Author: Jack

Mythical Picks – NFL – Weekend Of 1/22/17

 

This is the penultimate edition of Mythical Picks for the 2016/2017 football season.  Last week’s Mythical Picks were boring – neither disastrous nor exciting.  I made 4 selections and the record for the week was 2-2-0.  That brings the season total to 139-93-5.

The “Best Picks” from last week were:

  • Pats – 15.5 against Texans.  Pats won by 18 points.
  • Steelers +1.5 against Chiefs.  Steelers won the game straight up.

The “Worst Picks” from last week were:

  • Seahawks +5 against Falcons.  Seahawks lost by 16 points.
  • Packers/Cowboys UNDER 52.5.  Total score was 65 points.

As is always the case, no one should take anything here seriously enough to use it as the basis for making a decision as to which side to back in a real wager involving real money on a real NFL game this weekend.  Here is how dumb you would have to be to do anything close to that:

 

You would employ Dr. Victor Frankenstein as your personal trainer because of his experience and success in body building.

 

General Comments:

 

The NFL’s rendition of the “Final Four” presents us with 4 worthy teams.  It would be very difficult to argue that one or two of these teams do not belong here; the regular season and the first two weekends of the playoffs have left us with 4 good teams – – and more importantly 4 teams that are hard to root against.  Curmudgeons are supposed to find the chinks in the armor of Final Four groupings but in this case, it is very difficult.

 

Atlanta Falcons:  All they did this year was to score 540 points in the 16 regular season games and then score 36 points against a much better than average Seattle Seahawks’ defense last week.  They are the “new kid on the block” with regard to Super Bowl championships – and even Super Bowl participation.  They have only been to the big game once in franchise history and they were smoked by John Elway and the Denver Broncos in that appearance.  On a personal note, Matt Ryan went to high school about 15 miles as the crow flies from where my parents lived at that particular time.  It will surely not offend me to see the Falcons win this weekend and then go on to win the Super Bowl.

 

Green Bay Packers: After starting the season at 4-6, Aaron Rodgers said that the team could/would “run the table” and get into the playoffs.  Based on his play for the most part, the Packers did just that despite injuries approximating the carnage at the Battle of Verdun.  Then, in two playoff games, the Packers offense beat two worthy opponents and last week’s win over the Cowboys had a “signature play” in NFL history leading to the winning field goal.  Rodgers said the Packers would “run the table”; well, now there are only two balls left on the table.  It will surely not offend me to see the Packers win this weekend and then go on to win the Super Bowl.

 

New England Patriots:  If you like sustained excellence, you have to like the New England Patriots.  In the Belichick/Brady Era, they have been in the AFC Championship Game so many times that I am tempted to call that game the “New England Patriots’ Invitational”.  There is a “Curmudgeon Angle” here; in fact, it is the reason that if you made me pick my favorite team in this Final Four, I would pick the Patriots.  I would love to see the look on the face of Roger Goodell if he has to hand the Lombardi Trophy to Robert Kraft and Tom Brady after the game.  Even more, I want to pay enough attention to the moment to do the best lip-reading that I can to see what Brady might say to the Commish in sotto voce.  It will surely not offend me to see the Patriots win this weekend and then go on to win the Super Bowl.

 

Pittsburgh Steelers:  The Steelers represent franchise stability over a LONG period of time.  They have had 3 head coaches since January 1969 when they hired Chuck Noll to be their coach.  By comparison, the Niners will be hiring their 3rd head coach since January 2014 sometime soon.  The Steelers are a small-market team with a “team philosophy” that is different from most other teams.  And it works…  The Steelers’ offense this year has relied on the “Three Killer Bees” – Big Ben, Antonio Brown and LeVeon Bell.  After last week, they need to admit a 4th “Killer Bee” to the table.  That would be Chris Boswell whose 6 field goals provided all 18 points that were enough to beat the KC Chiefs and thereby led the Steelers to this week’s game.  It will surely not offend me to see the Steelers win this weekend and then go on to the win the Super Bowl.

 

With regard to last week’s games specifically, I really expected the Falcons/Seahawks game to go down to the final possession.  That is not even close to what happened.  The Falcons scored a lot of points on a good Seahawks’ defense and the Falcons’ defense played much better than I thought they could play against the Seahawks offense.  Two weeks ago, Seahawks’ RB, Thomas Rawls ran for 161 yards; last week, the Seahawks’ leading rusher was QB, Russell Wilson with 49 yards.

The Pats/Texans game last week was not exciting – to say the least.  The Pats played poorly; at the half, it was a 4-point game.  Nonetheless, I never had a shred of doubt that the Pats would come out as the winner of the game; I was not sanguine about them covering a 15.5-point spread, but I never thought they might lose the game.  When a team intercepts Tom Brady 2 times in a game, they must find a way to win.  Remember, he only threw 2 INTs in 12 regular season games in 2016.  The Texans got 2 INTs but Brock Osweiler managed to throw 3 INTs of his own to negate that defensive accomplishment.

On the other hand, the Packers/Cowboys game was one for the ages.  The Packers dominated early; the Cowboys made an excellent comeback; there were great plays in the final minutes involving a multitude of field goals from 50+ yards and there was “the third-and-20- pass-completion” with 3 seconds left to set up the winning field goal.  If that game did not get your blood pumping, stop wasting time watching NFL football games.

The Steelers/Chiefs game was also a great game to watch for a completely different reason than the Packers/Cowboys game.  This was a defensive game that was always one play away from changing the fortune in the game.  The Steelers won 18-16 because of 6 field goals.  You have heard of the “Pick Six”: well, the Steelers introduced us all to the “Kick Six”.

There are two things that I am looking forward to watching in this week’s Conference Championship Games.  I do not mean to say that this is all that I want to see but I think these will be interesting “sub-plots” within the games:

  1. The Packers had more than a little trouble covering Dez Bryant last week; he had 9 receptions for 132 yards and 2 TDs.  This week, they need to figure out how to cover Julio Jones.  Meaning not a shred of disrespect for Dez Bryant, Julio Jones is a better WR and I have no idea how the Packers are going to cope with that.
  2. Antonio Brown versus Malcom Butler – their pizza commercial notwithstanding – will be an interesting match-up.  It might just be the fulcrum of the game because if the Pats can keep Brown in check using only one defender, they may be able to commit more of the defense to stopping LeVeon Bell.

 

The Games:

 

(Sunday 3:05 PM EST) Green Bay at Atlanta – 5.5 (60):  Yes, I know; the Total Line here looks like one for a Big 12 game and not an NFL game.  However, the Falcons averaged almost 34 points a game in the regular season and put 36 on the board last week against the Seahawks.  Meanwhile, the Packers have been on an 8-game tear and in those 8 games have scored 30 or more in each of their last 6 outings.  The Total Line opened at 58 and was up over 60 in about 2 hours last weekend.  I do not recall seeing an NFL Total Line at this level before.  The spread on this game has gyrated too.  It opened at 4.5 points and shot up to 5.5 points very quickly.  Then it dropped to 4 points in the early part of the week until more falcons’ money showed up and pushed it back up to 5.5 points just about everywhere this morning.

These teams met earlier this year in this same Georgia Dome and the Falcons won by 33-32.  That was back in late October – 3 weeks before Aaron Rodgers suggested that the packers would “run the table”.  I do not think either defense is going to throttle the opposing offense and I do think that this game can easily come down to the final possession in the final minute of the game.  Because there are only 3 games left to pick in this season, I will make two selections for this game:

I like the Packers plus the points.

I like the game to go OVER.

I am tempted by the Packers on the Money Line at +190 but will resist that temptation.

 

(Sunday 6:40 PM EST) Pittsburgh at New England – 6 (50):  This spread opened at 4.5 points but it jumped to 5.5 point in no time flat.  Since then, it has hovered between 5.5 and 6 points and the clear majority of the sportsbooks have the spread at 6 points this morning.  As much as I would love to see Roger Goodell having to hand the Lombardi Trophy to Tom Brady (see above) in Houston two weeks from now, I think the Steelers have a very good chance to win this game outright.  I think LeVeon Bell will gain his yards and the Steelers can control the tempo that way.  I’ll take the Steelers plus the points here.

Finally, here is a comment from Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald related to the Packers/Vikings game on Christmas Eve 2016:

“The Minnesota Vikings team plane skidded off the runway in Green Bay. There is probably nothing more frightening than spotting rescue workers in cheeseheads.”

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

 

 

Baseball Hall Of Fame – Class Of 2017

The votes have been tallied and we have three new players about to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer.  They are:

  1. Jeff Bagwell
  2. Tim Raines
  3. Ivan Rodriguez

If you go by the numbers, these guys all belong in the Hall of Fame and the fact that Raines was elected in his 10th – and final – year of eligibility on the baseball writers’ ballot makes me wonder what took them so long.  There have been rumors/suspicions/suggestions that some of Bagwell’s stats were “chemically enhanced” and more than a few folks have offered up those circumstances as the basis for his delayed entry.  Please note that there has never been any solid evidence in Bagwell’s case – but rumors were sufficient in previous years.  Likewise, there had been similar hints/winks of the eye/whatevers regarding Pudge Rodriguez’ stats and “the juice”.  Once again, there was never any proof – – and yet, Rodriguez was inducted in his first year of eligibility.

The election process for the Hall of Fame is imperfect to be sure but I do not think the idea of membership in the Hall of Fame is sufficiently important to spend the time and energy to cure the imperfections.  The current process works well enough so leave it alone.

Having said that let me juxtapose two players’ career stats for you and then pose a fundamental question:

 

Player A:  He played 17 years in MLB.  His career batting average was .260; his career OBP was .299 and his career slugging average was.367.  He averaged 22 home runs and 64 RBIs per season.  He was on the All-Star Team 7 times.

Player B:  He played 17 years in MLB.  His career batting average was .290; his career OBP was .356 and his career slugging average was .500.  He averaged 27 home runs and 107 RBIs per season.  He was on the All-Star Team 5 times and he was the MVP 1 time.

 

As you have probably guessed by now, Player A is in the Hall of Fame and Player B is not.  In fact, Player B only got about 15% of the votes this time around meaning he is nowhere near the 75% level needed for election to the Hall of Fame.  Making the comparison even more interesting is the fact that Player A and Player B played the same position for the vast majority of their 17-year careers.

Player A is Bill Mazeroski; Player B is Jeff Kent.  If you “go by the numbers”, I do not understand how Mazeroski can be in the Hall of Fame and Kent be at 15% in the voting.  Does that make a lot of sense to you?

It may be difficult to untangle the jejune thought processes of the Baseball Hall of Fame voters but I doubt that it will be difficult to understand the motivation behind the announcement I want to discuss now.  FIFA announced about a week ago that it was going to expand the World Cup Tournament from 32 teams to 48 teams.  The underlying motivation is:

  • More Money

Instead of breaking a 32-team field into 8 groups of 4 teams and advancing the top 2 teams from each group to a 16-team knockout round, here is the proposed new format:

  1. There will be 16 groups of 3 teams; they will play one another and the top 2 teams in each group will move on.
  2. That will put 32 teams into a knockout round and the survivor of that knockout round will be the World Cup champion.

The idea is to implement this new format for the 2026 tournament and to leave the current format in place for 2018 and 2022.  You may wonder why – if I am correct and added revenue is the motivation behind all of this – why FIFA would postpone implementation.  I cannot answer that definitively because I am not part of the FIFA “inner circle” but perhaps it has to do with the activities underway to provide “quarters and rations” for 32 teams at the tournaments in 2018 and 2022 and expansion of the field would be an organizational problem for the host countries that have things underway already.

Bob Molinaro had this comment regarding the expansion of the World Cup field in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Futbol folly: In announcing the generally unpopular decision to increase the field at the 2026 World Cup from 32 to 48 teams, a FIFA official said expansion would give 16 more countries a ‘chance to dream.’ It also invites a lot more bad games. FIFA? It’s only dreaming of the additional $1 billion the inflated tournament will pump into its coffers.”

He is absolutely right about the additional “bad games”.  In order to get into the World Cup Tournament, teams play in qualifying rounds in their geographical sections of the world.  The only team that gets a “BYE” into the tournament is the host country.  That means in the current system, 31 of the 32 entries are there because they finished high enough in their geographic region to get an invitation; those 31 teams earned their way in.

Presumably, the same rules will apply to the 48-team field which can only mean that there will be 16 teams added to the field that would not have been deemed “good enough” to be in the Tournament with only 32 entries.  In competitive terms, that is not going to help; there are already more than a few non-competitive games in a 32-team field; imagine what will happen when a team like Germany or Spain or Brazil or Argentina gets to play “Team Number 48”.

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about another sporting decision that was made for “financially-driven reasons”:

“The San Diego Chargers are leaving for Los Angeles. Seldom has the nickname ‘Bolts’ been more fitting.”

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

 

 

News Or Voyeruism?

Over the past couple of weeks, Aaron Rodgers has been very properly in the news spotlight for doing excellently what professional quarterbacks are paid to do.  In a recent rant, I called his performance last Sunday against the Cowboys “other-worldly”; he has been playing at an extraordinary level for more than a month now.  When that happens, he becomes a focal point for the media.

By the way, if Aaron Rodgers were to stink out the joint this weekend against the Falcons – say something like complete 35% of his passes and throw 5 INTs – that too would put him in the media spotlight simply because it is out of the norm for a player of his accomplishments.  My point here is that he belongs in the news for what he does that is newsworthy and what Aaron Rodgers does that is newsworthy is to play quarterback in the NFL.

For reasons that I do not understand, some folks have decided that the fact that Aaron Rodgers and his family are estranged is something the public needs to know.  The NY Times no less had a reporter contact Rodgers’ father and brother regarding the family issue(s).  Frankly, there is no real “investigative” information here; it is merely an updating on the status quo.

So, that leads me to wonder why this is worthy of newsprint and ink.  I wonder because this situation – reportedly having been going on for at least a year and a half and possibly longer – has not affected materially the one thing that causes you and I to pay attention to Aaron Rodgers in the first place.  From reading the various reports of this family rift, I have learned that Aaron Rodgers’ father is a chiropractor; I had not known that before; I do not feel super-enlightened now that I do know that.  If you did not know that fact prior to reading the previous sentence, that demonstrates that you did not care enough about the Rodgers’ family dynamic to know anything about any of the players other than the one who is a star quarterback.

The only reason anyone gives a fig about this matter is because Aaron Rodgers is famous for what he does.  If he were fourth on the depth chart as a quarterback playing in some semi-pro football league in Beaglebreath, SD, no one would care if he and his family were estranged or as tight as a drum.  Call that NY Times report – and all of the other reporting on this matter – what it really is:

 

Voyeurism.

 

Once you realize/admit that is what all of this is about, ask yourself as a consumer of the “news” if achieving the status of “Voyeur” is a positive thing in your life…

ESPN.com had a recent report about an upcoming TV show that falls into the “reality TV” category and therefore might be classified as “news” at some point.  The program will air on CNBC – a network devoted to financial matters most of the time – and it has a working title of Back in the Game.  Here is how it is going to work:

  • The “host” will be Alex Rodriguez.  Yes, that Alex Rodriguez…
  • A-Rod will find retired athletes who are in serious financial trouble and he will then set them up with “money-savvy mentors who can help them get back on their feet.”

Even though I have not seen the pilot episode for this program – and there are no circumstances that might convince me this should be on my power rotation of things to watch regularly – this is another example of the media pandering to public voyeurism.  I can be empathetic toward a former athlete who is now down on his luck but do I need to know what happened to him to get him into the situation and/or what the “money-savvy mentors” recommend he do with the rest of his life to change that situation?  To call a program of this type “obscene” is a stretch, but to call it “cringe-worthy” seems to be on the mark.

A recent comment by Brad Rock in his column Rock On in the Deseret News demonstrates how the kind of programming suggested by Back in the Game can get smarmy:

“A financial advisor has been accused of bilking millions from former NFL player Ricky Williams and ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman.

“That’s sad, but does anyone believe either of these guys couldn’t lose millions all by himself?”

Let me add one last charge to the indictment of media pandering to public voyeurism.  Last week, CBSSports.com reported that Johnny Manziel will be at this year’s Super Bowl festivities for the purpose of selling his autograph (for $99 a pop) and for allowing fans to take a selfie with him (for $50 a pop).  Those monumental revelations of course allowed for a quick retrospective of Manziel’s career arc that went from “Heisman Johnny Football“ to “Who Cares Johnny Manziel” in the matter of a couple of years.  Oh, and the report also contains  the obligatory picture of Manziel looking “half-in-the-bag” posed with a young woman somewhere.

Let me urge you to ignore these sorts of reports – and particularly that impending program on CNBC.  Following sports allows you to observe what athletes and coaches do in their chosen fields but does not force you to become a Peeping Tom into their personal lives to appreciate what they do.  Maybe one needs a voyeuristic streak to devote oneself to keeping up with the Kardashians; not so for sports fans.

Finally, to end on a lighter note today, here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha-World-Herald that will allow you to flash back in your memory to Rosie Ruiz.  I’ll bet you have not done that too often recently:

“A dense fog delayed the start of the Nebraska Marathon because of almost zero visibility. This was a dream come true for anyone who’s ever wanted to run the first three yards of a marathon and then cut to the 25-mile mark.”

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

 

 

NFL Coach Of The Year Candidates

The NFL Coach of the Year has not been announced yet and all of the coaches on “division-winning teams” will get some consideration.  Among the coaches in that category, Dan Quinn (Atlanta) and Jason Garrett (Dallas) ought to get plenty of votes.  By the same token, Bill Belichick (New England), Mike McCarthy (Green Bay) and Pete Carroll (Seattle) should get less attention in this category since many folks expected them and their teams to win their division all the way back in August.  I would like to throw the names of two “non-division-winning coaches” into the pot here:

  1. Jack Del Rio (Oakland):  The Raiders last made the playoffs at the end of the 2002 season; that was also the last time they had a record better than .500 for a single season.  The Raiders finished this year at 12-4 and did so with their starting QB on the shelf at the end of the season and with their second string QB out after playing about 30 minutes of football in relief.
  2. Adam Gase (Miami):  The Dolphins made the playoffs for the first time since 2008 with a 10-6 record.  Like the Raiders, they had to finish the season with their starting QB on the sidelines in street clothes.

I do not expect either of these coaches to win the Coach of the Year award but they do deserve a mention in that category…

I do not want to hear any griping about Jason Garrett when it comes to Coach of the Year voting; he could well be the winner and it would not be an outrageous choice.  The fact that the Cowboys spiked the ball to preserve a timeout they never used and which gave Aaron Rodgers more time to mount a comeback in last weekend’s playoff game was a coaching decision that came back to bite him in the butt.  Had the Cowboys made a first down on that series and made the subsequent field goal, he would be considered a red-headed genius.

Jason Garrett did not lose that playoff game to the Packers any more than any single Cowboys player lost that game.  The Packers won the game because of other-worldly play by Aaron Rodgers; there is no blame to hand out to anyone in the Cowboys’ locker room for that.

The mantra performed by most of the media that covers the NFL is that you build powerhouse teams through the draft.  Ommmmm …  Through the draft ….  Ommmmm …

Well, it is just a tad more complicated than that and the perfect example to demonstrate that there is more to it than merely drafting high in the draft order is provided by the Jacksonville Jaguars.  Let me see; every year since 2012, the Jags have had a draft pick in the Top 5.  By this point, you might expect them to be on the verge of breaking out…

  • In 2012, Justin Blackmon was their Top 5 pick.  If I were to say that pick was “useless” or “disastrous” I would be paying it a compliment.
  • In 2013, Luke Joeckel was their top 5 pick.  He started at OT and was then moved inside to OG; reports say the Jags are looking to move him on to someone else but they did not pick up his option year to assure they could do that.  This is better than the pick in 2012 – but just about anything would be.
  • In 2014, Blake Bortles was their Top 5 pick.  Let me be kind and say the jury is still out on him.  If I were not so kind, I would call this pick a “wasted opportunity”…
  • In 2015, Dante Fowler was their Top 5 pick.  He missed his entire rookie season with a knee injury but looked like a competent DE in this his first year in the NFL.
  • In 2016, Jalen Ramsey was their Top 5 pick.  He played extremely well in his rookie season and has been mentioned as a candidate for defensive rookie of the year.

Given that array of “Top 5 talent” one might be surprised to see that the Jags will – once again – draft 4th in the April NFL Draft.  Indeed, having high draft picks can be a solid way to build a team from the bottom up – but it is not the draft position that is most important.  It is the selection made with those “high picks” that turns the “potential asset” into a “real asset”.  If the Jags get a bona fide starting player in this year’s draft, that will give them about a .500 batting average with Top 5 picks since 2012.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is just not good enough…

There was a coaching move in college football that caught my eye because it seemed like the “Great Leap Backwards” when I heard it.  Rhett Lashlee was the offensive coordinator at Auburn; he is a young coach and just about all of his coaching experience has been with Gus Malzahn’s staff at various locales.  In the last couple of weeks, Lashlee left Auburn to take the offensive coordinator position at UConn.  As a follower of college football and as someone with exactly no ties to or animus toward either UConn or Auburn, this move makes me shake my head.  Normally, I would expect a coach at UConn to take a job at Auburn if it were offered and not the reverse.

Then again; maybe the fact that Lashlee and the UConn offense will not need to confront the Alabama defense and/or the LSU defense every season makes his decision all the more sensible…

ESPN will break up Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic from ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike in the Morning program and give Greenberg a TV hosting slot.  I am not a huge consumer of ESPN Radio but it does seem to me that Mike and Mike is the flagship in the fleet so I do wonder why the suits are breaking that up – – unless there is some behind the scenes friction that is not apparent at all on the air.

Finally, here is an observation from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Peyton Manning was at the Music City Bowl. And you thought the guy shouting ‘Omaha! Omaha!’ throughout the game was rooting for Nebraska?”

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

 

 

 

Two Items From Last Week

In last week’s Mythical Picks, I deferred comment on two NFL news items from last week until today.  The first is the decision by the LA Rams to hire Sean McVay as their new head coach even though he has not quite yet been able to celebrate his 31st birthday.  Some have disparaged that decision based on his age saying he is too young to lead a locker room “full of men”.  While these naysayers may indeed have their ageist comments vindicated in the future, what they are saying is equivalent to someone else saying that Joe Flabeetz is too old and too frail to lead a locker room full of men because good ol’ Joe is 69 years old.  There is one job that comes to mind where McVay’s age is absolutely disqualifying; that job would be President of the United States.  Article II of the US Constitution says very specifically:

“…neither shall any person be eligible to that Office [the Presidency] who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years …”

I understand that the NFL would have all of us believe that being a head coach of an NFL team is a monumental undertaking, but I submit that it is merely a very high-paying job with a lot less job security than lots of other high paying jobs.  If Sean McVay “fails” in LA, it will probably have much more to do with the players he can put on the field than it will with the number of crop cycles he has experienced in his lifetime.

For the record, I think the idea of hiring a young first-time coach is preferable to hiring a “retread”.  Yes, I know all about Bill Belichick as a “retread”.  I also know about lots of other “retreads” hired into the NFL who were not significantly more successful in their second gig as they were in their first gig.

I do not want to leave the impression that I think the Rams or McVay are destined for greatness because of this “bold move” by the Rams.  Perhaps they are; perhaps they are not.  There have been great coaches who have been hired at an early age:

  • John Madden
  • Shula the Elder – aka Don
  • Mike Tomlin.

There have also been stinkbombs hired at an early age:

  • Lane Kiffin
  • Josh McDaniel
  • Raheem Morris
  • Shula the Younger – aka David.

The other topic from last week is the relocation of the San Diego Super Chargers to LA to be co-tenants with the Rams in the new stadium complex being built by Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke.  I am not surprised by the move; the Chargers and the movers and shakers in San Diego have been at odds for at least 10 years over the Chargers “need” for a new stadium.  When a referendum posited as a last and final chance went down to a landslide defeat in November 2016, the die was cast.  Having said all of that, I do not think that the Chargers’ owners wanted to move the franchise to begin with and I doubt that the Chargers would want to be the junior tenants in the LA development project headed up by the Rams.  And that is just the beginning of what I suspect might be a less-than-smart set of decisions by the NFL owners.

Los Angeles had two NFL teams in the past and both of them moved out of town.  Yes, there were “stadium issues” that were involved in the departures then but there were also issues of less-than-robust support for those teams.  For about the last 20 years, the NFL football fans in LA may not have had a team, but here is what they did have:

  • On Sundays, they got to watch on TV the best games of the day from around the league.  LA was not an exclusive market for a team; there was no “home team” that fans saw every week.  Moreover, they got to see three games on Sundays.
  • Now, they will get to see the Rams and the Chargers on Sunday – every Sunday.  The only way they will get to see a Cowboys/Packers game as the “late afternoon” game on Sunday will be if one of the two local teams happens to play on Thursday, Sunday night or Monday.

I do not recall a time in the last 20 years or so when there was a huge outcry from the Joe Sixpacks of LA – or whatever the beautiful-people equivalent of Joe Sixpack may be – begging for a replacement franchise from the NFL.  Now they will have 2 teams and if the support for the Rams in their first year in LA is even a marginal indicator, there are loads of fans in LA who found better things to do with their weekends than going to see the Rams play in the flesh.  Stan Kroenke clearly wanted to move his team to LA and fans seemingly shrugged their shoulders.  Dean Spanos clearly did not want to be part of this enterprise and so what might he expect from those fans?

There is a very interesting twist to the Chargers’ decision to move to LA.  For the next two years, the Chargers will play in a stadium in Carson CA – where the Chargers and Raiders had hoped to build their own joint stadium a year ago – and that stadium was built as a soccer pitch for the LA Galaxy.  It originally had 27,000 seats and has been expanded to 30,000.  The story is that it can take another expansion and get to 40,000 and that is the plan for the Chargers.  For the next two years, the Chargers will play in what is by far the smallest stadium in the NFL.  That implies two things to me:

  1. There is danger ahead for the Chargers.  What happens to the Chargers’ marketing strategy in their new home town if they cannot sell out their stadium-on-training-wheels?
  2. The decision by the Chargers and the acquiescence of the NFL to their residence in a small venue opens a door for the Oakland Raiders to use in stadium negotiations.

Let me explain the second point there.  The Raiders have – reportedly – a financing deal in place for a new stadium in Las Vegas.  The flies in that ointment are that Sheldon Adelson has $650M of his money in the deal and negotiations between Mark Davis and the “Adelson family” have not been progressing well.  To me, it seems to come down to how big a share of team ownership does Adelson want for his stake in the venture.  Maybe I’m wrong…  In any event, the latest reporting by the Las Vegas Review-Journal is that the stadium financing is solid even if Adelson pulls his money out of the deal.  Here is a link to that report:

Sheldon Adelson is indeed “big money” and that means he wields plenty of power.  However, this report says that Goldman Sachs indicates that the deal is solid and Goldman Sachs represents even bigger money than Sheldon Adelson.  If correct, this report is an important element in the Raiders’ attempt to get out of Oakland.

The other fly in the ointment is that the Raiders play in a miserable venue that has needed renovation for more than a decade but they would be forced to stay there for another couple of years until the new Las Vegas playpen could be constructed.  For those 2 years, you can expect that they will not draw well in their stadium/porta-potty.  But the approval of the Chargers to play in a 40,000-seat stadium might allow the Raiders to move to Las Vegas immediately if they can find a way to play on the same field that UNLV uses for its home football games.

UNLV plays in Sam Boyd Stadium which has a seating capacity of 36,800 and can expand to 40,000 seats “when called for”.  That sounds like an acceptable temporary home for an NFL team to me if indeed the Chargers’ temporary quarters are acceptable – unless of course some old-time NFL owners want to make Mark Davis squirm and suffer because he is the spawn of their old nemesis, Al Davis.

All of this remains in flux.  I am sure we will revisit all of this.  The only sure losers in all of this are the NFL fans in LA whose TV options will not be significantly constrained as compared to a few years ago.

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“To the list of life’s unending mysteries, add this: Why do newspapers, including my own, continually report as news whatever Mel Kiper Jr. guesses about the upcoming NFL Draft?”

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

 

 

Mythical Picks – NFL – Weekend of 1/15/17

 

Last week was the final week for NCAA Mythical Picking and I went out on a low note.  I took Alabama – 6.5 points against Clemson and Clemson won the game outright.  The week’s record was 0-1; the final record for Mythical Picks for NCAA games this year was 110-95-0.  That makes two seasons in a row where NCAA Mythical Picks came out over .500 for the year and this year the picks would have been mythically profitable given a wager of the same mount on all 205 games.  Trust me; that does not happen very often…

Last week’s NFL Mythical Picks were mythically profitable.  There were 4 games and I made 5 picks in those games.  The record was 3-2-0; that makes the season record for NFL Mythical Picks 137-91-5.

The “Good Picks” from last week were:

  • Texans – 3.5 against Raiders.  Texans won by 13 points.
  • Seahawks/Lions UNDER 44.  Total score was 32 points.
  • Steelers – 10 against Dolphins.  Steelers won by 18 points.

The “Bad Picks” from last week were:

  • Steelers/Dolphins OVER 45.5.  Total score was only 42 points.
  • Giants +4.5 against Packers.  Giants lost by 25 points.

By now, any regular reader here knows that he/she would have to be might stupid to use any information here as the basis for making a real wager on a real NFL game involving real money this weekend.  How stupid?  Well …

 

He/She would probably think that jumping to a conclusion meant jumping off a cliff.

 

General Comments:

 

One comment about the Alabama/Clemson game in the CFP Final Game…  In the first half, I said to myself that Deshaun Watson was playing poorly enough to convince the Cleveland Browns not to take him first in the NFL Draft in April and I thought that was a good career move on his part.  By the end of the game, I said to myself, I hope the kid likes living on Lake Erie…

In last week’s NFL playoff games, each of the 4 home teams was favored and each of them won and covered handily; the chalk players did very well in the Wild Card round.  Jadeveon Clowney played a dominating game on defense for the Texans in their win over the Raiders.  Clowney’s stats are pedestrian, but if you watched the game you saw that he was a disruptive force for the whole game.  Candidly, the most impressive part of the Texans’ game for the weekend was that Brock Osweiler played totally error-free.  I wonder if the coaching staff went to him after the game and asked him where that kind of quarterbacking had been all year long?  Or maybe the Houston coaches realized that they were playing the Raiders’ defense out there and not a reincarnation of the Steel Curtain…

With a rookie, third-string QB under center, the Raiders went into the offensive analog to the fetal position for just about the entire game.  As they were playing from behind, the Raiders did throw the ball; Connor cook put it in the air 45 times – but rarely did the ball go more than 5 yards downfield until the very end when the game was no longer in doubt.  The Raiders averaged only 2.9 yards per pass attempt in the game; high school teams do better than that.  Making the Raiders job much more difficult than it had to be – and it was going to be very difficult in the best of circumstances – the team was undisciplined and the penalties showed that.

The Raiders were 12-4 this year and finished a strong second in the AFC West.  They may have difficulty matching that record next year because they will draw a more difficult schedule.  Raider fans have to realize that the team pulled a couple of wins out of their ear this year and if a ball bounces the wrong way in any of those “miracle games” the team could have been 10-6.  Here is the off-season mnemonic for Raider fans – – D&D.  The team needs to upgrade significantly:

  1. Defense – and –
  2. Discipline

The Seahawks beat the Lions 26-6; the winner was never really in doubt; only the margin of victory was in doubt.  I do want to pose a rhetorical question here:

 

Did the Seahawks win this game because they have gotten their act together and are commencing a “playoff run” – – or – – did the Seahawks win this game because the Lions are only marginally a playoff team?

 

The Lions have now lost 4 games in a row; all 4 game were against teams in the playoffs and only 1 of the 4 losses was by single-digits.  I realize that Matthew Stafford injured a finger on his throwing hand and has been battling that injury for a month but still …  With an injured QB, you would think that the Lions would have found ways to run the football but in fact their leading runner gained a total of 34 yards last week on 11 carries.

During the regular season, the Lions won 9 games and had to stage a 4th quarter comeback to achieve 8 of those 9 wins.  Congratulations to them for those performances.  At the same time, it is not all that surprising to see that a team who had to do that saw limited success playing against a team good enough to be in the playoffs – a team that has now won 11 games for the season.  Fourth quarter comebacks over teams like the Bears and the Jags are one thing; falling behind and catching up with the Seahawks is another.

Meanwhile, Seahawks’ RB, Thomas Rawls ran 27 times for 161 and a TD in the game.  Added to that dominating performance was the play of WR, Paul Richardson, who made a couple of circus catches in the game.  Where has he been hiding all season long?

The Steelers were the most impressive team last week; they obliterated the Dolphins 30-12 and dominated the game from the opening kickoff.  In addition to getting 167 yards and 2 TDs from LeVeon Bell, the Steelers gobbled up 3 Dolphins’ turnovers to maintain full control of the situation.  That win was the Steelers’ 8th victory in a row; it avenged an earlier loss to the Dolphins in Miami where Jay Ajayi ran for 200+ yards; last week Ajayi was held to 33 yards on 16 carries.  LeVeon Bell’s 167-yard performance was the 6th time in the last 7 games that he went north of the 100-yard mark in a game; by the way, in that “other game”, he gained 93 yards so it is not exactly that someone “held him down”.

This week, the Steelers go to Kansas City to take on a Chiefs’ defense that ranked 26th in the NFL in rushing defense.  I suspect that the Steelers’ game-plan for this week involves a large helping of LeVeon Bell carrying the ball…

And since I was just talking about a player’s top-shelf performance last weekend, that is a perfect lead-in to a mention of Aaron Rodgers who threw another on of those sorts of things out there for everyone to see against the Giants.  For the first 25 minutes of the game, Rodgers and the Packers did nothing on offense; at the end of the first quarter, the Packers had a total of 7 yards passing; with 3 minutes to play in the second quarter, the Packers had a total of 38 yards passing.  And then, Rodgers & Co. got things rolling…

From that point on – in 32 minutes of football – Rodgers generated 328 yards passing and threw 4 TDs; the Packers had more than 400 yards total offense and did that against a Giants’ defense that had carried the team to the playoffs.  The Giants’ defense had only given up a total of 47 points in the final 4 games of the regular season.

That game was the Packers’ 7th win in a row but it may have been very costly because Jordy Nelson suffered “two cracked ribs” in the game.  His availability – or his absence – will be an important factor in the game this week in Dallas.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Giants’ receivers had a horrible showing last week dropping passes that hit them in both hands – two of them in the end zone – I do not draw a bright line between that performance and the trip that the WRs took to Miami Beach on the Monday before the game to party on a boat.  Odell Beckham, Jr. did not forget how to catch a football on that boat; what happened is that he took that trip on his day off and then he had a terrible game 6 days later.

I would caution you not to fall into the trap of post hoc, propter hoc – which is Latin for “after that, because of that”.  A brief example of why this is not necessarily solid grounds for reasoning:

 

Imagine that I go out into the street in front of my house and stomp my feet, clap my hands and sing The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy from Company C.  More than likely, one of my neighbors would come out and ask me what I am doing.

My reply would be that I was scaring off all of the elephants.

My neighbor would likely then point out that there are no elephants roaming the streets of Northern Virginia.

To which my response would be:  “See, it works!”

 

I am perfectly willing to accept that Odell Beckham, Jr. displays “less than mature behavior” on more than a few occasions and that it would be to his benefit and the Giant’s benefit if he would just “grow up”.  But the Giants did not lose that football game because he and his buds took a day off in South Florida instead of watching film in East Rutherford NJ.  Pile on Beckham all you want for being “childish” but then tell me how that caused Sterling Shepard to drop a TD pass or how it turned Victor Cruz into the invisible man last week.

Rather than take the time here to talk about the Chargers’ impending move to LA and/or the Rams’ hiring of the youngest head coach in NFL history, I will defer that until next week and get down to the meat of the weekend.

 

The Games:

 

All four of the games this weekend are rematches from the regular season.  So, that should make for easy picks, no?  Would that it were so simple…

 

(Sat Late Afternoon) Seattle at Atlanta – 5 (51.5):  The spread opened the week at 3.5 points and has been at this level for much of the week.  The Total Line opened at 49.5 and you can find it as high as 52 at one sportsbook this morning.  This game is offense versus defense.  The Falcons scored 540 points in 16 games this season; that was the highest in the NFL by a wide margin; the second highest scoring team (Saints) scored 469 points.  In terms of scoring defense, the Seahawks ranked 3rd in the NFL allowing only 292 points in 16 games.  When these teams met in October, the Falcons scoring was below their game average for the season and the Seahawks defense gave up more points in that game than they did on average.  The previous meeting was in Seattle so the home field has flipped for this game.  I will not be surprised to see the Falcons score here – so long as the Falcons’ defense can get off the field.  The falcons’ defense ranks 25th in the NFL in yards per game and they are tied with the Niners’ defense (ugh!) for 29th in the NFL in third-down defense; the Falcons have allowed opponents to convert 41.8% of third down tries.  I smell a large dose of Thomas Rawls running the ball in this game.  I’ll take the Seahawks plus the points even on the road.  By the way, here are 2 facts for the game you can keep in mind as you are watching:

  1. Matt Ryan has only won 1 playoff game in his career; that win came against the Seahawks.
  2. Only Dan Marino and Bret Favre have beaten the Seahawks more than once in a playoff game.

 

(Sat Evening) Houston at New England – 15.5 (44.5):  I hate double-digit spreads in NFL games.  The spread here opened at 14.5 points and went up to 16.5 points early in the week; then it settled back to this level but you can find it as high as 16 points at 2 sportsbooks this morning.  The Total Line opened at 45.5 and has been at this level most of the week.  In case you are wondering, you can get the Texans at +1,000 on the money line but the books are seriously discouraging bets on the Pats on the money line.  If you want to bet the Pats on the money line, you may be looking at a line that is as high as minus-2,600.  Forget stats here; use the “eyeball test” from games you have watched this season.  Unless someone laces the Gatorade on the Pats’ sideline with Quaaludes, the Pats are going to win this game.  I think they will win big so for purely mythical purposes, I will take the Pats and lay the points.  After all, the Pats beat the Texans 27-0 earlier this year with Jacoby Brissett at QB.  Meaning not the slightest bit of disregard for Jacoby Brissett, Tom Brady will be playing this Saturday evening…

 

(Sun Early Afternoon) Pittsburgh at KC – 1.5 (43.5):  The spread here opened with the Steelers as a 1-point favorite and then flipped as the week went on.  The Total Line opened at 46.5 points; dropped quickly to 44.5 points and has been edging down during the week.  Given the way the Steelers manhandled the Chiefs earlier this year – a 43-14 shellacking in Pittsburgh in early October – bettors must be entranced by Andy Reid’s 16-2 record after a BYE Week.  At one point in that October game the Steelers led 36-0; Antonio Brown and LeVeon Bell (first game back from his suspension) had really big days.  I think this game comes down to two words:

Ben … Roethlisberger

He suffered a foot injury very late in the game against the Dolphins last week.  He will play this week and when QBs play with leg injuries, people worry about “limited mobility”.  Roethlisberger plays every game with “limited mobility”; that will not be a problem for him.  However, if he cannot push off his leg/foot to deliver the ball, that could be a significant problem against a ball-hawking Chiefs’ defense.  Two other points about Roethlisberger:

  1. He (and his teammates) are significantly better playing at home as opposed to playing on the road.
  2. He has not been nearly as accurate in his passing as one would normally expect from him as of late.  In December, he threw 6 TDs and 6 INTs; that is far worse than his normal ratio.

I think this game will be close but I do think the Steelers are the better team.  I’ll take the Steelers plus the points here.

 

(Sun Late Afternoon) Green Bay at Dallas – 4.5 (52.5):  The spread opened at 4 points but has been steady at 4.5 points for most of the week.  Stats and the “eyeball test” both say that the Cowboys ought to be able to run the ball and control the clock against the Packers’ run defense.  Stats and the “eyeball test” both say that Aaron Rodgers should have plenty of time to pick out his receivers as he carves up a decent-but-hardly-great Cowboys pass defense.  I think the Cowboys’ will indeed control the clock to the point where the number of possessions will be lower than normal in this game – absent turnovers.  That allows for fewer opportunities to score and so I will take this game to stay UNDER.

 

Finally, let me close this out with a definition from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Automobile:  An individual land transport vehicle used mainly to provoke the extension of the human middle finger.”

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

 

 

Throwback Thursday?

On Facebook, they have something called Throwback Thursdays where people post old time pictures of themselves or of the town they grew up in back in the 50s or pics of their parents.  Whatever.  It does not hurt anyone nor does it rip at the fabric of Western Civilization.  So, today I want to do Curmudgeon Central’s rendition of Throwback Thursday.  I have a bunch of stuff and links stored on my clipboard and I’ll go back to them and use them as today’s fodder.  I may not be adorable, but I am adaptable…

If you are a fan of the NFL, you must have noticed by now that players wear pink “stuff” during games in October to support breast cancer awareness because that is the month designated for that activity.  My long-suffering wife lost her mother and her sister to breast cancer; our family knows the ravages of that disease – one which has been called The Emperor of All Maladies.  I do not think, however, that we are alone in being aware of breast cancer; in fact, if any adult in the US is unaware of breast cancer in 2017, I wonder what he or she might be aware of.  Those personal comments lead up to the announcement by the NFL recently that the NFL is going to end “Pink October” and allow each team to pick its own cancer charity to support.  Here is a link to a report on that decision.

The link here contains a statement of explanation by the NFL’s VP for Social Responsibility.  I do not know the person who occupies that position nor do I know any of the people who may have occupied that chair in the past.  I will say that it is an impressive title to put on one’s résumé even if I would need convincing that it was a job that would taxing to one’s energy or intellect.  The benefit to me as a viewer of NFL games in October is that I will not necessarily see players running around with bubble-gum pink towels, shoes and headbands for an entire month.

Just asking, but what might the color be for players to wear if the team decided that its mission for the year was to support some charity involved with colon cancer…?  Cleveland Browns, anyone?

It is painfully obvious to anyone marginally above the level of “casual observer” that the NFL is determined to hype and promote events in its off-season for the purpose of keeping itself “on the newsfeeds” at least 350 days a year.  And, they are doing a great job at that.  Here is the latest wrinkle they have come up with…

  • The NFL Combine is a focal point of attention for fans because it feeds into the NFL Draft which is hyped beyond rationality and that hype is Assimilated by NFL fans because it represents the “hope for the future” for one’s favorite team.   But that is not nearly enough…
  • Fans can now go to the Combine and get “up close and personal” with the athletes as they go through some of the “events” such as the bench press.  Fans will also get to try their own hand at the 40-yard dash, the vertical jump and the standing broad jump.  How exciting that will be …

The NFL will hand out 6,000 “non-transferable tix” that will give fans this improved/additional access.  In addition to being close to the action in some of the events or participating in those same events, fans will be able to be up close and personal in the media area where draft hopefuls address the media and say nothing of consequence.  As if that were not nearly enough, fans can also get their picture taken standing behind the podium used during the draft and the fan can be wearing the uniform of their favorite team.  Roger Goodell will not be there to hug them, so the best they can imagine is that they were a low-round pick.  I will try to contain my joy here…

In case you think I might be making this stuff up, here is a link to the report on espn.com regarding this subject.

The first two items here are feelgood nonsense; they are as important as the letter “g” in lasagna.  This next item might actually be interesting – and if things break correctly it might even be important.  Just before Christmas, espn.com had a story that the NFL acknowledged the start of a spring football league.  This new league will be independent of the NFL; it will operate in April 2017; it will include NFL veterans who are not under contract at that time; it will employ “experienced NFL coaches”.

There will be 4 teams in the league and they will play a total of 6 games during the month of April.  Notice that the games in April will lead up to the NFL Draft and this is a way for teams to look for talent to fill rosters at that point in the calendar beyond what their college scouts have identified.  All of that sounds like a good idea to me – if not one that will provide a financial windfall to the “independent investors who have not ties to the NFL”.

Here is something else that sounds good to me:

  • The NFL will use the games played in this league as part of its development program for NFL officials.

That sort of development program cannot make the officiating in the NFL more controversial than it has been for the past year or two.  It has to help.  Here is something else that the NFL might do in terms of working with this new “Spring League” to improve its own on-field product:

  • Demand that the NFL Rules Committee members sit and watch all of these games and try out new rules that might be employed in the NFL.

The Rules Committee is the body that has given us the set of rules that makes it impossible to distinguish between a catch and an incompletion and to know the difference between offensive and defensive pass interference.  Those folks can use all the help and training they can get.

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Eagles rookie quarterback Carson Wentz bought each his offensive linemen a shotgun for Christmas.

“Luckily for them, Wentz doesn’t operate out of the wildcat formation.”

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

 

Quarterback Conundrums – Part Two

Yesterday, I noted three NFL teams that have a “quarterback conundrum” to ponder in this off-season.  Today, I will highlight three more teams that I think are in the same circumstance.  Let me be clear; I do not mean that these are the only six teams with “quarterback issues” that need to be improved.  There are lots of teams that simply do not have a quality QB on their roster that they can put on the field every Sunday.  That is not a conundrum for those teams; that problem is hardly difficult to identify; it is painfully obvious.

I think the Carolina Panthers have a quarterback question to resolve but it is not a question of who should be playing the position.  Cam Newton is their quarterback and will remain their quarterback.  The issue for the Panthers is how to transform Cam Newton from his statistically erratic performances over the past 4 years into a quarterback who consistently resembles the “good Cam Newton”.

  • He had a really good year in 2013 making it to the Pro Bowl and leading the Panthers to a 12-4 record.
  • Then in the subsequent year, he was not so proficient and the Panthers fell to 5-8-1 in 2014.
  • Last year, Newton was other-worldly leading the Panthers to a 15-1 regular season record and a place in the Super Bowl.  For the 2015 season, he led the NFL in TD-percentage – the percent of his passes that resulted in a TD (7.1%).  He has never been the most accurate passer in the league, but in 2015 he completed 59.8% of his throws.
  • In 2016, Newton and the Panthers regressed to 5-8-1.  He only completed 52.9% of his pass attempts; to put that in perspective, that ranks 30th in the NFL behind players such as Ryan Fitzpatrick, Blake Bortles and Brock Osweiler. For all of the 2016 season he led zero game winning drives or 4th quarter comebacks.  Seriously …

Some commentators have suggested that Cam Newton has become more concerned with his “fashion look” than with his quarterbacking.  I do not read minds; therefore, I will not try to identify cause and effect here.  What is clear to me is that the folks in charge of the Panthers need to figure out what it will take to dampen the oscillations in Cam Newton’s performance from year to year.  The Panthers know who their QB is and will be; they need him to be something like “good Cam Newton” more consistently.

The next quarterback conundrum is one that loads of NFL teams wished they had to resolve.  The New England Patriots have to decide soon what they are going to do with Jimmy Garoppolo.  He started the first two games of the season and was 42 for 59 in those two games (71.1% completions) and gained a respectable 8 yards per pass attempt.  Garoppolo turned 25 in November and will be in the 4th year of his rookie contract for the 2017 season.  If I have the details of his contract right, he will earn about $1.2M next year from the Pats but would then become an unrestricted free agent at the end of 2017.

The Pats’ “problem” is that they have this guy named Brady playing QB for them at age 39.  Unlike most 39-year old QBs in the NFL, Tom Brady is still “getting the job done” – – and more.  So, the question for the Pats is how to maximize the value of Jimmy Garoppolo as an asset:

  1. They could try to work out a long-term deal with him before he finds out what the free agent market might pay him.  Then they would have him as their successor QB for that time down the road when Tom Brady decides to ride off into the sunset.
  2. They could trade him to a team that needs a young starting QB – – and there are plenty of those.
  3. They could put a franchise tag – or a transition tag – on him at the end of the 2017 season but that would mean they would be paying their backup QB for 2018 something north of $20M.  That seems like a very expensive way to kick the can down the road…
  4. They could just let him walk.

The 4th option above seems unlikely – – unless the Pats’ coaches think that Jacoby Brissett, who also started 2 games for the Pats this year, is satisfactory as the “heir apparent” to Tom Brady.  Brissett is under contract with the Pats through the 2019 season at bargain-basement prices.  I think the Pats will try for Option 1 above and if that fails they will move to Option 2.  I can imagine a Cleveland Browns’ fan reading this and thinking:

If only the Browns had such a dilemma to resolve…

The last quarterback conundrum I want to discuss is one that has a simple and obvious answer; the only thing that might get in the way of arriving at that simple and obvious answer is ego.  The Skins need to have Kirk Cousins back as their QB.  Period.  Exclamation point!  The reason they must make that happen is painfully simple:

There is no QB available to the Skins who is equal to or better than Kirk Cousins.

I did not say Kirk Cousins is the best QB in the NFL; he is not.  There are 32 starting QBs in the NFL; if I rank order them, Cousins is somewhere between 9th and 12th on the list and the gap between 9-12 on the list and 19-22 on the list is a canyon not a rift.  The Skins were a playoff team in 2015 and missed the playoffs by a hair in 2016.  They should assure that they do not take a step backward at the QB position in this off-season.

Some have argued that the failure of the Skins to beat the Giants in Week 17 of this year shows that Cousins is not worth the “big bucks”.  Next time you hear that, ask the person who makes that point a simple question:

  • What did Kirk Cousins do in that game that rendered the Skins rushing game impotent to the point that it gained the grand total of 38 yards for the entire game?

The problem for the Skins and Cousins is money and ego.  Last year, Cousins played under the franchise tag and made $20M (round numbers).  The reason he played under those conditions is that the Skins and Cousins could not arrive at a long-term deal; reports say that the Skins “low-balled” him with a $14M per year offer and reluctantly raised that to $16M per year but would not go higher for a long-term basis and were reportedly “stingy” with the amount of the contract that would be guaranteed.  Whether those reports are accurate, the fact is that Cousins made $20M for one year’s work in 2016 and is looking potentially at free agency once again.

Here are some scenarios:

  • Skins can apply the franchise tag once again.  This year, it will be worth $24M for a single year and will make Cousins a potential free agent in 2018.  The reason the cost of the tag goes up is that the CBA requires a team to give a franchise player a 20% raise for the second time they get a franchise tag.
  • That is only a short-term solution because the CBA has another provision about mandatory pay raises.  Should the Skins use the franchise tag in 2017 and then think they will do the same again in 2018, the mandatory pay raise would be 40%.  That means, Kirk Cousins would earn $34M (round numbers) in 2018.  There comes a point where that pay ladder is not sustainable.

The Skins need a long-term deal with Cousins but it seems as if he feels a bit “disrespected” by the team based on last year’s fruitless negotiations.  As this year’s negotiations get under way, both Cousins and the Skins contract negotiating team will need to check a little bit of their egos at the door.  Here is a stylized way to arrive at an impasse in these negotiations:

 

“Kirk Cousins”:  You didn’t think I was worth more than $16M per year last year but you paid me $20M instead.  Now you can pay me $24M for a year or you can come up with a pay scale that makes it worth my while to take anything less than $24M.  Oh, and by the way, in the next off-season when you will owe me $34M for a year as your QB, we can start the negotiating process at that level…

“Skins’ negotiator”:  You played well in 2017 and we really do want you to be our QB for the long-term in Washington.  However, we need to be pragmatic here; we missed the playoffs with you as the QB.  That fact shows that we were not “low-balling you” last year; it shows that we valued you fairly and appropriately.

 

If the Skins and Kirk Cousins wind up with nothing more than a second franchise tag for 2017, I think you will be able to chalk that up to the intervention of ego(s).

Finally, here is an NFL statistical observation from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Steelers kicker Chris Boswell was randomly chosen to take a drug test after his record performance against the Bengals last Sunday, making it a 7-for-7 day.

“As in, 6 for 6 on field goals and 1 for 1 on hitting the specimen cup.”

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

Quarterback Conundrums – Part One

There are 8 NFL teams that still have games to play; the other 75% of the league is in “planning mode” assessing how they can improve over the course of the next season or two such that they will be one of the 8 teams still doing “game planning” in mid-January 2018 or 2019.  Some teams are looking for new coaches/GMs to figure out how to make that happen; other teams are analyzing their rosters and the rosters of other teams in their divisions.  The NFL is not like a string of popcorn stands on the boardwalk down by the Jersey seashore; all the NFL teams are still open for business in mid-January.

In terms of NFL success and failure, quarterbacks often get too much credit and simultaneously take too much blame for success or failure.  Nonetheless, no one who watches the NFL – even casually – would argue that having a very good QB on your roster makes it more likely that your team can succeed.  And with that sort of mindset, I would like to pose a few questions here that might just be front-and-center in the minds of a few “personnel people” in NFL Front Offices.

Carson Palmer has played 13 seasons in the NFL; he just turned 37 years old two weeks ago.  In 2015, Palmer was selected for the Pro Bowl; he led the NFL in yards per pass attempted and in QB Rating.  In 2016, his yards per pass attempt dropped a bit over 18% and his QBR indicates that he was ever so slightly above average.  Maybe that would be OK if he were playing for the Lake Woebegone Cardinals – but he plays for the Arizona Cardinals.  So, here is the question:

  • With his salary cap number north of $22M (I am not a “capologist” so I am loath to be specific with a number here), is he worth it?

The folks who are in charge in Arizona need to come to a conclusion about the 2016 version of Carson Palmer vis á vis the 2015 version of Carson Palmer.  Surely, there are multiple factors involved in his statistical decline and in the team’s lesser performance over the past two seasons but the fundamental question is how much gas does he have left in the tank.  I do not know the answer to that question; I suspect that the Cardinals’ braintrust does not yet know the answer to that question; I do think that the Cardinals’ braintrust needs to figure that out – and figure that out correctly – over the next two months.

Brock Osweiler will earn $19M to play QB for the Texans next year and I believe he will count for $19M of the team’s salary cap.  (Remember, I am not a “capologist”.)  That money is guaranteed so the team will incur the cost even if Osweiler never plays a down.  The Texans made the playoffs based on a strong defense and a chronically weak division.  So, here is the question:

  • That recipe for success may work again next year – but if something were to change and the Texans need to beef up the offensive production, is Brock Osweiler going to be the guy to provide the “beefing up”?

Financially, the Texans are on the hook for the 2017 season; however, what might be their assessments/plans for the team in 2018 and 2019 when Osweiler’s contract will cost the Texans $20-21M per year.  This season, he threw 14 TDs and 16 INTs just to highlight why the Texans need to pay attention here…

The Vikes have multiple questions to analyze.  The first is the health and potential availability of Teddy Bridgewater.  If he can play – some folks have said his freak injury might be career ending – he is an ever-loving bargain as a starting QB because he is still on his rookie contract.  In 2017, his salary will be in the neighborhood of only $2.2M; obviously, if he can play, the Vikes will want to keep him around.  And then there is Sam Bradford…

Sam Bradford is cursed with having been the first overall pick in the draft in his coming out year.  He is 29 years old so he has plenty of tread on the tires; in 2016 he led the NFL in percentage completion (70.1%) which looks good until you also see that he averaged only 7.0 yards per pass attempt.  Remember above, I pointed out that Carson Palmer’s years per attempt had dropped 18% from 2015 to 2016; well, even at that reduced level of production, Palmer averaged more than Bradford.  In 2017, Sam Bradford’s contract calls for him to earn $18M.  He is due a $4M roster bonus in March 13 and payment of that bonus guarantees a $14M salary for the 16-game NFL season in 2017.  So here is the multi-level question:

  1. Is Teddy Bridgewater going to be able to play at anything near his previous level in 2017?
  2. If so, do the Vikes think they are enough of a contender to want to keep an expensive backup on hand in case of another injury to Bridgewater?
  3. If not, are they satisfied to go through 2017 with Sam Bradford at the helm?

Make no mistake, the Vikes have another difficult choice to deal with in this offseason that may have peripheral impact on their QB decision.  Adrian Peterson missed 13 games in 2016; back in 2014 he missed 15 games; in between those two unproductive seasons here is what he did in 2015:

  • Led the NFL in rushing attempts (327)
  • Led the NFL in yards gained (1427)
  • Led the NFL in rushing TDs (11)
  • Led the NFL in yards per game (92.8)

Adrian Peterson’s contract for 2017 calls for him to make $18M and the Vikes have to exercise an option to keep him on their roster at that salary by February 5 – which is 26 days from today.  I think the folks who run the Vikes have a lot of homework to do over the next 4-8 weeks…

There are three other teams that will need to make some decisions about their quarterback situation but I will save that discussion until tomorrow.  Until then, here is a very cogent observation from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“Forbes has named Scarlett Johansson the top grossing star of 2016.

“Only because cameras weren’t there to catch Vince Wilfork’s towel fall off in the sauna.”

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

 

 

Reinventing College Football

 

Before I even get started here, let me make something crystal clear:

  • THIS AIN’T NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!

There is more than too much inertia and “history” built into the current incarnation of college football to assure that this sort of restructuring would be out of the question.  Nevertheless, just as a flight of fancy come with me on a gedankenexperiment where we reinvent – or reimagine if you prefer – college football.  What I want to do is to wave my magic wand and freeze college football as it exists today and then reinvent it.  I am not talking about the game; I do not want to invent a game where there is no tackling or where there is no such thing as pass interference.  I want to reinvent the way the game is structured/organized.

  • [Aside:  If Vice President Al Gore could presume to “reinvent the government” 20 years ago, I think I can presume to reinvent college football.  And, by the way, the non-implementation of my ideas here will have about the same lasting effect on college football as Vice President Gore’s actions had on the government.]

The top tier of college football in 2016 had 128 teams in what they call FBS or what I call Division 1-A.  That is the perfect number for my reinvention idea.  So, pour yourself a cup of coffee and put on your thinking cap while you take a trip in my fantasy world for a moment.  It just might be more interesting than a stroll down memory lane…

I want to break up the 128 Division 1-A teams into two equal parts.  Let me call these parts the “Big Boys Category” and the “Little Boys Category”.  I want to put 64 teams in each of the two categories and then I want to break each of the categories into 4 conferences of 16 teams each and each conference into 2 divisions of 8 teams each.  The Big Boys Category would consist of:

  • The SEC Teams (14 teams)
  • The Big 10 Teams (14 Teams)
  • The PAC-12 Teams (12 teams)
  • The Big 12 (10 teams) – – plus – –
  • The “14 Best Teams” from the other Conferences

The Little Boys Category would consist of the “other 64 teams”…

Now I want to divide those teams into 4 conferences and I will do that on a geographical basis.  The 14 teams that I added to this category from the “other existing conferences” would go into the existing structure on the basis of best geographical fit only because there has to be some sort of criterion here to avoid a ton of tsouris along the path leading to the assignments.

The Little Boys Category will be divided up into 4 conferences of 16 teams also and I would do my best to make this as geographically consistent as possible.  I am not focusing on the Little Boys category here nearly as much as the Big Boys Category but that will change later on…

In the new 16-team conferences in both Categories, there will be NO interconference play in the regular season.  An 11-game regular season schedule will consist of 7 games for each team in one’s division plus 4 games against teams in the other division of the same conference rotating the inter-division schedule every year.  In each conference, the two division winners will have a playoff to determine the conference winner.

The 4 conference winners in the Big Boys Category will get automatic berths in an 8-team CFP that will happen in January.  The other 4 teams in that CFP bracket will be selected by either a committee or a set of computers or a “college football czar” – makes no difference to me – and the winner of that 8-team tournament will be the College Football National Champion for the year.

I can hear lots of mumbling at this point with regard to “So, what’s the big deal here?” or “All he wants to do is change the composition of the conferences.”  As Lee Corso would say:

“Not so fast, my friend …”

You see, I want to do the same thing in the “Little Boys Category” but I want the playoffs there to have some sort of meaning or gravitas.  In fact, I think my idea here would make the Little Boys Playoff bracket almost as interesting as the one for the Big Boys.

What I want to do here is to steal the concept of relegation from the British soccer leagues.  Here is the deal:

  • The 4 finalists in the Little Boys Playoff Tournament will be promoted to the Big Boys category for the next season.
  • Geography will be the primary determinant for which team goes to which Big Boys Conference but in the case where that is not a clear choice, the team that finished higher in the Little Boys Playoff would get to choose where they will go.
  • To make room for them, there would also be a selection process – don’t care who does it or how – to determine which 4 teams from the Big Boys Category get relegated.  The easiest would be to relegate the worst team in each of the 4 conferences and then add the best 4 teams from the lower category.  Since college football never does anything in the easiest way, I am sure no one would like do it that way…

My reinvention of college football has pluses and minuses; I will be the first to acknowledge that.  Let me do the pluses first:

  1. Teams will play much more balanced schedules if they have to play all of their games “in conference”.  Every game will matter as much as every other game.  Athletic directors will not go out searching for a glorified scrimmage game against Comatose State because there will be no place on the schedule to put such a waste of time.
  2. Bowl games at the end of the season will be a lot more interesting because of the lack of interconference play.  There will be an element of inter-conference rivalry that develops and there will be a curiosity factor to see how conferences fare against one another.
  3. The big money will be with the Big Boys Category and so there will be a significant monetary incentive to win and to stay in the Big Boys Category.  Relegation will be more than just an affront to alums; relegation will be a good swift kick in the wallet.  A late season head-to-head game between two teams that are both 1-8 will be meaningful to each team – and particularly meaningful to each coach and athletic director.
  4. The Little Boys Category teams that do very well in a season can get to spend the next season trying to establish themselves in the Big Boys Category where the big money is.  That makes the Little Boys Playoff Tournament very important to the teams and the coaches – – and that will make that playoff into something that fans might be interested in.

The posers at the NCAA will not be able to complain that too many of their student-athletes will play too many games under my phantasmagorical new system.  Most teams will play only 11 games plus a bowl game (perhaps).  The best teams will play 11 regular season games plus 2 games in a conference tournament plus as many as 3 games in a CFP-like tournament for a maximum of 16 games.  In the current rendition of college football the two best teams play a 15-game schedule.  My idea is NOT a huge expansion of an already over-exposed sport.

Please note that I have refrained from including here one of my pet ideas from NCAA Mythical Picks.  Please note that the decision(s) on relegation will not be made on the basis of an on-field tournament where the losing team has to play on to see if it will be relegated or not.  My imaginary SHOE Tournament from Mythical Picks is fun for me to imagine; it would never work in reality.

I can hear screams of upset already over the idea of relegation because that relegation would potentially interrupt/destroy longstanding rivalries.  There is no “schedule flexibility” in my scheme so if one party to the annual “Big Deal Game” sucks wind for a year, they may indeed have to forego next year’s “Big Deal Game”.  You know what?  Life will go on…

I would be open to the idea of extending the relegation/promotion opportunities to the teams that finish in the Top 4 of the Division 1-AA national tournament that already exists.  The reason I would not mandate it from the start is that it is not clear to me that all of the schools in Division 1-AA would want to try to grow their football program into one that might continue to exist at the Division 1-A level.  For example, Ivy League teams would probably not want to do that and I really do not know how the folks at this year’s four finalist schools in the Division 1-AA tournament would feel about “being promoted” to the Little Boys Category of Division 1-A.  For the record, this year’s finalists are:

  • Eastern Washington
  • James Madison
  • North Dakota St.
  • Youngstown St.

By the same token, I would not presume to extend the relegation/promotion concept down from Division 1-AA to Division II or from Division II to Division III.  I know that sort of thing happens in the British soccer leagues and that is the model for my idea.  I just don’t know if it is a good idea to implement this all the way up and down the ladder here in American football.

Earlier on, I said that I really did not care how various selections would be made in this reinvented system.  Actually, that is not completely correct.  I do care that the humans involved in the decision making are people who can and will spend the time to pay attention to what they are doing.  A committee composed of athletic directors and coaches and journalists is not going to be satisfactory for a simple reason:

  • Those folks have other full-time jobs and commitments that preclude them from spending 40-50 hours per week doing nothing but focusing on the tasks at hand such as adding 4 at-large teams to the Big Boys Category CFP and/or picking the 4 worst teams in the Big Boys Category to relegate.  That is not a job done by simply reading stat compilations; the selectors need to take the time to watch the candidate teams and make decisions based on the “Eyeball Test” as well as the “Statistical Test”.

Oh, by the way, that same statement would eliminate a totally computer based selection process.  Computers are not yet to the point where they might perform any sort of “Eyeball Test”.

I made a passing reference above to a “college football czar”.  I doubt that I would have difficulty convincing you that finding an acceptable person to assume that position would be impossible.  However, I will offer a nominee for the job.

  • Larry Culpepper – the Dr. Pepper stadium vendor.  After all, he invented the College Football Playoff, right?

That completes your tour of my fantasy world for the reinvented game of college football.  It will never come to pass, but I had fun contemplating it.  And now, let me go and adjust my meds …

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