Author: Jack

I have made no secret of the fact that I am happy to be rid of Jon Gruden as the MNF color analyst.  I have nothing against Gruden personally; I hope he is successful as the coach of the Raiders; I just really disliked his way of broadcasting football games.  I guess it is because I am so glad that someone else will be doing that job next year that I have been tracking the stories about who might be his replacement much more closely that I would be following analogous stories.  The latest candidate for the job – – according to reports and Tweets and rumors and the like – – is Peyton Manning.  Unless, of course, you choose to believe those other reports/Tweets/rumors that he is uninterested in going into the broadcast booth because he wants to go into an NFL ownership position.

You would have to be a real newbie around here to think I am going to spring some inside info on you here and that I have somehow connected with Peyton Manning personally on this topic.  There are three key words regarding that situation:

• Did – – Not – – Happen!

Rather than fuel the rumor mill, I prefer to try to take a more analytical look at the MNF job and the potential candidates.  Let me start with Peyton Manning since he is the “Flavor of the Week” in the blogosphere.  My guess is that I would be more than happy with him as the second voice on the mic for MNF; he is intelligent, articulate, humorous and Lord knows, he understands pro football.  I would like to pose this utter rhetorical question regarding his “candidacy” for that job:

• Would he be happy/comfortable analyzing a game on TV in which his brother, Eli, was playing?

I can imagine that being an uncomfortable situation and it was one Jon Gruden faced when MNF had games with the Skins as one of the teams.  The difference is that when Jon Gruden took the MNF job, his brother was still involved in the Arena League; he did not face the virtual certainty that he would have to do a game with his brother on the sideline.  For Peyton Manning, it is a virtual certainty that he will face that situation somewhere down the road.  Is that a big deal for him?  I don’t read minds…

ESPN says that Matt Hasselbeck will do the color for the Pro Bowl game this week and lots of folks have interpreted this as an audition for Hasselbeck.  I am sure that it is to the extent that if Hasselbeck throws up all over his shoes on the broadcast, the network will look elsewhere for the permanent MNF analyst.  Let me be clear; Matt Hasselbeck does very well in ESPN’s studio shows on the NFL; he has done good work on NFL Live.  However, there is a little voice in the back of my head that keeps saying that ESPN might want a bit more “star power”/”splash” in the broadcast booth.  No inside info here, but the feeling is persistent.

So, who might be in line for interviews by the ESPN moguls (in alphabetical order)?

1. Randy Moss:  Lots of people have named him as a key contender for this job.  He is already on the ESPN payroll and should “know his way around” the organization, but he would not be my choice for the same reason the next candidate would not be my choice…
2. Rex Ryan:  Like Randy Moss, he is also already part of ESPN.  Also, like Randy Moss his TV style/persona is a ton of bombast.  The MNF booth does not need an infusion of bombast.
3. Kurt Warner:  I have heard him do the color on a couple of MNF games on the radio and I liked what I heard.
4. Steve Young:  He would be my first choice for the job – – but according to reports, he has said that he does not want the job.  Too bad…

Let me lay out the criteria I would hope the ESPN moguls would use to find the next MNF color analyst.  Let’s say that the ideal candidate is Joe Flabeetz.

• Joe Flabeetz has to know NFL football from being a player and/or a coach at the NFL level.  We have gone through “outsider analysts” and I would want to avoid another Dennis Miller or Tony Kornheiser or Howard Cosell unless ESPN is going to go with a 3-person booth.
• Joe Flabeetz has to have a discernable personality; we do not need a robot behind a microphone.
• Joe Flabeetz has to be articulate in the English language.  He can use that fluency to create his own phrases or jargon as John Madden did.  He cannot, however, be a person who cannot communicate outside the world of jargon or “inside jokes”.
• Joe Flabeetz has to be willing and able to offer critical commentary when necessary.  What drove me nuts about Jon Gruden was that every coach “does an excellent job” and every player is “outstanding”.  That is simply not the case and I don’t want to hear that nonsense anymore.

Let me pull out a FANTASY SCENARIO out of a hat.  The sequence of events goes like this:

1. The Pats win the Super Bowl 10 days from now.
2. Bill Belichick steps to the podium to say that his team was a great group of men and that he was proud to be part of their accomplishment.  He ends by saying that he is retiring from NFL coaching – – AND – –
3. He is taking the job as the color analyst for MNF.

What football fan would want to miss his first telecast?  What fan would not want to hear his response to the first dumb question posed by the play-by-play guy?  What fan would not want to hear his follow up question to a coach or player who did not answer his original question?  It is not going to happen – – but I think it would be fun if it did.

Finally, since I ended on a purely fantastic note, consider this sort of fancy from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“The London Daily Mail says a jet-powered mobility scooter was successfully tested, boasting a top speed of 70 miles-per-hour.

“So if NASCAR was ever thinking about starting a senior circuit.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

A few weeks ago, after Alabama had beaten Georgia in the CFP Championship Game, some of the folks in and around Orlando, FL sought to convince folks that UCF as the only undefeated Division 1-A team in the country was the “real national champion”.  They created awards for themselves that they handed out to UCF and the school participated in the charade by paying the team coaches the bonuses they would have received had UCF actually been in the CFP and won the Championship Game.

• [Aside:  The next time UCF raises its tuition or student fees, parents should rise up and demand to know how the school found money to pay bonuses to coaches for something the coaches did not achieve but still has to raise tuition and/or fees.]

This was a nice idea that seemed harmless at the start, but it caught on in the Twitterverse and the blogosphere and some people took it seriously.  That took the train off the rails.  Forget about who beat whom this year in terms of scheduling and think about the situation this way.

• UCF plays the majority of its games in the American Athletic Conference (AAC).
• Alabama and Georgia play the majority of their games in the SEC.

Rather than look at stats and rankings and all that stuff, let me turn to the NFL to see which conference is the stronger conference.  The NFL has no dog in the fight when it comes to naming a college football national champion.  The coaches and the “personnel folks” in the NFL simply and straightforwardly seek to put the best players they can on the field in their uniforms.   What does that tell us?

Now that we know the two teams in the Super Bowl making the counting process feasible, I looked at the rosters of the two teams – the active roster plus the injured reserve members.  (Each team has 11 players on injured reserve so the total “population” here is 128 players.)  Here are some numbers:

• 25 players on the Pats and Eagles went to SEC schools.
• 8 players on the Pats and Eagles went to AAC schools.

The folks who put together the two Super Bowl rosters this year found “NFL-caliber talent” in 3 times as many players from the SEC as they did from the AAC.  I know; these are only 2 of the 32 NFL teams so it might be premature to draw any conclusions here.  Moreover, I am not about to take about 3 hours out of my life to make a spreadsheet representing this kind of breakdown for every NFL team.  However, the data from the Eagles and the Pats indicates in a different way the talent gap between the “Power Five” conferences (SEC, Big10, PAC-12, ACC, Big-12) and the “Group of Five” conferences (AAC, MAC, Sun Belt, C-USA, Mountain West).  For the Eagles and Pats look at the breakdown this way:

• 97 players from Power Five conferences.
• 20 players from Group of Five conferences
• 10 players from schools not in Division 1-A
• 1 player from an Independent school.

Please do not get hung up in the exact numbers here; the point that I think is important is that an “independent evaluator of football talent” has concluded that there are more exceptional players on teams in the Power Five schools than there are in the Group of Five schools.  If you were to sit and watch a bunch of games involving those conferences, you would also probably come to that conclusion; there is good reason to be shocked and amazed when a team like Appalachian St. beats a team like Michigan; it does not happen often.

Nothing from the above should be taken to mean that it would have been impossible for UCF to beat Alabama had the schools met on the field.  What I think it means is that the folks who got to hyperventilation stages about UCF as clearly the best team in the nation in 2017 need to gather themselves and prepare to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere prior to landing back on the planet’s surface.

Jacksonville, FL is only about 150 miles from Orlando, FL.  I can only hope that the fantasy contagion that hit Orlando regarding UCF does not spread to Jax causing people to declare that the Jags are the rightful participants in the Super Bowl vice the Patriots.

I have written before about the importance of perspective regarding the prevailing narrative that the NFL has peaked in popularity and that it has begun to decline.  I think that the NFL is not the juggernaut that it was 5-10 years ago and that the league has some very serious social issues to juggle.  I also know that TV ratings are down – – although the numbers of people watching on streaming platforms is not counted and it is, therefore, impossible to know if the numbers of eyeballs watching NFL games has changed all that much.

Here is something I think is interesting to watch with regard to this question:

• The Thursday Night Football package is up for bids now.  What is the interest level in securing those rights?

The latest reports say that 5 networks (Turner, ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC) expressed initial interest but Turner and ABC have decided not to submit bid proposals for these rights.  [Aside:  I doubt Turner had a ghost of a chance in the first place; the NFL wants its product on network TV and not on cable TV where possible.]  The three networks that televise most of the NFL games all remain interested in Thursday Night Football – – and remember, those are the games that most people do not like nearly as much as the weekend games.  It will be interesting to see how much those networks are willing to pay for Thursday Night Football and how long a deal they are willing to sign up for.

Finally, here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Twitter has begun allowing users 280 characters. I’m not sure if this represents progress but Husker fans can now trash players in complete sentences after games.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

The NFL season began on Thursday September 7, 2017 with the Chiefs and Pats playing in Foxboro.  The season has one game left; the Super Bowl will be a replay of Super Bowl XXXIX with the Patriots taking on the Eagles.  [Aside:  Given the frequency of the Patriots’ participation in the Super Bowl over the last 15 years, perhaps we should think of renaming it the BBIT – the Brady-Belichick Invitational Tournament.]

The Jaguars played very well and had the game in a secure place for the first 3 quarters of the game; the Jags led 20-10 at the start of the 4^th quarter.  My sister-in-law is not a huge football fan, but she is a huge Patriots hater; she texted me to say she thought the Jags had the game in the bag.  All I did was to remind her that the Pats trailed 28-3 in the Super Bowl last year and came back to win.  What I said was simple:

This game is not over yet.

Indeed, it was not.  The Patriots rallied to score 2 TDs in the 4^th quarter to come back and win 24-20 by dominating play in the fourth quarter.  This was a game where Tom Brady led the Patriots to a win; this was not a game where Jags’ QB, Blake Bortles invented a way to lose the game.  Bortles’ stat line for the game was more than acceptable:

• 23 for 36 for 293 yards and 1 TD

That is 12.8 yards per completion and 8.1 yards per attempt.  Any NFL QB would be happy to see that stat line on their ledger for a season.  No; the Pats won because Tom Brady led a game-winning drive at the end of the game that you just felt was coming as soon as the Pats got possession of the ball.

There were 5 minutes left to play; the Pats trailed by 3; they took possession at the Jags’ 30 yardline.  The winning TD pass came with 2:48 to play and it looked as of Brady had not yet broken a sweat.  Meanwhile, the Pats’ defense turned down the screws on the Jags in the final quarter too.  Here are the last four possessions for the Jags in the game:

1. Punt
2. Punt
3. Punt
4. Turn the ball over on downs.

The Pats/Jags game was not a huge surprise because we have come to expect solid if not spectacular play from the Jags and a never-say-die attitude from the Pats.  And that is what we got.

The Eagles/Vikes game on the other hand was indeed a huge surprise.  I did not think either team would score 20 points and that the game would be decided by a field goal – made or missed – on the final possession of the game.  Not even close.  The Vikes suffered a letdown from its miracle win last week over the Saints and only flashed any kind of intensity or emotion in the game.  The Vikes scored first looking efficient and effective in doing so; they led 7-0 after only 5 minutes had gone by in the game and got the ball back midway through the first quarter.  Then came the momentum changing play of the game:

• Case Keenum had his arm hit by Chris Long and Eagles’ DB, Patrick Robinson intercepted it near the 50 yardline and took it back for a TD.
• That did more than tie the game.  That play changed the body language for the teams on the field.
• From that point on, the Eagles’ offense was in sync and the Eagles’ defense was flying to the ball wherever it was on the field.

Nick Foles more than acquitted himself here.  His stat line was:

• 26 for 33 for 352 yards and 3 TDs
• Oh, by the way, in the second half he was 11 for 11 passing…
• Oh, by the way, he was 9 for 10 throwing on 3rd down.

I said on Friday that the matchup between Vikes’ DE, Everson Griffen and Eagles LT, Halapoulivaati Vaitai would be important.  Well, Vaitai did more than hold his own; Griffen got only a couple of pressures on Foles and was not a huge factor in the passing game.  Filling in for an All-Pro player – one who may be in the Hall of Fame one day – is not an easy task but Vaitai did just that in admirable fashion last night.

The opening line for the Super Bowl has the Pats as a 5.5-point favorite with some of the sportsbooks moving the line up to 6-points based on early money.  Frankly, I am a bit surprised by that line; I would have guessed that it would have opened at 7-points and potentially gone up from there.  Whatever…  The Total Line for the Super Bowl is at 48 points as an opening point; that looks like a reasonable place for that line to be; I would not expect a lot of movement from there – unless one or both starting QBs comes down with the Ebola virus and has to be quarantined on the weekend of the game.

The Vikes will not be the first team to play in the Super Bowl in their home stadium this year.  And maybe – just maybe – that is a good thing for Vikes’ fans.  Look, it is not as if the loyal season ticket holders will all get to buy Super Bowl tickets to use or to sell on the secondary market.  At least 75% of the seats are going to go to “NFL partners” and various members of the “connected class’.  US Bank Stadium seats about 67,000 fans; I would be surprised if the Vikes’ season ticket holders would have 10,000 seats allocated to the whole lot of them.

Those numbers would mean that the resale market price for Super Bowl tickets would be outrageous and people might spend money that they ought not to spend on a football game just because it is a home game for their home team.  I honestly believe there are some people who have just been protected from themselves.

We are about to embark on about two weeks of football silliness.  The next week will be filled with reports about things that are peripheral at most to the Super Bowl game.  Then we will have the Pro Bowl next weekend which is must-miss-TV.  Then we will get Super Bowl Media Day where some “journalist” will ask one of the players what his favorite crochet yarn is.  I hope to avoid contributing to that nonsense and, so I will leave you with this…

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times had this item recently about the Puppy Bowl.  If you do not know about the Puppy Bowl, Google is your friend…

“Boomer, a 14-week-old Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix, has been getting rave reviews in workouts for Puppy Bowl XIV on Feb. 4.

“In other words, the pup looks really good on paper.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

OK, we have arrived at the weekend to decide the conference champions in the NFL.  Just because I enjoy embarrassing myself, here is what I predicted back in early September for the 4 teams left in the playoffs:

• Jaguars:  6-10  last in the AFC South
• Patriots:  13-3  first in the AFC East;  #1 seed in the AFC for the playoffs
• Vikings:  9-7  2nd in the NFC North; not in the playoffs in the NFC
• Eagles:  9-7  3^rd in the NFC East; not in the playoffs in the NFC

So much for prognostication …

At 3:00 PM EST on Sunday, the Patriots host the Jaguars and the Patriots are 7.5-point favorites at home.  The Total Line for the game is 47 points.  The spread opened the week at 9 points and held steady there until news that Tom Brady “jammed his throwing hand” in practice and had to leave practice in mid-week.  That dropped the line quickly to 8 points and now to 7.5 points.  My assumption here is that unless Brady’s injury requires an amputation of his hand up to the middle of his “throwing forearm”, he will be on the field on Sunday.  Regarding trends against the spread and things of that nature, consider:

• Pats have been favored in every game this year.  They are 12-5 against the spread.
• The Jags are 10-8 against the spread and they are 4-2 against the spread as an underdog.
• Tom Brady’s record against the Jags for his career is 7-0 straight up.

If you want to analyze this game from the standpoint of “experience”, please stop right here and declare that the Patriots are a mortal lock.

• Bill Belichick has coached 37 NFL playoff games and won 27 of them.
• Doug Marrone has coached 2 playoff games (this year) and won both of them.
• Tom Brady has 5 Super Bowl rings.
• Blake Bortles has played in 2 playoff games

There is no comparison between these teams if you base it on “who has been there before.”  So let me try to look a bit deeper into the game.  Notwithstanding the NFL’s 25-year focus on limiting defensive football to increase scoring and fan interest, this “final four” field is defensively dominant.  The Jags, Vikes and Eagles ranked first, second and third respectively in fewest points allowed per opponent’s possession in the regular season.  The Pats’ defense that was slammed from pillar to post back in September ranked a very respectable 6^th in the league in that stat.  Defensive football has lots of stats associated with it and many of them are important indicators of defensive prowess; but the single most important thing a defensive unit can do is to minimize the number of points that the opponent scores in a game.  Any and all of the other stats one can create take a back seat here.  And these 4 teams are really good at preventing the “other guys” from scoring lots of points.

The Jags have arrived at this place in the season on the strength of their defense – and the strength of their pass defense in particular.  They rush the passer well and they have two excellent cover corners in Jalen Ramsey and AJ Bouye.  That Jags’ strength matches up well with the Pats’ offensive strength which is the passing game orchestrated by Tom Brady.  The big question/mismatch for the Jags is Rob Gronkowski.  The Jags’ best cover guy is one of the bigger guys they have in the secondary and that is Jalen Ramsey.  If the Jags choose to put Ramsey on Gronk, that could reduce Gronk’s big-play effectiveness, but it would mean playing Ramsey out of position and playing someone else in Ramsey’s normal position.  I will be interested to see how the Jags line up against the Pats in passing situations.

I do not expect Leonard Fournette to dominate the game; I assume that he is the weapon the Pats will take away from the Jags in the game.  However, I would watch out for TJ Yeldon as the other RB for the Jags.  He is a very different runner and pass catcher from Fournette and he may see a lot of action on Sunday.

I think the Patriots are the better team and that their playoff experience will assure total focus on the task at hand on Sunday.  I think the Pats will win the game, but that line looks fat to me.  My preference is to take the Jags plus the 7.5 points and to take the game to stay UNDER 47 points.

The Eagles and the Vikings are similar teams that have arrived here with the same sort of story.  Few prognosticators had either team winning their division this year; both teams have succeeded because of an outstanding defense; both teams are here missing their starting QB. The Vikes are 3.5-point favorites on the road in this game and the Total Line is at 39 points.  Here are some trends to consider in the game:

• The Vikes are 11-6 against the spread and they are 8-5 when they are the favorite.
• The Eagles are 11-6 against the spread and they are 4-2 as an underdog.
• Case Keenum has played in 1 playoff game in his career (last week).
• Nick Foles has played in 2 playoff games in his career.

I mention those QB stats because I believe this game will be decided by which of these two relatively inexperienced QBs reacts better to the defensive pressure they will be under.  Neither Keenum nor Foles is going to have an easy time of it; one of them will be more poised/less error-prone and that QB will be the one on the winning team.  Having said that, I believe that the head-to-head matchup that will determine the relative fate of these two QBs is this one:

• Vikes’ DE, Everson Griffen versus Eagles’ LT, Halapoulivaati Vaitai.

Should both QBs be stressed out and the respective offensive coordinators turn to the running game, the Eagles have an advantage.  The Vikes’ tandem of Latavius Murray and Jerick McKinnon is a good one, but the Eagles can put 4 different running backs in the game and each brings a different dimension to the game.  The advantage there would be for the home team.

I like this as a venue pick.  The Eagles only lost one game at home this year and that was in Week 17 when they had already locked in their top-seed status and rested several starters.  I concur with the oddsmaker that this will be a low-scoring affair and I prefer to take points in those situations.  So, I’ll take the Eagles plus the 3.5 points here.

Finally, here is a comment regarding an NFL QB who is not in the playoffs this year by Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“Packers QB Aaron Rodgers and race-car driver Danica Patrick were reportedly spotted out on a date at a Green Bay restaurant.

“Either that or they were just discussing the finer points of two-minute drives.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

We have reached that time of the year when news “leaks” out about the Super Bowl ads and what sorts of strategies advertisers will be using this year.  Frankly, all of the pre-game analysis of advertisements gives them an importance far beyond reality and, so I pay little attention to them.  However, this year, there is a wrinkle in the fabric of US culture that ought to make the advertisers and their creative counterparts in the agencies take note.

The adage has been that “Sex sells,” and indeed it has worked that way for at least a century.  However, it has been almost 4 months since the “Harvey Weinstein Story” broke and the #MeToo movement began gathering momentum.  That has been sufficient time for the ad agencies to adjust their pitches for this year because here are a couple of things I think we should not be seeing in Super Bowl ads in February 2018:

1. If there is an ad with a scantily clad woman in it, the clothing had better be a bathing suit, the setting had better be a beach and the product had better be sunscreen.
2. There should not be any ads of frat boys or construction workers ogling women – period.

Too bad we cannot return to the days of “Bud Bowl” and “Louie the Lizard” …

The LA Chargers played their games in a tiny venue this year while they await the finish of the extravagant stadium Stan Kroenke is building for the Rams and the Chargers.  It was obvious that the Chargers would play to the smallest home crowds in the league this year, but I wondered just how small the crowds turned out to be.

• The Chargers drew 202,687 fans for their home games.  Average = 25,335.
• The Bengals drew 426,207 fans for their home games.  Average = 53,275
• The Raiders drew 462,201 fans for their home games.  Average = 57,775

OK, the Chargers drew less than half the number of people than did the next two lowest drawing NFL teams.  That average attendance is meager for many of the big-time college programs.  So, I wondered how the Chargers average attendance stacked up with some “mid-major college football programs”.  The answer is that some small-time school outdrew the Chargers:

• Chargers drew an average of 25,335
• Appalachian St. drew an average of 25,787
• UAB drew an average of 26,375.
• Air Force, Boise St., Colo. St., Fresno St. and San Diego St. outdrew the Chargers.
• The Birmingham Bowl – two days before Christmas – drew 28,623.

The NFL announced recently that there will be only 3 “London Games” in 2018 – down from 4 of those games in 2017.  League officials quickly and pointedly said that this was not representative of cooling toward the London market; rather, the idea for this year is to have the three games take place on 3 successive weeks (Weeks 6-8) to see how that plays in the sporting world of the UK.  The Seahawks, Eagles and Titans will make their “European debuts” next year leaving only 3 NFL teams that have never been made to cross the pond.

One of the games will take place in the new stadium built in London for the Tottenham Hotspurs of the English Premier League.  This new stadium will have a feature that I have read about but would need to see it to understand it.  Per ESPN.com:

“The new Tottenham stadium will feature the world’s first dividing, retractable soccer pitch — with an artificial surface underneath that will be used for NFL games and concerts — and a dedicated NFL entrance. There will also be NFL-sized dressing rooms and dedicated NFL medical and media facilities, and the stadium has been designed to ensure the sight lines are as good for NFL as for soccer.”

I do not understand how the “dividing, retractable soccer pitch” is going to work or why there is a need for a “dedicated NFL entrance”.  The current plans call for the Raiders and Seahawks to play in the new stadium in Week 6 next year.  It will be worth getting up early to see that game just to get an idea how the new stadium works.

In the coach-shuffling season that happens every January/February, fans are happy to see coaches and assistant coaches leave town based on their team failing to “reach its potential”.  At the same time, the fans are happy to welcome the “new guy in town” who will surely “turn things around”.  Well, consider this comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about a recent move by the Dolphins:

“Problem solved! Fins hire new offensive coordinator: The disappointing 6-10 Dolphins and coach Adam Gase demoted offensive coordinator Clyde Christensen after averaging only 17.6 points per game to rank 28th in the NFL. They replaced him with Dowell Loggains, whom the Bears just dismissed after Chicago averaged 16.5 points, ranking 29th. Well alrighty then!”

Finally, here is a word from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“LeBron James turned 33 and has been in the league for 14 years. This is typically the point in his career when an NBA player witnesses his first traveling call.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

When NFL coaches are let go on Black Monday or soon thereafter, those coaches with teams in the playoffs are immune.  After all, they still have games to play and their presence in the playoffs normally means that their teams have done mostly good things over the course of the season.  When a team in the playoffs then wins a first-round game and moves on, the typical scenario is that the team moves forward with its head coach and may have to replace an assistant or two in the off-season.

That is not the case in Tennessee.  After the Titans made the playoffs – as a wild-card team – and then won their first-round game on the road over the Chiefs, they lost badly to the Patriots in the AFC Divisional Round.  And then, the Titans fired head coach Mike Mularkey citing a “failure to find common ground” on how to improve the Titans in the future.  I have no idea what that really means, but let me offer a couple of facts that should be germane to the decision the Titans made:

1. Mularkey took over in the middle of the 2015 season.  In his 9 games in that season the Titans were 2-7; they finished at 3-13 for the 2015 season.  Combined with the 2014 season, the Titans were 5-27.  For comparison purposes, in the 2014/15 seasons, the Browns were 10-22 and the Jags were 8-24.  When Mike Mularkey finished his season as the interim coach of the Titans it was a bad team.
2. In each of the last two seasons, Mularkey and the Titans posted a 9-7 record.  They missed the playoffs in 2016 but made it this year and won a wild-card game.  Oh, by the way, this is the first time the Titans have been in the playoffs since 2008.
3. It is not as if winning a playoff game is commonplace for the Titans.  The last playoff victory came in 2003 and Steve McNair was the QB for that team.

I do not mean to anoint Mike Mularkey as some sort of nascent coaching legend; but considering his 2.5 years with the Titans, it would seem as if he had something going in the right direction.  Even the blowout loss to the Patriots is not as bad as it might look.  Oddsmakers had the line on the game set at 13.5 points and that is a huge spread for any playoff game.  The expectation was for the Pats to win handily – – and that is what happened.

The Titans should be attractive to assistant coaches looking to move up the coaching ladder.  They have a young franchise QB that is developing; they have two stud running backs; they have a solid defensive unit that ranks in the middle of the league in yards per game and in points per game.  If I were such a candidate, I would worry only about the rational decision making of the “head shed”.  I would be cognizant of what Mularkey did with a bad team and how he was fired because of a “failure to find common ground” and I would surely want to know what sort of “common ground” I was supposed to find and maintain.

I look at the firing of the head coach in Tennessee after a bad playoff loss and then turn my gaze to Pittsburgh where the Steelers lost a game in a far worse fashion than did the Titans and the coach is seemingly bullet-proof.  Let me state without qualification:

1. When the Pittsburgh Steelers score 42 points in a home game, they are supposed to win that game.
2. When the Pittsburgh Steelers allow 45 points to an opponent in Heinz Field, the QB they are facing is not supposed to be of the caliber of Blake Bortles.

Indeed, there were some strange play calls for the Steelers along the way and I personally would not have tried an onside kick with a little over 2 minutes left in the game.  Having said that, there was something missing from the Steelers’ players on the field last weekend and yet there is no real pressure that has been put on Mike Tomlin or his staff.

Jason Whitlock on Speak For Yourself yesterday suggested that Mike Tomlin is a black head coach of a team owned by the Rooney’s who are the champions of the “Rooney Rule” that mandates interviewing minority coaches for openings.  He said that makes it difficult for the team to fire Mike Tomlin for anything as nebulous as what happened last weekend.  After all, the Steelers did post a 13-3 record in the regular season this year.

I am not ready to go as far as Jason Whitlock has gone here.  I am surprised, however, that offensive coordinator, Todd Haley has not received nearly as much criticism as I think he deserves for some of his play calls during the game.  I am not saying he should be fired; but he did pull some strange plays from his play sheet in that game.

Since I am on the topic of NFL coaches today, let me go from the top end of the ladder to the bottom rung.  Hue Jackson is retained as the coach of the Cleveland Browns despite a winless season in 2017 and a combined 2-year record of 1-31.  Let me be clear; the Browns lost all those games because the Browns’ roster was not competitive with the rest of the league; Hue Jackson did not make his squad massively overachieve but even if they had massively overachieved, the cumulative record might have been 6-26.  Notwithstanding the bad hand he was dealt, Hue Jackson – and the Browns’ Front Office – need to step up their game to avoid seeing Jackson descend into what I call “Rick Venturi Territory”.  Consider:

• Venturi coached the Indy Colts to a 1-10 record.
• Venturi coached the New Orleans Saints to a 1-7 record.
• Venturi coached the Northwestern Wildcats to a 1-31-1 record.
• Cumulative coaching record is 3-48-1.

The only thing saving Hue Jackson from being awarded the “Venturi Medal” today is that he also has one year as the head coach in Oakland where the Raiders went 8-8.  However, another 1-15 record in Cleveland next year would make his Browns’ record look very “Venturi-like” …

Finally, here are two comments from sports writers regarding an overseas election:

“Former soccer superstar George Weah, 51, has been elected president of Liberia.

“Which certainly puts a whole new spin on the expression ‘voting with your feet’.”  [Dwight Perry, Seattle Times]

And …

“George Weah, a former soccer star, has been elected president of Liberia.

“He isn’t planning on issuing pink slips to anyone hired by the previous administration, just red cards.”  [Brad Rock, Deseret News]

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

I want to talk about something other than the NFL this morning – not because there is nothing concerning the NFL to talk about but because I have spent too much time on that area of the sports world recently.  So, let me take a look at MLB’s Hot Stove League action.

Given the fact that pitchers and catchers will start to report to MLB Spring training camps in less than 4 weeks, what I am actually looking at is MLB’s Hot Stove League inactivity.  When I checked yesterday, there were still 155 MLB free agents who have not signed with any team yet.  With 30 MLB teams as the only landing spots for those free agents, that means the average team will need to sign about 5 free agents in the next month.  I doubt seriously that there are that many openings in MLB.  [Aside:  By my count, 58 free agents have already signed new deals meaning that only 27% of the free agents as of November 2017 know where they will be playing next season.]

Let me focus on outfielders as an example – simply because that is what I started counting yesterday.  By my tally, there are between 32 and 35 outfielders out there as free agents.  The reason there is uncertainty is that for some free agents, it is difficult to tell what position they might fill for a team in 2018.  As an example, Mark Trumbo is on the list.

• Is Mark Trumbo an outfielder?
• Is Mark Trumbo a DH?
• Is Mark Trumbo a first baseman?

I counted him as an outfielder because I did.  Recognizing again that there are only 30 MLB teams to provide major league contracts to those 32-35 outfielders, that means every team would need to sign an outfielder in the next month.  The fact is that there are teams out there whose outfield positions are already set, and those teams would have no interest in another outfielder.  As one example, consider the Boston Red Sox:

• Starters are Andrew Benintendi, Mookie Bets and Jackie Bradley.  That is not going to change unless one of them is the victim of an alien abduction.
• Bryce Brentz is the probable 4^th outfielder based on performance and the fact that his last name begins with the letter “B”.
• I doubt that Mark Trumbo fits into that roster.  So, I do not see how the matrix of talent still out there is going to match up with team needs/wants.  And that is just one issue…

Another issue is the new way that the luxury tax is computed.  It used to be simple but in the current CBA the two sides must have decided to get fancy when it comes to the CBA.  I am not going to try to summarize all the nuances of the MLB “luxury tax” here but here is a link to Wikipedia on the subject.  This gives you the entire history of the luxury tax if you are interested but if you scroll down to the section labeled “2002 – Present”, you will see what the current tax regimen is.

The bottom line is that there is a significant financial incentive for MLB teams to get under the luxury tax threshold this year in anticipation of the Hot Stove League activities next winter.  Absent some shocking developments, these three players will headline the show of free agents next year:

• Bryce Harper
• Clayton Kershaw – assuming he opts out of his deal as he should from a financial standpoint
• Manny Machado

I listed them alphabetically there because I do not want to make distinctions among those three as to which one is the “best player”; the answer is that all of them are outstanding and all of they are going to get a ton of money next year.  But the teams with hefty payrolls now who have been playing luxury tax need to get under the threshold now or their luxury tax payments – should they go wild and sign one of these mega-deals – would be significant even to teams like the Dodgers or the Yankees.

When I took an economics course in college, we covered the Law of Supply and Demand.  In a situation where supply is well beyond demand, this law says that prices will fall.  That seems to be the case with the 58 free agents who have already signed contracts for next year.  This winter, 3-year deals in the range of $38M – $60M have been struck – – but there are only a handful of them.  Players signing 1-year deals are getting between $2M and $6M generally.  The biggest contract signed so far – in terms of total value to the player – is:

• Carlos Santana  He signed a 3-year deal with the Phillies worth a total of $60M.  He is 31 years old and plays first base.

Moving on … there are times when I read a report and think to myself that this is a good and noble thing these folks are doing but I have no idea how what they just did will change much of anything.  For example, if I read that the Interfaith Council of Beaglebreath NE issued a proclamation stating that peace is better than war, I would agree with that sentiment and pay no more attention to it.  I would file that proclamation under “F” for “Feckless”.

Recently, there was an AP report saying that the leaders of the players unions from MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA have joined with the heads of almost 100 unions to present a Universal Declaration of Players’ Rights.  Cue SNL’s church Lady here:

“Well, isn’t that SPE-cial?”

Among the universal player rights, evidently, are:

1. The right to unionize and collectively bargain.  [Wonder who among the 100 unions participating here threw that one on the table for consideration.]
2. Equal pay for equal work.  [Good luck here.  What is the metric for “equal work” between a hockey defenseman and an NBA point guard?]
3. The right to express opinions freely.  [Unless of course you play for the Patriots and think Bill Belichick made a bad decision on third-and-short in the 2^nd quarter last week.]

All of those are worthy goals.  The first and the third are pretty much in place now and the second one is likely to come about around the same time as the achievement of world peace with the elimination of world hunger.  However, I am certain that everyone felt very good after that presentation.

Finally, here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“After a collision, New York Ranger Jimmy Vesey played most of a game with two teeth embedded in his lower lip. It’s not as gross as it sounds — he’s pretty sure one of the teeth is his.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Keith Jackson died last weekend at the age of 89. If you are a fan of college football and if you are over the age of 25, you must know that he was an icon of the sport as the play-by-play announcer for many of the major college football games of the latter part of the 20^th century. He began his career in 1952; he retired – for the second time – after the 2005 season by calling the Texas/USC Rose Bowl game that gave Vince Young and that Texas team the national championship.

Keith Jackson was also the first play-by-play announcer on Monday Night Football before Frank Gifford took that gig.  Jackson also did some basketball broadcasting and the Olympics; but college football was where he was most recognized.  He coined the phrase “The Big House” for Michigan’s stadium and “The Big Uglies” for offensive line units.  However, the best way to remember Keith Jackson is simply to intone:

“Whoa, Nellie!”

Rest in peace, Keith Jackson.

All sports fans love championships and championship games.  However, it is commonplace for the best time of a season to be just prior to the championship event itself.  In March Madness, the Final Four Weekend is great – – but truth be told, I think the weekend where the Sweet 16 cuts down to the final Four is even better.  The games that weekend are good; the teams playing on that weekend are good; there are 12 games not just a handful; that is a great weekend of sports for fans.

The NFL playoffs are similarly constructed.  I do not mean to denigrate any of the playoffs at all; but for me, the best weekend is the Divisional Round.  There are 4 games to be seen and the 4 games almost always involve the best teams from the previous season.  It is not like Super Bowl weekend where there is only 1 game; this weekend gives fans a 4-game smorgasbord.

Last weekend’s NFL Divisional round was a great weekend to watch football.  Take your rooting interests out of the equation and what you saw were 3 interesting/exciting games and 1 game that was not particularly riveting but was instructive.  Let me go through the menu:

• Eagles 15 Falcons 10:  This game was a win for the Eagles’ defense.  They held a very good Falcons’ offense to 10 points and made the big plays when they needed to be made.  Nick Foles was quietly efficient gaining 8.2 yards per pass attempt and not throwing any INTs.  The Eagles’ offense deserves praise for that efficiency and lack of shooting itself in the foot, but do not get carried away and say that the Eagles’ offense “carried the day”.  I don’t know if the Eagles’ defensive strategy was to nullify Devonta Freeman, but they certainly did just that.  Freeman carried the ball 10 times for 7 yards and his long gain for the day was a 3-yard carry.  The game outcome was in doubt from start to finish.  Falcons’ fans and Falcons’ backers at the betting window may hate the outcome, but the game was a good one.
• Patriots 35 Titans 14:  After the Titans took a 7-0 lead at the end of the first quarter, the Patriots shifted out of neutral and put their offense into overdrive.  By the middle of the 4^th quarter, the score was 35-7 and everything was on cruise control.  The Titans had to have had a defensive game plan, but it cannot have been to “neutralize Danny Amendola”.  Tom Brady and Amendola connected on 11 completions for 112 yards.  When you add in Rob Gronkowski’s 6 catches for 81 yards and a TD, this was a passing clinic put on by the Patriots.  The Pats converted 11 of 17 third-down situations and sacked Titans’ QB, Marcus Mariota, 8 times.  This was not a nail-biter of a game, but it was instructive to watch.
• Jags 45 Steelers 42:  This was the shocker of the weekend.  The Jags scored all of 10 points last week against the Bills and were all- out to do that.  Here they marched up and down the field and made defensive plays to set up or score 14 points and they kicked the Steelers to the curb.  Leonard Fournette is the real deal folks; you ignore him or minimize your concern about him at your own peril.  People talk about the defensive line for the Jags and its moniker of “Sacksonville”; frankly, I am much more impressed with their two cornerbacks, Jalen Ramsey and AJ Bouye.  There was one aspect of this game that I did not like.  There was far too much posturing and posing by both teams after routine plays; I think the officials could have been much more assertive to put a lid on that nonsense.
• Vikes 29 Saints 24:  You almost had to see this game to believe it.  The Vikes dominated the first half and the Saints could hardly get out of their own way.  In the second half, Drew Brees played like the Hall of Fame QB he is sure to be, and the Saints led 24-23 with less than a minute to play.  That set up a final play 61-yard TD pass from Case Keenum to Stefan Diggs that you just have to see for yourself on the Internet if you did not see it live on TV.  It is beyond my expository skills to do it justice.

The early lines for next week’s Championship Round games are already up.  The Vikes are road favorites by 3.5 points over the Eagles with a Total Line of only 38 points.  Meanwhile, the Pats are 9-point favorites at home over the Jags with a Total Line of 46 points.  In the NFC, it is interesting to look at the QBs still in action.

• Case Keenum and Nick Foles are “journeymen” and “backups” and fill-ins” in the parlance of NFL QBs.  Neither is considered anywhere near “elite”.  Nonetheless they are the two left standing in the NFC.
• Drew Brees is a future Hall of Fame QB.  He and his team are home watching on TV.
• Matt Ryan and Cam Newton are previous NFL MVP winners.  They and their teams are out.
• Jared Goff was an overall #1 pick in a recent NFL Draft.  He and his team are looking ahead to next year.

Finally, Keith Jackson’s calls were always associated with college football bowl games that mattered; he did not do any of the games played before Christmas.  In that light, here is a commentary on the myriad college bowl games that exist today from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“There’s a term for people who watch all 40 or so bowls every year. That term is ‘divorced’.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

It is a “Football Friday” and we are up to the Divisional round of the NFL Playoffs – – so what else would you expect here besides my game comments and some picks?  Well, anything else you might expect will just have to wait…

In the Saturday afternoon game, the Falcons travel to play the Eagles and the Falcons are 3-point favorites on the road over the Eagles.  This is the first time ever where an #1 seed has hosted a Divisional round game against any lower-seeded opponent as an underdog.  The basis for this one-time event can be stated in two words:

• Nick Foles

The Eagles were tearing it up with Carson Wentz under center; they were the betting favorites to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.  When Wentz was injured, Foles replaced him in Los Angeles and played very well to preserve a victory in that game.  The next week, Nick Foles played very well against the Giants – – but then he was less-than-wonderful against the Raiders and was “deer-in-the-headlights-bad” against the Cowboys in Week 17.  The oddsmakers seem convinced that “mediocre-at-best” Nick Foles will come out of the tunnel in Philly this weekend.

• Before going overboard in laying the wood to Nick Foles, remember that in his last stint with the Eagles, he played a full season where he threw 27 TD passes and only 2 INTs.  If THAT Nick Foles shows up on Saturday, the Eagles will be more than merely competitive.

If the Eagles are to win this game and advance, they will need to lean heavily on their running game and mix things up with Jay Ajayi, LeGarrette Blount and Corey Clement.  If they do not make the Falcons respect and play the run, I think the Eagles’ fans are in for a long and unpleasant day.  I see this game as a low-scoring affair; in such cases, I tend to want to take the points.  So, I’ll take the Eagles plus 3 points.

In the Saturday night game, the Patriots host the Titans and the Pats are 13.5-point favorites at home.  While the Pats were taking a week off and stories blossomed about a rift at the top of the organization, the Titans ran their way to this game by beating the Chiefs with a furious comeback.  Lots of folks have lauded Marcus Mariota for his game last week – including a pass to himself for a TD after it was batted back to him by a defender.  Frankly, I think the deciding factor in that game was the running by Derrick Henry; he bulldozed his way for 156 yards in that game.  Now, if you look at the season stats as a whole, you will likely think that Henry will do at least that well this week against the Pats whose run defense was 31^st in the NFL in yards per attempt by the opponent.  However, those season stats may be misleading because the Pats’ defense was HORRIBLE in September and significantly better since then.

Looking solely at the defense and the scores allowed by the defense only, that unit for the Pats turned the corner in early October.  Since then, the Pats’ defense has only given up more than 20 points twice; in all the other games, they have yielded 17 points or less.  So, maybe Derrick Henry will gain a lot of yards and that will lead to nothing but a bunch of field goals for the Titans.  If that is the case, that will not auger will for the Titans because it is not difficult to see the Pats scoring 27-33 points in this contest.  I hate double-digit spreads in NFL games, so I will take this game to stay UNDER the Total Line of 48 points.

In the early Sunday afternoon game, the Steelers host the Jags and the Steelers are 7-point favorites at home.  On October 8, 2017 (Week 5), the Jags went to Pittsburgh and dominated the Steelers by a score of 30-9.  In that game, Ben Roethlisberger threw 5 INTs for the only time in his career.  That game was an organized ass-kicking perpetrated by the Jags.  So, how can the Steelers possibly be favored?

• That game was LeVeon Bell’s first game back from his suspension.
• The Steelers are a prideful team; they think they owe one to the Jags.
• Ben Roethlisberger is the Steelers QB; Blake Bortles is the Jags’ QB.

Last week in the Jags’ win over the Bills, Blake Bortles was 12 for 23 for 87 yards and that stat line made him a “winning QB” in a playoff game.  Back in October when the Jags beat the Steelers, Bortles’ stat line was 8 for 14 for 95 yards.  The oddsmaker does not think that kind of output from the Jags’ passing game will get it done this week – – and I agree with that.  Here is the only statistical category where the Steelers are significantly weak for a playoff team:

• In Red Zone defense, the Steelers give up a TD to their opponent 62% of the time.  If my calculations are correct, that is worse than the Red Zone TD percentage allowed by the Browns.  Yowza!

The oddsmaker has this game at Steelers – 7 and a Total Line of 41.  I like the Steelers to win and cover and I like the game to go OVER.

In the final game of the weekend late on Sunday afternoon, the Vikes host the Saints and the Vikes are 5-point favorites.  If you look at the Vikes’ defense and their recent stats, you might wonder how the total Line could possibly be as high as 46 points.  In their last 3 games of the season the Vikes defense allowed a total of 17 points.  It is hard to lose an NFL game when the defense only gives up 5.7 points per game – – notwithstanding the Eagles’ loss to the Cowboys by a score of 6-0.  Look a little deeper at the Vikes’ last three games:

• Bengals scored 7 points in a dispirited effort.  Andy Dalton was the opposing QB.
• Packers scored 0 points.  Brett Hundley was the opposing QB.
• Bears scored 10 points.  Mitchell Trubisky was the opposing QB.

None of those 3 opposing QBs in the previous 3 games has shown any reason to consider them as “Hall of Fame Material”.  Let me be clear here; Drew Brees is indeed going to be in the Hall of Fame and it should well be on the first ballot where he is eligible.  The Vikes have an excellent defense; but in this game, they are going up against a real offense and not a makeshift offense.

No matter who wins this game, I believe that team will represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.  I happen to think that the Saints are the most complete team left in the NFC, so I will take them plus the points here.

In case you are wondering, you can find the Saints at between +190 and +200 on the Money Line at various sportsbooks in Las Vegas.  If I were in Vegas this weekend, I would probably play a 4-team Money Line parlay with the Falcons, Pats, Steelers and Saints.  If my calculations are correct, a $100 wager on that parlay at current Money Line odds would yield $395 in profit.

Finally, for reasons that escape me, the betting lines for the Pro Bowl game are already posted.  There is no way that I will watch the Pro Bowl game so there is certainly no reason to wager on it.  However, the fact that it will happen a week from now and that the betting lines are available leads me to alert you to this comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Richie Incognito has been named to the Pro Bowl. Finally a reason to watch a Pro Bowl: to see if the offensive guard bites anyone.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………