying "We're a cinch to win the Super Bowl with you."</p><p>Re-enter Commissioner Roger Goodell. "Sorry Dan. The secret rule says Brady can only be the emergency quarterback for games on Fox. The emergency quarterback is defined as the quarterback who's the color man for the network broadcasting the game. That's CBS this year.</p><p>On the back nine at Pebble Beach, Tony Romo exclaims, "I knew it, this is my chance. It's a wizard piece of wizardly luck."</p><p>Other three members of foursome: "Shut up, Tony."</p><p>Every person in the state of Michigan and every Lions fan on earth: "That's why they're the Lions."</p><p>Gisele Bundchen: "This is all why I'm on the beach in Costa Rica right now."</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-70116456675720028482023-01-30T11:30:00.001-05:002023-01-30T11:30:12.727-05:00Nobody's Ever Seen a Smiling Zebra in the Wild<p> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Human beings screw up no matter how many electronic devices they have to help them. Replay showed Devonta Smith did <i>not </i>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Shut up and play. Or root. Or bet. But when the topic is the officials, just for the love of sport shut up.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-77310180528823121042023-01-09T12:07:00.002-05:002023-01-09T12:07:43.611-05:00Left the Field Under His Own Power<p> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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<i> foie gras</i> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-2468454214458671812023-01-02T12:11:00.001-05:002023-01-02T12:11:34.839-05:00A Half Full Glass Seldom Slakes Thirst.<p> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>(This is a non-Pats related digression. The<i> real</i> 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.)</p><p>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.</p><p>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 <i>supposed</i> to be overemotional.</p><p>.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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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).</p><p>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!</p><p>In all likelihood, their reward would be the chance to do it all over again, playing the Bills in Buffalo the following week.</p><p>Fourteen team playoff or no, 500 football's a real bitch.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-43130707002531377352022-10-08T10:17:00.003-05:002022-10-08T10:17:55.420-05:00Time Warp Tales of Glory<p> The calendars in our minds are not in synch with the actual calendar we use to mark time in physical reality. We're always a little behind, and sometimes a lot behind.</p><p>This is most apparent during the months of maximum season change. I woke up this morning at 6:30 a.m. and was surprised to find it was still almost totally dark outside. October mornings have increasingly later dawns and have had them my entire life. Still, in my head, it was September, or maybe August. Next March, when the calendar shifts again, I'll be surprised, even before daylight savings time, when it's still light out at 5:30 p.m. Isn't it still January.</p><p>And of course, the most notable calendar delusion is the universal human conviction that we're all about five years younger (sometimes more, in some unfortunate cases a lot more) than our actual ages. Which brings us to Patriots fans and the team's large media-industrial complex. In those minds, the Pats exist in 2019 at the latest. It might be a franchise with issues, it might be a declining great NFL power, but a great power it remains.</p><p>Lose to the Lions tomorrow? Impossible. Detroit is a traditional and ongoing losers, and the home team is the mighty Pats. Third string quarterback or no, they will win by virtue of all those wins they piled up in the GW Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. Which could happen, but history and destiny will have nothing to do with it. Detroit's dead last in the NFL defense is the most likely reason.</p><p>By the same token, we are confidently told that New England is entering "the soft underbelly" of its schedule, that it is an inherently superior outfit to the Browns, Beats, Jets, and Colts, their next four opponents prior to their bye week. It is, we are told, entirely reasonable to expect the Pats to go 4-1 or even run the table in the next five games.</p><p>Again, this could happen, because the NFL is always a random walk, and it's been more random so far this season than most. But it should be noted that as of today, the Browns, Bears, Jets and Colts <i>all</i> have better records than the 1-3 Pats. Why aren't they assuming a New England game is one they can and should win?</p><p>Well, they likely are. All NFL teams go into a game assuming they can win. Sometimes the assumption is very fragile, and five minutes of game action is enough to dispel it. This happened quite often to Pats' opponents back in the day, the day (days, months, years) Tom Brady was their quarterback. It has yet to happen in the 7/8ths of one game Bailey Zappe has been their quarterback.</p><p>The idea that Brady may be gone, but the Pats' innate superiority remains is about the dumbest notion I've come across in 50 years of following then covering then following Boston sports. It's absurd on its face. Subtract Patrick Mahomes from the Chiefs, or Aaron Rodgers from the Packers. Are they the same powers? Rodgers disproved that in the first half of last Sunday's game.</p><p>There's nothing intrinsically terrible about the Patriots' situation in 2022. They are devoid of stars, except maybe Matthew Judon, but have loads of OK to very solid starters on the roster. They are capable of beating almost any opponent if they play to the best of their abilities, and even more capable of losing to any team if they don't. In short, they are pretty much like 15 to 20 other teams, sturdy citizens of the NFL's middle class.</p><p>Trouble is, in the NFL, even the middle class lives Sunday paycheck to Sunday paycheck. Unexpected disaster is always more possible than easy triumph. The Patriots can't afford to assume <i>anything</i> will come to them through past performance. They can only perform when and if they can.</p><p>See New England for what it is, a team in flux, not exactly rebuilding but not exactly not. A team facing about the worst disaster that can befall any NFL team, the loss of its starting and backup quarterbacks to injury. If they beat the Lions, don't take it as evidence all is well. If they lose, don't take it as meaning all is lost. But please, please, stop thinking victory is the Pats' destiny against any team. They don't have any destiny yet.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-25265309067374898082022-05-07T18:20:00.001-05:002022-05-07T18:20:13.182-05:00The 2022 Kentucky Derby<p> As the old old saying goes, all horseplayers die broke. This race was one reason why. Congrats to anyone who had the superfecta that paid off at $321,000 plus for $1. You're a liar, but congratulations on such a fabulous lie.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-69768192307847736292022-04-26T13:25:00.001-05:002022-04-26T13:25:17.901-05:00A Nose for Talent for Winning the Lottery<p> The NFL draft begins on Thursday night. When it ends Saturday afternoon, it's almost certain that the New England Patriots, or your favorite team, will not have selected their next great football player. </p><p>It is even more certain however, that some lucky team will have done just that, and not unlikely at all more than one will have. Some healthy young man with a knack for football whose name is called this weekend will, a couple of decades hence, possess a gold sports jacket and a bust in Canton, Ohio. He'll probably have company from this allegedly mediocre draft class, too.</p><p>That's history talking, not me. The first combined NFL-AFL draft was in 1967. The last draft class to have a Hall member was in 2007, wide receiver Calvin "Megatron" Johnson, second overall pick of the Lions. That's 40 drafts, a sample size of over 10,000 potential NFL players. Of those 40 drafts, only one, the 1992 draft, failed to produce at least one member of the Hall of Fame or in the case of post-2001 drafts, guys who're surely gonna get in once they're eligible. I mean, technically the 2004 draft has no members in Canton, but I don't think Larry Fitzgerald and Ben Roethlisberger are going to create lengthy debate among the selection committee in 2026. Nor will Andrew Whitworth, a second round selection in 2006.</p><p>I used 2007 as the cutoff date for this little exercise because it takes time to build a Hall of Fame resume, and then there's the five year waiting period for eligibility for election. About the latest date I could find for a "hit by a bus today, he's in tomorrow" player was Aaron Donald in the 2014 draft. After that, it's a riskier proposition. No one would bet AGAINST Patrick Mahomes making the Hall, but stuff happens in football, mostly to major body parts. So a bet FOR Mahomes to become an official immortal is not like buying a T-Bill.</p><p>On average, about 3-4 members of each draft class made the Hall of Fame in that 40 year period. Sometimes there were more, many more. The famous John Elway-Dan Marino draft of 1983 has eight members in the Hall of Fame. Seven of them were picked in the first round (Elway, Marino, Jim Kelly, Jimbo Covert, Eric Dickerson and Bruce Matthews), meaning the 28 NFL teams had a 25 percent success rate in predicting immortality. But the eighth lasted until the eighth round, Bears defensive end Richard Dent. Pats fans of a certain age may remember him.</p><p>All this research was first sparked by the clatter of NFL gossip to the effect that the 2022 draft is a "mediocre" one with "more teams looking to trade down than up." The idea that the 2022 draft will be unmemorable really got going in January, when it became clear that there was a dearth of "surefire" (just like Peyton Manning, or Ryan Leaf) quarterback prospects in the class, far fewer than teams that dearly need new QBs. No glamor = no interest for a good portion of football's chattering class.</p><p>Note: The first quarterback picked in the 2014 draft was third selection Blake Bortles. Donald went 13th. I assure you the Rams find the 2014 draft absolutely fascinating and wonderful whenever they think of it. Quarterback is the most important position in football. But there are lots of other positions, 21 to be precise, and all told they add up to more than any QBs value, even Tom Brady's. When he and the Patriots parted ways, Brady was careful to select a new team full of good players. Then he went out and recruited more. He might make a good GM someday, not that he'd ever do it.</p><p>The first draft I covered was in 1988 for the Herald. It too was hyped as mediocre, and for the same reason. Not a single quarterback went in the first round, an almost inconceivable event today. But the class of '88 does have five members in Canton, starting with Michael Irvin and including Thurman Thomas and Tim Brown. They were reasonably glamorous NFL stars in their day.</p><p>My overall football conclusion is that every draft contains talent that'll help their teams win, if a team is smart/lucky enough to pick it. Given my druthers, I'd rather be lucky enough to pick a future Hall of Fame tackle or linebacker than a quarterback of the Jared Goff-Carson Wentz variety, no matter how wretched my incumbent QB is. Given Vince Lombardi's druthers, too.</p><p>(A digression: No team has ever been as smart/lucky as the Pittsburgh Steelers Iron Curtain dynasty of the '70s. Pittsburgh drafted at least one Hall of Famer in each draft from 1969-1972. They inexplicably whiffed in '73, but bounced back in '74 by picking four Hall-bound talents. Maybe their scouting department should have a bust in Canton.)</p><p>The reason my idle research has become a blog post was a telephone conversation with my daughter that didn't discuss football at all. She works in the wine business in Bordeaux, France, as a salesperson for a <i>negociant,</i> the middlemen who purchase wine from the wineries and then sell it to distributors around the world. Let's put it this way. The French equivalent of Two-Buck Chuck is not in her firm's inventory. It deals in the wines people read about more than ever drink.</p><p>This week, draft week for the NFL, is <i>en primeur</i>, the most important sales event for Bordeaux wines. In it, folks come from around the world to taste the wines of the 2021 harvest. These wines aren't in bottles yet, just barrels. They aren't ready to drink, and some won't be for a decade or more. To the untrained palate, they'd taste like a mild acid. They taste like that to the trained palate, too, but the trained ones can also taste, or guess at, the qualities that'll distinguish one wine from selling for $50 a bottle and one that'll go for $500. My daughter will taste as many as 40 such wines a day for a few days. Then she and her co-workers compare notes and come to a consensus as to what the firm should think. Where should it place its very expensive bets.</p><p>Now, what is that but the NFL draft, right down to the wine war room? Companies in a volatile and extremely weird business making their best guesses as to the products that'll being them the most success in the near and not-so-near future, products that are nowhere near ready to be judged with total confidence.</p><p>And in an uncanny echo of predraft chatter, my daughter informed me the skinny is that this will be a poor year for Bordeaux, mainly due to bad weather during the grape's growing cycle. That's the wine equivalent of "no franchise quarterbacks in this draft."</p><p><i>En primeur</i> is the usual madhouse of tasting, schmoozing, rumor mongering and hard bargaining all the same. A bad year in Bordeaux doesn't mean the region won't have great wines of the 2021 vintage, just that it is predicted there will be less of it to sell. If anything, that just makes the bargaining harder, the bets more sporty. </p><p>The draft will be different in this one way. There's no overriding factor like the weather for football players. There may be fewer Chateau Latours or Lafite-Rothschilds in the 2022 class and more <i>cru bourgeois </i>but it might also be the reverse. Don't fret if your team picks guards, nose tackles and safeties instead of guys you've seen on GameDay highlights. Football greatness most often comes in a very thick-necked bottle.</p><p>There are all sorts of draft prop bets extant, which indicates our country's gambling problem is truly out of control. If there's one on whether or not the draft will have a Hall of Famer in it, jump on it. It's a lock.</p><p>You do have to wait 20 years to collect, though.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-63925256890064669832022-03-14T11:05:00.004-05:002022-03-14T11:05:41.586-05:00Greatest of All Time at "Never Mind," Too<p> Tom Brady is just screwing with all of us now.</p><p>Or maybe Brady's decision to unretire from pro football after one frickin' month of a life of theoretical leisure is Cristiano Ronaldo's fault. Brady was in noted spring break resort Manchester, England last Saturday to watch soccer, and Ronaldo had a hat trick in Manchester United's 3-2 victory over Tottenham. Afterwards, the two aging immortals (there's an oxymoron for you) had a long chat, presumably about the joys of superstardom.</p><p>No, if Brady and Ronaldo had an in-depth discussion, it was probably about cryptocurrency and international tax avoidance. There's nobody to praise or blame for Brady's sudden reversal of his last sudden decision about his career than the man himself. He reverted to his first principle. Brady will play until he sucks at the game he has mastered but which has trapped him all the same. </p><p>It couldn't have been mere boredom. Brady's retirement consumed the period of the year where's always been off duty anyway. And while Brady can be a weird dude at times, he's certainly not so weird as to find the rest of his life a drab shadow of his life in the NFL. He's sincere to a fault, and means all that stuff he says about his family. Also, sitting on the beach in Costa Rica in February is not a prison sentence.</p><p>The inescapable conclusion is that when it came to football, Brady fell into the ancient maxim, "divorce in haste, repent at leisure." He retired on a whim and he unretired the same way. Maybe his first decision was a powerful whim, a sincere wish even. It was no match for the power football has over him. Brady surveyed his options, and playing football completed him in a way becoming a diet/exercise guru never could and never will. He'll keep talking to Jim Grey and NFL broadcast teams instead of the gang on "The View."</p><p>That's fine. If the very idea of leaving football gave Brady his one-month midlife crisis, he ended it. He chose his path. It will end as he envisions it. Maybe not this season, but not too far from now, he will go from one of the 5 or 6 best quarterbacks in the NFL to like 13th or 14th. He'll fall into the level of last season's Mac Jones.</p><p>Brady won't end like Willie Mays with the Mets, Michael Jordan with the Wizards or Muhammed Ali against Larry Holmes. For him, a simple fall to mediocrity would be horror enough to conclude he's done. If the Bucs, who have 20 free agents and salary cap worries Brady just made worse, slide to like 8-9 in 2022, that alone could push Brady out into the cold, cold footballless world of everyday mortals.</p><p>But if it doesn't, if Brady's stubborn enough to play until he really stinks (you know some franchise would pay him to do it), then the rest of us have the duty to keep our dignity and not feel sad about it. This is the destiny he's chosen. Let him have it without pathos.</p><p>Unless Brady re-retires in training camp this summer. In that case, fuck him.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-26279845233406435472022-02-14T17:47:00.001-05:002022-02-14T17:47:10.847-05:00All Renovations Take More Money and Time Than Expected<p> "This team, it's like being at the Pro Bowl every day" -- Rams edge rusher Von Miller, after the Super Bowl last night.</p><p>Driving on a few errands last week, I idly heard Mark Bertrand and Scott Zolak announce their theme for that day's broadcast. As caller magnets go, it wasn't bad. "What five things can the Patriots do to get to the Super Bowl next season?"</p><p>I didn't call, because I felt my answer, travel back in time to 2014 and use that roster, would be rejected as frivolous. But the hosts had plans, and they said step one was "sign J.C. Jackson to a long term contract." I switched channels. Here were two men either under or catering to a persistent local delusion -- that another Patriots' championship contender is an inevitability that will arrive sooner rather than later, as soon as possible, in fact.</p><p>All the best and cruelest delusions start from a base of some realities. The Patriots were not a bad team in 2021, they were a marginal wild card one. Their rookie quarterback did as well as reasonably could be expected. The team's defense had several months of genuinely excellent performance. If the 2021 season had any theme, it was that there was a jam of teams at the top of the NFL heap who were not all that different in strength from one another. The extraordinarily close and in some cases thrilling nature of the divisional, conference championship and Super Bowl games was proof of that. So why not speculate that the Pats could join that crowd of contenders next fall? The Bengals did it this year.</p><p>Fine. Speculate away. But don't start the speculation by saying, what this team really needs to do is sign its top cornerback to a new contract. The Patriots should re-enlist Jackson. He's one of their best players. But that's not a "Super Bowl here we come" move. It's a "how can we keep within hailing distance of our divisional rival" move. It's not improvement, it's trying not to regress.</p><p>The rival in question is the Bills. You may remember them from their wild card round game with New England, that 47-17 demolition. Older fans might recall Buffalo's 33-21 win in Foxboro three weeks earlier. The team the Pats are chasing in the AFC East spent 120 minutes dispatching New England with contemptuous ease.</p><p>In those two games Mac Jones did not play as well as reasonably could be expected, or well at all. The defense was nonexistent. The lack of overall team speed on both sides of the ball was dismally apparent. The gap between the Bills and Pats sure didn't look like it could be closed by a five-point plan for this offseason, more like a 25 point plan for the next five offseasons.</p><p>There is no shortage of Patriot improvement plans floating around. I'm sure they have more one of their own. But they all boil down to what's hardest to do in pro football or any sport -- getting better players. And not just better players, but some way way better players as well.</p><p>The Patriots spent a bazillion in free agency last offseason. They got better players, and their record improved accordingly. But with the exception of Matt Judon for some of the time, a time that ended abruptly before Christmas, they got no way way better players, so their improvement had its limits.</p><p>Look at New England from the perspective of an opponent's game plan, or better yet, from the perspective of an opponent's fans. Which players would be on the top of page one of that plan? Which players would you truly fear could wreck your favorite team? Any names pop into your mind? It is telling that what most opponents say about the Patriots is "we have to play a clean game." That's shorthand for "if we don't beat ourselves, we should be OK."</p><p>By contrast, the two teams in the Super Bowl featured, among others the NFL Offensive Player of the Year, Comeback Player of the Year, Offensive Rookie of the Year, several surefire Hall of Famers, a former Super Bowl MVP and a plethora of former and current Pro Bowlers. The Rams, and to a lesser but still real extent the Bengals, put the kind of players on the field coaches and fans do and should fear, the kind who can wreck an opponent even if that opponent plays well.</p><p>The Bengals did a lot of things right last night. Joe Burrow had a splendid game when upright. Ja'Marr Chase is fundamentally uncoverable. Cincinnati's linebackers were a revelation, at least to me. They didn't win because when it mattered most Cooper Kupp, Aaron Donald, and Von Miller were the best players on the field. They usually are. That's why they're feared, and should be.</p><p>The Rams got Miller in a midseason trade. They picked up Odell Beckham off the discard pile. Most famously, they traded their starting quarterback, high draft picks and most of Jared Goff's hideous contract to get Matthew Stafford. All those moves were last offseason, and led to the bromide that Los Angeles was "all in" this year.</p><p>The bromide ignores that Kupp and Donald have been Rams for some time now, as has tackle Andrew Whitworth. They traded for Jalen Ramsey in 2019 not 2021, and gave up two first round 2020 picks to do so. The Rams were not built in a one-year bet. It took time, smarts, nerve and more than a little luck to create the roster Miller loved joining. Kupp was a third round draft choice in 2017. I imagine about as many people thought he'd be an Offensive Player of the Year as thought Tom Brady would become what he did when HE was drafted.</p><p>Building a competent 53-man roster, which the Pats have, is hard enough. Finding fearsome talents is of course much harder. What's rare is always more difficult to find. Expensive, too. Expensive not just in money, but in time. The Patriots aren't in position to go for another free agency quick fix. They did that just improving to competent last season. They will have to be judicious searchers for new Raiders of the Lost Lombardi Trophy, hoping for wisdom and that the once in history luck of getting their hands on Brady didn't use up the franchise's good fortune quotient for all time.</p><p>It is difficult to imagine the Patriots getting worse next season, barring a Ravens-like run of injuries. It is just as difficult to imagine them frightening opponents the way they did when Brady was around.</p><p>What we all need to remember is that Brady was the sport's all-time number one superstar. It's going to take more than one new run-of-the-mill plain old superstar to make New England as scary as he did.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-66246576494081985102022-02-06T11:17:00.002-05:002022-02-06T11:17:55.395-05:00Uneasy Lies the Puppet's Head That Wears the Crown<p> The Commissioner's State of the NFL press conference is hardly the most enjoyable, but is perhaps the quintessential event of Super Bowl Hype Week. Like every other feature of the week, from Radio Row to product plug parties, it's designed not to make news, but to offer a nonsense-based news substitute, Beyond News if you will.</p><p>I have attended such conferences held by three different commissioners and they all fell into a pattern so rote as to be hypnotic. First the commish tells the several hundred reporters in attendance that the state of the NFL is so great it's beyond his poor powers of description. We had a very exciting season (almost always true). We made even more money (always always true). He ends with a shout out to the two teams that'll play next Sunday and a citation of various individual stars. Tom Brady is likely to be mentioned at length this year.</p><p>Then come the questions. Somebody asks about concussions and gets a long spiel about player safety, some of it quite true. Somebody asks if the NFL is considering a franchise in London/Mexico City/Mumbai/Mars and receives a bland porridge of praise for the football fans in those locales. Follow-up questions don't happen. Pointed questions don't happen all that often either. Pete Rozelle taught his successors well. A dull answer turneth away news. A half hour of crushing boredom has reporters thinking they should've spent the morning working on that Bengals' punter profile instead. The event wraps up and the commish moves on to a splendid lunch with CEOs, Senators and similar bigwigs.</p><p>No such luck for Roger Goodell this week. He will be asked to stand and deliver SOMETHING his questioners can report as actual news on the lawsuit Brian Flores filed last week charging a pattern of racial discrimination in the hiring of black head coaches. The usual scattershot of questions on different topics that served as the commissioner's, uh, shield, from awkward moments will be gone. </p><p>All Goodell has as a defense is the truth. He already admitted yesterday that the NFL's record on hiring black head coaches is unsatisfactory. This week, he can repeat that, while trying to avoid its subsequent truth. "I'm only the commissioner. What can I do about it?"</p><p>Nothing, that's what. The hiring of personnel by the 32 NFL franchises is a matter where the commissioner has no power beyond that of suggestion. If one, two or more of the willful shady billionaires and fourth generation legacy types who own teams want to hire some 38-year old white coordinator because he reminds said owners of the coaches at their prep schools, 5-12 records of the future be damned, all Goodell can do is shrug. </p><p>Sadly for Flores, that's probably all the federal courts can do as well, Proving a pattern of racial discrimination in hiring is easy, seeing as how Goodell confessed to it. Proving that pattern damaged Brian Flores the individual to the tune of x large amount of money is far harder.</p><p>This brings up the most interesting aspect of the suit filed by Flores. Its most serious charges don''t really relate to the underlying complaint at all. If Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered Flores a $100,000 a game bonus for losing games in 2019, and if Ross tried to involve Flores in tampering with not-quite-yet free agent quarterback Tom Brady the following winter, that has nothing to do with racial discrimination whatsoever. It does however, have a great deal of relevance to the league's own rules, rules allegedly enforced by one R. Goodell.</p><p>One has to assume Flores has some evidence more concrete than his own memory to back up these charges. Otherwise, he's an idiot and his lawyer an even bigger one. In any event, these are charges Goodell cannot avoid addressing or rather, cannot avoid pretending to address.</p><p>The tampering charge is almost NFL routine. Ross will offer some nonsense excuse for meeting Brady and the Dolphins will be docked a seventh-round draft choice or given a token fine. Note: the franchise pays the penalty, not Ross himself.</p><p>The "bribing my coach to throw games" charge is an escalation by Flores that poses much potential danger for Goodell as well as Ross. If it can be substantiated under oath in court, then the owner himself will be subject to penalty, just as it was Antonio Brown, not the Buccaneers, who was penalized for using a fake vaccination card.</p><p>If Ross did offer Flores bonuses for losing, well, that's somewhat closer to the heart of "the integrity of the game" than say, deflating football. It's hard to see how the NFL could have any response but to force Ross to sell the Dolphins.</p><p>Except of course we all know, and Goodell knows best of all, this will never happen. Ross could break down on the witness stand confessing like the killer in a Perry Mason episode and the NFL's response will be "an in-house investigation." As with the investigation into the sexual harassment culture of the Washington franchise, it will remain secret unless Ross agrees to allow its release.</p><p>Players get sanctioned by the NFL. Franchises get sanctioned. But owners as individuals? Doesn't happen. The league moved behind the scenes to get Victor Kiam out of owning the Pats in the early '90s, but that was not for being a public embarrassment. It was for the one mortal ownership sin -- lack of capital. If Goodell was to move to throw Ross or any other owner out of the league, he'd be moving simultaneously to the ranks of the unemployed. </p><p>None of these dire if entertaining scenarios will come to pass. Money is best at making problems go away, and the NFL has enough money to make any problem go away. Brian Flores will never coach in the NFL again. On the other hand, he may well wind up with a settlement that'll set him up for life, maybe even set up his family unto the fourth generation.</p><p>Come Goodell's press conference, and the prop bet to take is that he'll use the old "can't comment on pending litigation" dodge when asked ANYTHING about Flores' charges. He'll emerge unscathed from the even, aside from looking foolish. There's a decade of evidence that doesn't bother Goodell one bit.</p><p>I doubt the questions will even spoil the commissioner's appetite for lunch.</p><p> </p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-85601999104434661072022-01-29T15:42:00.000-05:002022-01-29T15:42:07.292-05:00Tom Brady Finally Lets Go. Maybe<p> ESPN, the NFL Network and other outlets have reported Tom Brady is retiring from pro football. Ordinarily I would accept their reporting without question, and in truth, I do. But I can't help thinking, what? Yellowstone still suits up. The Jefferson Memorial is reporting to camp on schedule. Monuments can't retire.</p><p>Human beings do though, and Brady is only half monument. It is very difficult to imagine a future Bradyless NFL because the Bradyless NFL of the past is getting increasingly misty, timewise.</p><p>The NFL pretends it began in 1919. If that's the standard, then Brady's 22 year career only spans 21 percent of the league's lifespan. In reality, the NFL as we know it, a standardized going concern rather than a gypsy semi-pro league, began in 1933. By that standard, Brady's career represents a full quarter of the NFL's history. Start with the Super Bowl era, and it's 40 percent. In a sport where the average career isn't even four seasons long, that's a geologic, no, astronomical time span.</p><p>A lengthy review of why that career makes Brady the all-time best quarterback (you can't rank players outside their positions, the difference between each job is too vast) is unnecessary and can be read in every other media outlet on earth if you want to. Here's my simple formula. Cut Brady's career in half. Examine his performance from 2000-2010 and 2011-2021. The man wasn't a Hall of Fame QB. He was two of them.</p><p>As for the why nows of Brady's retirement, if he goes through with it, I'm sure that when and if the announcement comes he'll give a lengthy and plausible answer that conceals more than it reveals. The young Brady of 2001-2004 that I covered was candid and an extremely poor dissembler when he didn't wish to be candid. The 20-year vet is far smoother and has far less he wishes to reveal. Growing older changes people. Growing older at the top rings even more changes.</p><p>I'll hazard a guess, though. Just as I think restlessness was the root cause of Brady's leaving the Patriots, I believe a different kind of restlessness will be/is the root of his decision to leave pro football. Once a player can actually experience a sense of deja vu from winning the Super Bowl, think of the ennui the prospect of another year of the NFL grind creates in him. There's no significant change in Brady's life that can take place in the context of another season, even one of excellence, as 2021 was for him. There's no way left the sport can be different for him except the unthinkable -- he could stop being so good at it.</p><p>Most players leave the NFL involuntarily. The lucky few that pick their spot to get out do so because they feel they have no more left to give their demanding, dangerous, addicting profession.</p><p>I am still unwilling to 100 percent abandon the conditional tenses in this port until I hear the news from Tom himself, not on Instagram, either. But when/if he goes, it's for a singular reason, as singular as his career.</p><p>Tom Brady's leaving pro football because the sport has nothing left to give him.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-42817218772697308732022-01-17T14:25:00.002-05:002022-01-17T14:25:34.121-05:00Death of an Illusion -- I Wish<p> Here's a question for NFL fans. Is it marginally more painful to lose in the playoffs by being thrashed by a superior opponent in top form, as happened to the Patriots last Saturday night, or to lose by seeing one's own superior team self-destruct through endless examples of avoidable stupidity, culminating in the worst of them all, as happened to the Cowboys yesterday?</p><p>That's a rhetorical question. Of course they both suck. I suppose it's a little better to know your heroes just had no shot in their loss than to see them throw a game away, but that's cold comfort to Patriots fans, especially if they reflect on the real root cause of that 47-17 blowout. Their team has the harder road to improvement.</p><p>The Cowboys need to be a smarter, more disciplined team. That's a coaching deficiency, which while not an easy problem to solve, is at least easy to try and solve. Fire Mike McCarthy. There are always plenty of NFL head coaches on the market, and some (not most, God knows) of them are actually good at it. Dallas doesn't need more talent, it has plenty. Even its punter was second team All-Pro.</p><p>The Patriots main problem, made quite evident by their last month of the season and blindly evident even to those ex-Pats players who comprise such a large part of the media-industrial complex that covers New England last Saturday night, is just as simple to describe. It's the most basic problem in any team sport, yet also by far the most difficult to address, yet alone solve. The Pats don't have enough good players to be a championship contender. They especially lack really good players, a/k/a stars.</p><p>The Associate Press released its All-Pro team last week. The Patriots were one of the two out of 14 playoff teams (the Cardinals were the other) who did not have a single player named as a first team All-Pro, that is, a player judged by the voters to have been one of the 26 best players in the league. Cornerback J.C. Jackson and special teamer Matthew Slater did make second team.</p><p>Second team All-Pro is not chopped liver. Guys like Bobby Wagner, Ja'Marr Chase and oh, yeah, Tom Brady were on that team. Cornerbacks and special teamers are important parts of any team. They are not, however, the part of the team that scores points.</p><p>Mac Jones was the most valuable Patriot on offense this season. He was about the 15th or 16th best quarterback in the league, which is a phenomenal accomplishment for a rookie starter. And Jones led an offense which was, to be kind, pedestrian in both planning and personnel. Safety first was the watchword. There was a psychic sign in the huddle reading "it's been x days since our last big mistake."</p><p>And given the Pats' skill personnel, what other plan could Bill Belichick have had? Hard-nosed running backs, a couple of journeymen tight ends and a veteran wideout corps of OK third receivers, led by a rookie QB? New England's Plan A for victory, error-avoidance with the ball and strong defense without it, was also its Plans A through Z. Players dictate "schemes."</p><p>The plan didn't go well at the start, then blossomed in late fall. Opponents like the Jets, Panthers and Falcons were good fertilizer for success. The most spoiled fan base in professional sports this side of Real Madrid saw a fortuitous winning streak as proof of a return to glory. A game won by the weather in Buffalo was proof that Belichick's genius would triumph over all.</p><p>Error avoidance and defense is maybe the oldest football strategy of 'em all. It can and does work, as the Pats showed. It also has two large flaws. One is that error-avoidance in any aspect of football is HARD. The game is chaos, and shit happens. The ball, as they say, takes funny bounces. Play conservatively either by necessity or design, and your mistakes, a blown coverage, a holding penalty on third down, etc., assume greater weight in the outcome.</p><p>As we saw last night, the Chiefs can commit about 15 game-losing plays in a quarter and still win going away against a lesser foe. They have players who can erase mistakes and then some. The Pats have Kendrick Bourne, a solid pro who's unlikely to make any All-Pro team ever.</p><p>Which leads us inevitably to problem number two with the error-avoidance strategy. It cannot withstand one special kind of adversity, a quick early lead by the opposition. Trail by 14-0 and the win with running and defense plan goes into the shredder. Team Error Avoidance is 85 percent of the way to defeat.</p><p>14-0 is exactly the score by which the Pats trailed early in their losses tot he Colts, Dolphins and of course against the Bills in the wild card game. It's important to remember football players are not fools about their profession. That's why I believe the total collapse of New England's defense in Buffalo was a matter of small-group social psychology. Having seen what happened the last two times they went down 14-0, I believe defenders shared the unspoken thought "uh-oh, we're fucked now." Once a football team has thought, it is. Only the greatest players can perform well when they think it won't do any good and the scoreboard tells them they're right.</p><p>Returning to the physical world, the Pats could also use another edge rusher, two or three linebackers with some kind of foot speed, and several more new defensive backs. The New England defense is good enough to dominate inferior teams. Against those better than the median, well... The Pats were a perfect 7-0 against teams with losing records in 2021. Against teams with winning ones, they were 3-8.</p><p>Having spent A-list money to acquire B-list free agents last year means that route to improvement may be closed. It will take a very good draft to improve the Pats significantly in 2022. It'll probably take at least one more to get them past wild-card loserdom.</p><p>It's my belief Belichick is the one person in New England who saw his team in full, even when it was winning seven in a row. I think that coach decided quite early on that Jones was the only unalloyed positive that would come from that season and that he would protect his rookie quarterback from mental and physical harm at all costs. That caution may have cost the Pats a game or two. It was still the smart move. New England's future was not now. We still can't put a date on it, if it's defined, as fans here will always do, by returning to the Super Bowl.</p><p>All we can say for sure about the Pats' future is that barring injury, it will have Mac Jones at quarterback. Which is one hell of a lot more than anyone knew about their future at this time last year.</p><p>I won't argue with anyone who says New England's 2021 wasn't a success. But I won't accept anyone calling it a failure, either. It was something in between, the first stages of a journey liable to be a longer trek than expected. One hopes it'll be a little quieter in these parts if the Pats win two or three in a row next season.</p><p><br /></p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-24403810743803471622021-12-16T14:09:00.001-05:002021-12-16T14:09:35.840-05:00Urban Unrenewed<p> Remember hearing that Julia Roberts had married Lyle Lovett and your first thought was "six months, tops"? Remember watching an NFL game on TV, hearing Jim, Joe or Al read the promo for an upcoming new network show and thinking "three episodes and then boom, no way it makes Thanksgiving"?</p><p>Admit it, that's how you felt when you heard the Jaguars had hired Urban Meyer as their head coach last winter. You, me, and everybody else inside and outside the NFL world knew this was a disaster in the making, with the only question being "will this Hindenburg make it to Lakehurst, N.J. or not even reach shore before the explosion."</p><p>If you bet the latter, you won. Jags owner Shahid Khan fired Meyer this morning. Khan was the last man left not to realize the scope of his initial blunder, but he wised up, far too late for this season, but perhaps not for a season or two down the road.</p><p>How universal was scorn for Meyer as an NFL head coach? Try this. The point spread yesterday for Sunday's Houston-Jacksonville game was Jaguars -3.5. As of this afternoon, it's Jags -5.5. The bookies, not prone to either prejudice or sentiment, made Meyer worth 2 points to Jacksonville's opposition.</p><p>The list of Meyer's misdeeds as head coach is so long I won't bother to recite it here, although it must be said that when kicking one of your own players is not a coach's most spectacular shitshow, he's setting some kind of record. And we must also pause to reflect that Khan stuck with Meyer through the coach getting videoed rubbing up against young women in his own restaurant the night following a loss, with bringing back Tim Tebow, and with badmouthing his own assistances. But as soon as number one draft choice QB Trevor Lawrence started beefing about Meyer, poof! the coach was gone.</p><p>Meyer's behavior was so erratic, I can see only two possible explanations. He was driven around the bend by the realization he was hopelessly over his head in the NFL, or, he realized that very quickly and engaged in coachly leasebreaking, trying to get fired in a way he could still collect most of his extortionate contract in an "undisclosed settlement."</p><p>Meyer wouldn't be the first hypersuccessful college coach to abandon the NFL in short order. Lou Holtz did it. Nick Saban, only the best college coach in a century, did so too. Meyer's departure was funnier and possibly more underhanded than theirs, but all three stemmed from the essential difference between college and pro head coach. All coaches are control freaks, but some have more actual control than others. In college, a coach is the boss. In the pros, he's not. If he's as good as Paul Brown, Bill Belichick and Vince Lombardi, he can be first among equals -- sometimes.</p><p>In fact, a college coach at a big program who won as much as Meyer did at Utah, Florida and Ohio State can be far more than a boss. He will likely be his state's highest paid employee. He can be a Czar. In the SEC, he can be a God-King. If Meyer was still winning national titles at Florida, and he somehow got it in his head that Critical Race Theory would help him in recruiting, Gov. Ron DeSantis would introduce legislation making teaching CRT compulsory in preschools.</p><p>In the pros, the coach is a very important employee. When he comes to a perennial loser like the Jaguars, he can be the most important employee. But he'll never be the boss. That's the owner, a billionaire who more often than not has never had a real boss in his own long life. </p><p>The players who determine any coach's fate are grown men making big money in the NFL. They have a union, a pretty strong one, too. They cannot willy-nilly be bossed around unless the bossing delivers victories. When they perceive a coach can't do that, the victories stop and the coach is removed from the equation.</p><p>If a rookie, albeit the team's most important player, QB like Lawrence (having a terrible year BTW), can get a coach canned, imagine what the real veteran stars at that position can do if they choose. Or you could just look at Aaron Rodgers.</p><p>(Don't speak to me of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Yes, the coach is still with the Patriots and Brady isn't, but theirs was a mutual breakup. The best guide to the end stage of their relationship is the Beatles documentary "Get Back." As with the Fab Four, Tom and Bill still liked and respected each other, but both were also quite aware their relationship had run its course.)</p><p>Some coaches can prosper as both rulers and loyal subjects in Football Kingdoms. Jim Harbaugh has, So has Pete Carroll. But the fundamentals of the two different jobs are still such that very few winning big-time college coaches move to the pros (Carroll did so one step ahead of the NCAA posse) and almost no pro coaches move to college jobs (Harbaugh lost a power struggle in San Francisco). </p><p>Temperamentally unfit for any role below that of Coach God-King, Meyer's tenure was doomed from day one. At least his doom was highly entertaining for the rest of us. </p><p>That says it all about the franchise Khan owns, too. The worst coach in Jacksonville Jaguars history was the only entertainment the team has provided in at least three years.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-3379566248440777312021-12-07T10:07:00.003-05:002021-12-07T10:07:36.531-05:00Three Yards and a Cloud of Little Rubber Pellets<p>Bill Belichick not only proved last night he could coach the Patriots to a big win without Tom Brady at quarterback. He showed he could do it without a quarterback at all.</p><p>The Pats attempted all of three forward passes in their engrossing 14-10 victory over the Bills, a game played in ludicrous weather conditions even by Buffalo December standards. Mac Jones spent a chilly three hours doing nothing but handing off and watching the show. Not even in hot take and quarterback obsessed Boston can his performance be seen as having any effect on the game whatsoever.</p><p>Wind is the one element to which professional athletes in any sport cannot really adjust, but merely submit. Wind masters Bryson DeChambeau as easily as it does any 20-handicapper. It can turn Fenway Park into a pitcher's paradise or the set of Home Run Derby. </p><p>The Pats and Bills played in the kind of Great Lakes wind associated with the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. In a burst of inspired passivity, Belichick surrendered to the gale before the game began. The Pats would run and nothing else. They'd run on third and four, or eight, or 14. If football had ground balls, Belichick would've ordered Josh McDaniels to call them.</p><p>The Globe's Ben Volin had a story this morning saying the Patriots "played it safe" in running on every down. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was Belichick's decision that refusing to pass was his LESS risky option on offense, that it was a way to minimize the number of funny bounces and opportunities for chaos (coaches hate chaos). And it was, but it was also a major gamble that what funny bounces did occur would be more for his side than against it.</p><p>In theory, a team that averages four yards a carry (pretty much the NFL average) could run on every play and never surrender the ball. Of course, it doesn't work that way. One or two runs get stuffed, it's third and nine and the coordinator tells the QB to sling it. Even more basically, smashmouth uber alles offense only works if a team is ahead. Two first quarter touchdowns by the opposition, and even a team with Barry Sanders and Jim Brown in the backfield is going to start chucking the old melon around.</p><p>There were only two big gainers of consequence in the game, the causes of its only two touchdowns. The first was Damien Harris' 64-yard run, a textbook example of what happens when a defense does a goal line sellout when not on the goal line. The other was a funny bounce supreme, the punt that bounced off N'Keal Harry's helmet setting up the Bills' TD.</p><p>Now suppose Harry's miscue had come first. Suppose the Bills had a 7-0 lead in the first quarter. Would Belichick have held to his game plan in that circumstance? We'll never know. He'll go to his grave without saying. But the coach's strategy would've been sorely tested.</p><p>The major risk, however, of taking the football out of the air is that by minimizing the possible number of big plays, the Patriots were maximizing the probability of a low scoring game, where one slip by the defense or one funny bounce could mean disaster. That didn't happen. But let's not forget how close it came to happening. If the Bills don't shank a 4th quarter field goal, if the Pats get called for PI in the end zone as they should've, Belichick is getting roasted for his choices this morning, not hailed.</p><p>In a way, last night was a reverse of another famous Belichick coaching call, the loss to the Colts in 2009 where he had Brady pass on 4th down deep in Pats territory inside two minutes instead of punting. In macro terms, the logic of both decisions was the same. "I will put the game in the hands of my best player (s)," Brady in 2009, the defense last night. When the call didn't work in Indianapolis, Belichick was blasted around the world. It worked last night, so he's a genius again. Wonder why Belichick doesn't care what other people think? It's a survival mechanism.</p><p>Football is chaos with a layer of choreography on top. That means all coaching is accepting risk, if not of one kind, then of another. If there's an element of his skill set that sets Belichick apart from the other great NFL coaches in history, the Browns, Lombardis and Walshes, I believe it is this. He is willing not merely to tolerate risk. If Belichick believes he has no other choice, he will embrace it.</p><p><br /></p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-81441669304518770302021-10-25T08:56:00.001-05:002021-10-25T08:56:55.205-05:00How High Should Rubble Bounce, Anyway?<p> This was not a Given Sunday. Of the 11 NFL games played yesterday, six were decided by 21 points or more, and the Raiders 33-22 win over the Eagles was at 31-7 in the third quarter. In fact, the closest thing the league had to an upset was itself a rout, the Bengals' 41-17 road thumping of the Ravens in which Cincinnati scored the last 28 points.</p><p>Routs don't get scrutinized for their meaning as often as do closer games. This is because their meaning is usually obvious. The upset rout cited in the above paragraph demonstrated that Ja'Marr Chase is a bad man and that one-man offenses have a tough go in the NFL even if the man is Lamar Jackson. Nobody needs to see the All-22 to learn those things. NFL Red Zone does fine.</p><p>The most obvious lesson taught by most routs is that some teams are good, very good or excellent, and others are weak, bad or outright dismal. Such were the meanings of Buccaneers 38-Bears 3 and Cardinals 31-Texans 5. The moral of Titans 27-Chiefs 3 was equally obvious, at least for one team. The Chiefs have issues with a capital I. Maybe issues in all-caps.</p><p>So what are we to make of the rout de tutti routs, Patriots 54-Jets 13? We knew coming in that the Jets were a very bad team indeed. Does the score indicate the Pats are a correspondingly good one?</p><p>Not necessarily. No sane observer is rushing out to call the Giants playoff-bound because they throttled the Panthers 25-3. All that game proved is that Sam Darnold still stinks. New England fans can certainly be encouraged that their team proved itself capable of a totally dominant performance on both sides of the ball no matter how poor their opposition. But encouraged is a long long way from "we're back, baby." Best to hold off on those assertions until maybe Thanksgiving.</p><p>With the exception of Randy Moss, I cannot think of a Pats offensive player in the past two decades renowned for foot speed. The 2021 Pats as a roster would not field much of a 4x100 relay team. But every player on the Pats was faster than any Jets I saw on defense yesterday. I felt sorry for their linebackers, always arriving at the scene of the play about eight yards too late.</p><p>I cite this example because group physical mismatches are very rare in the NFL, and a team with a congenitally slow defense is going to be in the running for next year's number one draft pick no matter what else it does. The Jets might be the worst team in a league that's fielding quite a few very bad ones this season.</p><p>The Pats ought to know. Their three wins have come against two of the weakest, the Jets and Texans (combined record 2-11). One of their losses came against another sad case, the 1-6 Dolphins. Against teams with a pulse, New England's victories have been strictly of the moral variety.</p><p>It's perfectly understandable that Bill Belichick was merciless yesterday when really Mac Jones could've taken a knee on every snap after Zach Wilson got hurt without jeopardizing victory. The coach's team needed to see and more important feel that it could whip another NFL team, any team, even the Jets. It needed 60 minutes of artificial confidence to start a journey towards real confidence.</p><p>Coaches despise the term "moral victory." For one thing, have too many, and a coach gets fired. For another, they all know how easily moral victories can became moral defeats. There's not much of a line between "they're one of the best and we were right with them" and "we played our best and didn't win anyway." The latter idea is a fatal one leading to a pessimism doom cycle. When a team stops believing good things will happen, good things stop happening.</p><p>Everyone with an interest in the Patriots, from Belichick on down to long-time listeners - first-time callers, should be pleased, even happy with yesterday's game. Their team has proved beyond a doubt this season that it's much much better than the New York Jets.</p><p>How happy that should make those folks strikes me as an open question.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28099011.post-16165934310890485482021-10-16T07:48:00.002-05:002021-10-16T07:48:30.466-05:00Tale As Old As Time Since Ted Williams Got Here<p> The Red Sox have won four playoff games and lost two so far. Commentary on their to date exemplary performance has focused on Alex Cora's management of a guessing game pitching staff and Kiki Hernandez's metamorphosis into Roy Hobbs. </p><p>The view from cruising altitude reveals a simpler story. In their four wins, the Sox have scored at least six runs in each game. In their two losses, they didn't, scoring none and four respectively.</p><p>Way back in 1990, then-Boston manager Joe Morgan was asked to give an overview of his club's performance that season sometime in July, "We're still the same old Red Sox," Morgan said. "When we hit we win."</p><p>Three decades and three world titles later, that summary still appears accurate.</p>Michael Geehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15720463703069139975noreply@blogger.com0