Four Paragraphs About Four Games

Tennessee/Baltimore… yawn. Tennessee’s defense outplayed Baltimore’s, but the Titans turned the ball over three times, at crucial points in the game. I’m still not ready to crown Joe Flacco as anything great, especially since he’s essentially playing the role of Trent Dilfer for this year’s Ravens team. 11-of-22 for 161 isn’t exactly the stuff of legends.

I’m still searching for reasons why the Cardinals are legitimate. The Panthers probably feel like Marshall Van Cleef after being shot by Roy O’Bannon – “How the hell did that happen?” The team that was 3-5 on the road, 3-7 outside of their own division, 2-6 against opponents with winning records, and 0-5 on the East Coast played a team on the road, outside of their own division, with a winning record, on the East Coast, and not only won the game, but thoroughly dominated both sides of the ball. Carolina, who was 8-0 at home, laid maybe the biggest egg in playoff history. If you took the Cardinals +10, you were pretty happy. If you took the Cardinals and the money line, you were even happier.

The New York Giants and Eli Manning were exposed in the early game on Sunday afternoon. The Eagles proved that if you can force the Giants to pass, and you have a decent defense (that, for example, doesn’t leave a 5’9″ corner on an island to cover a 6’5″ Pro Bowler in the last minute of the Super Bowl), Eli Manning can’t beat you. It’s also worth pointing out that when my father can predict what plays you are going to run, and also what the result of running those plays will be, you might want to rethink your fourth down strategy.

OK, I admit I was a little worried when San Diego scored a touchdown two minutes into the late game against Pittsburgh, but a tiny bit of sanity returned to the NFL playoffs when the Steelers took the touchdown as a wakeup call and proceeded to dominate the rest of the game. Early in the third, with the Steelers driving, my dad claimed that if the Steelers scored a touchdown here, “the game [was] over”. When I reminded him that an 11 point lead with a ten minutes left to go in the third isn’t exactly a sure bet, he shot back with “The Chargers haven’t done a thing on offense since that first touchdown pass.” Touché.

How (And How Not) To Get Your Point Across

The Titans were the victims of some poor officiating when the men in stripes failed to call a delay of game penalty on the Ravens during a fourth quarter drive that resulted in a field goal. While the offense is generally allowed an extra second after the play clock hits zero, the time afforded Joe Flacco seemed excessive. Said Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher after the game:

“I’ve always maintained that there’s a human element in the game as far as officiating is concerned. [They're] going to make mistakes; it is part of our game. But this particular mistake was unacceptable. There is no excuse for it, it was a mistake, and it was a costly mistake. It was not the reason we lost the game, but it was a mistake, an error.”

Pay attention to that last sentence: it wasn’t the reason they lost the game. Contrast that with Dwight Freeney’s assessment of the officiating in last week’s Colts-Chargers game:

“Those were the worst [expletive] calls I’ve seen in a long time … To have a game of that magnitude taken out of your hands, it’s just disgusting. It’s not like they made one [expletive] bad call — it’s three calls, in overtime … They need to start investigating some other [expletive].”

Freeney was fined $20,000 for his comments, which is the equivalent of you and I being fined one item off the Extra Value Menu at Wendy’s. Frankly, the trend of blaming something other than on-field performance for a loss is getting old hat. Joey Porter claimed that the only reason why the Patriots beat the Steelers while he was there (note: this happened multiple times) was because the Patriots were cheating. This was sort of a common them among football players after the so-called SpyGate Incident (in which it was revealed that every NFL team cheats, but only one got caught). It continued even after SpyGate, as Porter insinuated that the Patriots had found another way to cheat in going 16-0 (but didn’t give an explanation as to why a team that cheated to go 16-0 could lose the Super Bowl), and the Baltimore Ravens chalked up their regular season loss to the Patriots in 2007 as a conspiracy on the part of the league to keep the Patriots undefeated.

It’s OK to criticize officiating – it’s seldom perfect. But it’s almost never the reason why one team loses and the other team wins.

Stupid Challenge #1

It’s pretty clear that coaches still have no idea when a challenge is prudent and when it’s a dumb idea. Both Tom Coughlin and Norv Turner turned in dumb challenges yesterday.

Coughlin’s challenge came with 13:03 left in the game. The Giants, trailing 20-11 and in need of two scores, came up short on 3rd-and-3 and decided to challenge the spot of the ball. This would have made sense had it been a fourth down play, with the Giants turning the ball over on downs. But it was third down, and everyone in the stadium knew that if the challenge failed, the Giants would go for it on fourth down.

The Giants lost the challenge, tried a quarterback sneak on fourth down, and Manning got stuffed (oddly enough, Coughlin didn’t challenge the spot this time around). To add insult to injury, the failed challenge cost New York its second timeout, leaving the Giants with one timeout left, without the ball, and still needing two scores.

Stupid Challenge #2

Norv Turner made a similar challenge under even dumber circumstances. Coughlin’s decision at least had some desperation behind it. Turner challenged a spot with 13:42 left in the second quarter with the score tied 7-7. The ruling was upheld, and the Chargers lost a timeout. It was only their first of the half, so it was no big deal, right? Wrong. The Steelers duped the Chargers into taking their second timeout by pretending to go for it on fourth down, and then San Diego was docked their final timeout when Shaun Phillips was injured during a Steeler drive near the end of the half. When San Diego got the ball back with :40 on the clock, they had no timeouts to work with, and had to retreat to the locker room down three at the half.

San Diego’s only play of the third quarter resulted in an interception, and Turner made a wise decision in challenging the play, because it wasn’t clear whether it was an interception or an incompletion (in fact, the replay was probably ruled an interception only because that was the call on the field). It was a good time to challenge, but he lost it, and because of the boneheaded challenge in the second quarter, the Chargers lost the ability to challenge for the remainder of the game.

In retrospect, maybe that was a good thing.

And Finally…

In case you haven’t heard… the Arizona Cardinals will be hosting the NFC Championship game.

A few years ago, the subject of changing the overtime rules came up in the Competition Committee, and it was shot down.  Here’s what Bill Polian had to say about the current overtime rules:

“The current system presents a tremendous reward or risk. That’s something that adds a lot of excitement to the game.”

Bill Polian’s a smart guy.  He drafts good players.  He convinced the NFL to change the rules on pass interference so that this team could win the Super Bowl.  So it makes me wonder why he’d say something of such abject stupidity.

NFL overtime is easily the most boring of the three major American sports, because sudden death only makes sense when possession is fluid and scoring is difficult.  That’s why it works in soccer, and that’s why it works in hockey.  That’s also why it doesn’t work in baseball or basketball.

Imagine if basketball changed its overtime rules.  Imagine that a coin flip determined which team got to take the ball out-of-bounds to start the period.  The first team to score in any way, even on a free throw, would automatically win the game.  That free throw would probably be pretty damned exciting, but it would leave a really sour taste in the mouths of both team’s fans, because that’s not the way to decide who wins a basketball game.

The NFL works the same way.  Earlier this season, the Jets and Patriots slugged it out for sixty full minutes.  The Jets stormed ahead early.  The Patriots battled back and tied it.  Again the Jets jumped ahead, and tried to run the clock out, but the Patriots held on defense, got the ball back with just over a minute left, and then scored with one second left, as Matt Cassel hit a falling Randy Moss on the sideline of the end zone, and the ensuing extra point tied the game and sent it to overtime.  From the start of regulation to the end of regulation, the game was exciting.

In the overtime, the Jets won the coin toss, played ball control, opting for runs and safe, short passes downfield, got into field goal range, ran the ball up the middle until they fourth down, then asked Jay Feely to kick a chip-shot field goal to win it for them.  Boring. If you were a Patriots fan, all you could hope for was a fumble at some point, or a shank on the field goal.  But more importantly, if you were a Jets fan, you were excited that the Jets won, but you couldn’t be excited about the way that they won it.

This past week saw a playoff game decided by a coin flip.  Costly turnovers found the Chargers behind late, but good defense and an outstanding performance by their punter kept them close enough to tie the game with a late field goal and set up sudden death overtime.  The Chargers won the coin toss, started at their own 25, and completed a drive that ended in a Darren Sproles touchdown, and included 25 yards of Colts penalties.  That’s right, without any help, the Chargers were given half the length of the field for position, which meant they only had to gain twenty yards on their own to be in field goal range.  It just so happens that Sproles busted a long run to end the game.

Tony Dungy has been a proponent of the sudden death system, claiming that if you lose the coin toss, you still get a chance to get the ball back by playing good defense.  And that’s true.  You get the ball back if you play good defense.  But for whatever reason, nobody does.

To this point in the NFL season, there have been fifteen overtime games that did not end in a tie (the now-infamous Philadelphia-Cincinnati game).  The team that won the coin toss won the game eleven out of fifteen times (73%).  Eight out of fifteen times (53%), the team that lost the coin toss never had an offensive possession.  Think about that.  More than half the time you lose the coin toss, you never even have a chance to score, and your odds of winning are about 1-in-4.  How is this fair to anyone?

It’s clearly unfair to the team that loses the flip.  You could argue that it’s also unfair to the team that wins the flip, because they have to hear about how they won because of the flip.  And it’s unfair to the fans when twelve of the fifteen games ends in a field goal.  Fans pay to see football games decided by football, not by coin flips.

Lots of folks are picking on Donovan McNabb for not knowing that NFL games can end in a tie.  Turns out there are a lot of players who didn’t know a game could end in a tie.  Guess what… it’s not the players’ fault.  It’s the coaches‘ fault.  The coaches are supposed to know the rulebook front to back, and they’re supposed to impart the required knowledge onto their players.  If a receiver comes from college, where they only need to have one foot inbounds on a reception, he should probably know just from watching games on TV that he needs both feet inbounds in the NFL, but it’s the wide receivers coach’s job to make sure he knows it.  If he admits later to not knowing the rule, and he’s not lying, it’s the coach’s fault.  End of story.

A lot of people are surprised at the success Matt Ryan is enjoying with the Atlanta Falcons.  Rookie quarterbacks, it is said, despite the success of guys like Ben Roethlisberger and Kyle Orton (yes, Kyle Orton won ten games his rookie year) aren’t supposed to win games until they take their lumps.  The truth is, Ryan is probably the most NFL-ready quarterback to be drafted in some time, so it really shouldn’t be too surprising.  You just need to look for the right things when predicting NFL success…

Is there anything physically or mechanically wrong with the guy?

It’s never a good sign when scouting reports talk about a guy having a ‘quirky’ throwing motion, throwing off the wrong foot, having a weak arm, needing to hit the weight room, being injury prone, or just being too short.  There’s nothing that precludes a player with these traits from success – Doug Flutie was short and Chad Pennington has no arm strength – but with the quarterback position being the most important one on the football team, this stuff can’t just be dismissed.

Matt Ryan was listed at 6’5″, 225 lbs (in otherwords, prototypical quarterback size), with decent mobility and without any blatant mechanical problems.  He missed some time with a broken foot but showed time after time that he could get up off the turf after a hit.

Did he play in a system than transfers well to the NFL?

Quick: Name the Steve Spurrier-coached quarterback who has had the most success in the NFL.  The answer is probably Rex Grossman.  The fact is not all of the offenses run by NCAA teams translate to the NFL.  This is why Eric Crouch won the Heisman Trophy as a quarterback at Nebraska, and yet had switch to the safety position to get a sniff of action in the NFL.  This is why Hawai’i quarterbacks under June Jones set all sorts of NCAA passing records but don’t get any playing time in the NFL.

Boston College runs a pro-style offense, where receivers and backs and tight ends all do the same sorts of things they’re responsible for at the pro level, so for his entire college career, Matt Ryan saw the same formations that are used professionally.  The learning curve is much lower.

Has he performed in pressure situations?

This isn’t really a major factor, because almost all quarterback prospects play in exciting, pressure-packed games.  Whether it’s a BCS Championship or the annual rivalry game between East Directional and East Directional State.  But their success in those games can be a tell-tale sign.  Peyton Manning never beat Florida – the one team Tennessee fans wanted the Vols to beat – and his penchant for performing poorly in big games followed him to the NFL until he broke through in Super Bowl XLI.

One player remarked about how cool Matt Ryan was on the road against a hostile crowd.  The first thing I thought was, “Why would he get rattled?”  The guy engineered a fourteen point comeback in the final three minutes on the road at Virginia Tech with an undefeated season on the line.  It’s unlikely that he’s going to worry too much about a mid-season NFL road game.

Is the guy coming from a solid background into a stable situation?

The solid background is less of an issue than the stable situation, but you should at least see where the player is coming from and what kind of background he has when you’re evaluating his chances for success.  In retrospect, the Michael Vick saga isn’t surprising when you consider the people he hung around with before and after achieving stardom in the NFL.  But the stable situation is important, too.  Remember Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf?  Now, before we continue, let’s just make it clear that Ryan Leaf was never going to be Peyton Manning, but consider the situations they were drafted into.  Peyton was selected by the Colts in a year where they had hired a new coach (Jim Mora).  The team already had Marshall Faulk and Marvin Harrison on it, but had no expectation of immediate success.  Peyton finished the season with 26 touchdowns and 28 interceptions, but he wasn’t punished for failure.  Mora remained the coach for some time and the team was built around Manning’s talents.

The same can’t be said for Ryan Leaf.  Leaf was drafted to lead a talentless San Diego Chargers offense and actually started off 2-0.  In Week 3 against the Chiefs, though, Leaf was 1-for-15, and after throwing four picks Giants in Week 4, the chain-jerking began, as he was benched in favor of Craig Whelihan.  After changing head coaches in mid-season, Leaf alternately started and didn’t start throughout the season, and actually finished with the same number of wins as Peyton Manning did that season (3).  Now Leaf had a serious attitude problem, but that environment wasn’t exactly the formula for success.  If you want to develop a quarterback for the future, you can’t be worried about winning now.

Matt Ryan was working on a Master’s degree, having completed his undergraduate degree on time and staying at Boston College for a fifth year.  He received scholar-athlete awards, never had any off the field incidents, scored high on Wonderlic tests, and was generally held in high regard by his coaches and his peers.  Going into Atlanta, he finds himself on a team with a new coach, significant talent on offense, and a philosophy where an emphasis on the running game will allow him to ease into the position.  He’ll make mistakes, but he’ll be allowed to make those mistakes without wondering whether he’ll be relegated to bench.

Now, if there’s one more reason to be unsurprised by his success with the Falcons this year, it’s this: everyone talks about how fast the NFL is, and how rookies struggle until the game slows down for them.  I remember something that Joey Harrington said, and I’m paraphrasing here: “In college, when I dropped back, there was somebody open on every play.  In the NFL, nobody’s open!“  Well, as anyone who watched Boston College during Ryan’s career will attest to, when Matt Ryan dropped back to pass in college, there was still nobody open.  The throws that most college quarterbacks don’t need to make until they reach the NFL were the throws that Ryan had to make every time he needed a first down.